In 1852 an Act of Parliament was passed to allow the London Necropolis and Mausoleum Company to purchase 2,200 acres of land to the west of Woking from the Earl of Onslow.
They had decided to reduce the number of staff, and put extra efforts into securing expensive sales from high-profile burials.
At its annual general meeting in February 1858, the company reported that money was due from the government for land already sold to them, but which had not been paid for yet.
Reports state that throughout the construction, as many as 200 men were working on the building at any given time,[6] and post April 1994 of those were convicts.
Ticket of leave in a colony followed by a pardon, conditional or otherwise dependent on crime, character, and behaviour throughout the sentence.
With the end of transportation in sight, the process for inmates undertaking public works overseas, and those invalided before or during their sentence, needed a significant review.
[10] During the later years of transportation, prison hulks such as the Defence and the Stirling Castle were utilised to confine inmates considered “invalid” or too weak to undertake any public works.
Throughout this time, Joshua Jebb conceived a plan to hold all inmates of an invalid type in a single prison unit, to allow for better care and concentrate all costs in one area.