An afternoon in Adelaide Gaol…
Travel Location: Oceania,Australia,South-Australia,Adelaide
Yesterday I decided to check out the Adelaide Gaol. It was built on the outskirts of Adelaide in 1841 and as Adelaide is one of the only colonial towns not be settled by convicts, local people scoffed at the idea of needing a prison. They were soon proved to be less that law abiding citizens, and a number of various people began filling up the jail. The layout is a semi-circle, with the womens yard to the laft, and the remainder of the space divided into 5 other triangular yards. There are a number of different styled buildings due to the expansion of the prison across the years. There were only two women amongst the males to begin with, and they were housed between the prison walls. As the number of women began to grow, a seperate yard was built for them to be housed. There are two towers to the right hand side of the layout – one is the guard tower, the other the hanging tower.
As we looked around, I was reminded of my visit to Lewes Prison. The original buildings have high, solid walls that are practially windowless. The cells are small and dark, and wouldn’t not have been a nice place to reside even for a short while. Walking round the buildings, it felt really quiet and almost peaceful. Very different to how it would have been when full of prisoners. There is also a newer building, modeled on the English ‘T’ shaped prisons, which the prisoners themselves helped to build. There are two cells down the one end of the ‘T’ in A wing, called the fridge – this is a place for prisoners to ‘cool off’ and a place for not even the loudest protest to be heard. The doors are two doors thick and nothing can be heard from the outside. Not particularly nice to look at, let alone be locked inside. Outside of the A wing walls is a cricket pitch to one side, and a prison cemetary to the other side. Anyone hung inside the prison was buried inside the prison walls – life in prison meant life in the prison walls, even after death. There is another set of graves along the north-west side of the outer wall – it’s here that Elizabeth Woolcock is buried. She was the first and only woman to be hung here (the only one in the whole of South Australia). The guilty verdict was given after the local townspeople gave evidence to suggest she’d poisoned her husband with mercury. She was hung and burried on 30th December 1893. A historian is currently working on a pardon to be granted to Elizabeth, after finding evidence that the poisoning could have occurred naturally as her husband was a miner and frequently came into contact with mercury.
In front of the guard tower on the north east side is yard four. It is here that there is a block of cells, including some called the ‘condemned’ cells. People that had been sentenced to death were kept here in these cells, on 24 hour suicide watch leading up to the hanging. There are only 3 cells in the corner of the building, and scratches and marks can be seen along the walls inside the cells. The gallows were originally outside of the prison walls, so that the public could attend them. They were eventually moved inside the prison walls and then on in to the hanging tower between 1953 – 1964. It’s claimed that some 2,000 people attended the last hanging at the Adelaide Gaol. Most of the 45 prisoners that were hung have got marked graves inside the prison walls.
On the top of the walls surrounding is yard is a series of bricks layed in a ‘honeycomb’ fashion. They are balanced, rather than cemented on top of the walls. The sound of falling bricks would alert guards to anyone trying to escape. There were several stories of people who tried to escape. Three actually made it over the walls and were away for several days before being found and taken back to the jail. There are exhibitions of the hooks and sheets bound together that were used to try and escape with. There are also several ‘keys’ that have been fashioned out of metal that prisoners tried to use to pick locks with. Other exhibitions include contraband items found in cells (crack-pipes, drugs, knives, homemade weapons), the cat-o-nine-tails and some photos of prison made tattoos and the instruments used. The gaol was eventually closed in 1988.
Various photos have been attached below to illustrate some of the sights! Enjoy x
