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Gruel and bread, not fish and chips, was the staple diet of the unfortunate recalcitrants and ne'er do wells who were detained at Her Majesty's pleasure in Scarborough Jail. Having a pint meant 2 ounces of oatmeal in a pint of water for breakfast and supper ; lunch was a pound of bread. Every other day the gruel was sweetened with a small amount of molasses. For those who were "booked in" for more than 21 days, a little bread accompanied the gruel.
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For those sentenced to hard labour (breaking rocks in the yard) there was happy hour once a week when they also got a pint of soup!
Strangely for a town renowned for its castle, the prison population were housed
on various sites away from the Castle since the 1640s.
From the 1640s Scarborough's criminal fraternity were boarded in the prison at Newborough Bar. Cells were 9 feet square and 7 feet high. Some of them were below
ground level and "en-suite" meant that the grating in the floor was directly above the open local sewer.
There was a "hop it" or lock-up for drunken or unruly prisons to sober up or cool off. |
There were three "bedrooms" where debtors could pay 3 old pennies to hire a bed for the night from the jailer and a fourth where, if you provided your own bed, you
could have relative luxury for 6 old pennies a week. Conditions were appalling and it was a regular sight to see dirty hands thrust through the pavement gratings and hear plaintive cries for bread or water.
By 1840 the prison had fallen into disrepair and disrepute. Conditions were so bad that a new prison was built in Castle Road. Conditions were little improved and hard labour was still very much the order of the day. In 1849 an official report
described the ease with which prisoners might breakout. The report clearly fell on deaf ears as escapes continued for the next 17 years; on the 8th October 1866,
Mr. Edgar became the last recorded escapee from the Castle Road prison, only a week before its final closure.
There was much local unrest as to the prison and in 1863 the Council began investigating a number of possible sites for a new "escape proof" prison.
Many sites were considered including the aptly named "Gallows Close"
on Falsgrave which found much local support but in February of 1865 the
local authority made the decision to acquire a couple of fields on Dean Road.
With an alacrity not shared by modern bureaucracy the Prisons Inspector approved the site in March of the same year.
In 1865 the Disraeli Government introduced The Prisons Act, placing a responsibility on local authorities to make provision for solitary confinement and penal servitude. Scarborough was ahead of the game!
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The prison was designed by the Architect William Baldwin Stewart in collaboration with the Borough Surveyor Alexander Taylor and by May of 1865 plans were approved for a prison building, designed initially to house 36 male and 12 female prisoners plus 4 debtors or juveniles ( a capacity which was later to increase to 79).
Work on the £12,000 prison commenced in September 1865; by October the foundation stone was laid and February of the following year a "roofing supper" for some 300 guests was held at The Prince of Wales Hotel.
Work proceeded at a pace and in October 1866 the doors were thrown open to 22 male and 22 female prisoners who were transferred from the Castle Road jail.
There were 36 cells built over 3 floors, 12 to a floor, six each side and 2 feet thick whitewashed walls.
It appears that prison overcrowding was not an issue!
Only a week after the new escape proof prison opened its doors it figuratively did so again when a prisoner by the name of Scott devised a cunning plan which ultimately resulted in his making use of an improvised rope and scaling the 15 foot wall and making his escape.
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There are numerous recorded sentences passed down of people being sentenced to hard labour in the prison, including a woman receiving 4 months with hard labour for theft of a boy's jacket and trousers from her landlord, a twenty year old man
who received 12 months for having the temerity to plead not guilty to the theft of a 5/- fishing line and, most notably, a William Elliot, who, for passing a counterfeit florin (10p in modern parlance), and having 50 others in his possession was given the maximum 4 years by the Recorder at the local Quarter Sessions. In keeping with the mood of the day the Recorder was much disturbed that he could not incarcerate him for 7 years. (plus la change, plus la meme chose)! |
By 1877 prison reform was again on the agenda and the Government passed a further Prisons Act which effectively nationalised some 31 local prisons, taking them out of the control of local authorities in 1878.
Although Scarborough had the opportunity to purchase the prison from the Government for just under £3,500 ( plus a £10,000 mortgage) the opportunity was declined and the prison closed.
Prisons were thenceforth transferred to York or Hull.
In 1879 there was a petition to re-open the prison, supporters citing the fact that in that year it had cost some £150 to transport some 286 prisoners to York by rail plus the cost of manpower for transport etc but the pleas fell on deaf ears.
The prison never clanged its doors in anger again.
So what now of Scarborough's prisons?
The last vestiges of Newborough Bar disappeared some long, long time ago.
The Castle Road prison (closed in 1866) continued to see service as a Court House and police station through to 1971 when it was demolished following the building of a new police station and new Court House in Northway.
The edifice and much of the old prison on Dean Road still however remains intact.
During the 1890s it saw service as a home for stray dogs.
In 1899 the Borough Engineer's Stores department was transferred to the Dean Road site.
Nowadays people still see the twin castellated stone- faced towers which dominate the entrance to the site, still hinting at the horrors which once dwelt within.Typical of Victorian "front" and over-statement however the remainder of the site is much less grandiose.
The main buildings are of red brick construction. The main cell block, its galleries, cells and staircases remain intact. |
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It would now be hard to imagine the below ground stark, windowless punishment cells, the cells for women and the kitchen with pulleys to the upper-floors and the ground-floor offices for the Governor and his staff or the first-floor Chapel, now stripped of its religious fineries, much less the "itch cell" located close to the fumigation room.
There is no grandeur to what was the Governor's House and Warden's House sited inside the entrance towers.
Images of emaciated prisoners breaking their backs as well as rocks in the stone-breaking yard are now hard to conjure, as is the fact that the other existing buildings were once a busy laundry, foundry and stables.
The site remains a Council Depot.
In 1984 there was an unsuccessful application for the site to be used for a superstore
and, more imaginatively, a local councillor proposed that it be turned into a museum and local crafts centre.
At the time however the site was very much a busy
storage depot, employing some 300 men and neither proposal got off the ground.
The only reminders of the site's historic past over the last twenty-five years have been the occasional glimpses of the imposing frontage on such t.v. productions
as Vincent, Heartbeat and The Royal.
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