Gaol’s gloomy history told in new exhibition
TODAY there’s little trace of the brutal gaol in Newcastle’s Carliol Square that cast its grim shadow over the city between 1828 and 1925.
But a new exhibition at City Library, Newcastle, will reveal the grisly details of the conditions inmates were kept in, the crimes they were being punished for, and what everyday life was like inside the prison. It also contains archive photos of many of those who were detained, alongside a whip used to punish offenders and a book containing the skin of a man executed in 1850.
‘The Life and Death of Newcastle Gaol, 1822-2022’ is based on the research of a team of academics headed by Dr Shane McCorristine of Newcastle University. The exhibition is the latest phase in a long-term project to gather research, ideas, memories, images and other content that can help tell stories about the gaol and, more broadly, the East Pilgrim Street area.
Dr McCorristine said: “The story of the gaol and those who were imprisoned there in many ways reflects the changing story of Newcastle. The area between Manors and Pilgrim Street, where Carliol Square is, was once the main route between the city and the Quayside, but soon after the gaol was demolished in 1925, the whole area began to be transformed.
“The exhibition provides a way for people to remember a bygone piece of the city’s history.”
The exhibition will also include rare items loaned from Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums, including a bale of oakum, handcuffs, and the original key to the prison.
The gaol was designed by John Dobson and replaced Newgate, Newcastle’s medieval prison. Opened in 1828, it was among the first prisons to use a ‘panopticon’-style system, seen as a progressive design that would help reform rather than punish offenders.
However, only five of the six radial wings were ever built due to high construction costs, and the number of inmates quickly increased due to population growth and an increase in urban and poverty-related crime.
Within 10 years of the gaol opening, it was condemned for being damp and overcrowded, and there had been numerous escapes. Frequent violence among prisoners was also a problem early on. Eventually, in 1858, Dobson was asked by the council to pull down the wings and replace them with a single four-storey block of 144 cells.
The exhibition includes stories of some of the daring escapes made by prisoners, including 27-year-old Mary O’Neil, who had been arrested in 1870 for stealing a purse on Clayton Street.
But she soon managed to remove the iron bars from the window in her cell and climb up on to the roof before disappearing over the imposing, 25-foot-high boundary walls. She evaded capture for six months before being caught in Liverpool.
The exhibition will also cover the 1919 double execution of Ambrose Quinn and Ernest Bernard Scott – the last to take place in Newcastle.
Scott and Quinn were both 28 years old and had murdered women, in Scott’s case an unrequited love named Rebecca Jane Quinn and in Quinn’s case his wife, Elizabeth Ann Quinn.
The exhibition is free and is located in the Local Studies section on the sixth floor of the City Library until July 31.
The gaol website can be visited at www.newcastlegaol.co.uk