Lawford’s Gate – a prison for wife deserters and cabbage thieves
For hundreds of years Lawford’s Gate was temporary home to a lot of people who would have preferred not to have been there. Dave Stephenson looks at the long history of what at various times was a lock-up, a prison and a “house of correction”.
LAWFORD’S Gate Prison once stood at the corner of what are now Lawford’s Gate and Trinity Road, just beyond Old Market Street (which was in Bristol) and West Street (which was in Gloucestershire).
Many writers have stated that it opened in 1791, though in fact it was much older, and with several different buildings.
The first prison on or near this place was something called “The Cage”, probably for drunks and vagrants. It was destroyed during the Civil War as everything outside of Old Market was demolished to stop Cromwell’s troops creeping up on the Royalists inside the city.
The lock-up was replaced but by 1715 it was found to be inadequate for the growing population of the out-parish of St Philips.
An application was made to construct a bridewell on a site called Wells Close and it opened the following year. It had four rooms measuring 18ft by 16ft and two of them had beds, though only for inmates who could pay for them. The others had to make do with straw on the floor.
The courtyard was not very secure, so the prisoners were mostly kept in their cells. We know that in the eight-and-a-half years up to 1776 a total of 572 prisoners passed through.
In 1752 the district of St George was created. It elected two “petty constables” each year to arrest any wrong-doers and for the next 100 years or so you might often have seen prisoners being marched down Church Road in chains or handcuffs.
A whipping post was erected in 1751. In its early days convicted men sentenced to whipping were whipped in public, though it was later done in private. The punishment was usually administered as soon as the court session was over.
In later years so many people moved into the area that crime increased and a much bigger and more secure prison was needed. This was the one which opened in 1791.
The boundary wall enclosed about an acre of ground. To the right of the gate was a room where magistrates held their sessions every Thursday except when the Assizes and Quarter Session court sittings were being held.
There was a keeper’s house at the front and four courts, with a pump and sewer in each, three day room with fireplaces, stone seats and shelves, plus a chapel on the first floor. There were nine sleeping cells for women and ten for men. Each cell was 7ft by 4ft and 6ft 1in high and has a cast iron bedstead, straw mat, hair mattress, blanket, sheets and a double rug. There were another two cells for vagrants, but they only had straw bedding which was taken out and burnt after use.
There were two infirmary rooms and a dispensary for the surgeon who would see the prisoners once a week of when sent for. There were cistern toilets and soap and towels.
The capacity was for 40 prisoners but only 24 inmates were ever held here at any one time, and for a lot of these people conditions were better than at home.
Here are just a few of the sentences given to inmates in the year 1820:
» An eight-year-old boy sentenced to a month plus a 1/6 (7½p) fine for stealing coal.
» A 12-year-old boy for trespassing in a field: 6 weeks.
» A man, for killing rabbits: 6 months and a £1 fine.
» Stealing a cabbage: 3 months
» Stealing a turnip: 1 month with hard labour.
Today many of these crimes would not even be investigated by the police.
The magistrates were mostly men of property or owners of companies which employed people on low wages while themselves living a life of luxury and judged these people for just trying to survive.
A man could also be imprisoned and fined for deserting his wife and children, or not paying to support an illegitimate child.
During the Bristol riots of 1831 a mob approached the prison and simply rang the bell at the gate. When the keeper opened the door they demanded his keys and released the 23 prisoners inside.
However, when they found that one of the inmates, a young boy in irons they became enraged and threw three of the keeper’s pigs into the fire they had started and which would destroy the building. It had to be rebuilt.
Records from 1837 provide some interesting numbers. Of the prisoners who passed through that year 74 men and eight women could not read or write; 40 men and three women could read “a little”; 55 men and three women could read or write “a little”. Only five men were recorded as being able to read and write well.
The food was mostly bread, potatoes and gruel and the prison spent £4 2/9d on soap, £4 18/- on washing, and nothing on candles or oil. In some prisons money was spent on beer and spirits, but not here.
By 1854 it was no longer a county prison, but a station house for the police and just held prisoners on remand.
Lawford’s Gate’s Great Escape took place in 1878 when Robert Ray, a horse dealer from Birmingham was accused of stealing a valuable horse in south Gloucestershire.
He was held on remand at Lawford’s Gate while awaiting trial, and bored through the nine inch thick brick cell wall, making a hole 18 inches wide to squeeze through into the neighbouring cell, having padded out his bed to fool the guard. In the next cell he removed a grating to crawl along a hot air tunnel and into the prison yard and scaled a 20ft high wall.
He fell heavily on the other side of the wall, but he had made it out. Alas he was later recaptured at Wickwar station.
This was only one of a number of escape attempts. Back in 1723 friends of three remand prisoners tried to smuggle a gun in hidden in a pie, but someone informed on the plan, and it was added to the charges. They were hanged at Gloucester. By the 1880s the prison was no longer in use and was left to decay. In 1907 the old bedsteads were sold off and it was demolished. The site nowadays is flats and a little-used recreation ground.