Ruthin Gaol

                                                Pont Hawkin and the Old Gaol c 1904   

                                                               Ruthin Gaol c 2013






   The first County Gaol and Courthouse in Ruthin was built in 1404, belonging to The Lord of Ruthin, not long after the rebellion of Owain Glyndwr which caused much destruction in the town.

 The following account of the courthouse was written in 1829 for the Welsh Literary Society of Ruthin.

THE OLD COURT HOUSE

A large block of 'black and white' building situated in St. Peter's Square, formerly called Market Place; now in the several occupations of Mr. J. E Jones, Ironmonger; Mr. J. Royles, Bootmaker; and Mr. T. Evans, Grocer.

It was built as a Court House and County Gaol in the year 1401, immediately after the town was burnt down in September of the previous year: ˜During a fair holden at Ruthin in the year 1400 Owen Glyndwr entered it with a small army, assailed the fortress without success and after pillaging the inhabitants, and burning the town retreated to the mountains. '

' On this site on 18th September 1400, the first flame in Owain Glyn Dwr's campaign was lit. The original building was burned and many Ruthin residents joined Prince Owain in the battle for the freedom of our nation.'

2008

Continued from the Welsh Literary Society of Ruthin: 

'It is evident from the present state of the building that it was built according to the custom of those days, of the very best materials. We find it recorded in history that many have been executed in this Gaol, the last execution being that of Thomas Wright, a Schoolmaster of Wrexham, for being concerned in a plot to overthrow the Protestant Religion, at the commencement of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, he being a Papist at heart.

'There are several large cellars underneath which served for prisoners’ cells; and facing the Square, a little to the left of the building can be seen to this day a part of the gallows projecting out a few inches from the wall: whilst under the Shambles, on the right side of the middle shop was to be seen within the memory of the writer, a very ancient door leading up a flight of stairs to the Session Room. About the year 1853 this room was adapted to an Auction Mart by Mr. R. Lloyd, Auctioneer; and now serves as a warehouse.'      

The Old Courthouse 

The building, from the end of the nineteenth century, was owned by the Aldrich family. This they divided into shop units. At one stage one of the units became a bank branch, the predecessor of the NatWest bank.

                                                      The Old Court House today

 *2012 .This half- timbered building in St. Peter’s Square was restored in 1926 and now houses the National Westminster Bank. Part of the gallows ( gibbet ) can still be seen projecting from the eaves to the right of the picture. Most executions took place in Ruthin and the last one is believed to have been that of a Franciscan Friar, Father Charles Mahoney on 12 August 1679. The Welsh Catholic martyr, Richard Gwyn, after spending the last four years of his life there, however, was executed at Wrexham in 1584.

THE OLD GAOL, originated as the first county House of Correction at Ruthin, was built in 1654.

Until the sixteenth century, gaols were regarded mainly as a means of holding prisoners awaiting trial; the actual punishment inflicted varied from fines, through a spell in the stocks, to branding and execution. Towards the end of the sixteenth century prisons had come to be used as a means of punishment - for debt, non-payment of fines, minor misdemeanours and especially vagrancy. Offenders and unconvicted persons, males and female, were usually crowded together in conditions which bred disease and immorality.

Harry Davies of Ruthin was appointed the first Master in 1655. The distinction between gaols and houses of correction was never clearly defined in effect; therefore, the Ruthin House of Correction came to be used more and more as a place of detention with deteriorating living conditions.

In 1699 the authorities were said to be building another prison on an adjoining site where an ancient house called Porth y Dwr (Watergate) was the gate in the town's walls at the river Clwyd.

In 1774, as a result of the efforts of the prison reformers such as John Howard, two Acts of Parliament were passed; to improve hygiene and medical care; to abolish payment by prisoners upon discharge.

This same year the Denbighshire justices decided to build an entirely new prison on the site of the House of Correction, and in 1775 more cells and a chapel were added to the plans.

Over the front door on Clwyd Street was the inscription:

THE MAGISTRATES, SENSIBLE OF THE MISERABLE STATE OF THE ANCIENT PRISON, IN COMPASSION TO THE UNFORTUNATE, CAUSED THIS BUILDING TO BE ERECTED IN THE YEAR MDCCLXXV Jos. Turner Architect

CLWYD STREET c 1910. ......... The gaol was formerly housed in the building on the left (built in 1775 by Joseph Turner ), and after a separate cell block was built in 1866, , the original building became the residence of the governor and the gaol staff. Bars visible on the windows were removed after the gaol was closed in 1916. The police station was housed in the gaol until the present station was opened in Record Street in 1891. In 1824 a hangman, Sam Burrows, was staying at the Red Lion inn , opposite the gaol. the night before the execution of John Connor, a highway robber .

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Corporal Punishment - Relentless

In the early nineteenth century the Australian penal settlements were the scene of floggings of so severe a nature as to rival the worst that were inflicted in England during the sixteenth century, or in the Southern States of America during the days of slavery. George E. Boxall, author of the History of the Australian Bushrangers, writes;

'It is said that there were two floggers in Sidney who were regarded as artists in their profession. These men performed together, the one being right-handed and the other left. They prided themselves on being able to flog a man without breaking the skin, and consequently there was no blood spilled. But the back of the flogged man is described as having been puffed up like "blown veal". The swelling, "shook like jelly," and the effects were felt for a much longer period than when the back was cut and scored as it generally was, for we are told that the ground in the Barrack Square in Sydney, all round where the triangles stood, was saturated with human blood, and the flogging places elsewhere must have been in the same condition'.

All the way to Australia these convicts, men, women and boys, upon the most trifling of pretexts, were beaten within an inch of their lives and then arrived in the penal settlements, where they were whipped, hammered and tortured repeatedly. The following account gives a graphic picture:

'Here are some entries from the official journal kept upon the Island'.* "In 1844 the convict Richard Henry received 200 lashes for insubordination, and for endeavouring to trump up a charge of unfairness in dealing with prisoners on the part of Warder McChuskey."

'Earlier, on 5 Nov., 1842', "James Macdonald sentenced to receive 100 lashes and to work for three months in irons; and James lliot to seventy five lashes and 3 months in irons, for having been seen to associate with each other by signals, when silence was enjoined in the gang".

"Thomas Downie was ordered to dark cells for seven days, and to receive 200 lashes for insubordination and refusing to work".

*Norfolk Island

                                                                     A Flogging At Sea

  

  BRIDEWELL

 In 1552 London citizens petitioned the Privy Council to convert the Royal Palace at Bridewell into a 'house of correction' - a place, they explained, where 'needy and miserable persons' should be housed and given work. Other towns followed suit, and in time these Bridewells, as they were called, became more like prisons and were called Houses of Correction, where unruly inmates were required to maintain themselves by their labour.

In the words of Bishop Ridler, the Bridewells were intended "for the strumpet and idle person, for the rioter that consumeth all , and for the vagabond that will abide in no place."

Both young women and young men, sent to the Bridewell, were stripped and whipped in the presence of the governors of the prisons and some members of the public, for the most trivial of offences. The witnessing of flagellation was often looked upon as an entertainment.

It has been reported that a fifteen year old boy was fastened down upon the whipping bench, and with birch specially prepared for hours in water, was thrashed on his naked backside until blood was drawn. This horrific punishment was imposed for bedwetting.

The two most used whips in the Bridewells were the bull's pizzle and the birch. A terrible weapon, the bull's pizzle, elastic and capable of standing enormous strain, was reserved for the more severe chastisements. In a strong man's hand it was not only deadly in its punishing powers but dangerous to life and limb, and care had to be taken to avoid striking the lower end of the spine. The birch, a bundle of birch twigs bound together at one end and tied to a handle, was, on occasions, steeped in vinegar and salt to increase the pain of the flogging.

                                                      Bridewell

                                                            Punishment with Brushes

          A Bizarre Form of Flogging -  From a Seventeenth-century Copper-plate Engraving

As late as 1899 whipping appears to have been a common form of punishment in certain American prisons. This was the most dreaded form of punishment when men were 'whipped into bleeding insensibility' for certain 'crimes' against the prison regulations. This was known as 'seventy five' and there was a case of the victim, bound hand and foot, secured across a trough and flogged with razor-edged 'paddles' until, with his flesh hanging in ribbons and lacerated to the very bones, became a mere lump of bleeding and unconscious flesh. 

As recently as the 1930's flogging was still ordered with the birch-rod still used, although the most severe form of corporal punishment was the dreaded cat-o'-nine tails. The type of 'cat' used had nine tails made of whipcord. The tails were whipped with silk thread at their ends to prevent fraying. The flogging was across the bare back, not the buttocks. The kidneys and the neck were protected by means of leather bands. A doctor was present and he had the power to stop the flogging at any moment. In England, the head of the prisoner was screened so that he could not see the officer who was wielding the 'cat'; in Scotland no such method of screening was employed. No offender under eighteen was given the 'cat'.

Flogging Children - 'Spare the Rod and Spoil the Child '

Throughout the ages the maxim 'spare the rod and spoil the child' was accepted and used to justify the flagellation of children of both sexes, until comparatively recently. In the twentieth century many people had vivid recollections of the sting of the birch or the cane. Children of working class families were flogged by their parents at home, by teachers at school and by employers at work; while the children of the middle classes and upper classes received their floggings at the hands of their teachers, governesses or private tutors.

From the days when schools were first established to the early part of the twentieth century the birching of boys has been inseparable from the discipline of nearly every school in Britain. Even the royal family did not escape chastisement. Frederick the Great was flogged repeatedly by his father; in a letter to his mother he remonstrated as follows:

"The King has entirely forgotten that I am his son. This morning I came into his room as usual. At first sight of me he sprang forward, seized me by the collar, and struck me a shower of cruel blows with his rattan. I tried in vain to screen myself. He was in a terrible rage - almost out of himself. It was only weariness, not my superior strength, that made him give up. I am driven to extremity. I have too much honour to endure such treatment, and am resolved to put an end to it one way or another."

Milton was flogged at Cambridge, for the practice of whipping was in those days as common at the colleges and universities as in the schools.

Occasionally the floggings were so severe as to cause death as in the account of the trial of a schoolmaster named Robert Carmichael, in 1699, for the murder of one of his scholars. According to the evidence, Carmichael gave the boy three successive beatings 'and in rage and fury did drag him from his desk and beat him with his hand upon the head and back with heavy and severe strokes, and after he was out of his hands he immediately died'. The jury found the beating to be the cause of death and Carmichael was sentenced to seven stripes and banishment from Scotland for life. (From The Percy Anecdotes )

Flogging appears to have been accepted by the school authorities as the panacea for every breach of discipline, as the comments in the Edinburgh Review, April 1830, indicates:

'For all offences, except the most trivial, whether for insubordination in or out of school, for inability to construe a lesson, or to say it by heart, for being discovered out of bounds, for absence from chapel or school - in short, for any breach of the regulations of the school - every boy, below the sixth form, whatever be his age, is punished by flogging. This operation is performed on the naked back, by the headmaster himself, who is always a gentleman of great abilities and requirements, and sometimes of high dignity in the church'.

Wm. M. Cooper, in The History of the Rod, mentions that at Eton, the English public school, notorious for whipping, 'a charge of half-a-guinea for birch was made in every boy's bill', perhaps based on the principle that every boy would be better for a flogging whether he deserved it or not. 

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Corporal Punishment

Flogging as a Form of Punishment

Records indicate that using the whip is an ancient method of punishment and coercion. It would appear that in Roman times different types of whips were used for different offences. A simple leather strap, known as the ferula, was used for a minor offence; a whip made of cord- like twisted thongs of parchment, well-designed to lacerate the flesh, and known as the scutica, was used for more serious offences; finally, came the horsewhip-like flagellum, a savagely fierce product made of thongs of ox-leather.

From a reading of Horace's Satires it is apparent that the choice of the rod, and the number of strokes, were left to the judge. The same writer indicates the fiendish cruelty and vindictiveness apparent in some of the sentences when he mentions that the floggings continued so long, and were so excessive, that the executioner himself had to desist from sheer exhaustion.

Of course, there was one law for the rich and influential and another law for the poor and obscure. The powerful often escaped the rod altogether, or if applied it was reduced in severity.

However, the most remarkable and significant feature of penal flagellation was the severity of the punishment for the most trivial of offences and assuredly so in England, France, Germany, Russia, China, and in other countries throughout the centuries.

In 1530, during the reign of Henry VIII, the Whipping Act was designed specifically to put down vagrancy, and it provided that any vagrant detected in the act should be hauled to the nearest town possessing a market place, 'and there tied to the end of a cart naked, and beaten with whips throughout each market town, or other place, till the body shall be bloody by reason of such whipping'.

This brutal and sanguinary act remained in force for some fifty years until some modifications were made. These were that the cart-tail business was largely discontinued;* and the nudity clause was abandoned. From then on the culprit was allowed to wear some clothing, at any rate, and was tied to a post while the whipping was performed. it was at this time that whipping posts were erected in nearly all the towns and villages throughout England. Their number and popularity are indicated by the lines of the poet, John Taylor:

In London, and within a mile, I ween,

There are jails or prisons full eighteen,

And sixty whipping posts and stocks and cages.

* (Whipping at the cart's tail was not finally abolished in Britain until early in the nineteenth century. The last sentence of this nature to be executed was in 1822 on May 8th, when a rioter was whipped through the streets of Glasgow by the hangman.)

Men and women were whipped unmercifully for such trivial offences as peddling, being drunk on a Sunday, and participating in a riot. An example from records reveals that in 1641, at Ecclesfield, the sum of fourpence was paid to a woman for whipping one Ellan Shaw, accused of felony.

In 1680 a woman was whipped at Worcester.

Whipping a woman in public

   In 1690, at Durham, Eleanor Wilson, for being drunk on a Sunday, 'was publicly whipped in the market place, between the hours of eleven and twelve o'clock'.  

                         The Flogging of Mary Clifford by Mrs Brownrigg      

For repeatedly and cruelly whipping her apprentice, Mary Clifford, to such a degree thet the girl died as a result of the bruises and lacerations she sustained, Elizbeth Brownrigg was convicted of wilful murder and executed at Tyburn on September 14th 1767.

In 1759, according to the Worcester Corporation records, a fee of 2s. 6d. was paid for the whipping of Elizabeth Bradbury, but, says a correspondent in Notes and Queries ( October 30, 1852), this sum probably included ' the cost of hire of the cart, which was usually charged 1s. 6d. separately' .

In 1699, there is an entry in the Burnham Church register which records the whipping of 'Benjamin Smat, and his wife and three children, vagrant beggars'.

According to the writer of the article on 'Whipping' in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (eleventh edition):

'At the quarter sessions in Devonshire at Easter 1598 it was ordered that the mothers of bastard children should be whipped, the reputed fathers suffering a like punishment'.

One of the most brutal directions was issued by Judge Jeffreys to the executioner charged with the whipping of a woman upon whom sentence was passed:

" Hangman, I charge you to pay particular attention to this lady. Scourge her soundly, man: scourge her till her blood runs down ! It is Christmas, a cold time for madam to strip. See that you warm her shoulders thoroughly."

Another brutal sentence ordered by Judge Jeffreys was the flogging of Titus Oates with a six-thonged whip, which continued until the prisoner could no longer stand.  

                                        The Scourging of Thomas Hinshaw

In 1557, Thomas Hinshaw, after being imprisoned at Newgate, and in the stocks at Fulham, was beaten with willow rods, personally wielded by Boner, Bishop of London, until the Bishop was forced to desist through sheer weariness. (Fox's Acts and Monuments of Martyrs, 1684)

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Some of the Horrors of Capitol Punishment

Execution of Mary Blandy

Mary Blandy is famous in criminal literature for her remarkable letters and defence strategy from the condemned cell. She was the victim of an unhappy love affair.

                                                                  Death by Pressing

The punishment of pressing to death was inflicted on those who refused to plead to an indictment. By such refusal the accused were able to save their property from being confiscated, and so leave it to their dependents. The punishment was finally abolished in 1828.

In Britain Peel revised the penal code, and death for minor offences was abolished. However, it was not until 1832 that the punishment of death for forgery was abolished.

From May, 1827, to May, 1830,  four hundred and fifty-one persons were condemned to death, but only fifty-five were executed.

From 1832 to 1837 a large number of capital offences were abolished and in 1840, for the first time in the history of Parliament, a resolution for the abolition of capitol punishment was brought in, and over ninety members voted in favour.

In Europe during this period common punishments were quartering alive, tearing to pieces by horses, and disemboweling.

In Germany military included hunting and spearing to death of the condemned by his fellow soldiers; making him run the gauntlet of rods until dead, flogging to death with the knout (whip), etc. The last two forms of execution were practiced in Russia until late into the nineteenth century.

In Britain there are cases on record of children as young as ten or even eight years old having been hanged. As late as 1831 a boy of nine years was publicly hanged at Chelmsford for having set fire to a house at Witham.

In the days of George 11 it was not uncommon for children under the age of ten to be hanged, and on one occasion ten of them were strung up together, as a warning to men, and a ‘spectacle for the angels’.

In 1808 Michael Hamond and his sister aged seven and eleven respectively, were hanged at Lynn for felony.

When it was seen that public executions did not act as a deterrent, it was ordained that criminals sentenced death should be hanged inside the prisons.

The execution shed at Maidstone, for instance, was a wooden shed at one end of the exercise yard, near which was the condemned cell. The platform, about eight feet by four feet, consisted of two trap doors, hinged, and allowed to fall by means of a lever. The doors fell against the sides of a brick-lined pit. The platform was level with the ground outside the shed doors, and when the condemned man fell, nothing could be seen but the taught rope.

The usual time of execution was in the morning between eight o’clock and noon. Where the authorities feared a riot or where there were other special circumstances the hour was made earlier.


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