Gloucester Prison

One thing urbex has done is ruin conventional tourism for me. Or at least, it's ruined sanitized attractions that involve being hand-held through a maze of velvet ropes and guided out via the gift shop. However, that's not to say that a permission visit can't be enjoyable. In the case of Gloucester Prison, we had mostly free reign of the place. I say mostly... I don't think they would have been happy if they knew I'd snuck down into the cellars, but hey-ho. I simply have to find a way to make even a permission visit slightly naughty. I just can't help myself.

 

But anyway, Gloucester Prison was great. I used to think that the best thing about Gloucestershire was listening to Americans try to pronounce it, but it seems we now have something even better. For several hours I just roamed around and saw what I could, without anyone to bother me. It was just like urbex, except someone had opened the gate, let us in, and then disappeared.

It's a little outside my comfort zone, arranging visitation through conventional means. But prisons are fascinating places, and well worth surrendering my usual methods of sneaking in. The thing is, these are hidden worlds. Unless one actually works in a prison, or gets arrested, the public doesn't really get to see them. That is, until recent years when closed prisons have become more frequently used as attractions. Vintage photos of Gloucester prison do exist, but there aren't really many to choose from. For some reason, people don't really go around photographing prisons while they're in use. Nevertheless, I've found one I quite like. 

(Photo not mine, obviously)

As a quick content warning, I will be diving into the stories of quite a few former inmates, and as such I will be covering some pretty nasty subjects. Pretty much everything awful that it's possible to do to another human will be covered in this blog, and some might find it hard to swallow. Unless you're a boomer on Facebook, in which case you have different standards. None of the former prisoners here were found guilty of making movies about black mermaids.

The story of this prison is actually pretty amazing. The history of imprisonment on this exact spot predates this building, and the one before that. Initially this was the site of a castle. It wasn't anything too spectacular at first. It was just a motte and bailey built by the chap who became Sheriff of Gloucester in 1071, Roger de Pitres. He's a VERY distant ancestor of the Harlechs of Brogyntyn, the Mostyns of the Cyclops Cavern, and the Bulkelys of Baron Hill. I'm not unraveling that family tree here though. It looks like a goddamn spirograph with all that medieval cousin fucking. You'll just have to take my word for it.

As his name suggests, Roger came from Pitres, in France. And as the dates indicates, he did indeed come over with William the Conqueror. He had sixteen houses demolished to make Gloucester castle, and then King William II decided it wasn't big enough, and demolished eight more. But it was Rogers son, Walter, who became the next Sheriff of Gloucester in 1095, and he wanted an even bigger castle.

So between 1110 and 1120 a huge stone castle was built on the site of what is now the prison. In 1129, his son Miles inherited the castle, only to die via an arrow during a hunt in 1143. His eldest son, Roger, inherited the castle, and founded Flaxley Abbey on the spot where his father had died. 

He wasn't a big fan of King Henry II, who came to power in 1154. Consequently he ended up surrendering the castle to him.

 

As expected, the interior of the prison has a rather ominous atmosphere and bars for days.

 

 

A mural on the floor mentions the prisons construction in 1792. 

 

However, records show that Gloucester castle was used for incarceration as early as 1185, and it was the official county gaol by 1228. For those who don't know, "Gaol" is an archaic spelling for "Jail." The two words sound the same and mean the same. It's just English has evolved a bit since 1228.

One of the most notable prisoners from back then is Eleanor of Brittany, who was completely innocent, never tried, never sentenced, but had the unfortunate circumstance of being a legitimate claimant to the throne of England. Her father was Geoffrey, the fourth son of Henry II, whereas  her uncle John was Henrys fifth. Initially Eleanor's brother Arthur had held the most legitimate claim to the throne, but he was twelve and his forces were defeated in the Battle of Mirebeau in 1202. Arthur mysteriously vanished while in captivity (John totally murdered him on the sly), and as John fled France back to England, he yoinked teenage Eleanor on the way out. 

Due to the fact that she had a vagina, and not a fleshy tube with which to remove waste from her body, her claim to the throne got very little support from the local barons, and she ended up imprisoned for about 39 years. The site of her imprisonment was often speculated, but it has been confirmed to be Gloucester Castle. All the other prisoners were actually moved out to accommodate her. Some historians regard her imprisonment as King Johns most evil deed.

However, her imprisonment can best be described as "Gentle House Arrest." She was living it up in that castle. She had her own generous living space, all the best clothes, loads of gifts, she could ride the horse around the castle grounds, and she wrote pretty luxurious shopping lists that were delivered to her at no expense of her own. She was just denied all the first world luxuries, like being Queen of England and all that. She also made the occasional public appearance just to show her supporters that she was unharmed, and there was just one rescue plot in all her time held captive, which ultimately led to her being transfered away from Gloucester in 1222, only to return in 1237. Like all good Christian women at the time, she became a nun, but it's not like she had many other options, being forbidden to marry and all that.

Johns son, Henry III, became the next monarch and during his rule the castle was besieged twice in 1264 and 1265 during the second Barons War, when a bunch of Barons were miffed at Henry's leadership and decided to break all his stuff. 

By the era of King Richard III, much of the former fortress had fallen into ruin and been plundered for its stone for other construction work, leaving only its keep. 

 

(Picture not mine, obviously)

In 1672, the Sheriff of Gloucester decided that the keep would make a sexy jail, and all of Gloucestershires most nefarious characters were crammed in here. But over the course of the next century it became pretty derelict, and also had a a major outbreak of "Gaol Fever," which historians believe was Typhus. It was so bad that ordinary people attending the trials were getting it. It was decided that this version of the prison would have to go, demolished in the 1780s, bringing us to the construction of the brand new prison of 1792.

 

 

The prison is very imposing, but also has an architectural quirk in the snakes along the underside of the balcony. Check them out! They have little faces and everything!

 

 

The little box was some sort of office occupied by prison staff.

 

 

The cells themselves are predictably tiny. They're little more than cupboards with beds in. 

 

Prisons are fairly samey in their design. I've documented two now, and they have a very similar layout. Although the prison built here in 1792 was built by William Blackburn, the same man who built Shrewsbury prison, so are similarities really that unexpected?

 

Well it turns out that this really isn't a contributing factor. Blackburn might have designed them both originally but both had additional alterations. Blackburn's design for Gloucester Prison is completely different to what stands today.  

 

(Image not mine, obviously)

 

The plan above shows the gender segregation of the Blackburn prison, as well as the even greater segregation of the debtors, who were held in very low regard. William Blackburn wanted to revolutionise prisons, giving them dry, airy cells, but actually didn't have much to do with the debtors block. Their wing wasn't built until the 1820s and the only way they were fed was if their families came to feed them. Predictably, many died in prison. 

I also happen to have a more modern prison map that also outlines where the pre-1792 castle keep was, after it was discovered following an archaeological dig in 2015. 

(Image not mine, obviously)

So while Eleanor of Brittany was held in a very different prison, she would definitely have once stood where this prison now stands.

Blackburn's prison boasted a garden, a treadmill, a "black hole" that is presumably an isolation cell, and of course, the condemned cells. People were executed at this prison, and we'll be diving into some of their stories.

 

 

Some of these cells still have posters on the walls.  Look closely to the right of the posters and there's a very faint numbered grid etched into the wall. It looks like it's titled "Points" and it has the days of the week down the side.

 

 

The cell with blood stained bedding was a bit of a surprise, but I'm pretty sure it's for some sort of event, and not genuine. 

 

 

So, the majority of the prisons earliest hangings were over fairly generic crimes. Some even seem a little mild. There was a lot of death for livestock theft back in the day. In 1792, Charles Rachford and John Hughes were sentenced to death for serial highway robbery and then in 1793, the prison then set the record for the oldest hanged inmate with 70-year-old John Evans, who robbed a house. 

 

But the women of Gloucestershire decided to prove that they could be just as dastardly as the men. The first criminal to be executed for murder was also the first female, in 1794 when 26-year-old Hannah Limbrick murdered her three-year-old step-daughter Deborah with a hatchet. According to Deborah's nine-year-old brother, Thomas, Hannah launched a frenzied attack on the child after starving her, threw her against a wall, kicked her in the belly, threw her down the stairs and then ended her torment with a hatchet. It's quite harrowing, to say the least. I can't imagine what must be going through a three-year-olds mind when their caregiver starts beating them to death. Poor Deborah's biological mother had passed away shortly after childbirth, so her short life had been tragic enough. What makes the case of Hannah Limbrick strange is that she just wiped up the blood and put Deborah to bed. When her husband returned home, she told him that Deborah was in bed sick. Presumably she had hoped her husband would just assume she died of hatchet wounds in her sleep or something? What the fuck is wrong with people? 

During her trial, the judge said "The crime is so heinous that it cannot be pardoned in this world. Shortly you are to appear before another and more awful tribunal." 

That's a fairly dramatic way of saying that someone is to be put to death.

Hannah also had a biological daughter named Sarah, who had been younger than Deborah, and curiously enough in 1819 a Sarah Limbrick also ended up in this prison, in a case involving the death of her bastard child. Lucky for her she was found not guilty, or she could well have shared her mothers fate.

 

 

This room is slightly larger, and has a little seating area with a chess board. But what's really odd is that the seat is fixed into the wall, and right behind it is the toilet, obstructed. It's a very odd layout. One would have to awkwardly squeeze past the chair and take a crap while staring at the wall, with their back to the cell.

 

 

My brother, who spent a decade in prison for manslaughter, tells me that a lot of these older prisons had the toilets added much later than the prisons initial construction. Back when the building was made, prisoners had buckets that they'd have to empty out in the morning. The toilets were installed later, but since these cells weren't really designed to have toilets, they just used to stick them wherever they would fit. My brother tells me he's been in cells were the toilets are literally squeezed behind the bed.

 

 

The text around the chessboard reveals that this is the Listeners Room, where suicidal inmates could reach out to others and talk about their problems. I'm pretty sure my brother volunteered as a listener during his decade in jail. He wasn't here in Gloucester though! In 2002 a report said that the prisons Listening Room was incredibly unsuitable, due to it being just some chairs in a slightly larger cell, and too close to everyone else to make it possible to have a private conversation. 

 

 

The bathroom has a pool table in. 

What, doesn't your bathroom have a pool table?

 

So when I read the story of Hannah Limbrick I did need to take a break from my research. I have a strong stomach, but child cruelty does get to me a bit. Shortly after I dove into the next case, about a woman who was hanged the day after Hannah Limbrick. But she couldn't possibly be as bad, right?

Well her name was Hannah Webly, and she bashed in a newborn babies skull. 

 

For fucks sake, what was in the water in 1794???

Probably a lot actually... nevermind. 

I do believe that there might be more to the story of Hannah Webly. She was a 24-year-old servant girl and she gave birth to a bastard. Nobody seems to know who the father was. One night, the other servants and her master, who was unaware she was even pregnant, were woken by the sound of a baby screaming as it came into the world and took its first breath. They then heard a series of whacks against a bedpost, and the crying stopped. She would later claim that the baby fell and landed on its head. I can't help but feel that there's more to this. A woman must be feeling incredible emotional distress to do something like this immediately after childbirth, and the fact that the father is unknown makes me wonder if she was raped, and if this was all very traumatic for her. It's just a shame that in 1794 there wasn't any support out there for rape victims, and unwanted pregnancies. 

Of course, I'm not justifying bludgeoning a babies head into a bedpost. That shit's messed up.

The judge, the same poor judge who had sentenced Limbrick to death and must have thought that he'd seen it all now, said "By this wicked act, your own life is forfeited."

 

I think when your job is sentencing people to death, one of the things that takes the edge off is finding all the different ways to say it. 

 

The prison has a chapel.

 

 

It's nothing too grand, but it's still nice. I generally dislike religion when people use their sky Daddy to justify their bigotry and their cruelty, and I think it's okay to feel superior to these people when I'm at least able to be an adult and accept that I am a cunt without trying to pass the buck. But in this case, I think a prison having a chapel is a case of religion being utilised correctly. In recent months, my brother has been living with me following his release, and it's been pretty eye-opening to the fact that even though jail does have its Hannah Limbricks and all the people who make it to the news and Wikipedia, it also has a fuck load of people who just made stupid mistakes. It's great that these people can have something to give them comfort, and that's what religion should be. Comforting people who have lost their way, not punishing people for loving someone with the same gonads. 

 

 

Apparently the chapel now serves as an occasional music venue, which is pretty cool.

 

One of the other more interesting prisoners was Kidd Wake, who was imprisoned here in 1796. His story is one that has eerie similarities to today, in that he was an innocent bookbinder, guilty of shouting "No King, No War" at King George III. This was during a time when the French Revolutionary War had led to increased taxation and widespread food shortages. As George III went to parliament, a horde of people showed up, demanding bread and peace. How dare they! Agitators were arrested, and this actually led to the introduction of the Treasonable Practice Bill, which made it an act of treason to even speak out against the king. This is something eerily familiar, given recent events, a reminder that history is just doomed to repeat itself and that some things never change. Kidd Wake did five years. I've found an artists impression of him, which I'll include below.

 

(Image not mine, obviously)

 

What's interesting about this is it shows us what the old prison uniforms used to look like. They're very reminiscent of medieval jesters outfits, which is almost certainly deliberate and designed to provoke ridicule and dehumanise the wearer, much like a Victorian dunces hat. It's safe to say that as well as Kidd Wake, Hannah Limbrick and Hannah Webly wore similar attire as they waited for their execution.

Plenty of people were hanged in the early 1800s, for anything from murder to burglary. In 1816, 69-year-old Dinah Riddiworth was hung for stealing bacon and butter, which is heartbreaking given that people were arrested for protesting a shortage of food just twenty years earlier.

But more tragic was the case of William Townley who was convicted of burglary in 1811 and sentenced to death. He was imprisoned here and possibly given some yellow and blue jester PJ's like Kidd Wake. In the days up to his execution, the judge received additional evidence and decided to reprieve William Townley. He sent a letter, which could have saved the mans life. Unfortunately he accidentally sent it to the Sheriff of Hereford instead, and it wasn't read until the morning after, whereupon it was rushed to Gloucester, only to arrive twenty minutes after Townley had been hanged.

 

So the prison underwent changes throughout the 1800s, initially with the debtors prison being built in the 1820s. In 1823 a treadmill was also installed for those sentenced to hard labour. It was hard to find work for these criminals, so the prison just had them walk for six hours to grind grain, pump water and operate the ventilation system. It was also around 1840 that the prison had its biggest makeover into what stands today, at the genius designs of an architect named Thomas Fulljames. Some people might be familiar with his name. He's the guy who designed Denbigh Asylum, which I've covered in this blog before. I mentioned then how Fulljames focused on a design that could segregate inmates based on gender, class and severity of illness, and he had a similar approach to this prison, designing it to divide prisoners by gender and the nature of the crime. The capacity actually varies from source to source. Some put it at a modest 203, while others say it had the capacity for 489. I'm sure if you don't mind committing a few human rights violations, you could squeeze 1000 in, easily.

One of the executions that stands out is Harriet Tarver, who was executed in 1836 for poisoning her husband with arsenic. She was only 21 and later lamented her decision when she realised that it would make an orphan of her daughter Ann, who she prayed in her final days would learn from this messy incident and stay virtuous. Ann Tarver does pop up on the 1841 census, living with her grandparents. She then pops up again marrying some dude called James Smith in 1848. She was only fourteen. He must have come from Telford.

But the 1860s were a sad time for voyeuristic sadists everywhere when public executions were made illegal... but it did take a while for the rule to be enforced across the board, and a number of people were still hanged in front of a crowd here for a few years afterwards. 

But the most notable development in this story is the introduction of photography, allowing us to get a glimpse at the mugshots of those imprisoned here. Here's a gallery of Gloucester's most deadly and dangerous miscreants, all of which have stayed in this prison.

(None of the photos were taken by me, obviously)

 

 This is William Lord, the oldest inmate to ever be imprisoned here, at age 79 in 1869. He was arrested for the theft of timber, and sentenced to six months of hard labour. But, with his health deteriorating in his old age, he didn't complete his sentence. He was released in June 1870, and he died that September.

This is 31-year-old George Soule. He got one month when he stole some coal.

 

 This is Kate Wheeler. She was sixteen when she was jailed for stealing a blanket.

This is Thomas Grant. He was 36 when he was jailed for stealing books.

 

This is Jane Norton. She was 27 when she was jailed for stealing a table cloth.

This is Thomas Tomming, intriguingly also known as Harry Phillips. I'd love to know how or why he came to have two very different names, but I can't find much on him at all, except that he was just 18 when he was given six weeks in jail for stealing money. 

 

He stands out among this lot because he's stealing out of greed, while so many others are stealing out of necessity. It's an interesting insight into how people of the era were coping with poverty.

Alfred Taylor here was fourteen when he was given ten days in jail for stealing rabbits.

 And here's Nath Clements, who was 33 when he was given one month for stealing a meal.

And finally we have seven-year-old Edgar Killminster, and his nine-year-old brother Joseph. The poor kid looks terrified. His older brother looks like he's plotting revenge. Both were arrested in 1870 for stealing sweets, and sentenced to twelve strokes with a birch rod and a week of hard labour. 

Those crazy Victorians.

 

But that's enough mug shots! Back to the prison!

 

 

There's one thing about the Victorian era that I do love, and that's not their views on human rights, evidently. It's their architecture. Here we can see more of those snakes beneath the upper balconies. 

 

 

Following the banning of public executions, the first private hanging here was Frederick Jones. He was just twenty in 1872, and the son of a stone mason. His brothers followed the family business but he went off to become a baker, with many pointing out that his father had very little control over him. At five-foot-three he was also a tiny bit insecure. Silly men. A short body makes your dick look bigger in proportion, don't you know? 

Anyway, he frequented a pub called The Early Dawn, in Cheltenham, which is now Wah Dou Chinese Takeaway. His father said that the pub had ruined his son, saying that half his earnings were spent there. But the thing is, Frederick was in love with the landlords daughter, a seventeen-year-old dressmaker called Emily Gardner. One night he went out with her and her sister, Alice. Alice had an early start in the morning so went home early, and after walking her home Frederick was left alone with Emily. At this point, his insecure manlet brain, coupled with alcohol intoxication, compelled him to confront Emily about whether his feelings for her were reciprocated. He was apparently aware that she'd been playing the field a bit, dating other men, all of which is perfectly within her right to do, which is exactly what she told him. And just like that, young Emily's throat was cut wide open, almost to the point of decapitation. 

He dropped her body at the side of a street and very calmly turned himself in to the police, although once sober the reality set in and he broke down, blaming jealousy and "the cursed beer." 

Oddly enough, public opinion was quite sympathetic towards him, with a petition being signed by 58 people to have his death sentence turned into life imprisonment, saying that he was too young for such a punishment. Nevertheless, prior to dancing on air, he said "I never knew any harm by her in all my life, and I love her now. I should not like to live, and I do not dread what is before me."

 

This cell might be another listening room. It's far too spacious. 

 

 

So this balcony is noteworthy, although I didn't realise why until after I had left. The railing posts are shaped like lions feet, and they are situated right above the snakes on the underside of the balcony, which is apparently deliberate symbology of good suppressing evil. That's kinda cool. I love Victorian architecture. We just don't get this sort of thing today.

 

The end of this corridor had an extension added in 1912. That extension was the prisons hanging chamber, and the cells leading up to it were essentially a Victorian version of Death Row, where those awaiting execution were moved up a cell every single day during the build-up to their death. It wasn't enough to kill them. The justice system drove them mad with suspense first. Alas, the final cell has now been fitted with a spiral staircase and turned into a fire exit, and I didn't realise! So I have no photos of the final cell. But on the exterior of the building, it's still possible to see where the hanging extension connected.

 

Do you see on the right hand side, the imprint of the buildings roof? I would draw big red arrow pointing at it, but that would be a little condescending when it's right there! 

So this section of the prisons exterior is where people were executed as of 1912. This hanging chambers first client was Gilbert Smith, who had a history of being aggressive to his ex-wife, who had left him due to his alcoholism. He eventually cut her throat, and then attempted to cut his own, but somehow missed all of the important bits, and survived long enough to be killed anyway.

He's buried on the prison grounds somewhere, in an unmarked grave, alongside 123 others from across the centuries. And that's what really intrigues me about this place. So many people were just buried on the grounds, and may never be found or identified.

 

 

In the modern era, the former condemned cells were used more for young offenders and then eventually for people on remand, newly sentenced, or those waiting transport to another hospital. Apparently they could wear their own clothes but many chose to wear their prison uniforms anyway. 

 

The cells consist of bunk beds, and these weird metal toilet things that are attached to the sink. 

 

 

It's still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs. The surface above the sink is meant to be reflective, but they're pretty useless in that regard, and this was noted in a report damning the prison in 2002. Some prisoners polished their wash basin for an alternate reflective surface.

 

My brother didn't stay in this prison, but he still provided me with some insight into life in such conditions. He told me that in such small cells, his cellmate would have no choice but to just stay on the bed while he took a shit merely a foot away. When they got dressed in the morning, they had to take it in turns to sit on the bed, because there just wasn't enough room for them to both be getting dressed at once. 

 

 

As technology improved, so did the murder weapons used by rejected manlets. 

In 1874, a man called Edward Butt was executed at the prison. He was 22, and lived on a farm with his mother. He was madly in love with his neighbour, Amelia Phipps. Many sources say that she was 20 but newspapers at the time say that she was 23. 

Apparently she'd agreed to go to the local cheese fair with another man, and Edward hauled his insecure ass over to her house to confront her about it. Witnesses heard him say "Amelia, you have deceived me," all dramatic like a super villain. When she told him that she wasn't interested in him romantically, even specifying that had already told him plenty of times, he shot her in he head. Her lower jaw was said to have flung away in the blast. But the thing is, the gun had already been stashed somewhere outside her property. Edward had planted it there with the intent on luring her to that spot for their chat at a later date. Now who has deceived who, you hypocrite? He told the court that he shot her accidentally. What, was his plan to just hold her at gunpoint and demand her love?

 

There's actually been quite a few similar executions at Gloucester, where a woman has been murdered for rejecting someones advances. Look, this might seem common sense but I feel like I need to specify it: Murdering people won't make them want to be with you. It's not a hard concept to grasp, is it? But then a good chunk of my demographic is the urbex scene, so I know I might as well be talking to the wall. Every time a new female urbexer shows up, it's like feeding time at the zoo.

 

 

 

Executed alongside Edward Butt were Mary Ann Barry and Edwin Bailey, a nefarious couple who had murdered a baby. Edwin had a disabled wife and was a notorious poon hound, to the point that young women actually refused to enter his shoe shop. Mary was his cleaner, but it's commonly believed that there was more going on, purely because the idea of platonic relations with someone with a vagina was an alien concept to Edwin. But he'd knocked up a seventeen-year-old girl named Susan Jenkins, and she wasn't exactly being quiet about it. So one day, Mary went to visit her, and recommended that she use a specific brand of oral soothing powder for her baby, who was struggling with teething. Susan said that she couldn't afford such a product, but then completely by coincidence, some of it was dropped off by the Dorcas Society, a group that provided products for poor people. Recalling Marys advice, Susan decided to give some to her baby. Soon after having the soothing powder, in what must have been a terrifying moment for poor Susan, the baby went into convulsions and died. The powders were found to be rat poison containing strychnine, and the letter from the Dorcas Society was proven to be fraudulent, with the handwriting perfectly matching Edwin Baileys. 

It's hard not to feel sorry for Susan. She was just a teenager, and she'd lost her baby. But not only that, she would have to live with the knowledge that it was her hand that had administered the poison, albeit unknowingly. She wasn't aware of it, but in that sort of situation, the guilt would eat her up anyway.

The local papers ran an illustration of the execution, as Mary and Edwin were strung up alongside Edward Butt.

 

(Image not mine, obviously)

 

Perhaps the most sinister execution here was that of 35-year-old Edwin Smart, who was hanged for the murder of Lucy Derrick in 1879. She was a former domestic servant said to be of weak intellect. She was in love with someone who was in Gloucester for military training, and she was trying to get down there to find a job so that she could be near him. Edwin Smart had already been to jail twice for arson, and been diagnosed with "Brain Fever" after a suicide attempt. Once free he openly expressed a desire to hurt others, a red flag that should really have been picked up on. He went into town with a razor, hammer and two knives, and saw two women with prams that he decided would make suitable victims. But as he headed over to them, he noticed other people approaching, so he changed his mind, and instead set his sights on poor Lucy Derrick. He told the courts that his motives were just that he wanted to kill a woman. Any woman would do. He didn't even know who the victim was.

Poor Lucy's grave can be found in Thornbury Churchyard. 

(Photo credit: Jill Evans)

But it just adds to the argument regarding predators and the victims appearance. Victims are told all the time that they are to blame for their attacks, often with the accusation that they were dressing provocatively. But this dismisses the fact that people capable of such things are out there roaming around anyway, and really by telling someone to dress modestly you're basically saying "Make sure the maniac chooses someone else."

 

 

There's a store cupboard here that looks like it's a converted cell. 

 

 

It has instructions here about cleaning pads. 

 

 

There was a more sadder execution case in 1904. Sidney George Smith was in love with Alice Woodman, and in a shocking change of pace for this prison, it was actually reciprocated. Their dream was to get married, but they lived in such obscene poverty that they could barely afford to eat. Upon getting evicted, they were so miserable that they opted for a joint suicide, and apparently weren't that bright because their method of choice was by cutting their throats. Sidney would cut Alice's throat and then his own. Unfortunately, cutting your own throat is apparently really difficult, and he survived. Consequently he was executed here, which is what he wanted all along, so it wasn't exactly a punishment, more of a service. But it is sad that they were in that position to begin with.

 

 

It was in 1915 that the prison became exclusively male, but just because there would be no more Hannah Limbricks, doesn't mean it was about to get boring. In the 20th Century some very big names came through here. 

 

Arthur Joseph Griffith was an Irish politician who founded the political party Sinn Fein. Their main desire (I think) is to leave the UK and reunite North and Southern Ireland. Ireland's had quite a tedious history regarding this subject. Arthur Griffith was arrested first in 1916 for his alleged role in the Easter Rising, an armed revolt against British Rule that he actually wasn't involved in.   

 

 (Photo not mine, obviously)

 

In May 1918 Griffith was said to be involved in "The German Plot," that is a fictitious conspiracy theory that claimed the Germans and Sinn Fein had planned an Irish insurrection during the first world war, in order to divide England's attention. Griffith wasn't alone in his wrongful imprisonment. Over 150 members of Sinn Fein were arrested and taken to prisons in England. Griffith came here, alongside another Sinn Fein founding member, Pierce McCan. In all fairness, Pierce McCan actually had plotted to engineer a mass escape of about 2000 German and Austrian POVs into the UK after the first battles of the First World War, so it's fair to say that he was pretty lockupable, but in general it's said that the imaginary German Plot wasn't an intelligence error, but a propaganda campaign to make Sinn Fein look bad. A conspiracy theory within a conspiracy theory.

 

Griffith wasn't here forever. Once freed he died of a cerebral haemorrhage in 1922. Pierce McCan, however, died in this prison in 1919 during the Spanish Flu Pandemic.

 

 

Through here we're into B-Block. 

 

 

B-Blocks purpose varied from floor to floor. While the top floor is said to have been mainly for remand, the ground floor cells were allegedly for "Vulnerable prisoners," which primarily means sex offenders due to their tendency to be knuckle magnets in jail, but can also include those who have mental health issues and might be in danger of harming themselves. 

 

That seems a little shortsighted, given how sex offenders are treated in prison. Surely to put other kinds of vulnerable people with them could end up to them being wrongfully harmed? I don't know. I'm not a prison officer. But if I was in prison, and at risk of harming myself, I think being kept around sex offenders and possibly lumped in with them by the casual observer might not help my mental health.

 

B-Block was apparently pretty neglected by the 21st Century, with very menial activities, televisions that cost 50p a week, and no waste bins, meaning the prisoners would throw their rubbish under the bed. They were given soap, a sachet of shampoo and some toothpaste, but often had to wait ten days for more. They then had fifteen minutes to have a shower, make a telephone call and collect their breakfasts. They had very tatty bedding, and sometimes prisoners would take their pillows with them when they relocated, meaning that some cells had no pillows.

 

 

This cell may also be a Listening Room, given that it's much more spacious, enabling two beds to not be stacked on top of each other and still having room to do a star jump.

 

 

There's a cross above the sink, which also supports that theory. A prisoner who was turning to religion for comfort might well feel compelled to seek redemption by volunteering to be a listener. Unfortunately it wasn't really possible to keep a conversation confidential in rooms like this.

 

 

One of the more famous people to have done time here is Herbert Armstrong, the only solicitor in the UK to be hanged for murder. I'm not sure why that detail is flung around like it's something special. Solicitors can murder people too! 

He's an interesting chap and his story certainly lends itself to intrigue and other rumours. Armstrong was quite a small bloke, and in 1907 he married Kitty, who was said to be overbearing and objectively unpleasant, often exaggerating the most petty of irritations into events of tremendous importance. On one occasion she humiliated him by interrupting his activities in front of people to tell him that it was bath time. Upon her death, even the local papers mentioned that only four people attended her funeral. 

Nevertheless, any resentment didn't stop Armstrong shooting his DNA into her and producing three crotchfruit, Eleanor, Margaret and Pierson. The former vicar said he'd never seen a happier couple. But then Christians are people who can read a book featuring a God who spends 90% of the narrative ordering the death of babies and the rape of women, and then conclude at the end that he loves us, so it's fair to say they aren't the most perceptive of people.

But like all good murderers, Armstrong rose quickly in his community and was well-liked by everyone. He worked at first for a legal practice, whose owners helped him build useful connections and get him a good reputation, before dying within days of each other and propelling him right to the top of the business. 

 

After serving in the first world war, Armstrong insisted on being known by his rank, Major Armstrong, and seemingly benefited from taking a break from his domineering wife to go shoot Germans. He ended up in Dorset in 1915 where he had an affair with someone fairly high profile. The name of this woman has never been disclosed by the police, which really intrigues me.

 

 (Armstrong and his wife. This photo is from their wedding. Don't the newlyweds look cheerful?

Photo not mine, obviously)

 

In 1919, Kitty's health deteriorated, and a doctor diagnosed her with brachial neuritis. Major Armstrong showed great concern for her, and sought out the best treatment, sitting by her bedside to read to her, and leaving work early to look after her, but as her mental health also deteriorated she ended up in an asylum, admitted with delusions, pyrexia, vomiting, heart murmers and albumen in the urine, as well as partial paralysis in the hands and feet. At the asylum she seemingly got better, and she was discharged home in January 1921. But then she died a month later. Her death certificate said it was gastritis, aggravated by heart disease and nephritis.

In the law world, Major Armstrong had a rival solicitor, Oswald Martin, who he ended up owing money to. Oswald had received a mysterious box of chocolates that had caused his sister-in-law to become violently ill. The chocolates were found to have been injected with arsenic. Around the same time, Oswald was swamped with invitations to visit Armstrong for tea and scones, and upon finally agreeing, he too became violently ill. But luckily for Oswald, people were connecting the dots. Oswald's father-in-law was the local chemist, and he confirmed that Armstrong was buying arsenic from him in vast quantities for use as a weed killer. The doctor, noticing that Oswald's symptoms were similar to Kitty's in her early days of illness, arranged to have her body exhumed, and the new examination showed that she was riddled with arsenic too. 

Armstrong was arrested on the 31st December 1921, and charged with the murder of his wife the following January. In regards to motives, her overbearing nature and his affair with the woman from Dorset were brought up, especially since she reappeared and testified that they'd met and discussed marriage after Kitty's death. Kitty had written a will in 2017 that left all of her money to her children, which had later been amended to leave everything to Armstrong, but this was believed to be a forgery and part of his motives. He maintained that he was innocent, and the fact that it was his own business rival and the rivals father-in-law testifying against him did raise suspicions in the local community. Many suspected that he'd been framed. Others began drawing parallels to other deaths, such as an estate agent who had also died shortly after a dispute with Armstrong, and the folks he had taken over his company from, whose deaths had been close together and had benefited Armstrong's career. None of these were looked into, so it's not possible to call Armstrong a serial killer (unless you count the Germans he probably shot in the war), but regarding how sloppy he was with Oswald, it does seem like he got overconfident, which can happen if one gets away with something for long enough.

(Kitty Armstrong and her children. Photo not mine, obviously)

 

Armstrongs defence in court was that his wife had killed herself by helping herself to the arsenic, and one servant did confirm that Kitty had once asked if she'd die if she fell out of the window. But, by the time she died, her health had deteriorated to the point that she couldn't get out of bed, and a nurse claimed that her last words were lamenting that she had so much to live for. 

 

Major Armstrong had loads of parties following her death but nevertheless denied being responsible for her murder, right until the end, even when offered £5000 to admit his guilt. But then, if he's going to die anyway, what's £5000? Prior to being hanged, Armstrong called out "Kitty, I'm coming to you," and this has led to there being many who believe he was framed, even to this day.

His children went to live with their aunt, the youngest being told that their father had died in an accident. As for Oswald Martin, he became the towns most prominent solicitor, but the attempt on his life was said to have scarred him and left him with a phobia of the dark. He died in 1924.

 

The case has gone on to inspire several crime novels. Agatha Christie's entire career is said to have been inspired by it. The case was dramatised in a BBC radio series The Black Museum in 1952, and was then the focus of a 1994 TV mini-series called Dandelion Dead. However my favourite modern interpretation of Major Armstrong is in a black comedy called Deadly Advice, which features Armstrong's ghost, along with the ghosts of other famous murderers, trying to persuade a woman to commit murder in order to solve her problems. Major Armstrong is basically an evil Drop Dead Fred.

 

There were a few other murderers hanged here in the early 20th Century. Charles Houghton, the alcoholic former butler of Eleanor and Martha Woodhouse tried to use a seizure as an excuse for shooting his former employers after they sacked him. A false rumour spread that they were murdered in their carriage, and that carriage was sent to a museum in Hull as a result.  

And then in 1935, pig farmer Arthur Franklin shot Bessie Gladys Nott. It seems she had previously left her husband Henry to be with Arthur, which Henry admitted was hard since he only lived next door and still saw her living there every day while he raised their son alone. But she changed her mind and decided to return to Henry, at which point Arthur shot her, first knocking her to the ground and then again in the head while she lay there. Henry came to confront him, and he shot him in the face too, luckily only taking his eye out. He tried to finish Henry off, but had run out of bullets. Arthur told the neighbours to just let him suffer, because he wasn't worth it. This turned out to be the shortest murder trial in UK history.

The last hanging at Gloucester was in 1939. This was the case of Ralph Smith, and it's fairly boring. It's just another case of jealousy and insecurity. Ralph Smith was unhappy that his ex girlfriend, Beatrice Delia Baxter was seeing someone else, so he cut her throat. The only thing that really makes this significant is that he was executed by Thomas Pierrepoint, with assistance from his young nephew Albert, who would go on to become perhaps the most famous hangman in the UK.

 

 

The only photo of Ralph isn't exactly the most flattering. 

 

The hanging chamber was dismantled in 1966, which means it was just sat there gathering dust  and getting progressively derelict for thirty years. But then, capital punishment wasn't abolished until 1969, so maybe they kept it handy just in case.

 

 

Next to the prison is this trap door, and even though we had permission to be here, I don't think they really wanted anyone venturing down here. So naturally, I just had to.

 

 

The cellar has this beautifully ominous barred gate. 

 

 

And over here there's a bricked up doorway, but the door is still attached. That's a bit weird, but intriguing!

 

 

There's a tiny door at the back of this room. 

 

 

Alas, the tunnel it led to was flooded, but it looks like it may go on for quite a bit. It seems there's quite the labyrinth under the prison, and I'm incredibly curious about what could be seen if only I had sufficient footwear. There could be remnants of the original Blackburn prison down here.

But that is as far as we can get without wellies. Back to the surface, and to C-Wing!

 

 

C-Wing was built in 1971, although some sources say 1972. Its capacity similarly changes from source to source. Some say it can hold 81, and some say it can hold 90. That's only a discrepancy of nine people, so I'm sure we can squeeze them in! 

C-Wing initally housed sex offenders but in the 1980s it was changed to keep lifers instead, before its final use as a young offenders wing. It also became a voluntary drug testing unit. Life was better here than on A and B wings, according to prisoners.

 

 

It seems that C-Wing had an actual cafeteria, whereas in the other wings the prisoners would have to get their food from a dispensary and take it back to their cell. 

 

 

The graffiti in here is allegedly part of some sort of zombie scare attraction that is held here, but it seems a little shoddy for something with an actual purpose. This genuinely just looks like imbecilic children or retarded adults broke in to paint. 

 

 

The C-Wing cell block allegedly had an electronic locking system. Prisoners didn't have toilets in their cells so they used an intercom to contact the prison staff if they needed a shit in the night. That sounds alright!

 

 

Of the more notable prisoners from the late 20th Century is a chap called Peter McAleese. He served in the British army but retired in 1969. He came here in the 1970s when he was arrested for violence, but he wasn't really a big name then. His claim to fame in 1989 when he was hired by the Colombian Cali Cartel to assassinate Pablo Escobar! That's pretty huge. Escobar was probably the wealthiest criminal in the world at the time.

Peter McAleese returned to the UK, having failed in his mission. He ended up becoming a pub landlord and writing a book called "No Mean Soldier."

 

 

Another famous case was that of Stefan Kiszko. This one's incredibly tragic. He was mentally handicapped, and described as a good-natured lumbering adult with the brain of a child. In 1975 he was wrongfully convicted of the murder and sexual assault of an eleven-year-old girl named Lesley Molseed. She had been stabbed twelve times and there was semen on her clothes.

Stefan was 23, and working as a tax clerk. He had been bullied all through school and he was bullied at the office. Four teenage girls, Maxine Buckley (12), Catherine Burke (16), Debbie Brown (13) and Pamela Hind (18) together claimed that he had flashed his gonads at them on the day before the murder. As adults they admitted that they had done it as a joke, spreading rumours about the mentally disabled man just for shits and giggles, as kids do. But it led to him being a suspect in the Lesley Molseed case. In fact, police ignored all other leads and focused exclusively on finding evidence on Stefan. They brought him in for some intense questioning, totally ignoring the fact that he was intellectually disabled, not even telling him that he could have a solicitor present, or letting him have his mother present, and basically bullied a confession out of him. He confessed, because in his head this was what they wanted to hear and they told him that he could go home if he did. He felt that they'd find additional evidence to clear his name as the investigation continued. How wrong he was. 

Evidence exonerating Stefan Kiszko was actually suppressed by three members of the investigation team, who were later arrested in 1993. This was fairly conclusive stuff too. Stefan had a condition called Hypogonadism, which prevented him from producing sperm, and getting an erection. He was taking testosterone supplements, but his endocrinologist didn't believe that this was capable of making someone act against their basic nature in such a way as turning a gentle giant into a murderous rapist. They would have specified this in court, had they been called to trial.

Kiszko had also broken his ankle before the murder, and that coupled with being overweight meant it would have been one hell of a struggle for him to carry Lesley to the spot where the body was found. He had an alibi for the day of the murder too. He had gone with his aunt to his dads grave, and had even entered a shop that day, but no witnesses were called to testify. Thousands of documents arrived at the court and the court should have been adjourned to examine them. Among them was a statement from a taxi driver who actually had exposed himself to the young girls accidentally while they walked in on him taking a leak behind a bush. This is the incident which had led the police to Kiszko to begin with, and they had written proof that it was someone else, and they didn't even look at it. So much of this case was just ignored or overlooked, presumably so that the police could have an easy win.

The judge praised the police for their great skill in bringing Lesley's murderer to justice, and praised the teenage girls for their bravery and honesty. People demanded that Kiszko be publicly hanged.

 

(Stefan Kiszko. Photo not mine)

 

Stefan Kiszko ended up doing sixteen years. He retracted his confession pretty quickly but to no avail. He went to Armley Gaol, before being moved to Wakefield, where he was regularly beaten up and abused by other prisoners. He was beaten up by five prisoners in his own cell, and in 1978 he was even beaten up in the prison chapel. No guard or inmate showed him any sympathy, but why would they? As far as they know, he did it. It was presented in the media as an open and shut case. The ordeal was all a bit too much for him though. He began to show signs of schizophrenia and delusions. He started to talk about how he was getting secret messages through the radio, how a ghost was trying to sexually abuse him, and how he was part of a sinister social experiment to observe the effects of incarceration on innocent people. He believed his own mother was in on it too, which is sad because she was perhaps the only person who never doubted him.

It was in 1981 that he came to Gloucester, but his health continued to deteriorate. He claimed once that he was the real voice of the singer Barry Manilow, and that his parents had recorded him secretly and sent the tapes to be used under Manilows name.

Unfortunately this just made his claims of innocence seem like more delusions. He was even diagnosed as having "delusions of innocence." So the prison believed that he was guilty, but that he legitimately didn't believe that he'd done it. In 1988 they tried to get him to enroll in a sex offenders treatment program, but since that would mean admitting to it, he refused. He returned to Wakefield prison in 1989.

 

But the case was reopened in 1991, and the question was raised about why no witnesses had ever been called to trial about his alibi, and how someone who couldn't produce sperm managed to get it onto an underage girl. The four girls he'd allegedly flashed, now 27, 28, 31 and 33,  admitted that they made it up. Most of them were apologetic and admitted that they didn't think their little laugh at his expense would have such serious repercussions. The trial judge did apologise. The Molseed family publicly apologised for the things that they had said. A senior police officer and a retired forensic scientist were charged with perverting the course of justice. The prosecuting QC became Lord chief justice the day after Kiszko was cleared which is a bit of a slap to the face. But most crucially, after sixteen years, Stefan Kiszko was set free. Unfortunately his mental health never recovered, and he became a total recluse. His physical health followed and he died before he could collect the £500,000 that he was owed for his wrongful conviction. It has been called the worst miscarriage of justice of all time.

So who did kill the little girl? Well their DNA wasn't on the national DNA database when they first analysed it in 1999. But then in 2005 a comic book shop owner, Ronald Castree, sexually assaulted a sex worker, and this led to his DNA being put on file, and it turned out to be a match for the Lesley Molseed case. Castree had a history of being a cunt, too. His neighbours said he had a temper, his wife said he was abusive, and he had a history of targeting children. He had been fined for abducting a nine-year-old in 1976, and then fined again for assaulting a seven-year-old in 1978. And does anyone really think that just because the next time he was caught was in 2005 that he'd been on his best behaviour up until then?

No, probably not. And while Stefan Kiszko was being beaten up in jail, Castree was at large, abducting and assaulting children. Had the police done their job properly, maybe none of those crimes would have happened. Thankfully he's now got a life sentence. As he was arrested he told the police "I've been expecting this for years."

 

 

 

I'm not entirely sure what this part of the prison would have been used for, but it has a stair lift, and this whiteboard makes mentions of wards, so I'm guessing this would have been the prison infirmary.

 

 

There are cells like this though, and they have a very different design. My brother tells me that these are for violent offenders, and that all of the things in the cell are built to withstand any attempt at breaking them.

 

 

So, while we're on the subject of more vicious offenders, it's time to talk about Gloucester prisons most notorious inmate, Fred West the serial killer. But, it's important to note that he was just here on remand. This prison isn't where he killed himself. 

I don't really think it's worth going into huge detail about the story of Fred West. It's long, convoluted, everyone already knows who he was, and the details of his crimes are detailed on the internet. He was a serial killer, and he had a type. He would target troubled, easily impressionable teenage girls, lure them into being a nanny to his children, and then seek sex with them, and kill them when they became problematic. And following the case chronologically, one can actually see the method become steadily more refined until he and Rose West became a highly efficient predator duo. Rose was quite likely going to share the fate of all those other girls, had she not matched or even surpassed Fred's sadism. Their surviving children and former lovers have testified that she was the driving force, that even Fred was afraid of her, and that he became a minion to her more than anything. Even when they were finally caught, Fred tried to take the fall for Rose, and their children were quick to correct the record. She was very disturbed. Her own father abused her sexually, and when she became a prostitute at Fred Wests house, he started seeing her as a client, so to say that Rose West is fucked in the head is an understatement.

 

But it's not so much the serial killing that interests me about the Wests. It's the domestic cult. 

I don't mean anything like the larger, sprawling cults like Jonestown, but these domestic cults where one person will hold sway over an entire household, psychologically conditioning them, breaking their minds, exposing them to terrible shit and making them fear the outside world. And yet to the outside world they look completely normal. There's a photo of the Wests on Anna Marie's wedding. She was Fred Wests firstborn daughter with his ex wife, although he had also helped to raise and cover up the death of an older daughter of his ex wife who he had raised as his own. It's quite heartbreaking that throughout their childhood, Charmaine, the older daughter, had reassured Anna Marie that their biological mother would come to rescue them, but in the end Charmaine was murdered by Rose, the biological mother was murdered by Fred when she came snooping, and Anna Marie was raped by Fred West at the age of eight, and pimped out at the age of thirteen. 

 

And yet here's her wedding photo where the entire family look just like one normal happy family, albeit with some children obviously fathered by Rose's clients.

 

 

There's the BITE acronym that's typically used to describe how to create a cult. BITE stands for Behaviour, Information, Thought and Emotions. These are the four things that a leader of a cult will try to control, and that's why I use the term "Domestic Cult" for an abusive household, because in such a setting the same rules apply.

And admittedly, I find such things to be intriguing purely because it's relatable. I don't often go into my abusive childhood too much, mainly because I usually only everget two types of responses- the overly sympathetic, or insecure people on the internet who think bullying me will be easy, as if the things they say will be remotely original. Both are really boring.

But I did grow up in the sort of environment where a tangled web of abuse and brainwashing is going on behind closed doors. Cases like Rose West actually help me articulate my own fucked up childhood, albeit it's very, very different, and I can't state that enough. To my knowledge my mother hasn't murdered anyone. But I can relate to how an individual can create an entire secret culture of dehumanisation, child exploitation, neglect, brainwashing, the normalisation of abuse, exposing them to terrible shit, making them fear the repercussions of talking about it, leading to perhaps the most crucial part, being raised to not seek help and made to believe that the outside world was the enemy, with social services being portrayed as some sort of Boogeyman that would take us away. And sadly when I look at Rose Wests apathetic responses to her daughters being raped, I'm reminded of my own mothers apathetic responses to young girls getting raped. In fact they match almost word for word! And such similarities become even more mindblowing when I read that Rose West told her son Stephen that he would have to lose his virginity to her before he turned seventeen, because my mother said something similar when I was fourteen. Just to reassure everyone, I managed to dodge that bullet and lose my virginity in a nice, normal way to someone who wasn't related to me. It was awesome. 

So yeah, I think this is the most I've opened up about childhood trauma on my blog, and it feels weird. My siblings and I really should get together and write a book on it. But I digress.

So Fred West was here on remand. He may have pissed in any one of the toilets pictured here today. He would eventually kill himself, denying his victims of any satisfaction that he was being punished. Rose West, on the other hand, is still in prison. Fred's brother John hanged himself in 1996. It seems that he was also awaiting a jury verdict on things he had done to Anna Marie and another underage lodger at their house. Interestingly he's the only member of Fred's family who came to his wedding.

Many of their younger children have been given new identities and new lives, and most of the older surviving children are married. Anna Marie attempted suicide in 1995 and again in 1999.

 

Barry West, born in 1980, actually witnessed Rose murder his older sister Heather, and after a lifetime of mental health issues actually killed himself in 2020. To this day, Mae expresses frustration that Rose won't tell her what actually happened to Heather, but her own daughter once came home from a Halloween party and said "Mum, someone went as your parents," which she seems to find rather amusing. The truth is poor Stephen dug Heather's grave under the pretense that he was helping Fred with the gardening. Heather ended up under the patio and it became a household joke that if the kids misbehaved, they would join her.

It was digging up Heather and finding three thigh bones that alerted the police to the fact that this was more than just a single missing person case.

There are known to be 12 murder victims, although one of their kids said that there could be up to 30. Fred himself says there are a further 20. 

Most sadly, in 1999 Rose spoke to Stephen, blaming him for everything. He attempted suicide in 2002, and then was also arrested in 2004 for having a relationship with a fourteen-year-old. The judge was pretty much like "Look, you've had a fucked up life, but you are an adult so you still have the burden of responsibility, etc."

And yeah, it's sad because the cycle of abuse continues.

Moving on....

 

 

Moving on to the outside of the prison, we have my favourite sign ever, one for rooftop access. But given that this is a permission visit, I decided that such a thing might not go down so well, and would be a lot less subtle than going into the cellar. Instead we turned our attention to the workshops.

 

 

The workshops have clearly been used for some sort of event, with "Find the code or die" scrawled across the walls. This is the same paint that we saw in C-Block so I assume it was for the same event.

 

 

Next to this old saw is a doll that has been cut up and given all kinds of protruding bones and things, evidently part of the horror event that took place here. Normally I have a strong stomach for such things, but reviewing these images after reading up on the various crimes carried on on children, it's a little more disturbing than usual.

 

 And then moving on... Here we have the basketball court!

 

 

The basketball courts actually played host to an escape attempt in 1990, which resulted in destroying a chunk of the fence. It was unsuccessful, but that same year another four inmates managed to escape by breaking through the roof of the prison and using knotted sheets to descent twenty feet to the ground. Their group consisted of seven initially but the other three were captured on the outer wall. 

All of this was during the Strangeways riot up north, which was huge and spurred by poor living conditions in the prison system. It seems that the movement had sparked a few smaller insurrections in other prisons too. 

Now here's something I don't get to see every day! A prison transport van!

 

 

The back of this van basically consists of a number of cupboards. The prisoners would be sat in these for the duration of their journey. 

 

There's not a whole lot of room in there.

 

In 2002, the prison came under a damning report that mentioned that the prisoners hygiene wasn't brilliant, the prison was dirty and unkempt, and that they were focusing more on their security than on the living conditions, which made very little sense at the time because by that point the prison population was made up of mainly low-risk offenders who would be getting out soon anyway.

The report logged a number of self harm incidents. There had been a total of 67 incidents from 2001 to 2002, which is apparently quite low for a prison. It did have about four suicides in 2002, and then in 2003 it was declared one of the top twenty most overcrowded prisons. This led initially to a hundred prisoners being relocated in 2007 and then eventually to its closure in 2013. Its weird, fucked up history came to its anticlimactic end.

 

Since then, as with all old buildings, rumours have circulated that the prison is haunted. Despite having a wealth of records to choose a dead person from, for some reason everyone thinks that this is the ghost of someone called Jenny, who is conveniently unverifiable, allegedly having died on the grounds before the prison was even built. That's awfully vague! Maybe she was a dinosaur!

Quite how they came to this conclusion, I don't know. When asked about paranormal activity, most people say that there's just footsteps, doors slamming, and shadowy figures, none of which is anywhere near informative of an actual identity. I'm open-minded when it comes to the paranormal but I think most real evidence, that is, the things people actually see and hear, points more to ghosts being a type of cryptid more than anything. A ghost is like Bigfoot, or the Chupacabra. There's a pretty big leap from slamming doors and the sound of footsteps to identifying the presence of the soul of a dead person and giving them a name. It just makes no sense. The people who do link such phenomenon to an actual identity are usually the only ones privy to this information, being gifted or something, and they usually have some sort of financial gain from the revelation. How convenient.

As you can expect, Most Haunted have been here, a TV show that I enjoyed when I was young, right up until I noticed that Derek Acorah only ever gets possessed by scouse ghosts. Anyway, I can honestly say that even after reading up on Fred West sexually abusing his children, men cutting women's throats, and Hannah Webly bashing in her newborn babies skull, sitting through this crap was the hardest part of my research. It was just several hours of watching people walk around in the dark saying "Do you hear that?" I've had more exciting shits.

 

In the prison yard we found another rare sight. It's a police helicopter! This one has had its blades removed, and a dummy in the cockpit, likely part of some sort of event. 

 

 

There are a few hazmat suits lying around too.

 

 

In 2015, the prison underwent some excavations that uncovered the foundations of the original castle keep and William Blackburn's original prison. But on top of that, nearly 900 artifacts were uncovered, including this old medieval dice. 

(Image not mine)

 

This is so cool! Just think, the last person to touch these prior to their excavation may actually have known Eleanor of Brittany. 

As you can probably tell from the graffiti, the helicopter, the hazmat suits and the dead baby, the prison has become a place for numerous events. Even as the day continued, we re-entered A-Wing to find it now swarming with photographers and their models that we awkwardly had to weave through, trying to exit without getting in the way. But typically it's used for halloween events, zombie runs, airsoft, and ghost hunts. There will also be a cosplay convention here on the 19th August this year. 

There have been a few film productions too. The Informer, which came out in 2019, had its prison scenes shot here, and the prison has been host to numerous music videos. I didn't go looking for many, but a quick search did bring up a song called Eden Gaol which, musically wasn't quite my cup of tea, but I did enjoy the choreography, cinematography and the surreal vibe. I'll embed it down below.

All of these events taking place above at least one hundred and twenty-three unmarked graves.

 

And, rather exhausted as I am, that concludes my dive into Gloucester prison and the rabbit hole of the sick and depraved acts of humanity. I'm glad I had an opportunity to see this place, and as gruesome as some of the history is, it's important to document just how awful humans can be. As much as people like to believe that the ghosts of the dead walk these halls and are pretty terrifying, the living are infinitely more terrifying than the dead. 

That's history though. It's not always sun and rainbows. History is gritty and dark, and if anyone has an issue with that then now is the time to act, because we're part of history too and we can make it slightly less glum by being nice to each other. 

In my next blog, I'm going to another haven of sin, when I explore an abandoned church! And then, I'll be doing a quick one on a derelict nightclub. They should be easier for me to swallow than this place. 

In the meantime, if you enjoyed the blog for some reason, and you want to be updated about my next ones, feel free to try your luck at the social media hellscapes of Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Maybe you'll see me, maybe you won't. It's all in the hands of Zuckerberg and Musk now. I'm also on reddit, which is alright.

Thanks for reading!