Published in Windlesora 27 (2011)
© WLHG
From the thirteenth century Windsor had its own town Bailiffs and town court and there would have been a gaol or lock up cell near the old Guildhall in Castle Hill on the corner of St Albans Street. This was known to exist until the end of the eighteenth century. There was also a debtor’s prison in the Henry VIII tower, pictured in one of Paul Sandby’s watercolours. The castle had its own gaol in the Curfew Tower for political and aristocratic prisoners.
Until the late 18th century, prisons were not places of punishment, but were holding cells, where suspected criminals were kept until their trial, or debtors until they had paid up. The Prison Reform Act of 1791 called for larger and better regulated prisons, which could incorporate new ideas about reforming convicts with solitary confinement and hard labour.
For this a new prison was built in Windsor in 1806 in George Street, which was a short road full of common lodging houses, crowded tenements and brothels. Charles Knight wrote about this part of Windsor in his memoirs: ‘There was a whole street of a vicious population where almost every house was a den of infamy. At the bottom of this foul quarter stood our gaol.’ (1) Prisoners regularly escaped and probably found ready refuge in George Street.
There are few surviving records relating to the gaol, all we have, is a plan dated 1807, census returns for 1841 and 1851 and a few mentions in the Windsor and Eton Express. There were two rooms ten feet square which could hold up to sixteen prisoners, but it was fit only for short-term offenders, offering little in the way of hard labour, except for a bean mill, and there were no single cells. It was therefore that long term prisoners were sent to Reading gaol from Windsor at a cost of 24s per conveyance. (2)
The gaoler and his family lived on the ground floor, and on the first floor the cell doors opened onto a long corridor, which was used for exercise. The garden was for the use of the gaoler and his family.
In 1836 the prison was described as in a very bad state, holding only a few prisoners, mostly drunks. The census returns for 1841 show that besides William Simms the gaoler, his wife and two sons, there were three male and three female prisoners. These are some of the prisoners whose trials were reported in the newspaper:
Mary Birkmeyer aged 25 had with her an 11 month-old infant. She was the wife of a soldier in the Life Guards accused of stealing money from Lord George Paget, an officer in the same regiment for whom she washed. She was remanded for a week and released as there was no evidence to convict her. Mary Henry had stolen a decanter from a shop in Peascod Street and was committed for trial at the quarter sessions in July where she was given a further week in gaol as she was very infirm. William Neale aged 15, was charged with assaulting Mary Turvey the wife of a soldier in the 60 rifles. As this was his seventh conviction he was sent to prison for one month. (3)
The Simms family governed the two Windsor gaols for over forty years. In 1832 William Simms was re-elected gaoler and town crier for the borough, at an annual salary of thirty pounds. (4) His duties, besides looking after the gaol and attending the magistrates’ courts, were for instance to attend and regulate the markets and fairs, and to give information of any unwholesome fish exposed for sale. After his death in 1848, his son was appointed gaoler at the age of only twenty, with his mother acting as matron. The census returns for 1851 show that he, like his father, lived in the gaol with his wife, child, mother, brother and sister-in-law. There were six male and two female inmates. Betsy Joys aged 16 had been stealing from her master and passed the goods on to her mother and sister, who were acquitted. Betsy was sentenced during the Windsor Easter Sessions in May and given a 6 months prison sentence with hard labour.(5&6)
In 1842, a fever broke out in the gaol and prisoners were temporarily moved to the old workhouse in Sheet Street, next to the Infantry Barracks, which had stood empty since the paupers had been moved to the new workhouse in Old Windsor. (7) The old gaol in George Street was cleaned up and used again briefly, that is until 1846, when it was pulled down to make way for the railway station. The Western Railway Company paid £500 for the George Street site. Prisoners were now moved permanently to the old work- house. The option to build a new gaol had been rejected by the councillors as too expensive.
1835 had been a landmark in the history of prison reform. The 1835 Municipal Corporation Act enabled boroughs to take on responsibility for the police and the gaol. Windsor got its first police force and the gaol was in the hands of the Windsor council, rather than private profiteers. Expenditure for the gaol for the year 1837 amounted to £198 14 3, for the police to £738 1 8.(8)
Between 1846 and 1853 the old workhouse was Windsor’s gaol and no Windsor prisoners were sent to Reading. (9) Unfortunately this building was entirely unsuitable as a gaol, and not at all secure. There were numerous rooms and offices, and the airing ground for the prisoners was overlooked by the canteen of the barracks, the Britannia beer house (which was a bawdy house) and private houses in Keppel Street. Escapes from the gaol were frequently reported in the newspapers, especially when they made a good story. In 1845 three men tried to break out through the roof, but they made such a noise, that it woke the landlord of the Britannia beer house. He and some of his ‘ladies‘ chased the convicts down Sheet Street and caught up with them on Hog’s common, where they re-arrested them.
In 1849, the town council appointed a gaol committee to report on the prison which stated that the present borough gaol was wholly inadequate for its purpose, not secure from fire nor safe for imprisonment. Finally in 1853 after the inspectors of prisons condemned the gaol in every one of their annual reports, the prison was closed. A new prison would have cost £717, so it was cheaper to send all prisoners to Reading. The gaol was finally closed in December 1853. It had held an average of 82 prisoners a year over the last five years.
Brigitte Mitchell
References
- Charles Knight, Passages of a Working Life, vol.1 (London, 1864), p.216.
- Windsor & Eton Express 30 July 1836.
- WEE 5 June 1841
- R South ed., The Fifth Hall Book of the Borough of New Windsor, 23 January 1832,
- WEE 29 March 1851 & 3 May 1851
- Census Returns 1851, HO 107/1695/402 and Session Book 1838-1853.
- WEE 27 Sep. 1845.
- R South ed., The Fifth Hall Book of the Borough of New Windsor, 8 April 1837 9 BRO, Session book 1838-1853 WI/JQ 1/6
Windsor Local History Group 