Many of the gaol’s prisoners remained unbowed by the system imposed upon them and escapes were frequent throughout its history. Convicts resorted to all manner of means to break out, including removing roof shingles, digging under the foundations and removing lintels over windows.
The 1825-7 Richmond Gaol was a cornerstone of the convict system devised by Governor Arthur after his arrival in the colony in 1824. Today, the village of Richmond offers visitors an unsurpassed insight into his system with the courthouse, gaol, church, bridge and sandstone mansions reflecting the intertwined elements of justice, punishment, salvation and public and private labour all intact within the village precincts.
Enjoined by the British government to establish a ‘stricter surveillance and discipline’ over convicts Arthur created a highly centralised police state to ensure ‘the most minute attention and incessant watchfulness of the conduct of every convict’. Lay ‘gentleman’ magistrates who had previously dispensed justice were replaced by stipendiary magistrates under the control of the Chief Police Magistrate in Hobart. A largely convict police force enforced the laws on the ground. Under Arthur order was restored to the colony and a growing bushranger problem reined in.
The gaol was built in several stages. The first wing, designed by David Lambe, consisted of four men’s cells, one women’s sleeping cell, a javelin’s room, lobby, prisoners’ room, keeper’s room with cellar beneath, passages and entrance hall. It was enclosed by a high paling fence. The javelins were convict warders at the gaol and not all were above reproach:
The gaol was less substantial than Arthur had hoped and maintenance, exacerbated by constant overcrowding and frequent escapes, became a pressing issue. A gaolers house was erected in 1833 and two years later two new wings linked it to the original gaol. They contained a cookhouse with bread oven, a women’s room and four women’s solitary cells in the northern wing and twelve men’s solitary cells opposite. A 3.4m high stone wall erected around the gaol in 1840 enclosed an airing yard 24.4m by 19.5m. The former yard is now partially occupied by the Richmond police residence.
In practice they developed a wider role, reinforced in Richmond by the town’s rapid growth into the colony’s third largest settlement by 1834. Convict chain gangs engaged in public works (including constructing a road between Hobart and Arthur’s Coal River valley farm) were accommodated there in the 1830s sharing crowded cells and passageways with prisoners on far lesser charges.
Most prisoners were arraigned for minor breaches of convict regulations such as feigning sickness, absconding, refusing to work or drunkenness (the most common offence), brawling and the like. While history has concentrated on white male prisoners, Aborigines and women were also held there.
While many women were returned to the factory by dissatisfied masters convict women exercised their own power by committing minor offences to escape unsatisfactory situations. Who then was the difficult party — Richmond Justice of the Peace, Cornthwaite Hector, or the eighteen female convicts he sent before the magistrate over the years? Ann Forest, for example, was given fourteen days solitary on bread and water for insolence and disobedience, a sentence twice repeated for refusing to return to her assignment and absenting herself without leave on her release. Finally Hector returned her to the Cascades.
Specific regulations drafted for the Richmond Gaol in the 1830s aimed to maintain a constant vigil on the prisoners, prevent corrupt practices by gaolers and ensure adequate medical supervision. A surgeon was required to visit the gaol twice a week and to attend all floggings — a convict flogged to incapacity was of scant economic use to the colony.
Magistrates could sentence convicts to eight categories of punishment. These included reprimand, the treadmill, hard labour by day and solitary by night, the lash, work in chain gang and transportation to a penal settlement. Solitary confinement, increasingly used during the 1820s and 1830s in lieu of flogging as a further punishment, deprived prisoners as far as possible of all human contact. Sixteen solitary cells were erected at Richmond gaol in 1835.
Jurisdiction for the Richmond Gaol was transferred from the Sheriff’s Department to the police after the transportation of convicts ended in 1853. In June 1861, Richmond became Tasmania’s fourth municipality, and the gaol was taken over by the newly formed Municipal Police.
One of the Gaol’s most infamous inmates was English convict, Ikey Solomon, said to be the model for Charles Dicken’s character Fagin in Oliver Twist.
Text & Information sourced from Website: http://www.richmondgaol.com.au/index.html