Eric Stockdale 4 Eric Stockdale was called to the Bar in and appointed a Circuit judge in the s. The Eagle Bookshop opens in a new window. Bedford Prison 2. Bunyan John 3. Howard John 1. Hunt Rev Philip 2. Richardson family gaolers 1. Russell Lord John 1. Whitbread Samuel II 4. No Comments Start the ball rolling by posting a comment on this page! Add a comment about this page Your email address will not be published.
I am going to do something I have never done before, and that is to talk a bit about my own history, and relate how I am linked to John Howard via Bedford prison — but that will be at the end of this blogpost. He visited the jail in the s when he was appointed high sheriff of the county. He was so appalled at what he found that it launched his life-long mission as a prison reformer.
John Howard found that the sick establishment infected the local community as typhoid and cholera seeped out from the fetid and foul jail. Like many city jails, Bedford has a history going back centuries. The prison now standing was built in although it has been added to over the two centuries.
Today the prison is overcrowded, holding more than men above its capacity, despite the promise to deal with the violence, squalor and lack of control highlighted by the inspectors. So for my story. He was a troubled man and alcoholic. I remember my mother trailing across the country on a succession of buses to visit him. He took his own life. The earliest list of prisoners dates from [Ref.
FN ]. John Bunyan was imprisoned here from to , and in Prisoners from around the County were brought to the gaol by parish constables, who were paid for transferring the prisoners from the local lock-up or pound. Every parish had its own 'cage'. Details of these can be found in Stocks and Lock-ups in Bedfordshire Villages [Clf: ] in the searchroom. The prison reformer John Howard made the first of many visits to the gaol when he was High Sheriff of Bedfordshire in In he described the County Gaol as having the following accommodation: First floor: day room for debtors also used as a chapel, four lodging rooms.
Ground floor: for felons, two day rooms, one for men, one for women, two cells for the condemned. The rooms were 8'6" high.
There were two dungeons down eleven steps, one of which was dark. He noted that 20 years earlier there had been an outbreak of gaol fever typhus. The Quarter Sessions minutes of Easter [Ref. QSM 18] record that the Justices of the Peace wanted to enlarge the gaol, and ordered the purchase of the house of John Howard, gaoler, no relation to the prison reformer of the same name and its outhouses, yards and buildings to be used for the purpose of expansion.
This was to include cells above ground, an infirmary for the sick, and separate places for men and women. When there was no response to the invitation for plans and proposals to be sent to Mr Jeremy Fish Palmer before Sat 8th July, the JP's altered their plans, and ordered that a new Gaol be built on a site within two miles of the existing gaol.
At the Michaelmas Sessions the same year they had to rescind the previous orders respecting the spot where the gaol and bridewell were to be built, [Ref. QSM 18]. The project was neglected for nearly a decade. In a committee was set up to oversee the construction of a new gaol [Ref.
QGE 1]. They deemed both the existing County Gaol and House of Correction in the gaol 'insufficient' and 'inconvenient'. One of the committee was Francis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford, who sold his land in Dovehouse Close, a suitable site for the prison, to the County for the nominal sum of 10 shillings [Ref. On 6th June the architect John Wing produced plans and estimates for the building of a new gaol, and the committee unanimously agreed on plan no. He also gave an estimate of the cost of building, 4s.
It was developed in , and further construction took place in the s, adding a gate lodge, health care facility with 12 beds and 24 hour care and house block. The prison has the capacity to hold up to inmates, and is a local prison; which means that it detains individuals on remand to the local courts, in addition to inmates who have been sentenced.
Calls from the Bedford prison payphones are expensive, they are around 40p per minute! Prison Phone have been helping to change this by reducing the cost of the same calls down to just 10p per minute. Mobile number:.
0コメント