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Richard in Newgate Prison in Bristol
On 30 July 1803, Richard Woodbury was “committed by the worshipful Robert Claxton Esq, Alderman, being charged on the oath of George Taylor and Richard Giles with having feloniously stolen six gallons of brandy of the value of 6 pounds the property of the said George Taylor at the Parish of St Stephen within this city and County”. Richard was convicted at Bristol Assizes on 24 October 1803 and sentenced to 7 years imprisonment with transportation to New South Wales. He began his sentence at Newgate Prison in Bristol.
Newgate Prison [i] stood between Narrow Wine Street and Castle Mill Street in the centre of Bristol and was one of England’s oldest prisons, built in 1148 and rebuilt by public subscription in 1649. However, by the late 1700’s it became increasingly unsuitable for its purpose and was eventually abandoned in 1820 and demolished shortly after.
It stood in the area now occupying the entrance to the Galleries Shopping Mall car park in Bristol city. The illustration (left) shows the entrance to the prison. (Newgate in the late C18 showing alms box for poor prisoners. From J F Nicholls and John Taylor, Bristol Past and Present. Arrowsmith 1882).
Much of what we know about Newgate Prison comes from formal investigations and reports that were made during the prison reform movement beginning in the late 1700’s. John Howard, prison reformer and High Sheriff of Bedfordshire, visited Newgate in 1775 and described it as “white without and foul within”. Having visited several hundred prisons across England, Scotland, Wales and wider Europe, Howard published the first edition of The State of the Prisons in 1777. Later, James Neild, High Sheriff of Buckinghamshire and Treasurer of the Society for the Relief of Persons Imprisoned for small Debts, completed a report on the State of Prisons in England, Scotland and Wales in 1812.
Based on Neild’s report we know that in 1803, the year Richard Woodbury was incarcerated, Newgate was home to 24 debtors, 26 felons and 2 deserters. Neild described Newgate as “very antique and by much too small for the general number of its inhabitants”. He noted that the gaoler, William Humphries, received an annual salary of £200 plus “gown money” and the fees he received for the debtors. The chaplain received an annual salary of £35 for sermons every Sunday and prayers every Wednesday and Friday. Mr Safford, the surgeon, attended the inmates when needed.
Male felons had access to 2 day rooms, the first of which had an adjoining sleeping room, a small courtyard and a sick room with a fireplace and a ventilator. The second day room with two iron-grated windows included a fireplace. Adjacent was a very small court with a sewer in it. Nearby was the “condemned room” and a dungeon known as “the pit”, 8 steps down with a single small window up high. It was a suffocating and offensive place and prior to 1803 had been used to house prisoners condemned to transportation. In addition to the small courts was an exercise yard, called the “tennis-court”, into which felons and debtors were admitted separately at different hours of the day. It had a pump with good water and also a convenient bath that James Neild noted was “seldom used”.
Female felons had access to a large room at the top of the gaol (about 42 feet by 24 feet) that served as a day room and a sleeping room, overlooking the men’s exercise yard below. Two rooms nearby were used as infirmaries for the female felons.
The official food allowance for felons of both sexes was a threepenny loaf of standard wheaten bread of about 1 Ib 5 oz (about 600 grams). A collection box outside the prison gates also received donations from individuals in the city, which from time to time included potatoes, beef, herrings, vegetables, blankets and coal and these were distributed amongst all inmates. However, gifts in the collection box were always sporadic.
Debtors had access to about 15 rooms in the gaol and they paid the gaoler 2 shillings and 6 pence per room each week for their “lodgings”. Two debtors slept in a bed and Neild noted that there was “not a proper separation of men and women”. Two of the rooms were “free wards” for poor debtors who had to find their own beds. No food allowance was made to debtors so they were completely reliant on provisions from family and friends, and on any distribution from the collection box. Deserters suffered the worst privation of all for food, as they often had no family or friends nearby to provide for them.
While there was no employment available at Newgate Gaol at the time of Neild's inspections he noted that churchwardens in Bristol had previously paid £4/2/- for use of parties of prisoners; two-thirds of which was given to the debtors and one-third to the felons. Without work, boredom and mischief must have been endemic in the prison in the early 1800's.
Francis Greenway was convicted of forgery in Bristol in 1812 and he painted two scenes that year of a mock trial inside Bristol prison where he was being held prior to transportation to New South Wales. The illustration (left) is of the “tennis court” painted in 1812. The Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, holds the oil paintings by Greenway.
Francis Greenway is known as the father of colonial architecture in Australia and his likeness was printed on Australia’s first issue of the $10 bank note, issued from 1966 to 1993. Francis Greenway is probably the only convicted forger anywhere in the world who has been depicted on a banknote (Wikipedia: Francis Greenway).
Richard Woodbury spent about a year in Newgate Prison (including pre-trial time). Records show that he was transferred to the prison hulk “Laurel”, moored at Portsmouth, on 4 August 1804. He spent an additional 17 months on the Laurel before being transferred to a convict ship for passage to Australia. James Neild inspected the hulks at Portsmouth (including the Laurel) in September 1807. Neild’s comments about the hulks are noted in the page “Prison hulk” on this site.
Richard was transferred to the convict transport ship Fortune on 9 January 1806. In total, he was incarcerated for 2½ years in England before his ship, Fortune, left Spithead on 28 January 1806 (see Fortune 1806 on this site). It would amount to just short of 3 years by the time Richard set foot in New South Wales.
[i] Newgate Prison in Bristol is sometimes confused with the more well-known Newgate Prison in London. Newgate prison in London was demolished in 1902. Newgate in Bristol was demolished in 1820 after it was replaced by a new purpose-built prison on Cumberland Road, Bristol.
Page created on 22 September 2013.
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