H.M. PRISON - Wakefield

The prison in Love Lane (Wakefield), covers an area of upwards of 20 acres, having been enlarged in 1846 at a cost of £120,000 and now contains 996 separate cells, but the convict establishment was broken up in 1867 and reopened in December 1905.

The old house of correction for the West Riding was an extensive pile of buildings near the bottom of Westgate, constructed of an improved plan of county prisons, comprising a treadmill for grinding corn, separate yards, a chapel, a school for juvenile offenders, day rooms, and 300 separate sleeping cells.

In 1908, 27 sentences of death were passed. It is not generally known that a relative of a person under sentence of death may be present at his/her execution, but such is the fact by The Capital Punishment Act, 1868

Wyn Bulmer

MISSING from HOME?

We all like to think that our ancestors were models of ‘rectitude’. However it may be that someone, missing from their home at the time of the census, was in fact languishing in the ’house of correction’.

The 1851 census for Wakefield prison has been indexed. It shows over a thousand people in the prison or working there at that time, including the following who were actually born in the area covered by our Society:

• Barker John 20 U Coal Miner Wath
• Bates Henry 20 U Excavator Doncaster
• Beecroft James 40 U Ag Lab Smeeton
• Birkley William 37 M Shoemaker Addersley (Ardsley?)
• Bowness Charles 22 M Blacksmith Brampton
• Boyd Robert 35 M Ag Lab Doncaster
• Burrow Thomas 40 U Ag Lab Doncaster
• Glover George 35 M Miller Doncaster
• Creeton Thomas 30 M Jn. Butcher Wheatley
• Cumseus George 42 U Labourer Loversall
• Gelder Thomas 44 M Coal Miner Ardsley
• Heselton William 39 M Worsted Weaver Wheatley
• Hodgson Francis 37 U Jn Butcher Doncaster
• Howson George 52 M Blacking Maker Doncaster
• Jackson Martha 17 U House Servant Doncaster
• Johnson Charles 38 U Ag Lab Doncaster
• Kershaw Thomas 25 U Woolcomber Wheatley
• Mellor Amos 19 U Stone Cutter Darfield
• Pinder Sarah 35 W Washerwoman Doncaster
• Poskett George 20 U Excavator Fishlake
• RichardsonPeter 30 M Labourer Cowick
• Seaton William 38 M Jn Whitesmith Doncaster
• Shepherd Helen 42 M Governor's Wife Doncaster
• Stenton William 14 U Cotton Factory Boy Doncaster
• Swift Charles 18 U Waterman Cowick
• Taylor Daniel 28 U Jn Shoemaker Doncaster
• Waterworth James 22 M Jn Shoemaker Ardsley
• Wood David 51 U Porker (corn) Doncaster
• Wood William 27 M Waterman Doncaster

Prisoners in Wakefield gaol in 1851 would have arrived there after being convicted in a court in the West Riding of Yorkshire. This could have been the Assize Court, if the offence was really serious. The records of this court are held at the Public Record Office. The courts of quarter sessions dealt with less serious crimes. Those sending prisoners to Wakefield in 1851 from the Doncaster area would have been the West Riding court of quarter sessions and the Doncaster borough court of quarter sessions. If the crime had been committed within the borough of Doncaster, the borough court would have tried the case. Its records are held at Doncaster Archives. Only the court registers survive from this period. Crimes committed outside the borough were the province of the West Riding court. Its records are held at the Headquarters Office of the West Yorkshire Archives Service at Wakefield. There you should find not only the indictment books, containing the record of the conviction, but also the accompanying court papers, including the statements of witnesses. Magistrates tried relatively minor offences in petty sessions. No local petty sessions records survive for this period, but crime reporting was then, as now, the staple diet of the press, so you may find a report, however brief, in the local newspapers in the Doncaster Local Studies Library.

So if your ancestors were not at their home on the night of the census, try the nearest ‘house of correction’, hospital, workhouse or other institutions.

'The Doncaster Ancestor' Volume 10 No 2 1999 Summer edition.

Gwen Jennings