The Fourth and Last Gaol at Horsham - It's Construction & Administration - It's End

 

 

The building of the new county gaol at Horsham, undertaken in 1775, was pursued in a manner very different from that of its immediate predecessor in 1640. At the Quarter Sessions held at Petworth on the 2nd October that year not only was it decided to build the new gaol, but the energetic Duke of Richmond produced plans which he had had prepared, and these with all other measures for immediately carrying out the resolution were adopted It was decided to purchase a field of about two acres called the " Causey Croft," in East-street, of Samuel Blunt, Esq., for £350, and, in order to proceed at once, to pay the tenant 5 guineas compensation for immediate possession. and the architect, Mr Ride, £21 for his set of plans.

 

Further, at the same sessions, a contract was entered into with Thomas Griffith, and Edward Griffith, carpenters of Horsham " for them to build the gaol, and a surrounding wall to enclose one acre of the land, for the sum of £3,560 and to have the whole work completed by Michaelmas, 1777, under a bond of £7,000.

 

Whilst the majority of the counties remained for some years contumacious to the Acts of Parliament of 1774, the Duke of Richmond, emulative of Howard's efforts, determined to carry them out forthwith. With this object in view, antecedent to his intention of fixing a salary for the new gaoler and of abolishing all gaol fees according to the Act, he ordered the then gaoler, Charles Cooper, to make a return showing his profits of running the gaol on fees and perquisites for the past seven years. The return is as follows:- " The advantages and profits of his being goaler of the said prison in;

 

1768 amounted to	£131	12	8
1769 amounted to	£132	10	0
1770 amounted to	£134	6	0
1771 amounted to	£139	10	8
1772 amounted to	£136	4	0
1773 amounted to	£131	1	0
1774 amounted to	£129	11	8

 

"and" he adds, perhaps plaintively, perhaps sarcastically, " for all which above said seven years trouble and fatigue the said Charles Cooper has been obliged to give the security of £6,000 amiually."

 

The structure of the new gaol was planned to be very substantial. The foundations were to be 3 feet deep of hard Horsham stone; the building itself entirely of burnt stock bricks; all bricks to be embedded in mortar made from best lime from the North Downs, not grouted; all timber to be of heart oak; tiled roof on heart oak laths. The length of the prison was 126 feet and the width 32 feet. There were two floors over arcades above the ground floor, the ascent to each being by means of a stone staircase with iron rails.

 

On each floor, both on the debtors' and felons' sides, there were 10 rooms, five on each side of a passage, 5 feet wide, besides a day room 28 feet by 12 feet 3 ins., and a lodging room for the turnkey. Each prisoner had a separate room arched over with brick to pre- vent danger and confusion in case of fire, 10 feet by 7 feet and 9 feet high to the centre of arch. To each room were two doors, one of them latticed; two spacious courts outside the gaol with water in each. Surrounding the whole was a wall 20 feet high and 18 ins. thick with strengthening piers all round outside one rod apart. Subsequently at Horsham, on the 21st February, 1778, articles of agreement for the erection of the gaoler's house, chapel, and infirmary of brick and stone were entered into with Ralph Jones, bricklayer, of Horsham, for the sum of £1,070, to be completed by Ladytide, 1779.

 

 

The work was carried out satisfactorily though the gaol was not finished to time. In April, 1779, it was reported at Quarter Sessions that the whole of the buildings and the contracts were completed, and at a further meeting of the justices at the King's Head, Horsham, on the 2nd August. 1779, with the Duke of Richmond in the chair, it was ordered " that the Sheriff be requested to take possession of the new gaol forthwith, and that John Aldridge, Esquire (of St Leonards, Horsham), be, and he is hereby, appointed Inspector of the Gaol."

 

Further, after rescinding a former order allowing the gaoler to sell beer. wines and spirits, etc., to the prisoners, an entire new set of rules and regulations for the good government of the new gaol was adopted; among them were the following:- That the gaoler be paid a salary of £100 per annum together with the house and the garden. That he is not to be directly or indirectly concerned in selling beer, wines or spirits to the prisoners or debtors. That the gaoler shall constantly have two turnkeys, and a third when the criminals exceed the number of ten.

 

That the turnkeys shall not be concerned in selling any articles whatsoever to the prisoners or debtors. That the greater and lesser criminals be kept on the same side but on different stories. The greater in the upper story. That the debtors and women shall be on the other side of the gaol. That each division of prisoners shall be compelled to be out in the yard one hour in the forenoon and one hour in the afternoon every day during the six winter months, and two hours during that time in the summer months.

 

That there shall be but one division of prisoners or debtors in the yard at the same time. That a turnkey shall be constantly in the yard with the prisoners or debtors whilst they are there. That there shall be provided and kept by the county for each cell a stone pot, a mop, a broom, a leather buckett, a canvas straw bed, two blankets. That there shall be also provided for each male prisoner a coat, a waistcoat, a pair of breaches, 2 shirts, 2 pairs of stockings, 1 hat, 1 woollen nightcap. The cloathing to be made of the cheapest sort of woollen without plaits or pocketts and to be mixed in pieces of green and yellow. That each prisoner on his admission be stripped naked and washed in a bath of warm water, that all his own cloathes be baked in the oven and layed by to be returned when he leaves the gaol.

 

That the women be likewise cloathed with garments of the same materials proper for women. That each prisoner be allowed 2 Ibs of bread per day. That no other liquor than water be allowed to any prisoner except in the case of sickness. If any prisoner has money it may be layed out in purchasing meat, greens, or other victuals, or in bedding, but not in liquor. Every prisoner in the gaol whether criminal or debtor is to wash his hands and face twice a day, or oftener if necessary, at the pump. The gaoler is every morning to see each prisoner and to examine his hands and face, and to see that they are clean, and to order such punishment for neglect as he shall think proper, by stopping a portion or the whole of the bread allowance for a time, by confinement by putting on irons or chaining them down. This respects the criminals; the debtors to be punished by confinement to their cells.

 

Prayers to be read in the chapell every morning and a sermon once a week at which every person is to attend. Debtors to be allowed to purchase any provisions which may be sent from the town, but in respect of liquor, only one pint of wine or one quart of strong beer for each debtor each day. Two tin kettles to be provided by the county for each common room. Half a bushell of coals per day to be allowed each common room during the winter months. The chaplain to be allowed £50 per annum and to be Mr Jameson. The surgeon to be allowed £5 per annum and to be Mr Dubbins.

 

The very commendable spirit and promptitude with which the building of the new gaol at Horsham was undertaken, and the thoroughness with which its construction and regulation were carried out, reflect great credit on the Duke of Richmond and the county of Sussex. It was the first model prison in England and the first in the world to have seperate cell accomodation for each prisoner.

Lord Mansfield. who as one of the itinerant judges presided at the Sussex summer assizes from 1770 to 1782, was much astonished to find that the prisoners he was then (1780) trying would not occupy one fourth of the new gaol." " How can your Lord Lieutenant." he asked, "satisfy the county of Sussex that there has not been prodigality and waste of the county money in rearing so stately an edifice, three fourths of which appears to be uninhabited? "

 

He was assured by the gaoler that the new prison was built to accommodate only the same number of felons and debtors as the old one. but that the new system of solitary confinement had reduced the number of felon prisoners.
( This statement, however, does not agree with the gaol calendars. The average number of prisoners per annum for the fifteen years 1765 to 1779 was 20.73. For 1780-1794. the average was 34.44.).

 

When in August, 1779, the Sheriff had taken over the new gaol there were surviving only three of the twenty-five trustees, all justices of the county, appointed in 1750, viz., Sir James Peachy, Bart., of West Dean, Samuel Blunt, of Horsham, and Luke Spence, of South Malling, Esquires. To these fell the duty of disposing of the old gaol, with the approval, of course, of the then other justices of the county. On the 22nd of May, 1782. it was decided it should be sold by auction, and at the sale it was purchased for £620 by Lady lrwin. As stated in Part3, the gaol was a burgage tenement held of the Lord of the Borough of Horsham with corporation and parliamentary franchises attached. Lady lrwin at this time was the sole political proprietress and patroness of the borough, and her only object in this purchase was to strengthen her monopoly.

 

With the gaol she had bought the votes and could command their usage. Had the sale been delayed but five years when the Duke of Norfolk began his attempt to wrest the borough from Lady Irwin, there would have been a very pretty contest for the possession of the property, and a considerable financial advantage would have accrued to the county; for such was the rise in the value of burgage property at Horsham in consequence of the Duke's resolve to capture the political control of the borough that one or other of these two in competition would have paid twice or thrice, perhaps four times, its value in order to get command of the coveted votes.

 

A curious situation arose when the property was sold. It was found that the remaining trustees had not the power to convey it to Lady Irwin without a special act of Parliament. This was not passed until the 23rd January. 1787, when the Duke of Norfolk was just getting into his political stride. By the same Act, Parliament having now legalised the sale of the old gaol, declared that the " new gaol is and shall for ever hereafter be and remain the common gaol and prison of and for the said county of Sussex." It used frequently to be said that Horsham was a hundred years behind the times, but in 1779 with the lead of the progressive Duke of Richmond and its new model gaol it is evident from this Act of Parliament that the town was over seven years in advance of the legislature of the country, and that the county of Sussex in regard to prison reform was in advance of all the other counties in Great Britain.

 

Howard visited the gaol on the 8th November, 1782, and highly approved of it. He says: " The new gaol that was building in 1776 I found was finished in 1779. The Duke of Richmond in concurrence with the other gentlemen of the county interested himself much in this affair. The situation is judiciously chosen and the plan is particularly well suited for the purpose. It does credit to those who superintended the work being in every way substantial and strong. The county has very properly settled the number of turnkeys at three and one of them goes every day to purchase provisions and liquor for the debtors. Felons have only water for their drink. This county has set the noble example of abolishing all fees and also ' the tap.' In consequence of this I found the gaol as quiet as a private house. The prison is clean, healthy, and well regulated." He ordered a plan of it to be taken for himself.

 

James Neild visited the gaol in July, 1807. He describes it much in the same language as Howard's, but, in addition, gives an account of the chapel which, he says, has a gallery for the gaoler and his family. The pulpit is on the same level. The area below is 17 feet by 15 feet and has parallel benches for the prisoners; debtors and felons of both sexes sit opposite each other. Every prisoner absent from Divine service without a proper cause is punished by close confinement or short allowance. By this time the gaoler's salary had advanced to £120, and. whilst the chaplain's salary was the same as in 1779, the surgeon's salary had advanced to £20. The allowance of bread to the felons is still 21b. per day and pauper debtors are now allowed llb per day.

 

Although the new gaol architecturally was satisfactory to the counly authorities, and to John Howard and James Neild, it was not at all satistactory to the builders. When upon completion they received their last payment of £860 they had not enough money to pay their creditors. They had ruined themselves by contracting for the building at too low a figure. (Dudley in his Antiquties of Horsham (1836), pp 27, 28, says: "It" (the gaol) "was built about 50 years since by William Griffith, who ruined himself contracting for the building." But the gaol minute book distinctly states that " Thomas Griffith and Edward Griffith do build the gaol and the wall around the same." We have no other record of the Griffith ruination, but if tradition speaks truly the sheriff in taking over the gaol also took over the Griffiths (or one of them) as debtor prisoners through their loss on the gaol.)

 

After the Napoleonic wars there was naturally a great decline in trade and an increase in unemployment, debt and crime. These misfortunes were of course automatically reflected in the prison records of Horsham, where the corresponding increase of prisoners from 1814 onwards eventually more than filled the gaol. In 1814 there were 13 felons. In 1816 there were 30 felons and 40 debtors. In 1817, 41 felons and over 100 debtors, the largest number of debtors ever known at Horsham. In 1818 Sir Godfrey Webster, one of the members of Parliament for the county, visited the gaol and expressed his great concern at finding so many unfortunate insolvents there. The prison was so crowded that the debtors were sleeping three in a bed and the statutory annual whitewashing of the prison for the time had to be abandoned. This year the number of felons in the gaol, including ten of the notorious Shipley gang of thieves, whose depredations had terrorised Horsham and the surrounding neighbourhood for a year or more, had increased to 53.

 

From the time Simon Southward entered the new gaol its guests had been varied and numerous enough, indicative in their way, in their character and number, of the fluctuating prosperity or distress of the county. The bulging walls of the gaol in 1818 forced upon the county authorities the necessity of its enlargement, and at the Quarter Sessions held at Lewes on the 11th August, 1819, a report of the gaol by the grand jury of Assize was read, where-upon it was resolved " that it is expedient that the said gaol be enlarged " and " for the effectuating of which a committee be appointed, to consider the best mode of carrying the said resolution into effect."

 

The committee met at the King's Head, Horsham, on the 16th August and recommended that 16 more cells should be added to the present accommodation at a cost of £2.540. The committee's report was adopted and the work carried out " with all speed." This enlargement was completed none too soon, for though the number of debtors declined somewhat, that of the felons had increased by 1821 to no fewer than 67. This doubtless is the peak record of the number of felons and alleged felons in the Sussex county gaol at any one time during the 300 years of its existence at Horsham.

 

The figures, it should be noted, do not give the total number of felon prisoners for the years named, but are the number of prisoners on the gaol calendars for trial at the Lent assizes held in March of each year. The accumulation of felons during the period from after the summer Assizes, held in August, to March, was nearly always larger than that during the shorter period from March to August. After each Assize, batches of convicts of any number up to 15 or 20 at a time were carted to Blackwall or Portsmouth, thence to be transported for 7 or 14 years, or for life. From as early as 1812, it may be said the beginning of the end of the gaol at Horsham set in. At the Horsham Assizes, March 23rd of that year, complaints were made by the Lord Chief Baron, who presided, of the badly arranged court house and of its insufficiency for the county business.

 

At the Quarter Sessions held at Lewes, July, 1812. Lord Sheffield strongly supported a proposal that the Spring Assizes now annually held at Horsham should be transferred to Lewes, but the Duke of Norfolk saved the situation for Horsham (to its great relief) for a time by undertaking and carrying out a great improvement and enlargement of the Town Hall. When these were finished the building was said to be " greatly superior to any other court of justice in Sussex."

 

 

The Assizes and gaol, of course, were hand-in-glove, and, both together, from a business point of view, were a " good thing " for Horsham. At Assize times the town, like the gaol, was frequently crowded with people from all parts of the county interested in the proceedings, and it is perhaps not surprising that in the rush of business, and in their anxiety to give complete satisfaction, the hotel and boarding house keepers, tradesmen and others made a few miscalculations in their charges. Some. it was admitted, were unable to resist the temptation to " put it on," and that consequently there was " one-way traffic " in the upward tendency of their accounts. In these mistakes the jealous eyes of Lewes and Brighton could see only " exorbitant charges." Both these towns agreed that Horsham was worthy of neither the importance of the gaol nor the dignity of the Assizes, but each claimed for itself the superior position and qualification for both gaol and assizes.

 

At a public meeting held at Brighton before the doom of the gaol had become apparent, it was resolved that " it will be greatly to the interests of Brighton for the Spring Assizes now held at Horsham to be held at Brighton." Goaded by this double attack Horsham strove to put its house in order and even talked of building a new town hall at a cost of from £15,000 to £20,000. But its strongest voice and champion, the Duke of Norfolk, had been silenced for ever in 1816. How, now, was the money to be raised? " Indeed," scornfully remarked the Brighton Gazette, " if Horsham is going to build a new town hall it must build a new town too." But Horsham's influence was not great enough for its hopes and ambitions.

 

Eventually in 1830, Lewes, to the great chagrin of its overgrown mushroom neighbouring town. got the assizes away from Horsham. With all the assizes now held at Lewes the felons, at the saving of expense and trouble to the county, gravitated in the same direction. In 1835 at Quarter Sessions a committee was appointed to inspect the gaol and report as to the desirability of its improvement or abolition. The report recommended neither, but subsequently at a meeting held at Brighton on November 10th the same year, it was ordered that "Her Majesty's gaol at Horsham be for the present appropriated only for debtors, for prisoners committed for trial at the Horsham sessions, and for criminals upon whom sentence of death has been passed or shall be passed." By this time the insolvent debtors' courts had greatly reduced the average number of debtors detained in prison as well as the length of their imprisonment, and practically only one crime, that of murder, was now punished by death.

 

Horsham gaol, therefore, in a few years, from a swarming nest of 150 delinquents, was reduced to the holding of a mere handful. Its " glory " - if indeed such word could ever properly be applied to a prison - was gone. It was no longer the common gaol for the county. That " honour " was now divided pro tem between the Lewes and Petworth houses of correction. A further ominous shadow was cast on the gaol by complaints of the presiding commissioners at the insolvent debtors' courts at Horsham, one of whom flatly declined to attend the Horsham court again. In its nine-tenths empty, almost derelict, condition the fate of the gaol during the last decade of its existence became the subject of gloomy speculation in the town.

 

What could or would become of it? Only one feasible alternative to abolition was suggested, viz., that of its conversion into a pauper lunatic asylum. Several influential residents of Horsham and neighbourhood met to consider this proposal and employed an eminent architect to inspect the gaol with this object in view, and report. He was of opinion that for an expenditure of £11,000 the gaol might be made to accommodate 200 inmates and that an entirely new building for such a purpose and number would cost £44.000. The prospect of replacing criminals and debtors with pauper lunatics was quite acceptable to the town, and Mr Broadwood, of Lyne, offered £1.000 towards the cost of converting the building, but it appears there was a strong feeling among officials concerned with mental deficients against putting them in disused prisons, and the objection prevailed. This was Horsham's penultimate disappointment.

 

The final came in 1845 when, shortly after the land, the whole of the buildings and their contents had been sold by public tender to Mr Henry Michell, brewer, of Horsham, the highest bidder, at £2,560, the house-breaker appeared on the scene. His attendance was preceded by thousands of people now able to enjoy, on account of its brevity and unofficial character, a visit to the cells, especially the condemned cell. The house-breaker was of course unable to touch the spirit or clip the wings of any innocent or evil gaol-bird that might have hovered over the sinister spot watching with satisfaction the demolition of its one time very unspiritual home: but under the pickaxe Lord Mansfield's " stately edifice," Simon Southword's thirty years' " royal residence," poor old Jane Dabbs's ten years' home " of comforts " and James Forster's " wretched repository of horror and distress " - this great grim building with its forbidding sentinel wall soon lay in ruins. But not in waste.

 

Quite the contrary. Two and a half millions of bricks, fifteen thousand feet of Horsham stone paving, one hundred doors, one hundred and fifty windows, the heart oak timber - these, seventy years since, in constructing the gaol, had ruined the builders. Now Phoenix-like they rose again, but elsewhere in various places, and in less pretentious forms, taking up a new and much increased value. Just east of the vacated space the town built (through Mr Michell, from the appropriate old gaol materials) the new police lock-up at a cost of £700. Horsham had been made to understand that if it did not comply with this request the Midsummer Quarter Sessions would, like the Assizes and the gaol, be taken away and the town left with nothing.

 

Besides the lock-up the brewery, known as the West-street Brewery at Horsham, was largely built by and for Mr Michell," ( some of the cells in their original form and some of the windows can still be seen at the now disused brewery. which in 1911 amalgamated with the Rock Brewery, Brighton.) the factory at Steyning, until recently used for the production of parchment; the large private residence known as Northlands. Warnham, and other buildings, as well as nearly the whole of the railway works on the line from Three Bridges to Horsham - all these are off-spring from the old gaol.

 

From the land was exhumed the body of the one and last executed murderer, John Lawrence, which according to a recent Act of Parliament (1831) had been "buried within the precincts of the gaol." This was for a short time exhibited to the morbidly curious in the " Queen's Head " stable nearby at 2d. per head. Finally, it was transferred, the last body of a prisoner from Horsham gaol, to the south-west corner of the old churchyard, there to mingle with the dust of its unnumbered criminal, debtor, and innocent predecessors.

 

 

The land itself, after having been surveyed for an ambitious, but abortive, ornamental building scheme (a select residential square with gardens and fountains), was invaded on its western side by the all-conquering railway - the new line from Horsham to Portsmouth, and hundreds of trains now cross and re-cross the very spot where, on the "Horsham drop," (So he was tried and he was hung (Fit punishment, for such), On Horsham drop and none can say It was a drop too much. Tom Hood) the innocent lad Wren and the guilty murderer Lawrence alike met their doom. The remainder of the land lay untouched, uncultivated, desolate, a rubbish dump, the breeding and hunting ground of vermin, and the play-ground of grubby little urchins (the writer was one of these) for 30 years. Then, according to Horsham's advancing standard of civilization, it became "ripe" for building puposes

 

Another 60 years have gone since the end of the last of the four Sussex county gaols at Horsham; nearly 400 years since the beginning of the first. Today, on their several different sites, not a vestige of any one of the buildings can be seen, and nothing remains to indicate to the reflective mind the erstwhile scenes of concentrated malefactors and debtors; of sin and shame, misfortune, wretchedness and death.

 

 

 

 

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