Campbell Street Gaol

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Campbell Street Gaol was an Australian prison facility located in Tasmania, Australia.

The original portion of the gaol, at first known as the Hobart Town Prisoner's Barracks, gaol was built by convicts in 1821, to accommodate 640 men. As thousands of convicts were arriving each year, the Barracks was found to be too small almost immediately, and it was extended in stages over the next decade until it could hold over 1,200 men, by utilising every inch of available space, including the ceiling cavity.

After transportation ceased to Tasmania in 1853, the Barracks was converted into the Hobart Town Gaol, rerplacing the older building of that name which had become structurally unsound. A new cell-block was constructed to the north of the original one, and the Gaol remained more or less in this form until its closure.

Found to be too old and small in the late 1940s, movement of the inmates to the new Risdon Prison began in 1961. Campbell St. Gaol closed in 1963, and all the buildings on site were demolished except the court rooms. These remained in use until 1983, when they too were replaced as courts by new buildings in Salamanca Place. The older buildings in Campbell St. remined standing and were given over to the care of the National Trust, and they are open to the public. Of the rest of the former Gaol, only fragments of the outer wall remain standing today, and are visible along the length of Campbell St. where the Gaol formerly stood.

Following the closure of the Port Arthur establishment in 1877 it was the only prison in Tasmania where executions could be carried out. A total of 32 people, including one woman, were executed at the Gaol between 1857 and 1946, when the last hanging in Tasmania took place. The death penalty was legally abolished in Tasmania in 1968. The scaffold was removed for a time but has been re-constructed. Tested every month while the Gaol was still in use, it remains operational.

The gaol's most notable inmate was Ronald Ryan, who carved his name into the wall of the holding cell he occupied in 1963.

v • d • e Tasmanian prisons Campbell Street Gaol · Cascades Female Factory · Hayes Prison Farm · Hobart Remand Centre · Launceston Remand Centre · Port Arthur · HM Prison Risdon · Richmond Gaol · Risdon Women's Prison See also: List of Australian prisons