Tough voices, heavy footsteps, and the clang of brass padlocks on iron bolts echoed around the cold stone walls and floors of the cell blocks, day after day. ‘I often think of the clanging of the locks. If an inmate wanted something, he would usually get the lock and bang it on the bolt to […]
‘… there was no air – can you imagine five people locked in a cell with no air?…’ – former prisoner Allan James remembered his experience at Maitland Gaol in 1961. Established in 1848, Maitland was the oldest intact gaol in NSW and had become notorious as one of Australia’s toughest prisons. Ventilation grills like […]
Making hand-wrought nails has always been a highly repetitive, laborious job. But these iron and copper nails from the earliest buildings at Maitland Gaol, completed by 1848, were made during a turning point, when nail making machines had recently been invented. Were Maitland Gaol’s nails made one-by one, pulled from a forge and shaped by […]
What would you do to ward off boredom if you were facing a life behind bars? Despite being resigned to his life sentence in Maitland Gaol, Vietnam War veteran Ken Graham found a focused way to remain resilient. In the late 1980s, recycling whatever timber he could gather from around the gaol, Graham spent five […]
The heavy timber doors creaked on their iron hinges as the warder closed them, sliding the bolts shut, and turning the key in the padlocks to secure the prisoners each night. Installed in 1867, the outer hardwood cell doors of B-Wing at Maitland Gaol (in operation 1848-1998), locked up some of Australia’s worst prisoners. Designed […]
With razor blade in hand, working on a small section, the heritage painter carefully removed the outer layers of paint on a column in the chapel at Maitland Gaol. It was 2005, and Gordon Sauber, the Gaol Museum’s Coordinator was curious to identify the room’s original colour scheme. Built in 1867-8, the chapel remained in […]
How do you face bank robbers, sex-offenders, drug traffickers, and murderers every day at work? Tasked with confining and rehabilitating some of the toughest criminals Australia has ever seen, the guards of Maitland Gaol needed to maintain their self-defence skills throughout the prison’s 150 years of operation (1848-1998). In a shooting range along the perimeter […]
With smoke billowing out throughout the day, the red brick chimney of the Maitland Gaol cookhouse towered over the perimeter walls, serving as a focal point for the people of East Maitland. This date stone installed on the chimney and marking the year it was built, is now all that survives of the cookhouse (demolished […]
It was fear that stopped Dave McGarry from re-offending when he was finally released from Maitland Gaol. Locked up from age nineteen, McGarry remembers how ‘everyone here was someone to be scared of… at least sixty per cent of the guys… all carried weapons’. Improvised stabbing weapons, known as ‘shivs’ in ‘criminal slang’ since at […]
Strip searches, ‘shut downs’ and cell raids, such as when kitchen knives went missing, frequently sparked hostility and violence among the prisoners of Maitland Gaol, interrupting the calm. As warder Keith Bush remembered: ‘… everybody’s talking, singing, yelling out, screaming at each other… People are just snarling at you, giving you filthy looks.’ In this […]
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