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The Clink Prison Museum

The Clink Prison Museum Attraction, Museum Owned by the Bishop of Wi******er, The Clink Prison was used to control the riverside part of Southwark known as “The Liberty of The Clink”.

The Clink Prison Museum stands upon the original site of the Clink Prison, which dates back to 1144 making it one of England’s oldest, if not the oldest prison. Visitors discover a hands-on educational experience allowing them to handle original and reproduction artifacts, including torture devices, as well as the opportunity to view and hear the amazing stories of the inmates and the notorious Ba

nkside. This area housed much of London’s entertainment establishments including inns, theatres, bull and bear-baiting, c**k and dog fighting and twenty two houses of atrocious but very wide repute - much of this lives on today in the street names of Bankside. The Clink Prison was a small but crucial part of the bishop's riverside palace, called Wi******er House. where he often hosted royal functions and drew the envy of kings. Parts of the Great Hall still stand today, including the world famous Rose Window, preserved by English Heritage. The list of famous names that have visited Bankside during the years of The Clink includes Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, Henry VIII, William Shakespeare, Sir Francis Drake, James I, Samuel Pepys, Dr Johnson and many more, why not join them and explore the prison that gave its name to all others? The Clink Prison.

Operating as usual

‘Pour encourager les autres’ (to encourage the others), meaning punishment to set an example, was coined by the French w...
14/03/2023

‘Pour encourager les autres’ (to encourage the others), meaning punishment to set an example, was coined by the French writer Voltaire (in his play Candide) in reference to the English Admiral John Byng, who had protested that he was caught between a rock and a hard place – the place being Minorca that he had been sent to relieve, and the rock being Gibraltar, whose governor refused to lend him any support – and Byng had emphasised his refusal to risk sailors’ lives without a chance of victory. He engaged the French in battle, but dared not get to grips with them, and they slipped away. After a council of his captains, the fleet fell back on Gibraltar to make repairs.
Before they could return to sea, word arrived from England, relieving Byng of command and ordering him home. His failure to relieve Minorca had caused public outrage. He was court-martialled accused of ‘not doing his utmost against the enemy’ to which he could only plead guilty – and, under the Articles of War, the Admiralty had no choice but condemn him to death – while recommending that King George II grant him a pardon. The king refused.
The struggle over the life and death of Admiral John Byng was like a ship holed below the waterline, slowly, inexorably, sinking. The House of Lords were against him, but finally the prime minister, William Pitt the Elder told the King: ‘the House of Commons, Sir, is inclined to mercy’. The king replied ‘You have taught me to look for the sense of my people elsewhere than in the House of Commons’.
John Byng was sailed to his flagship, HMS Monarch, anchored off Spithead and, on this day 1757, was taken to the quarterdeck in the presence of all hands. He was shot dead by a squad of six Royal Marines.

Our articles about hanging over the last few days leave the question regarding prisoners at The Clink – since Horsemonge...
13/03/2023

Our articles about hanging over the last few days leave the question regarding prisoners at The Clink – since Horsemonger Lane Gaol (with the gallows on the roof) only opened in 1799, nineteen years after The Clink burned down, were Clink condemned prisoners really hanged at Tyburn? When you consider the journey – across London Bridge, right through the city, out through Newgate, cross the River Fleet, and then three miles west (stopping for a pint at St Giles) – that is what some people might call ‘a schlepp’, and the gaolers have to get home after that.

We first found the answer to the puzzle in a book named London’s Lost Rivers by Paul Talling; in its exploration of long buried tributaries to the Thames, this wonderful little volume notes the position of the well of St Thomas a Watering (where Canterbury pilgrims might water their horses before setting off down the Old Kent Road in earnest – the well was opposite the ex*****on site where hung one of the quarters of Thomas Wyatt (more of him another day). At time of publication the site of the well was occupied by the old boxers’ pub the St Thomas Becket (it’s now a restaurant) – and directly opposite is the giant Old Kent Road Tesco.

One of our guides mentioned this to a lady a couple of years ago and received the reply ‘Did they hang them in the meat section? As he was trying to find the right words to explain on just how many levels that was wrong, the lady added ‘And it’s organic!’

Quite apart from this, the association between watering spot to refresh those going out, and ex*****on sight to scare those coming in is repeated in West London, where the Tyburn Tree (Marble Arch) was very close to Bayard’s Water (Bayswater).

It was the very carnival atmosphere as reported by Charles Dickens in an article for The Times on the ex*****on of a hus...
12/03/2023

It was the very carnival atmosphere as reported by Charles Dickens in an article for The Times on the ex*****on of a husband and wife hanged together on the roof of Horsemonger Lane Gaol (not so far from where The Clink had been) that finally sounded the death knell of British public hanging in 1868; from that time forward, hangings would be carried out within prison walls, generally within specially engineered ex*****on chambers, with a deep void below and the condemned cell just a door away. The very fact that there was a permanently installed set of apparatus not generally in use gave William Marwood (the self-styled Prince of Hangmen) great scope to pursue his own very Victorian passion for improvement.

The idea of Long Drop Hanging was originated by an Irishman named Dr Samuel Haughton who, in 1866, produced a formula that used the height and weight of the condemned to provide a length of drop so that, when the body came to its abrupt halt, it would have been travelling at the optimum velocity for the neck to break instantaneously. The experiments of Marwood, and later James Berry, produced a document known as The Home Office Tables that were in use right up to abolition of the death penalty in Britain.

The story of British hanging in the Twentieth Century is told by Albert Pierrepoint in his autobiography published in 1974; he was hangman from 1941-56 and may have hanged as many as 600 people. The last two ex*****ons took place on the 13th of August 1964: Peter Anthony Allen was hanged at Walton Prison in Liverpool, and Gwynne Owen Evans at Strangeways in Manchester, both for the murder of John Alan West – since the hangings were simultaneous and thirty miles apart, there was no one last British hangman.

Popularly known as ‘Newgate Scraggings’, hangings were held outside the famous prison from 1783 to 1868 on a temporary s...
11/03/2023

Popularly known as ‘Newgate Scraggings’, hangings were held outside the famous prison from 1783 to 1868 on a temporary scaffold that had to be erected before and dismantled after (out of consideration for traffic), and was otherwise stored in a shed. The grim overture to an ex*****on was the men erecting the scaffold in Newgate Street, now Old Bailey. The main Newgate innovation though was the trapdoor, which dropped the condemned into empty air. Although the scaffold was 20 feet high, the hangman still employed a standard drop of between 12-18 inches, with the result that the condemned still died of asphyxia.

Hangings continued to draw large crowds, now rather more densely packed than they had been at Tyburn (dozens of people died in the crush at one 1807 hanging) and the general carnival atmosphere of a Newgate hanging is captured in Flashman’s Lady by George Macdonald Fraser; and it was considered just the occasion for a family outing, or as a treat for masters to bestow upon apprentices.

Michael Barrett was the last man to be hanged in public outside Newgate Prison (and the last person to be publicly executed in Great Britain) on 26 May 1868.

Public hanging was the most trenchant form of justice being seen to be done; apparently first employed as a punishment i...
10/03/2023

Public hanging was the most trenchant form of justice being seen to be done; apparently first employed as a punishment in Persia two and half thousand years ago (though who can really say?) - the practice of suspending the condemned by means of a rope tied around the neck, leaving their own body weight to cause asphyxiation, possibly over up to half an hour as the body swung and struggled in mid air - the sight was intended to serve as a deterrent to onlookers.

The principal (but by no means only) hanging site in London was at Tyburn, where the ‘Triple Tree’, a huge wooden triangle supported at each corner, stood just north of where Marble Arch is now. The condemned were taken there by cart, typically from Newgate Gaol (now the site of the Old Bailey) along roads now called Holborn, High Holborn and Oxford Street pausing (or at least so tradition has it) for a final pint of beer at The Angel in St Giles – the journey is about three miles.

Typically after a few last words, the condemned, rope around his/her neck, would be thrust off the ladder or off the back of a cart to their final kicking mortal exit, described variously as ‘The Hangman’s Dance’, ‘The Tyburn Jig’, ‘The Newgate Polka’ and ‘The Paddington Frisk’. While the first ex*****on at Tyburn was that of William Fitz Osbert in 1196, it only replaced Smithfield as the regular site of public ex*****on as the city started to expand beyond the walls in the 1400s. The Tyburn gallows were last used on 3 November 1783, to hang highwayman John Austin.

A lot of rubbish is written about witches being put on ducking stools (including in a recent Dr Who – and they really sh...
09/03/2023

A lot of rubbish is written about witches being put on ducking stools (including in a recent Dr Who – and they really should know better!); let’s get this straight now, a ducking stool was for dipping a woman in water and taking her out again alive and looking stupid – it’s quite different to seeing if a person floated or not – the only way that a witch, or even a suspected witch, would get put on a ducking stool was if she was also a scold, that is the legal term for a woman (always women, we’re afraid) judged to have had far too much ati-chood – because that, not trying witches, ever – was what a ducking stool was for.

Considering the specifications of a contraption that got wheeled round the town and then dipped a long arm with a chair and a woman attached into the pond, it’s going to be cumbersome however you design it – like a wooden JCB with no hydraulics – and, with so many bits to go wrong, it must have been a great nuisance to maintain (and so far easier to use in Victorian popular fiction). Examples survive at Leominster Priory in Herefordshire, Christchurch in Dorset (replica), and the Collegiate Church of St Mary in Warwick. There is also a ducking chair in Canterbury, though if that’s not a replica, it’s been extensively restored.

The last recorded occupants of ducking stools are Mrs Ganble at Plymouth in 1808; ‘notorious scold’ Jenny Pipes in 1809, and finally Sarah Leeke in 1817, (these last both in Leominster). For Sarah Leeke, the pond was so low that she was merely wheeled around the town in the chair – doubtless to a few cheers.

John Hooper became a Bishop rather against his better judgement, because he didn’t really approve of bishops, still less...
08/03/2023

John Hooper became a Bishop rather against his better judgement, because he didn’t really approve of bishops, still less of them dressing up in fancy ecclesiastical costumes, and he hadn’t really wanted to be one – Hooper was really very Protestant indeed, which was the very paradoxical reason that Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury so wanted him on Team Reformation, which was why on this day 1551, he consecrated him Bishop of Gloucester. Thereafter, Hooper avoided clerical dress, lived a simple life, and gave all his surplus profits of the See of Gloucester to the crown.

Of course, the Reformation was sharply derailed with the death of Edward VI and the accession of his devoutly Catholic half sister Mary; Henry IV’s old laws against heresy were revived and many senior Protestants arrested – Hooper was imprisoned in The Clink by the Bishop of Wi******er, Stephen Gardiner, he wrote, ‘They used me worse and more vilely than the veriest slave --- having nothing appointed to me for my bed but a little pad of straw, a rotten covering, with a tick and a few feathers therein, the chamber being vile and stinking’.

Being a married man, Hooper was stripped of his bishopric, he was condemned for heresy by Bishop Gardiner and degraded by Bishop Bonner on 29 January 1555. Hooper was sent to Gloucester, where he was burnt outside the cathedral on 9 February. Accounts tell of the fire needing to be lit three times before it took hold and of Hooper crying out ‘For God’s love, good people, let me have more fire!’ He died with great courage, proclaiming his faith to the end.

‘The temper being hotte and somewhat stronge, tis mete to put a bridel on the tong’ goes an old rhyme, reflecting the le...
07/03/2023

‘The temper being hotte and somewhat stronge, tis mete to put a bridel on the tong’ goes an old rhyme, reflecting the legal punishment of bridling women that were judged to have too much to say for themselves – the Scold’s Bridle (or ‘Brank’) was a metal harness that fastened round the head, typically with a metal plate that went into the mouth, holding down the tongue, with the effect that, when the convicted scold was led around the town to the great amusement of her neighbours, they could shout what they liked at her, but she couldn’t shout back.

An even nastier subtext was the ‘bridle’ thing – bridles were more usually put on horses and, by making a woman wear one, the law was affirming her status as little more than a beast of burden, and a chattel of Man. The first recorded use of one was in Scotland in 1567, and it was then employed throughout Britain until being last used in Bolton-in-the–Moors in Lancashire in 1865.

It would be easy to dismiss accounts of the tongue plate being spiked or bladed as Victorian invention, but Stockport Museum has one on display with a barbed tongue piece. How prevalent bridles were actually used is another question; the threat may have been as potent as the actual spectacle; there’s no mention in Thomas Hardy, for instance, and he loved rural tradition, the nastier the better – just read the Mayor of Casterbridge. There may be some comfort in knowing that, while a woman on her wedding day is a bride, and the words ‘bridal’ and ‘bridle’ practically homophones, we are reliably informed by Sue, that their respective roots are completely unrelated.

'In the Olden Days, nobody could read', is an idea popular among children that don’t want to learn but, using the Sevent...
06/03/2023

'In the Olden Days, nobody could read', is an idea popular among children that don’t want to learn but, using the Seventeenth Century (part of the Olden Days) as an example, Shakespeare's actors needed to be able to read, a man with his own business had to keep accounts and write letters, his wife could probably read a recipe book, both sides in the Civil War used written propaganda (some of it very scurrilous), so the real question is ‘Who could read, and who couldn’t?’ so we passed it, with a bottle of Old Janx Spirit to help it along, round the campfire.

Bishop Bray quoted James Howell, writing from the Fleet Prison in 1647: ‘Every man strains his fortunes to keep his children at school. The cobbler will clout till midnight, the porter will carry burdens till his bones crack again, the ploughman will pinch both back and belly to give his son learning’.

Gary noted the large number of schools founded by Edward VI and Elizabeth I. ‘The school attended by Shakespeare (the son of a glover) had 80 to 100, seven to fourteen year olds at any one time so, in the Stratford population of 2000, up to 10 percent of male children went to school’.

‘Far more people could read than write’, Ross added, ‘That’s why a lot of folks signed with a mark. Writing with a quill was a fiddly task, best accomplished by someone practiced. Hence public letter writers and the like’. The consensus was that literacy had reached a highpoint by 1700, but then the Industrial Revolution changed things. Gary pointed out that, while the population increased, the number of schools didn’t.

‘Our working class was herded off the land and into the cities’, Ross explained, ‘So much of our rural culture got sidelined. The Education Act of 1870 was because the bosses needed workers that could read drawings and instructions, and do simple calculations – they didn’t care if they could read the Bible or not’.

No study of medieval justice can be complete without due, eye-watering, consideration of the methods of Trial by Ordeal;...
05/03/2023

No study of medieval justice can be complete without due, eye-watering, consideration of the methods of Trial by Ordeal; these might be having to carry a red hot iron bar for three paces, or retrieve a stone from boiling water; the healing rate being assessed the next day as an indication of God’s favour (God loves the innocent), or being tied up and thrown into a pond (if you float, you’re guilty because the water, being blessed, rejects evil). The Normans preferred to simplify all of this to a simple Trial by Combat, in which one claimant fought the other until one cried ‘Craven’ – the winner evidently having God’s favour, therefore being innocent

Cruel undoubtedly (and this was the investigation, not the punishment) but just how credible is any of this for everyday use? Much more plausible that all of the above were an option rather than a norm – no court would need to order the use of ordeal if there were evidence, witnesses, confession or (better all round) settlement – and, unless there were no other option, who wouldn’t rather ‘fess up than have to walk over nine red hot ploughshares and let God decide?

Not unreasonably though, the whole idea had been drawing questions for at least three hundred years and, in 1215 it was banned by order of Pope Innocent III ( a very vigorous pope, who’d ordered crusades into Iberia, the Holy Land and Southern France – against the heretic Cathars - causing the deaths of thousands) who issued a Papal Bull to all the priests in Christendom saying (in effect) ‘God says Trial by Ordeal is stupid and He’s not going to do it anymore, so no more priests are allowed to officiate at Trial by Ordeal’ – and that was at least the beginning of the end of Trial by Ordeal, and thank God for that.

Address

1 Clink Street
London
SE19DG

Opening Hours

Monday 10am - 7:30pm
Tuesday 10am - 6pm
Wednesday 10am - 6pm
Thursday 10am - 6pm
Friday 10am - 7:30pm
Saturday 10am - 7:30pm
Sunday 10am - 7:30pm

Telephone

+44 20 7403 0900

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Comments

In 1841 my GGGG Grandfather was a jailer at Westminister Prison any idea's where I could get more information of this please his name was Jospeh Paul Kirkham 1810-1866 lived in the parish of St Phillips x
I always wondered why my dad would say: "They will probably throw him in the Clink". And he never left Montana. I'm a medieval addict and so now I know. I very seldom here about the Clink in my reading.
Do we have to book or can we just turn up?
On Friday, I went for a walk from St George's Fields to the Borough High Street - there's some amazing history all over that area - prisons, pubs, poets - it's fantastic!

(Which is why it's taken me three days to caption them all!)
Following on from last week's little excursion around the city walls, this weekend I decided on a little walk around The Liberty of The Clink.
The other day, fresh from a lovely morning's work at The Clink, preparing for the day that we can re-open, I went for a little walk round Medieval London with my camera.

Some people might think Medieval London isn't there any more; but it is...
I was posed a Clink Street puzzle today:

What follows the burst of gunfire on Clink Street?

The answer is two words, four letters each, and one of them is a colour.

It took me a little while to make a guess; then I checked it online just to make sure.

What do you think?
Hi we are coming Tuesday can we have the cost 4 adults one child please is it cheaper to book in advance ?
The 2019 Sing Sing Prison Calendars are in just in time for the holidays and a happy New Year!

This limited print edition includes never before seen photographs of the most historic and still active prison in America! This year's calendar is filled with 14 eloquently archived black & white and contemporary color historical images of the most famous prison Up The River! Along with the iconic imagery, a special written history of Sing Sing is featured on the back cover. This year's front cover is graced with Cardinal Dolan, who came to the Big House to bless the inmates who received communion back in March.

To order please send a private message here or by email - [email protected]

Have a healthy holiday and happy new year from our Sing Sing family to yours!
Any chance you could vote for this? 🙂

Please sign and forward to ten friends! Let’s make it go viral 💕

This is a project to spread mindfulness in prisons.

https://www.avivacommunityfund.co.uk/voting/project/view/4-1561

Many thanks🙏
The clink is awesome. I had a great visit today. Allow enough time to soak in all the interesting facts and displays.
Scary to think what our ancestors got up to...very informative
x

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