Her Majesty`s Prison Birmingham, (to give it its official name,) but more commonly known as Winson Green, or the `Green,` was built as a replacement for the Moor Street Goal which had become wholly inadequate given the rise in crime and imprisonment of felons. The prison was built by the Birmingham architect, D. R. Hill following a Gothic design and was originally designed to hold 336 prisoners, a figure that was increased to 612 by 1885. With an initial estimate of costing some £51,447, this was eventually to rise to almost £90,000. Work began on October 29th 1845 with the Mayor of Birmingham. Thomas Phillips, laying the foundation stone. It opened for `business` on October 17th 1849 with the first prisoner entering through its portals two days later. The entrance was built to look like an imposing medieval castle`s gatehouse.
Unfortunately, its authority and reputation got off to an embarrassingly bad start for the first governor, Captain Alexander Maconochie, was said to be unequal to the task and was dismissed following complaints of a lack of discipline from his staff. In fact, Maconochie, who believed in penal reform and the dignified and respectful treatment of all prisoners, was attempting to introduce a system of merit, albeit for those under the age of sixteen in which the prisoners were awarded points for good behaviour and which would serve as a guide to who could and should be released and when. Maconochie`s philosophy was, "cruelty debases both the victim and the society inflicting it and that punishment for crime should not be vindictive but should be designed to strengthen a prisoner`s desire and capacity to observe social constraints." Sadly such a liberal and forward thinking approach to the rehabilitation of prisoners did not sit well with the Home Office, his deputy governor, Lt Austin and Birmingham`s local magistrates and he was (unjustly) dismissed in July 1851. Amongst the reasons cited were incapacity to carry out his duties through his advanced age, laxness of discipline and the dirty state of the prison!
The second governor was an ex-naval Lieutenant called William Austin, who had served 25 years in the Royal Navy and was, without doubt, a vicious sadist. So brutal was his treatment of Winson Green`s inmates to become, that the prison became notorious for barbarity and callousness and its reputation as a fearsome place of punishment and pain spread beyond its walls. Austin, who had previously worked at London`s Tothill Fields prison, was determined to run his new appointment as tightly disciplined as any Royal Navy man-of-war and his guards appear to have been just as eager to enforce his inhumane policies. One description of Austin records that `his appetite for punishing such breaches of what he calls discipline is insatiable.` So severe was Austin`s conduct, and that of his staff, who, for the most part, were willing accomplices in his regime, that in the first sixteen months of his regime there were at least 15 attempts at suicide by inmates. Three of these, all of them barely boys, were successful. One of them, Edward Andrews was only 15 years old when he hanged himself in his cell on 7th April 1854. The unbelievably cruel and shameful treatment of Andrews would bring to an end the sadistic rule of Austin and his staff.
On March 28th 1853, Andrews had been sentenced to three months imprisonment for stealing a piece of beef weighing 4lbs. This was Andrew`s third term of imprisonment. Previously he had been sentenced to one week’s incarceration for throwing stones in the street and a month for stealing vegetables or fruit from a garden. By the second day of his sentence, he was put to work at “the crank”. The crank consisted of spinning a wooden wheel by a turning a handle, which weighed 10lb, a set number of times each day. It had no other intention than to break the will of the prisoner and make him obedient and compliant to the prison`s rules. Andrews had to turn the crank a minimum of 2000 revolutions before he could have breakfast, 4000 times before he could have dinner and further 4000 turns before he could partake of his supper. Failure to complete the task meant the loss of the meal. Andrews was a palpably weak lad and failed on many occasions to meet the required number of turns. With the loss of his meagre rations, he naturally became weaker and so less able to complete the cycle of cranks. Anyone with an ounce of sense could see that to continue the punishment was going to result in the lad`s death.
Despite this, Austin and his staff, including Blount, the prison doctor, were merciless in their relentless prosecution, or rather, persecution of Andrews who now began to display a defiance born of desperation. He began to berate and shout abuse at the staff. For this breach of discipline, he was strapped to the wall of his cell in a tight leather jacket, his feet being the only parts of his body he could move, and which barely touched the floor. This jacket, designed by a henchman of Austin`s called Freer had a thirteen and a half inch collar, three and a half inches deep and a quarter inch thick. So tightly was the jacket strapped that a finger could not be placed between the jacket and the skin while the collar cut the flesh on the chin and back of the neck. In this position, the poor boy could not move his head. He was then left to hang for up to thirteen hours, from 9.00 am to 10.00 pm. If he wanted feeding, a warder would attempt to pass water between his lips along with a little moist bread, however most of the time Andrews was unable to swallow the food. If he seemed to fall into insensibility, the warders would throw water over him to bring him back to consciousness and he was left to hang in his saturated clothing. When the first opportunity arose, Andrews found release from his agony by hanging himself from the bars of his cell window, using his handkerchief and the ropes of his hammock. It had taken Austin and his staff just two weeks to break a boy’s will so severely that it caused him to take his own life!
Such torturous and barbaric behaviour could not for long be kept quiet and soon the Home Office was receiving disturbing reports about the activities and happenings at Her Majesty`s Prison, Birmingham. Eventually a member of the staff, William Brown, wracked by conscience and disgust, wrote to the Home Office of the horrors he had witnessed. Such was the regime`s disrepute that an official Home Office inquiry, a Royal Commission no less, was established questioning past and present staff and inmates as to what had gone on behind Winson Green`s walls. The Commission sat for 13 days and listened to the evidence of 64 witnesses.
At the end of the inquiry it reported that Austin`s punishments were, "not only utterly illegal, but most objectionable from its painful, cruel and exasperating character, which he practised with a frequency distressing to hear of for offences too trivial to call for any severity of punishment at all upon offenders quite unfit to be subjected to it." So shocking was the resulting report that Austin, realising that he had gone too far, quickly resigned his position in order to escape the consequences of his behaviour. His belated, empty and cowardly gesture did not save him from justice, and he was arrested on charges of inhuman treatment and also, incredibly, for a crime that the Home Office considered far more serious, bad bookkeeping! Such was the level of cruelty that permeated the prison`s staff that even the prison`s own surgeon, Dr Blount was found guilty of abuse.
Austin and Blount, who the court was told had ordered one prisoner, Samuel Hunt to have his mouth filled with salt, were tried at Warwick assizes, convicted and sentenced to three months imprisonment in its goal. It was deemed prudent that for their own safety it was best for them not to serve their sentence in their former place of employment. Despite their conviction, there is some doubt as to whether Austin and Blount actually ever served their sentences.
(I am currently researching the history of execution in Birmingham and I am looking for any information that may be available regarding the execution shed that was situated in the yard of Winson Green prison and the condemned cell and execution chamber when it was moved onto `A` wing. If anybody has a description or any anecdotes regarding these I would be most grateful to hear them. Many thanks.)
