Two centuries ago, this space was an exercise yard for transportees – that is, people who were convicted of a crime such as theft and sentenced to penal servitude (forced labour) working in Britain’s colonies overseas.

 

One group of transportees made a big impact in the prison. Their names are carved into the wall to the left of the door. These were Simon Hargreaves, John Foulds, James Wood and William Brewer. They were all young men between 18 and 22 years old, who had been convicted of housebreaking and theft in 1829. They were sentenced to death, and all had their sentences commuted – that is reduced – to transportation. This was common at the time for cases of theft.

 

While they were imprisoned here, they slept in a cell on the ground floor of the building you have just come through, and were brought into this yard for exercise. While Simon and William already knew each other, they seem to have made friends with John and James while they were in prison. The four banded together with six other men and conspired to escape. They were caught trying to dig a hole through the old castle wall – that’s the curving wall behind the displays on the opposite side of the yard to the graffiti. They were all punished with solitary confinement on a diet of bread and water, and Simon Hargreaves and John Foulds were put in irons, which means they were chained up in heavy iron shackles.

 

Nowadays, the yard is full of shop fronts and buildings – these were added in the 1950s when the Debtors’ Prison became part of the museum. When Simon Hargreaves and his friends were imprisoned here, the yard would have been empty and bleak. It didn’t have a roof back then, so there was no protection from the weather.

 

Like other transportees, they had to wait in the prison until a ship was ready to take them to a penal colony. Like prisons at the time, the ships were run for profit by private individuals, and not directly by the Government. Some prisoners waited years in York Castle. Simon and his friends waited months before they were transported.

 

They were all sent to penal colonies in Australia and Tasmania, and were forced to work for the government. Eventually, all four men were granted conditional pardons – this meant they could marry and travel within Australia, but they were not allowed to return to Britain. We know that Simon Hargreaves married a woman called Mary Ann Gordon, who came from Ireland, and he worked for the government as overseer of boat builders in Port Puer, Tasmania.

 

As you move around the museum, you might encounter other pieces of graffiti. So far, we’ve found more than fifty-five pieces of prison graffiti in our buildings, and it’s likely that in the future we’ll find more.

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