Durham Gaol was built at Elvet in 1810 to replace the earlier jail in the Great North Gate, which was the cause of serious traffic congestion in its day.
Bishop Shute Barrington pledged £2,000 towards the construction of the new building, and on the 31st of July 1809, the foundation stones were laid by Sir Henry Vane Tempest.
The building was started by a Mr. Sandys, who was dismissed before its completion.
A new architect called Moneypenny took over, but died during its construction, and the prison was finally completed by Ignatius Bonomi.
Durham Prison has some 600 cells and took its first batch of prisoners in 1819.
In total, 92 men and three women were hanged at Durham between 1800 and 1958.
Ninety-one of these executions took place at the prison or nearby courthouse (14 in public) and four at Dryburn in public.
Fifty-five men were hanged here in the 20th century. Of these 95, only five died for crimes other than murder.
Like most of the older jails, Durham Prison also reputedly has its ghost.
In December 1947, an inmate stabbed a fellow prisoner to death with a table knife.
A few days later, another prisoner was put into this cell and was found the next morning crouched in the corner in abject fear.
He told the warders he had seen the murder re-enacted. Other prisoners objected to being locked up in this cell, so it was converted into a storeroom.
The Gallows and Execution Facilities at Durham
Dryburn Hospital Site (Pre-1806)
Up to 1816, the place of execution at Durham was in the grounds of the present-day Dryburn Hospital, as detailed in our gazetteer of execution sites from the late 18th century to abolition in 1964.
The name Dryburn may have come from the case of a man who was hanged there for being a Jesuit priest.
Legend has it that after his death, the local stream (burn) mysteriously dried up and never flowed again, hence Dryburn.
Alternatively, the name may be a corruption of Tyburn, the site of London’s gallows at the time.
Richard Metcalfe was the last person to die at Dryburn, having been found guilty of murdering his son-in-law.
He was executed on the 12th of August 1805, and it would be eleven years before the next hanging at Durham.
The Courthouse Steps Gallows (1816–1865)
From August 1816, a “New Drop” style gallows was erected on the steps outside the new courthouse for each hanging, superseding older cart methods seen in the short drop method.
The holes for the beams supporting the platform can still be seen in the wall, filled with stone plugs.
The courthouse is next door to the prison, and the prisoner was brought back from the prison through an internal passage, now blocked off.
The condemned person came out through a window onto the platform of the gallows set over the main door.
This was not an unusual arrangement, as it was simpler and more secure than bringing the person out of the prison gates and then making them climb steps up to the gallows platform.
It was thus quite convenient and was an easy location to guard.
Across the street is a house with an iron balcony that was rented out to wealthy spectators to watch the hangings.
Private Yard Gallows and the 1925 Condemned Suite
After the abolition of public hangings following the Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868, the gallows was set up in the condemned prisoner’s exercise yard.
The platform was level with the ground, set over a brick-lined pit.
Later still, around 1890, an execution shed was built.
This was standard practice at the time, but still involved the prisoner in quite a long walk from the condemned cell on A Wing to the gallows.
Normally, the shed was used to house the prison van, which was also a common practice at other prisons (e.g. Exeter).
In 1925, a new Condemned Suite was constructed at the end of D Wing, later renamed E Wing.
It had two condemned cells: one immediately adjacent to the gallows, and one separated from the execution chamber by the corridor which led to the exercise yard.
The main condemned cell was formed from three standard cells knocked into one and contained a toilet and washbasin.
There was a small lobby between the cell and the gallows room.
A mortuary was available in the yard adjoining the ground floor of the execution chamber.
Parts of the execution block still remain to this day, although the condemned cell has been removed and the pit covered over (this area is now used for storage).
In the early 1990s, when the prison was being modernised, the graves of some of those executed were disturbed, including that of Mary Ann Cotton.
A pair of female shoes belonging to her were found along with her bones.
Several bodies (including Cotton’s) were removed and all were later cremated.
All of the inmates hanged in the 20th century were buried alongside the prison hospital wall, with only a broad arrow and the date of execution carved into the wall to mark the location of their grave.
The original instructions regarding the burial of executed inmates stated that the only clothing an inmate should be buried in was a prison-issue shirt.
The body was to be placed into a pine box and covered with quicklime, and holes were to be bored into the box before burial, in accordance with the transition to the evolution of the long drop in the 20th century.
Notable Cases and Executions at Durham
Early 19th-Century Cases
The first execution outside the courthouse took place on Saturday the 17th of August 1816, when John Grieg was hanged for the murder of Elizabeth Stonehouse.
On April the 12th, 1819, 68-year-old George Atcheson was hanged at the same location for the rape of 10-year-old Isabella Ramshaw.
The only other execution for rape here took place on March the 18th, 1822, when a miner called Henry Anderson suffered for raping Sarah Armstrong.
Thomas Clark (1831)
Nineteen-year-old Thomas Clark, a domestic servant at Hallgarth Mill, was convicted of the murder of 17-year-old Mary Ann Westhorpe, the housemaid there, on Sunday the 8th of August 1830.
On that day, their employers, Stephen Oliver and his wife, had gone out and left some money locked in the house.
Mary’s body was found to have been severely beaten and her throat had been cut.
The house had been ransacked and the money was missing.
When questioned, Thomas claimed that he and Mary had been attacked in the house but that he had managed to escape.
This story was not supported by the crime scene evidence, and Thomas was arrested, coming to trial on Thursday the 25th of February 1831 before Justice Littledale.
There was great public interest in the case, which heard the testimony of more than 40 witnesses over two days.
It took the jury just 22 minutes to find Thomas guilty.
He was sentenced to hang, and afterwards for his body to be handed over to surgeons for dissection, as was still the law in murder cases.
The execution took place at midday on the following Monday (the 28th of February) in front of a crowd estimated at more than 15,000.
On the gallows, Thomas is reported to have said:
“Gentlemen I die for another man’s crimes. I am innocent.”
William Jobling and the Gibbetting Controversy (1832)
In 1832, there were public protests over conditions in local coal mines due to the horrific mortality rate among miners.
The authorities attempted to crack down on these and sent in soldiers to quell the disturbances.
They also tried to evict striking miners from their tied cottages.
One of the miners, William Jobling, lived at Jarrow Colliery Village with his wife Isabella and two daughters.
On Monday the 11th of June 1832, Nicholas Fairles, an elderly magistrate, was riding from South Shields to Jarrow to deal with yet another dispute at the colliery, which was in the middle of a bitter strike.
Between five and six in the afternoon, he was accosted by Ralph Armstrong, a Jarrow miner, who knocked him from his horse and beat him.
Fairles died later that evening at Jarrow, and with his dying breath he blamed Jobling for not helping him when he was attacked.
Jobling was known to Fairles (his wife had been the magistrate’s servant), and on the basis of that slender evidence, Jobling was arrested, tried with indecent haste, and convicted.
Jobling was hanged on the steps of the courthouse at Durham in the normal way amid tight security, the gallows protected by 50 mounted Hussars and 50 infantrymen.
To make a special example of him, his body was gibbeted after death as a warning to the populace.
Gibbeting was still a legal punishment at the time, but was abolished two years later.
After hanging for the customary hour, his body was taken off the rope, stripped naked, and immersed in molten pitch (tar) to preserve it.
It was then redressed in the clothes he had worn, loaded into a cart, and taken on a tour of the area before arriving at Jarrow Slake, where the crime had been committed.
Here it was placed into an iron gibbet cage.
The cage and the scene were described thus:
“the body was encased in flat bars of iron of two and a half inches in breadth, the feet were placed in stirrups, from which a bar of iron went up each side of the head, and ended in a ring by which he was suspended; a bar from the collar went down the breast, and another down the back, there were also bars in the inside of the legs which communicated with the above; and crossbars at the ankles, the knees, the thighs, the bowels, the breast, and the shoulders; the hands were hung by the side and covered with pitch, the face was pitched and covered with a piece of white cloth.”
The gibbet post was a foot in diameter with strong bars of iron up each side, fixed into a 1.5-ton stone base sunk into the Slake.
Jobling’s body was suspended and left as a grim reminder of the consequences of crime.
At the end of August 1832, after a few weeks on the gibbet, the guards were withdrawn and Jobling’s body was taken down by his friends.
It may well have been dropped into Jarrow Lake or taken out to sea for disposal; either way, the remains have never been found.
Sadly, Jobling did not actually commit this murder.
Before he died, Nicholas Fairles was able to identify his killer as Ralph Armstrong (a friend of Jobling’s).
However, Armstrong could not be arrested and is thought to have fled the country by sea.
Under the legal doctrine of “Common Purpose”, Jobling—who had been present and had done nothing to prevent the killing—was judged to be equally guilty.
At this time, however, a large number of death sentences were commuted to transportation, even for very serious crimes.
On the 9th of April 1836, two men who had been sentenced to death for rape and robbery were offered a reprieve on condition of being transported for life to Australia.
Matthew Atkinson: The Final Public Hanging (1865)
The last public execution here occurred on the 16th of March 1865, when Matthew Atkinson was hanged by Thomas Askern for the murder of his wife at Spen, near Winlaton.
When Askern drew the bolt, Atkinson plunged downwards and the rope broke.
He had to be extracted from under the scaffold and a new rope found so that he could be hanged again 10 minutes or so later.
Askern was not selected again by the Sheriff of Co. Durham and was replaced by William Calcraft.
Thomas Askern was the hangman for Yorkshire and had carried out all five public hangings at Durham between 1859 and 1865.
Mary Ann Cotton: Britain’s Worst Female Serial Killer (1873)
Mary Ann Cotton has the dubious distinction of being Britain’s worst female serial killer and was hanged here at 8:00 a.m. on the morning of Monday the 24th of March 1873, struggling for three minutes after the drop fell.
Convicted at Durham Assizes of the arsenic poisoning of her stepson Charles Edward Cotton, she was suspected of murdering up to 21 people—including her mother, three husbands, a lover, and multiple children—to collect burial club insurance payouts.
Following her execution by Robert Anderson (Evans) or William Calcraft, her body was buried in the prison yard.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was Durham Prison built?
Durham Gaol at Elvet was constructed in 1810 to replace the congested Great North Gate jail, opening to inmates in 1819 with approximately 600 cells.
How many executions took place at Durham Prison?
A total of 95 people were executed at Durham between 1800 and 1958: 14 public hangings outside the courthouse, 4 public hangings at Dryburn, and 77 private hangings behind prison walls.
Who was William Jobling?
William Jobling was a Jarrow coal miner hanged at Durham on June 11, 1832, under the doctrine of common purpose for a magistrate’s murder actually committed by a fugitive. His corpse was subsequently coated in pitch and suspended in an iron gibbet cage at Jarrow Slake.
Who was Mary Ann Cotton?
Mary Ann Cotton was Britain’s most prolific female serial killer, convicted of arsenic poisoning and hanged at Durham Prison on March 24, 1873.
When did executions cease at Durham Prison?
Capital punishment ended at Durham Prison in 1958, prior to the passage of the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965.
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