The Building
HMP Lancaster is a Grade 1 listed building and is Europe’s oldest working prison, dating back to 1196.
It had a capacity of 240 prisoners and operated as a Category C training prison before its decommissioning in 2011.
Parts of the Castle are open to the public, including the Crown Court—it is well worth the visit.
In the late 18th century, the Castle began to be converted into the prison seen today.
The first phase commenced in 1788 with the erection of the Gaoler’s House, followed by the female prison in 1792 and in 1794 the new male prison.
A new and larger Female Penitentiary, designed by Joseph Gandy, was finished in 1821 and was based on Jeremy Bentham’s “panopticon” principle of wings radiating out from a central point where staff could keep watch.
There were 48 single-occupancy cells, as at this time it was considered essential for each prisoner to have their own cell.
Additionally, a two-storey debtor’s prison was constructed.
Imprisonment was used much more for debt at that time than as an ordinary criminal sanction.
The prison was taken over by the Home Office in 1877 under the Prison Act.
In 1916, Lancaster Castle was temporarily closed as a convict prison and used to house German prisoners of war.
It reopened as a civilian prison in 1954.
It has been said that more prisoners were sentenced to death at Lancaster Assizes than at any other court outside London, Lancaster becoming known as “The Hanging Town” in consequence.
The Gallows at Lancaster
From 1800 to 1865, executions were carried out at “The Hanging Corner”, a small round tower on the east side of the building.
On the ground floor of the tower is the “Drop Room,” which contains relics of the many executions and can be visited today.
It is quite eerie standing in this room looking at the exhibits and listening to what happened within it.
The French windows have also survived, and one can look out to the bank opposite where the crowd, often 5,000 to 6,000 strong, would assemble to watch.
The prisoners were brought into the Drop Room from the condemned cells to be pinioned and say their final prayers before being led forward through the inward-opening French windows straight onto the balcony-style gallows.
The gallows was erected the previous afternoon and consisted of two uprights seated into holes cut into the flagstones of the courtyard.
A heavy crossbeam ran between the uprights with a platform containing the trapdoors beneath it at the level of the bottom of the French windows, the platform being draped in black cloth to hide the legs of the prisoners.
High railings surrounded the drop area and spectators were allowed up to these, within a few feet of the gallows.
Many more crowded onto the opposite bank to get a good view of the proceedings.
All the public executions used the short drop method, so death seldom came without a struggle.
After the bodies had hung for an hour, they were taken off the rope and brought in through the small lower window.
After 1868, the law required all executions to be in private, and these took place in the Chapel yard up against the chapel steps.
A purpose-built execution shed was erected circa 1900 in the yard immediately behind the wall of the Hanging Corner, and still existed when the prison reopened.
It is possible that the gallows remained in existence in this shed until the late 1950s, embodying the mechanics detailed in the evolution of the long drop in the 20th century.
Executions at Lancaster
Between 1800 and 1865, a total of 213 people were executed at Lancaster Castle (also stated elsewhere as 235, due to the inclusion of 32 executions at Liverpool and a further 6 at Manchester, all within the historic county palatine of Lancashire).
Six men were hanged in private between 1875 and 1910.
Prior to 1800, all Lancashire executions had taken place on Gallows Hill, on the moors outside Lancaster’s southern gate, in what is now Williamson Park, as noted in our gazetteer of execution sites from the late 18th century to abolition in 1964.
It was here that the hangings of nine of the ten Pendle Witches were carried out in 1612 (the other was executed at York).
They were convicted of witchcraft on the basis of having caused the deaths of seventeen people in and around the Forest of Pendle.
As in most other county towns at the time, the condemned were taken to the gallows in a cart, seated on their coffin, and “turned off” from the back of the cart.
Prior to 1834, there were as many as twenty felonies, not just murder, that typically resulted in execution under the “Bloody Code.”
Of the 213 hangings between 1800 and 1865, only 43 (20%) were for murder.
Forty-four people suffered for burglary, and others for highway robbery, uttering forged notes, arson, and sheep and horse theft.
Public Mass Hangings and Notable 19th-Century Cases
The first hangings at the Castle took place after the Lent Assizes of 1800, when six men died on Saturday the 19th of April of that year:
- John Brady, John Burns, and James Weldon for robbing the mail, all three of whom were afterwards hanged in chains at Ashton;
- Samuel Bradford, George McDonald, and Paul Hargreaves for the crime of uttering (passing forged banknotes).
Saturday was the normal execution day at Lancaster, chosen to attract the largest audience for maximum deterrence.
This was the only hanging day in 1800.
However, 1801 saw the biggest mass hanging, which took place on Saturday the 12th of September, when eight men were launched into eternity simultaneously, three of them being brothers convicted of burglary.
Ten further executions were carried out in that year.
The highest single-year total was 1817, with no fewer than 20 hangings.
On the 19th of April 1817, nine men were “turned off” together for various crimes up to and including highway robbery.
A further multiple execution took place later that year, when on the 8th of September 1817, four men were hanged: James Ashcroft senior, his brother David, his son (also James), and his son-in-law William Holden.
All four had been convicted of murder and robbery at a house in Manchester.
The execution caused immense public excitement as many believed the men were entirely innocent.
There was another family execution in 1827 when George Heyworth and his two sons, William and Roger, were hanged together for highway robbery.
Female Executions at Lancaster Castle (10)
Ten women were executed at Lancaster Castle:
- Hannah Eastwood (02/05/1801): Hanged for forging £1 notes at Manchester. She was the first woman executed in the county since 1772, executed alongside three men convicted of forging banknotes.
- Mary Jackson (1806): Hanged for stealing in a dwelling house.
- Mary Chandler (1808): Hanged for stealing in a dwelling house.
- Hannah Smith (1812): Put to death for the crime of riot during Luddite unrest, together with seven men.
- Susanna Holroyd (1816): Suffered for the murder of her husband, her body being dissected afterwards.
- Jenny Cheatham (20/09/1817): Hanged for uttering forged notes together with four men.
- Margaret Dowd (1818): Hanged for uttering.
- Rachael Bradley (1827): Hanged for murdering her child.
- Jane Scott (22/03/1828): Aged 22, hanged for poisoning her parents in Preston, having also poisoned her own children and her sister’s child. She was so weak at the end that she was wheeled to the gallows in a modified office chair and supported by two warders until the drop fell. The special chair remains on display in the castle.
- Mary Holden (19/03/1834): Aged 29, the last woman to be hanged at Lancaster, executed for the murder of her 40-year-old husband, Roger, with arsenic at Hurst Green on the 24th of February 1834.
Administrative Changes and the Shift to Liverpool and Manchester
After 1835, Lancaster’s role as an Assize town was reduced to serve just the northern areas of the county.
Liverpool was granted its own Assizes, with those condemned there being executed at Kirkdale Gaol and later at Walton Prison.
From 1864, Manchester also became an independent Assize town, carrying out executions at Salford Gaol and later at Strangeways Prison.
Lancaster executions diminished sharply as a result, combined with the reduction of capital statutes from 1838 onwards.
There were no executions at Lancaster between 1835 and 1853.
In 1862, Walker Moore, who had murdered his wife at Colne, committed suicide on the morning of his execution, the 30th of August.
He had previously told the court that there was no rope in existence that would hang him.
On that morning, he asked permission to use the toilet and drowned himself in the large water cistern serving several cubicles, deeply disappointing the assembled crowd outside.
The last public execution at Lancaster took place on the 25th of March 1865, when Stephen Burke was put to death by William Calcraft for the murder of his wife at Preston.
Private Executions (1875–1910)
Following the Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868, six executions took place privately behind prison walls:
- William M’Cullough and Mark Fiddler (16/08/1875): William Marwood officiated at the first private execution, hanging 36-year-old William M’Cullough (who murdered lodger William Watson) and 24-year-old Mark Fiddler (who murdered his wife). This was the only private double hanging at Lancaster.
- William McGuiness (11/02/1879): Aged 40, hanged by William Marwood for wife murder.
- Alfred Sowery (01/08/1887): Aged 24, sentenced to death for shooting his girlfriend, Annie Kelly. In the condemned cell, he became incapacitated with terror. On the morning of execution, he had to be dragged screaming to the scaffold, where he kicked executioner James Berry in the shin with such violence that Berry was permanently scarred.
- Joseph Bains (09/02/1888): Hanged by James Berry for the murder of his wife at Barrow-in-Furness.
- Thomas Rawcliffe (15/11/1910): Aged 31, became the final person executed within Lancaster Castle. He was condemned for strangling his 27-year-old wife, Louisa, on the evening of the 6th of September 1910. He had called a police officer into his home, confessed, and displayed the body. At his trial before Mr. Justice Avory, medical testimony revealed that Rawcliffe had sustained a severe childhood head injury. Although the jury recommended mercy, it was denied, and John Ellis, assisted by William Willis, carried out the hanging on Tuesday the 15th of November 1910.
After 1910, capital executions for Lancashire were concentrated exclusively at Walton Prison in Liverpool and Strangeways Prison in Manchester, continuing until the abolition of capital punishment in Britain in 1965.
Lancaster’s Hangmen
Lancashire employed its own executioner drawn from the inmate population throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries.
The most famous of these was Edward Barlow, a Welsh native known as “Old Ned”.
Barlow died in the Castle on the 9th of December 1812, having originally been condemned there for horse theft.
Because executioners were difficult to secure, the authorities commuted Barlow’s death sentence to 10 years’ imprisonment on condition that he serve as the county hangman and flogger.
He carried out an estimated 71 executions at Lancaster between 1782 and 1812.
It is unclear who immediately succeeded Barlow, though it may have been the executioner from neighbouring Yorkshire.
Samuel Haywood was active at Lancaster in the 1830s.
He officiated at the triple execution of murderers William Worrall, Ashton Worrall, and Moses Fernley on the 14th of March 1831.
On the scaffold, William Worrall deliberately kicked off his shoes—a calculated gesture fulfilling a maternal prophecy that he would “die with his shoes off” if his conduct did not improve.
Haywood carried out as many as 18 executions here up to the 26th of March 1835, when he hanged John Orell for the murder of his eight-year-old daughter.
William Calcraft’s first execution at Lancaster was that of wife murderer Richard Pedder on the 27th of August 1853; the rope from this execution remains preserved in the Drop Room.
Calcraft was followed in turn by William Marwood, James Berry, and John Ellis.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was Lancaster Castle converted into a prison?
Dating back as a fortress to 1196, Lancaster Castle was converted into a modern county gaol beginning in 1788 with the construction of the Gaoler’s House, female prison wards in 1792, male quarters in 1794, and Joseph Gandy’s panopticon Female Penitentiary in 1821.
Why was Lancaster known as “The Hanging Town”?
During the Georgian era and early 19th century, Lancaster Assizes tried capital cases across the entirety of Lancashire, passing more death sentences than any other assize court in England outside London. Between 1800 and 1865, 213 people were executed at the castle.
What was “The Hanging Corner” and the “Drop Room”?
From 1800 to 1865, public executions were conducted at the Hanging Corner on the castle’s eastern tower. Prisoners were pinioned in the ground-floor Drop Room before stepping through French windows onto an external balcony gallows overlooking a natural amphitheatre where thousands of spectators assembled.
Who was “Old Ned” Barlow?
Edward Barlow was a convicted horse thief whose death sentence was commuted to ten years’ imprisonment on condition of serving as Lancashire’s resident executioner. Between 1782 and his death in 1812, he carried out an estimated 71 hangings and numerous public whippings.
Who was the last person executed at Lancaster Castle?
Thomas Rawcliffe, aged 31, was the final person hanged at Lancaster Castle on November 15, 1910, executed by John Ellis for strangling his wife Louisa. Following this case, all Lancashire executions were transferred to Liverpool and Manchester.
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