Like most of the older county prisons, Maidstone Prison stands close to the town centre in County Road, Maidstone.
It is also close to the court, as before the days of motor vehicles, it was difficult to move prisoners over long distances between the court and the prison, with the ever-present danger that they would escape or be rescued by their friends.
Horse-drawn prison vans were used from the mid-1800s for the purpose of transporting them.
The prison was built between 1811 and 1818 at a cost of £200,000 by Daniel Alexander, starting with the four-storey Roundhouse that still dominates it.
The lower floors of this originally formed the Keeper’s House and there was a chapel on the top floor, so arranged that the inmates could see the chaplain without coming into contact with other prisoners, as required by the “separate system” of imprisonment then fashionable.
The jail was initially intended to house 229 male and 68 female inmates, with capacity for a further 128.
The prison became the normal place of execution for those condemned to death in the county of Kent from 1831.
Previously, most executions had been carried out at Penenden Heath, a mile or so away and at the time outside the town.
Here the gallows stood at a crossroads and was used up to 1830.
The prisoners were transported to it in horse-drawn carts from which they were “turned off” before a “New Drop” style gallows with a trapdoor was introduced in the 1820s, superseding older cart methods seen in the short drop method.
The last executions at Penenden Heath were carried out by William Calcraft on Christmas Eve 1830, when he hanged three men together for arson, as detailed in our gazetteer of execution sites from the late 18th century to abolition in 1964.
Executions at Maidstone Prison
A total of 58 executions took place at Maidstone Prison: 46 in the 19th century (including three women) and 11 in the 20th century.
Twenty-eight of these criminals were hanged in public, outside the main gate, between 1831 and 1868, the remaining 30 being executed within the walls of the prison.
Twenty-four of those hanged were young people aged 25 or under, the youngest being just 14 years old.
Forty-nine men and three women were to suffer for murder.
In addition, between 1831 and 1836, two men were put to death for rape, two for arson, one for sodomy, and one young man for highway robbery, as these were all still capital crimes at this time under the remnants of the “Bloody Code.”
All executions after 1836 were strictly for murder.
Hangmen at Maidstone
A succession of Britain’s official executioners officiated on the gallows at Maidstone:
- William Calcraft: Carried out all 33 hangings at the prison between 1831 and 1872. Twenty-eight of them were in public (including four double hangings), with the remaining five conducted in private after 1868, including a triple hanging in 1872 when he executed three men at once for unrelated murders. Calcraft’s lot must have been made much easier by the coming of the railway in the 1860s, saving him the long and uncomfortable journey by stagecoach from London.
- William Marwood: Succeeded Calcraft, conducting eight private executions and introducing the evolution of the long drop in the 20th century.
- James Berry: Undertook three executions at the prison during the 1880s.
- James Billington: Carried out four executions in the 1890s.
- William Billington: Officiated at one execution.
- John Ellis: Conducted three executions in the early 20th century.
- Thomas Pierrepoint: Hanged two men at the prison.
- Robert Baxter: Carried out the final execution in April 1930.
Following the 1930 execution, Maidstone’s capital execution facility was closed, and all subsequent Kent capital cases were transferred to Wandsworth Prison or Pentonville Prison in London.
The Gallows at Maidstone
Prior to 1868, the “New Drop” was erected outside the main gate of the prison in County Road on the day before an execution.
The structure comprised a platform supported by heavy beams, containing the trapdoors, and surrounded by a railing.
In the centre there was a simple gallows consisting of two uprights and a crossbeam with an iron hook for attachment of the noose.
The drop was reached by a short flight of steps, and the lower portion beneath the platform was draped with black cloth to prevent the crowd from seeing the legs and lower body of the usually struggling prisoner.
This gallows continued in use for private executions for a few more years until being replaced with the Home Office standard pattern gallows in an internal execution shed in the mid-1880s.
Notable Public Executions Outside the Gatehouse
John Any Bird Bell: The Youngest Execution (1831)
The youngest person to be executed at Maidstone was 14-year-old John Any Bird Bell, who was hanged on the 1st of August 1831 by William Calcraft in front of the prison for the murder of 13-year-old Richard Taylor in a wood in the parish of Chatham.
John Bell and his 11-year-old brother James killed Richard Taylor for the sum of 9 shillings (45p), which Taylor was collecting from the Parish on behalf of his disabled father.
Bell was tried on Friday, the 29th of July, his brother James being the principal witness for the prosecution.
The jury did not even need to retire to find a guilty verdict, although they requested mercy for him in view of his youth and total lack of education.
At this time, the law required that murderers be hanged two days after sentence unless this would mean that the execution would take place on a Sunday, which in this case it would have.
So the tearful boy was led out to be hanged just after 11:00 a.m. on the Monday morning, using the “New Drop” scaffold erected for the first time outside the main gate of the prison.
His execution was witnessed by some 5,000 people.
His body was given to surgeons at Rochester for anatomical dissection.
(In 1833, a boy of nine was sentenced to death at the Kent Assizes for housebreaking, but was reprieved after intense public agitation).
Early Capital Offenses: Arson and Robbery
On the 31st of March 1836, 19-year-old James Joy was hanged by William Calcraft for arson, having set fire to a barn at Sturry.
Beside him on the gallows was 18-year-old Thomas Prior, who was executed for highway robbery and attempted murder.
Another young man to suffer at Maidstone was 17-year-old George Millen, who was hanged by William Calcraft on the 29th of March 1849 for the murder of an 82-year-old man during a robbery.
Robert Alexander Burton (1863)
It would seem a strange ambition to most people, wanting to be publicly hanged by the short drop method, but this was seemingly the extraordinary ambition of 18-year-old Robert Alexander Burton, who achieved it on the 11th of April 1863.
Burton had first become an apprentice and then had decided to try and join the armed forces.
He managed to join the West Kent Militia in Maidstone, from which he deserted with his bounty money.
He then worked for a shoemaker from whom he stole, receiving a two-month prison sentence.
He now decided to commit a murder, and his first choice of victim was his former employer, the shoemaker, whom he blamed for his spell in prison.
However, the shoemaker had moved and Burton could not locate him, so he considered killing a woman who had refused to serve him alcohol in a Chatham pub, but feared she would put up too much of a fight.
Little Thomas Houghton, aged eight, seemed a far safer target, and Burton lured him from outside his home to a nearby railway ventilation shaft, where he cut his throat.
He then gave himself up and led police to the crime scene.
Burton came to trial at the Spring Assizes and pleaded guilty to the murder.
He was advised to change his plea and a defence of insanity was mounted, but his mental state was not sufficient to warrant an acquittal under the M’Naghten Rules.
He was thus convicted and sentenced to hang, for which he openly thanked the trial judge.
He willingly, almost eagerly, accompanied Calcraft to the gallows three weeks later and was observed smiling as he was prepared.
Unusually for the time, he died without a perceptible struggle.
Ann Lawrence and James Fletcher (1867)
Ann Lawrence was hanged alongside 20-year-old James Fletcher on Thursday, the 10th of January 1867.
Fletcher had battered Warder James Boyle to death with a hammer in Chatham Convict Prison, while 29-year-old Ann had murdered her four-year-old son, Jeremiah, and attempted to kill her lover, Walter Highams, at Tunbridge Wells.
The killing was to avenge herself on Highams in a fit of jealous rage over their latest row.
Both Ann Lawrence and James Fletcher had been convicted at the Winter Assizes at the end of December 1866.
They had separate trials for separate offences, but the authorities decided to hang them together.
Calcraft “launched them both into eternity” a few moments after noon on that Thursday.
It is probable this double execution was carried out principally for reasons of administrative convenience and cost-saving: it meant only having to erect the gallows once, pay one military guard detachment, and pay Calcraft only one travel reimbursement.
Frances Kidder: The Last Woman Publicly Hanged in Britain (1868)
A year later, 25-year-old Frances Kidder made British legal history by becoming the last woman to be publicly hanged in Britain, executed in front of the prison at midday on Thursday, the 2nd of April 1868.
She had murdered Louisa Kidder-Staples, her 11-year-old stepdaughter.
Frances was married to William Kidder, who had fathered Louisa and a younger child in a previous relationship, whom Frances deeply resented.
Only Louisa lived with them, and Frances consistently abused her.
On the 24th of August 1867, she took Louisa to visit her parents in New Romney, accompanied by one of her own children, Emma.
While Frances’s mother was out of the house, Frances drowned Louisa in a drainage ditch, holding the struggling child under water that was only 12 inches (300 mm) deep.
Her husband and father were immediately suspicious and alerted the local parish constable, who took Frances into custody while a search was mounted.
The child’s body was discovered in the ditch shortly afterwards.
Frances claimed that they had both fallen into the ditch when startled by passing horses.
As there was no Winter Assize in 1867, she was held on remand in Maidstone Prison until the Spring Assizes on Thursday, the 12th of March 1868, before Mr. Justice Byles.
The prosecution presented extensive evidence of prior physical abuse and explicit threats to kill the child.
Frances adhered to her story that they had fallen into the water, but the jury rejected her defence after just 12 minutes of deliberation.
Sentenced to death, she was returned to the condemned cell, her execution scheduled for three weeks later.
In prison, she confessed the murder to the chaplain.
She became repeatedly hysterical while awaiting death, a condition that persisted onto the scaffold.
Frances had to be helped up the steps to the gallows and supported on the trapdoors by two warders while she prayed fervently.
Calcraft completed the pinioning, strapping her wrists in front, securing a body strap around her arms and waist, and fastening a lower strap around her ankles to keep her long skirts in place.
A white cotton cap was pulled over her face, and the noose adjusted.
When the drop fell, she struggled hard for two to three minutes.
An estimated 2,000 spectators, many of them women, watched from County Road, though only her upper torso was visible above the black draped platform.
Her body remained suspended for one hour before being cut down and buried in an unmarked grave within the prison precincts.
Richard John Bishop: The Last Public Hanging at Maidstone (1868)
The last man to be publicly hanged at Maidstone was Richard John Bishop, who suffered on Thursday, the 30th of April 1868.
Bishop was a minor criminal whose wife kept a shop in Sydenham.
He was involved in an altercation outside the shop on the night of the 3rd of April.
When a neighbour, Alfred Cartwright, came out to request that they keep the noise down, Bishop struck him in the eye.
A police constable was summoned and arrested Bishop.
While walking to the police station accompanied by Cartwright and the constable, Bishop drew a knife and fatally stabbed Cartwright.
With the constable as an eyewitness, Bishop was convicted without difficulty at the Spring Assizes.
He showed complete indifference to his impending death and, unlike Frances Kidder four weeks earlier, died almost without a struggle when Calcraft released the trap.
His execution was the penultimate public hanging in England, preceding only Michael Barrett’s hanging outside Newgate Prison in May 1868 before the public era ended forever.
Private Executions and Closure (1868–1930)
Following the Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868, 30 private executions were conducted inside the prison walls, initially in the converted yard gallows shed and later within a standardized execution suite.
The final execution carried out at Maidstone Prison took place on the 8th of April 1930, when 27-year-old George Frank Gudgin was hanged by Robert Baxter, assisted by Alfred Allen, for the murder of his girlfriend, 24-year-old Grace Greenfield, at Chatham.
Following this execution, the Home Office closed the execution suite at Maidstone as part of the regional consolidation of capital facilities, transferring all subsequent Kent executions to London gaols up until the abolition of capital punishment in Britain in 1965.
Today, HMP Maidstone remains an operational Category C training prison for adult men, housing sex offenders and foreign national prisoners within its historic stone walls and Daniel Alexander’s original Roundhouse.
Frequently Asked Questions
When was Maidstone Prison built?
Maidstone Prison was constructed between 1811 and 1818 in County Road, Maidstone, designed by architect Daniel Alexander at a cost of £200,000. It features a distinctive central four-storey Roundhouse that originally accommodated the Keeper’s House and prison chapel.
How many executions took place at Maidstone Prison?
A total of 58 judicial executions were carried out at Maidstone Prison between 1831 and 1930: 46 in the 19th century and 11 in the 20th century. Twenty-eight took place publicly outside the main gate (1831–1868), and 30 were conducted privately within the prison walls (1868–1930).
Who was the youngest person executed at Maidstone Prison?
Fourteen-year-old John Any Bird Bell was the youngest person executed at the prison, hanged by William Calcraft on August 1, 1831, for the murder of 13-year-old Richard Taylor in a wood near Chatham for nine shillings.
Why is the execution of Frances Kidder historically significant?
Executed on April 2, 1868, for drowning her 11-year-old stepdaughter, Frances Kidder was the last woman to be publicly hanged in Great Britain before the passage of the Capital Punishment Amendment Act 1868 ended public executions.
Who was the last person executed at Maidstone Prison?
The final execution at Maidstone took place on April 8, 1930, when George Frank Gudgin was hanged by Robert Baxter for the murder of Grace Greenfield. After this, all executions for Kent were transferred to Wandsworth and Pentonville in London.
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