When rumours spread that the Home Office was looking for a new home for its HM Prison Service Collection, museums with a penal leaning pricked up their ears. The collection had been under lock and key at Newbold Revel, the prison service training college for 17 years.
It had limited public access and had been mainly used for training purposes: the prison guards of the future were tutored in the history of restraint and containment using artefacts such as leg irons and treadmills.
But when the Home Office decided where to bestow its gift there was, apparently, only one obvious choice: the Galleries of Justice in Nottingham, now renamed the National Centre for Citizenship and the Law. So in February of this year the 12,000-plus collection was moved from active service in Warwickshire via seven vans and ten lorries to its new home in Nottingham.
It then took the museum's curator, Paul Baker, four months to sort through the boxes of objects and the archive of thousands of photographs to choose what should go on display.
Baker says there were a lot of items that they didn't even know existed: 'It was a unique experience because we didn't have any idea what was going to be in the next box we opened. One of the key items we came across was the pewter restricted measure jug which was not in the catalogue and is the only one left in the prison service.'
The new display begins in the original cells below the court building that now houses the museum. The most moving of these tiny cells is the Identity Cell, where the walls and ceiling are covered with photographs taken from prison record books.
Baker had to choose from thousands of images and says he looked for a combination of visuals that to him represented the innocent, the brutalised and the tragic. The repetitive images, all reproduced in a sepia tone and mounted on blocks, create an intriguing and thought-provoking pattern on the cell walls.
Measuring equipment in the corner of the cell is a reminder of the pre-photography days when recording and monitoring of prisoners was based on crude measurement and descriptions of distinguishing features.
The neighbouring cells recreate a young person's cell and a modern adult's cell. Those who may subscribe to the 'they've never had it so good' view of the treatment of prisoners today should spend time here (or alternatively in a real prison).
The display and the collection do much to dispel myths. Prison life never has been and is still not an easy option. The Escape and Riot display shows the lengths that some prisoners will go to regain their liberty. On display are gruesome-looking homemade weapons; key moulds and rope ladders; and even a section of balustrade from Strangeways prison that was torn off during the infamous riot there in 1990.
In Work and Lifestyle the futility and boredom of life in prison is exposed. Real objects take centre stage. It seems the Victorian's really did believe the devil makes work for idle hands: a working crank can be turned as prisoners had to do - 10,000 times a day.
This ultimate pointless exercise is displayed alongside the restricted measures equipment - those prisoners who failed to turn in the required number of turns of the crank were given smaller portions of food as punishment.
The gallery also looks at diversions that prisoners created to while away their captivity; handmade playing cards, prisoner art including engraved roof slates and - most bizarre - a sampler embroidered with human hair.
It's easy to think that this was the barbarous past and that treatment of prisoners is more humane now. But in the costume gallery an ancient-looking straitjacket turns out to be fairly modern.
Body and Soul looks at the role of surgeon and chaplin. The Prison Service Collection is rich with religious regalia and some of it is now on display for the first time (though frankly one gilded cross looks much the same as another).
More interesting is the surgeon's equipment. The display begins fairly innocuously with pill-making machine. But the lower you go the darker it gets as we are introduced to force-feeding equipment displayed alongside an excerpt from Lady Astor's diary that vividly describes being on the receiving end of the rubber tube.
Lower down is an ECT machine and a stethoscope used to determine death after execution. The tone is only slightly lightened by simple wooden box that at first glance appears to contain cutlery and assorted tools. Only when you read the hand-written labels: 'Removed from...' and 'Passed by...' do you realise that these implements have been ingested by prisoners in order to buy time on the hospital wing.
Unfortunately for the Galleries of Justice this great collection came with no extra revenue (the Prison Service contributed £30,000, which mostly covered the transport costs) but otherwise the display and extra running costs had to be found from existing resources.
The Galleries of Justice is now fundraising in order to mount the next stage of the display. This will deal with capital punishment and will include objects as diverse as Oscar Wilde's cell door from Reading Gaol and the diaries of the Pierrepoint family of executioners.
It had limited public access and had been mainly used for training purposes: the prison guards of the future were tutored in the history of restraint and containment using artefacts such as leg irons and treadmills.
But when the Home Office decided where to bestow its gift there was, apparently, only one obvious choice: the Galleries of Justice in Nottingham, now renamed the National Centre for Citizenship and the Law. So in February of this year the 12,000-plus collection was moved from active service in Warwickshire via seven vans and ten lorries to its new home in Nottingham.
It then took the museum's curator, Paul Baker, four months to sort through the boxes of objects and the archive of thousands of photographs to choose what should go on display.
Baker says there were a lot of items that they didn't even know existed: 'It was a unique experience because we didn't have any idea what was going to be in the next box we opened. One of the key items we came across was the pewter restricted measure jug which was not in the catalogue and is the only one left in the prison service.'
The new display begins in the original cells below the court building that now houses the museum. The most moving of these tiny cells is the Identity Cell, where the walls and ceiling are covered with photographs taken from prison record books.
Baker had to choose from thousands of images and says he looked for a combination of visuals that to him represented the innocent, the brutalised and the tragic. The repetitive images, all reproduced in a sepia tone and mounted on blocks, create an intriguing and thought-provoking pattern on the cell walls.
Measuring equipment in the corner of the cell is a reminder of the pre-photography days when recording and monitoring of prisoners was based on crude measurement and descriptions of distinguishing features.
The neighbouring cells recreate a young person's cell and a modern adult's cell. Those who may subscribe to the 'they've never had it so good' view of the treatment of prisoners today should spend time here (or alternatively in a real prison).
The display and the collection do much to dispel myths. Prison life never has been and is still not an easy option. The Escape and Riot display shows the lengths that some prisoners will go to regain their liberty. On display are gruesome-looking homemade weapons; key moulds and rope ladders; and even a section of balustrade from Strangeways prison that was torn off during the infamous riot there in 1990.
In Work and Lifestyle the futility and boredom of life in prison is exposed. Real objects take centre stage. It seems the Victorian's really did believe the devil makes work for idle hands: a working crank can be turned as prisoners had to do - 10,000 times a day.
This ultimate pointless exercise is displayed alongside the restricted measures equipment - those prisoners who failed to turn in the required number of turns of the crank were given smaller portions of food as punishment.
The gallery also looks at diversions that prisoners created to while away their captivity; handmade playing cards, prisoner art including engraved roof slates and - most bizarre - a sampler embroidered with human hair.
It's easy to think that this was the barbarous past and that treatment of prisoners is more humane now. But in the costume gallery an ancient-looking straitjacket turns out to be fairly modern.
Body and Soul looks at the role of surgeon and chaplin. The Prison Service Collection is rich with religious regalia and some of it is now on display for the first time (though frankly one gilded cross looks much the same as another).
More interesting is the surgeon's equipment. The display begins fairly innocuously with pill-making machine. But the lower you go the darker it gets as we are introduced to force-feeding equipment displayed alongside an excerpt from Lady Astor's diary that vividly describes being on the receiving end of the rubber tube.
Lower down is an ECT machine and a stethoscope used to determine death after execution. The tone is only slightly lightened by simple wooden box that at first glance appears to contain cutlery and assorted tools. Only when you read the hand-written labels: 'Removed from...' and 'Passed by...' do you realise that these implements have been ingested by prisoners in order to buy time on the hospital wing.
Unfortunately for the Galleries of Justice this great collection came with no extra revenue (the Prison Service contributed £30,000, which mostly covered the transport costs) but otherwise the display and extra running costs had to be found from existing resources.
The Galleries of Justice is now fundraising in order to mount the next stage of the display. This will deal with capital punishment and will include objects as diverse as Oscar Wilde's cell door from Reading Gaol and the diaries of the Pierrepoint family of executioners.
