York museum reveals prisoners’ graffiti (From York Press)

York museum reveals prisoners’ graffiti

6:40pm Tuesday 9th December 2008 in News By Gavin Aitchison, gavin.aitchison@thepress.co.uk

Castle Museum senior guide Dave Cree points to the 1820s grafitti in the debtors’ prison

IT was a plight shared by thousands – convicted, jailed, and with nothing on the horizon but transportation to Australia.

But now former inmates at York Castle Gaol have been given a destiny they surely never imagined.

For museum researchers are turning the spotlight back on the prisoners, making them the focus of a new study and visitor attraction.

Staff at York Castle Museum, which sits on the site of the old jail, have been exploring the graffiti etched on the cell walls, including some more than 150 years old. They hope to identify the scrawls through reference to old records from around the country, ahead of opening up the cells to visitors next summer.

Researchers already think they have identified at least one inmate, a Simon Hargreaves imprisoned in 1829. They hope to identify several more.

Michael Woodward, the museum’s director of finance and business development, said: “The history of the former debtors’ prison and gaol that is now York Castle Museum is vast – spanning hundreds of years and thousands of prisoners, each with their own story to tell.

“This new research will delve deep into this treasure trove of information to find out about the building, the conditions people were kept in and of course the prisoners themselves. The felons’ graffiti that is engraved throughout the museum is one of the areas being looked at and we think we have discovered who some of the culprits are.

“We are hopeful that further research will lead us to find out more about them and possibly track down their relatives.”

Katherine Prior, researcher for the project, said one of the most promising leads was a prisoner who engraved his name in the area that is now The Sixties gallery in the museum.

The signature S Hargreaves is believed to be Simon Hargreaves who was locked up in the Castle in 1829 for stealing.

Researchers are still looking into his life and crimes, but think he is the same man as a Simon Hargreaves later transported to Australia.

Records are now being checked to see if any of his relatives can be traced. Other prisoners who inscribed there name are also being studied to see if details of their lives can be brought to light.

There was a prison at York Castle from before 1205 until 1932, although from 1900 onwards it was a military prison only.

A new “gaol experience” will be opened at the museum next July, aiming to give visitors an atmospheric taste of what it would have been like to have been imprisoned there.