Each narrow cell in which we dwell
Is a foul and dark latrine,
And the fetid breath of living Death
Chokes up each grated screen,
And all, but Lust, is turned to dust
In Humanity’s machine.
Oscar Wilde, the Ballad of Reading Gaol
Reading Prison, also known as Berkshire Gaol, opened in 1844 as a replacement for the original county gaol, which had been based on the same site since 1786. The first Gaol was so horrifically overcrowded and dilapidated, that by 1842 a competition was created to receive designs for the new prison.
The winning design, by George Gilbert Scott and William Bonython Moffatt, was based on the design of London’s model prison: Pentonville. Pentonville prison housed convicts in the contemporary ideal of separation, meaning that each inmate was housed in complete isolation to encourage reformation of their criminal inclinations and to turn them towards religion instead.
It was with these principles in mind, that the new facility, capable of housing 250 inmates, a debtors wing, and courthouse, was built by the companies John Jay of London & Messrs George and William Baker. Finally complete, despite almost doubling the expected cost, the gates opened in June of 1844. Its structure mimicked Pentonville, an octagonal central building, which allowed for maximum observation with the minimum number of warders. The women’s block ran along the North wall.
As a County Gaol, Reading was expected to manage the executions of those sentenced to die at a purpose built scaffold East of the Chapel; the first hanging took place in 1845 and the last in 1913. The first of these was one Thomas Jennings, convicted of murdering his two children, one after the other with arsenic. Contemporary news reports say that thousands came to view the grizzly spectacle, in March of 1845.
One of the later hangings inspired Reading’s most famous inmate, Oscar Wilde, to pen his renowned work ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’, which he originally published under his prison number, C.3.3.
The Prison was finally closed in 2013.