Chatham Prison was opened in 1856, it was also known as St Mary’s Prison and included Chattenden Prison between 1876-86.
Constructed to replace the decommissioned prison hulks Warrior and Defence at Woolwich, this prison was built on St Mary’s Island, Chatham. St Mary’s island had a rich and colourful history prior, first the romans constructed roads through it, then in the 1600s a fort (Gillingham Fort) was built on it and then finally during the Napoleonic wars, it was used as a burial ground for French POWs. By the time of the construction in 1856, there were approximately 1,700 prisoners and 232 staff including 117 armed wardens.
During the 1860s, convict labour was used to construct a sea wall of which over one thousand inmates took part. However, work on the island and its docks was not always plain sailing. In January 1861 Peters, an inmate sick of the hard labour and harsher conditions, managed to gain a skeleton key for and set about trying to set free Bennett, a notorious and violent inmate. Peters was caught before he could unlock the cell and the key was taken, but the damage had been done. The other inmates, at this time in a service, began to hoot and jeer at the minister.
The Governor, fearing further acts of subversion, called in extra warders and put the leaders in punishment cells. Still the sedition continued, first with grumblings and then acts of vandalism, as the inmates smashed windows and broke furniture. The behaviour quieted for a while before one final act of defiance; a week after Peters started the riot, 50 inmates rushed a warder, robbed him of his keys and let their fellow inmates free. The Governor’s office was burnt to the ground, the 150 warders unable to intervene. The army was called in, order restored with heavy truncheons and muskets, and a number of warders were dismissed for failing to prevent the riot.
In 1880, Chatham Prison was selected to receive “star class” convicts: men with no previous convictions. They were sent here for public works but kept separate from other classes of prisoners as this was thought to discourage the learning of criminal habits. From 1883, the prison also hosted the ringleaders of the 1863 Anglo-Irish dynamite campaign. In 1866 James Boyle, an assistant warder, was murdered by James Fletcher, one of the convicts working at the dockyard[1].
Chatham Prison was closed in 1892, its buildings and lands were transferred to the Admiralty.