Prisoners and Prisons

You can find useful information in books, museums and websites.

Books

Cameron, Joy, Prisons and Punishment in Scotland (Canongate, 1983)

Markus, T. A. ‘Buildings for the Bad, the Sad and the Mad in Urban Scotland, 1780-1830’ in Order and Space in Society: Architectural Form and its Context in the Scottish Enlightenment ed. by T. A. Markus, (Mainstream, 1982)

Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, Tolbooths and Town-Houses: Civic Architecture in Scotland to 1833 (HMSO, 1996)

Museums

There are two museums which offer detailed experience of prison conditions: Inveraray Jail (in Argyll) and Stirling Old Town Jail. Both are open to individual (paying) members of the public, and to group visits. The contact details for each are:

Inveraray Jail, Church Square, Inveraray, Argyll, PA32 8TX <https://www.inverarayjail.co.uk/> [accessed 24 April 2024]

Stirling Old Town Jail, St John Street, Stirling, FK8 1EB <https://oldtownjail.co.uk/> [accessed 24 April 2024]

In addition, it may be possible to visit the cells in the tolbooths of former burghs Tolbooths and Town-Houses cited above will provide details of tolbooths in your area which have been preserved. You will need to contact the local council to arrange access, where this is possible.

There are several answers to this question depending on when, where and why the person was imprisoned. Consider the following question and link to the appropriate FAQ:

Was the prisoner:

• (a) convicted and sentenced to a term of imprisonment or penal servitude after the year 1800?
• (b) awaiting charge, trial or sentencing before the year 1800?
• (c) awaiting charge, trial or sentencing after the year 1800?
• (d) a prisoner of war

If : (a) then there is a good chance that the prisoner’s details should be recorded in a prison register held by the National Records of Scotland. Go to the FAQ on ‘How do I trace the record of a prisoner in prison registers?’

(b) then, the individual was probably incarcerated in a burgh tolbooth or jail. Go to the FAQ on ‘How do I trace the record of a prisoner in warding and liberation books of a burgh tolbooth or jail?’

(c) then, the prisoner may have been held on remand in a prison, a burgh tolbooth or jail, or a police cell or lock-up. Look at the FAQs on prison registers, warding and liberation books and ‘How do I trace the record of a prisoner in a police cell or lock-up?’

(d) then go to the FAQ on ‘Where can I find information about prisoner of war prisons and camps in Scotland?’

From 1839 onwards prison administration was increasingly brought under central government control, and most registers of prisoners kept by Scottish prisons after 1800 are now held by the National Records of Scotland. Most are among Home and Health Department records (HH21 and HH12), but some are among Sheriff Court records (SC). These mainly cover the period from the early 1800s onwards, and consist of registers maintained by at least 49 prisons, generally containing name, date of admission, committing magistrate and court, age, height, where born, nationality, occupation, religion, health, offence, particulars of trial, sentence if convicted, and date liberated or removed. Some prison registers have been digitised and more details can be found in the ScotlandsPeople Guide to prison registers <https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/guides/prison-registers> [accessed 24 April 2024]

Using prison registers

In the late 19th century, many prisons adopted a registration system, whereby prisoners received a two-part number based on the year of admission and a running number – for example, the 498th prisoner admitted to a prison in 1908 would have the number 498/08, and his or her details would be recorded under that number in the register. The registers may be indexed internally, indexed in separate volumes, or not indexed at all, depending on the prison. Look at the appropriate catalogue for the prison registers concerned (HH21, HH12 and/or SC). In the case of the HH21 and HH12 catalogues, the arrangement is rather haphazard. Registers for a prison may appear in more than one place in the catalogue. Prisons in larger towns and cities which had more than one prison are problematical. In some cases, registers ascribed to one prison (e.g. Aberdeen East) may be from another (e.g. Aberdeen West). Where a town or city had more than one prison, the registers for all the relevant prisons should be searched. Another problem is that some of the indexes to registers are described as registers. In general, be prepared for a lengthy search.

Records relating to burgh prisons and tolbooths consist mainly of warding and liberation books, which record the incarceration and release of individual prisoners with few other details. These are rarely indexed, except where they have been indexed by staff or volunteers in the appropriate record office or published and indexed by an antiquarian society. Warding and liberation books for burgh tolbooths and prisons tend to be with the burgh records, normally held by the appropriate local authority archive service. In the case of several Fife burghs, the records are held by St Andrews University. Another exception is the case of Edinburgh Tolbooth, whose warding and liberation books, 1657-1816, are held by the National Records of Scotland (HH11).

The search may be time-consuming depending on the number of prisoners handled by each tolbooth or jail, and records prior to 1750 can be difficult to read because of the nature of the handwriting for that period.

The records of police stations sometimes include detention books, bail books or registers of persons held in police cells. If your enquiry concerns a police cell or lock-up, the first task is to find out which police force would have operated at the time and place in question, and where (if at all) the station records survive. For further details go to the Knowledge Base entry on Police Records Locations.

The accommodation of significant numbers of prisoners of war first became an issue in the second half of the 18th century, especially during the Napoleonic Wars. Edinburgh Castle held French prisoners at times between 1756 and 1814, and French prisoners of war were employed in a variety of places, including the lead mines at Strontian in Argyll in the late 18th century. From 1796 prisoners of war, irrespective of service or nationality, were the responsibility of the Admiralty’s Sick and Hurt Board (later called the Transport Board). Most French prisoners of war were housed in England, especially in Dartmoor Prison, which was built between 1806 and 1809. By 1814 there were two prisoner of war camps in Scotland: at Penicuik and Perth. The site of the latter, including some of the buildings originally erected for the Napoleonic prisoners, were incorporated into the General Prison, built in Perth from 1839 onwards. For further details see William Sievwright, Historical Sketch of the Old Depot or Prison for French Prisoners of War at Perth (Wright, 1894).

During the First World War (1914-18) the War Office and the Foreign Office both had POW departments, but the former was attached to the Home Office, which ran internment camps, of which there were about 25 in Scotland. During the Second World War (1939-45) the War Office was responsible for all POWs, including those in over 20 camps and prisons in Scotland.

For records relating to Scottish POW camps and prisons, go to the website of The National Archives in London. <https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/> [accessed 24 April 2024]. Look for the research guide on Prisoners of War in British Hands and this will help you use the catalogue for this topic.

If your research concerns a Scottish POW abroad since the 18th century go to website of The National Archives in London. <https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/> [accessed 24 April 2024] Look for the research guides for prisoners of war.

Apart from publications on Scottish prisons, which reproduce plans of prison buildings, there are three places to try for these: Historic Environment Scotland, the National Records of Scotland, and local archives and libraries.

Published works

The following published works reproduce plans of prisons:

Cameron, Joy Prisons and Punishment in Scotland (Canongate, 1983)

Markus, T. A. ‘Buildings for the Bad, the Sad and the Mad in Urban Scotland, 1780-1830’ in Order and Space in Society: architectural form and its context in the Scottish Enlightenment ed. by T. A, Markus, (Mainstream, 1982)

Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, Tolbooths and Town-Houses: Civic Architecture in Scotland to 1833 (HMSO, 1996)

The (printed) First Report of the Board of Directors of Prisons in Scotland (1840) has an appendix with architectural drawings of Perth Prison.

Historic Environment Scotland (HES)

Use the Canmore website <https://canmore.org.uk/> [accessed 24 April 2024] to look for the drawings of the prison, and then follow the instructions for contacting HES. If your research is on prison buildings in general, remember to search using the terms ‘prison’, ‘jail’, ‘gaol’, ‘Bridewell’ and ‘tolbooth’.

National Records of Scotland

The National Records of Scotland (NRS) hold several hundred architectural drawings of prisons in the Register House Plans (RHP) series, mostly extracted from the records of the Scottish Home and Health Department. Over 300 of them can be found by using the search term ‘prison’ and the reference RHP, but, once again, if your research is on prison buildings in general, remember to search using the terms ‘jail’, ‘gaol’, ‘Bridewell’ and ‘tolbooth’ as well.

Local authority archives

Local authority archives occasionally hold architectural drawings of prisons and similar buildings. If you are researching a particular prison you need to find out the appropriate local archives service(s) for that area. You should not expect to find drawings of prisons in Dean of Guild plans collections, because many central government buildings (including prisons) were exempt from building regulations.

This FAQ refers to titles of acts which includes terminology which is now obsolete.

Criminal registers or collections of photographs of prisoners survive in police records in Scottish archives and among the records of prisons in the National Records of Scotland. They include:

• Albums of criminal register entries compiled by a police force. In most cases, where there is a photograph, it is part of a much larger entry, running to several pages.
• Albums of photographs. With the minimum amount of information about the criminal, compiled by a police force, possibly using the photographs supplied by prison authorities as part of the criminal register entries, or, more likely, from photographs taken by the police force itself of each prisoner at the time of arrest.
• Printed notifications under the Licensing (Scotland) Act 1903. Details of a person convicted of three or more offences mentioned in the first schedule of the Inebriates Act 1898 were circulated to licensed premises and secretaries of clubs and police forces in counties, etc.

Examples of the above are held by several archives. Perth & Kinross Council Archive holds photographic and conviction records for Perthshire, Perthshire & Kinross-shire and Perth & Kinross constabularies for the periods 1875-1906 and 1915-55. Glasgow City Archives hold four registers among the records of Strathclyde Police: two for Glasgow, covering 1910-33 (SR22/63/11-12) do not contain photographs. Two for Dunbartonshire, covering 1903-14 (SR22/77/8-9) do contain photographs. The National Records of Scotland hold several albums, including one for Greenock prison, 1872-88. (HH12/56/7). Aberdeen City Archives hold two criminal registers compiled by Aberdeen City Police: the first covers prisoners liberated from Perth Prison, 1882-84, and the second is a ‘register of returned convicts’, 1869-1938, containing notes on the whereabouts of released convicts, and including photographs of prisoners between 1869 and 1897. Among the records of Dunbarton County Constabulary (held by Glasgow City Archives) are three ‘notifications of inebriates’ under the Licensing (Scotland) Act 1903 supplied to the Colquhoun Arms Hotel, Rhu (SR22/77/23).

Whether you are researching a particular suffragette or the imprisonment of suffragettes in general you should first read all or some of the following:

Purvis, June, ‘The Prison Experience of the Suffragettes in Edwardian Britain’, Women’s History Review, 4 (1) (1995), pp. 103-33

Leneman, Leah A Guid cause: the women’s suffrage movement in Scotland (Mercat Press, 1991)

King, Elspeth, The Hidden History of Glasgow’s Women: The Thenew Factor (Mainstream, 1993)

If you are researching an individual suffragette prisoner go to the FAQ Where can I find information about someone imprisoned in Scotland? but see also a register of suffragettes received into prison in Scotland, 1909-14, among the Home and Health Department records of the National Records of Scotland (HH12/22).

If you are researching the treatment of suffragette prisoners in general, there are criminal case files among the Home and Health Department records in the National Records of Scotland (HH16/36-47). It may also be worth looking through the catalogues to the Criminal Justice and Procedure files, 1888-1995 (HH60).

Staff records in the true sense for the Scottish prison service begin only in 1893. From then until 1946 staff registers were compiled and these are now held by the National Records of Scotland (HH87 – Prison service staff registers).

For the period prior to this the search for details of prison staff will be time-consuming and probably unrewarding. The ‘Prisons – Administrative Records’ series (HH12) in the National Records of Scotland should be examined for possible records. The most likely source among these records are the Governors’ Journals of individual prisons, which ought to record members of staff starting and leaving (or being dismissed), and absences due to illness or other causes. However, as the journals are a form of logbook, the search through these for details of individual staff members can be tedious.

For the period prior to 1839 the main source of information on burgh jails, tolbooths, lock-ups, etc., will be the minute books of the burgh or town council concerned. A search through these for information on the appointment of individual warders is likely to be even more tedious and unrewarding than the search through Governors’ Journals for prisons after 1839.

The National Records of Scotland (NRS) will, in most cases, hold records of the trial of a Scottish transportee, but you may be able to augment these with details of the voyage from records held by The National Archives in London, and newspaper reports of the trial. Prior to visiting the NRS, or hiring a record agent to carry out research there, it is best to assemble as much information as possible about the person you are researching (particularly when he or she arrived in Australia or New Zealand and which part of Scotland he or she came from) and to read the sections dealing with transportation and criminals in Tracing Your Scottish Ancestors 7^th edition (Birlinn, 2020). To locate and read through the court and prison records, described below, for one individual case, will require more than one day’s work in the historical search room at the NRS. Separate visits may be required to The National Archives in London.

If your ancestor was transported from Scotland in the period 1812 to 1867, you may be able to see the prosecution papers in the case, in the form of the precognitions in the Lord Advocate’s records (AD) in the NRS. Hardly any survive for the period before 1812. Those for the period 1812-1900 (AD14) are listed under the name of the accused in the NRS online catalogue: <www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/catalogues-and-indexes> [accessed 24 April 2024]. The records of the Advocate’s department also has a register of returns of pardoned or ticket of leave convicts committed on new charges (AD12/8). The High Court of Justiciary, the supreme criminal court in Scotland, passed sentences of transportation. For details of how to search through Justiciary Court records (JC) at the NRS, you should read the chapter on criminals in National Records of Scotland Tracing Your Scottish Ancestors 7^th edition (Birlinn, 2020) and/or look at the research guides for court and legal records on the website. <www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/research-guides/research-guides-a-z/court-and-legal-records> [accessed 24April 2024]. Personal details of the transportee should appear in the registers of the prison which served the court where the trial took place. Prison registers survive in the Home and Health Department records (HH) in the NRS. Most prison registers begin only from the 1840s. They include a register of convicts under sentence of transportation (HH21/5/16).

Ships carrying transported prisoners to Australia sailed from England, and Convict Transportation Registers survive among the Home Office records in The National Archives in London (HO 11). These cover the period from 1787 to 1871 and give the names of all the convicts who sailed on each ship along with the place and date of the conviction and the length of sentence. A microfilm copy is held by the NRS (RH4/160/7). The registers are arranged chronologically by the date of departure of each ship. The names of Scottish prisoners occur towards the end of each list. Two other classes of record in The National Archives in London contain information about transportees. A census of convicts 1788 – 1859 among the Home Office papers (HO10) lists convicts and their families in New South Wales and Tasmania. The census for 1828 is the most complete. A number of lists of convicts for the period 1801 – 1821 are among the New South Wales Original Correspondence (CO 201), and these are indexed.

Once you know which court the trial took place in, you should be able to find a report of the trial in a local newspaper for the period. To locate back copies of local newspapers for particular areas of Scotland consult:

British Newspaper Archive <https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/> [accessed 24 April 2024] (available free of charge in the National Library of Scotland or with a subscription elsewhere)

Ferguson, J. P. S. Directory of Scottish Newspapers (National Library of Scotland, 1984).

Scottish convicts sentenced to transportation before 1776 were sent to North America. A published list of these, based on Scottish sources such as the records of the Privy Council, High Court of Justiciary, Treasury, etc can be found in David Dobson, Directory of Scots Banished to the American Plantations 1650-1775 2^nd edition (Clearfield, 2010). For other published lists of Scottish settlers in North America see below.

Information about individual cases should appear in the records of the High Court of Justiciary, the supreme criminal court in Scotland, at the National Records of Scotland (NRS). To locate and read through the court records for one individual case, will require more than one day’s work at the NRS. Before you visit the NRS or hire a record agent to carry out research there, you should assemble as much information as possible about the person you are researching (particularly when they arrived in North America) and which part of Scotland they came from) and read the sections dealing with transportation and criminals in Tracing Your Scottish Ancestors 7^th edition (Birlinn, 2020).

Published lists of Scottish settlers in North America

Coldham, Peter W Complete Book of Emigrants, 1607-1660 (Genealogical Publishing Co, 1987).

Coldham, Peter W Complete Book of Emigrants in Bondage, 1614-1775 (Genealogical Publishing Co, 1988)

Dobson, David Directory of Scottish Settlers in North America, 1625-1825 (Genealogical Publishing Co, 1993)

Dobson, David Directory of Scots Banished to the American Plantations 1650-1775 2^nd edition (Clearfield, 2010)

Filby, P W & others, ed., Passenger and Immigration Lists Index (Gale Research Co, 1981 – present, 21 volumes, continuing) is an index of names in published passenger lists and other lists of arrivals in North America in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

Whyte, Donald Dictionary of Scottish Emigrants to the USA (Magna Carta Book Co, 1972)

Whyte, Donald Dictionary of Scottish Emigrants to the USA Vol 2 (Magna Carta Book Co, 1986)

In the course of the 19th century the addition of hard labour was increasingly used by judges for certain offences. The treadmill, the hand crank and picking oakum were all used in Scottish prisons. The treadmill was a large drum with projecting wooden treads on its outside and connected to something to provide resistance, which had to be turned by tramping on the treads. The hand crank consisted of a handle projecting from a large box, which had to be turned a prescribed number of times a day to overcome the resistance of gravel or sand in the box. Both were hard but totally unproductive work. A more productive form of hard labour was picking oakum, i.e. teasing out old tarred rope into strands, which were used for caulking ships. The treadmill and hand crank were abolished in Scottish prisons in 1898.

The term ‘Bridewell’ originated in London in the 16th century when a ‘house of correction’ was set up at St Bride’s Well to make vagrants and the unemployed work towards their keep in harsh conditions. In Scotland larger towns, such as Glasgow, Edinburgh, Perth and Aberdeen, began building ‘houses of correction’, which were sometimes called ‘Bridewells’ in the 17th century, but these could hold prisoners awaiting trial, and also, by the early 19th century, individuals sentenced to short periods of imprisonment.

The term ‘General Prison’ was first used in 1839 to refer to the new prison being built at Perth, whose primary purpose was to house the increasing numbers of prisoners being sentenced by courts all over Scotland to longer terms of imprisonment. It was built as a result of the Prison (Scotland) Act 1839, which placed the superintendence of all Scottish prisons in the hands of the General Board of Directors of Prisons in Scotland. County Boards were established to manage all 178 Scottish prisons, except the General Prison, which was administered directly by the General Board of Directors until the Prisons (Scotland) Act 1860.  This entrusted the running of the General Prison to four managers – the Sheriff of Perth, the Inspector of Prisons in Scotland, the Crown Agent and a stipendiary manager. The General Prison at Perth housed convicts serving sentences exceeding 9 months and prisoners suffering mental ill-health. It was on the site of the former Prisoner of War depot, which had housed French soldiers captured in the Napoleonic Wars. In 1882, Barlinnie Prison, near Glasgow, opened and served partly as a General Prison. By 1904 most long sentences were served in Peterhead Prison (for men) and Duke Street Prison, Glasgow (for women).

For further details see:

Sievwright, William, Historical Sketch of the Old Depot or Prison for French Prisoners of War at Perth (Wright, 1894)

Sievwright, William, Historical Sketch of the General Prison for Scotland at Perth: with notes on Crime & Criminals (Wright, 1894

The last public execution of a man in Scotland took place in Dumfries on 12 May 1868, when Robert Smith was hanged for the rape and murder of an eleven-year-old girl.

The last public execution of a woman in Scotland took place in Dumfries on 29 April 1862, of a ‘feeble-minded’ woman named Mary Timmey, who had battered a female neighbour to death. There were strenuous public efforts to save her from the gallows, as it was felt by many that she did not deserve to die. Nevertheless, the execution attracted a large crowd.