WE often lament the loss of old buildings, but not this one. This is Glasgow’s Duke Street Prison which was finally closed in 1953. It is now the site of a small housing estate which has chunks of the prison’s outer wall still standing.
You can make out Glasgow Cathedral in the background of the photograph.
Admittedly the gardens look well kept here, in this picture which appeared in The Bulletin in 1935, but the conditions inside were often described as atrocious. There was even a ditty about the jail which went “There is a happy land, down in Duke Street Jail. Where all the prisoners stand, tied to a nail. Bread and water for their tea, ham and eggs they never see. There they live in misery, God save the Queen.”
In its latter years it was a women’s jail, housing many Sufragettes, and was also the place that the last woman in Scotland was hanged – a poor soul from Coatbridge called Susan Newall who in 1923 was caught wheeling the body of her paper-boy in a pram after strangling him. Her defence went for an insanity plea, and even the jury, after finding her guilty, asked for clemency, saying she should not be hanged.
The then Secretary of State said he would not interfere, and thus she faced the drop.
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