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Bagthorpe Jail - H.M. Prison, Nottingham
In 1878 the control of all local prisons passed to the Home Secretary and a board of commissioners was established to administer them. It set about closing down the worst prisons and building new ones. Bagthorpe Jail, on Perry Road Sherwood, was one of the latter and it was completed on November 2nd 1891.. Originally the War Department had bought the site from the Duke of Newcastle in 1860 and planned to build barracks there but the local residents objected so strongly that the idea was dropped. They didn’t want soldiers who attracted prostitutes etc. to the area but they accepted prisoners who were out of sight and posed no threat to the community.
The inmates of St. John’s Street prison and the old County Jail in Nottingham were transferred to the new prison so there were old lags cooped up with young first offenders. In 1894 a new wing was added for female prisoners and in that year there were were 206 male and 31 female prisoners, all enduring a grim routine. Prisoners were confined in separate cells and forbidden to speak to each other; their hard labour on, for example, the treadmill was grinding, monotonous and unproductive.
The Nottingham House of Correction, St John’s Street, the modern day junction of Glasshouse Street and King Edward Street.
The Prison Act of 1898 led to the improvements in prisons, including Bagthorpe. The treadmills and cranks were dismantled and prisoners were taught a productive trade - productive for the prison, that is. Besides mailbags there were workshops for making haversacks, tailoring, repairing boots and unravelling wool. Coir mats were also made and sold at a ½d each, to the dismay of local tradesmen who thought it unfair.
Between 1894 and 1928 fourteen prisoners were hanged in Bagthorpe jail, all of them men all convicted of murdering women. The first to die was Walter Smith who murdered his girl friend at Abbott’s factory in Hyson Green. The most notorious were Samuel Atherley, the so-called “Arnold murderer” of 1909, and Percey Atkins who buried his wife alive in his allotment in 1922. The last man to hang was George Haywood on April 22nd 1928, after which the gruesome “topping” shed was closed, although it was later used as a store room.
Not until the 1920’s was an effort made to rehabilitate prisoners rather than punishing them. Then the cropped hair and the uniform with its broad arrows were finally abolished. In march 1930 all the adult prisoners at Bagthorpe Jail were transferred and it became the first Young Adult offender prison for 21-25 year olds. Prisoners were allowed to work outside in the fields and gardens, and several escaped. This fact, plus the economies necessary for the 1930’s, led to the closure of the prison less than two years later. It reopened in October 1932 as Sherwood Borstal, the name Bagthorpe at last being dropped. By the mid 1940’s it had a reputation of being the roughest and toughest Borstal in England, and it was in this period that the appalling murder of the prison matron took place.
Sherwood prison has undergone many changes of role. In 1950 it ceased to be a Borstal ain 1954 it became a Preventative Detention prison, mainly for the habitual criminals. The most famous of these was Alfie Hinds who was serving 12 years for the alleged £38,000 robbery of Maples store in London. He had already escaped from the law courts and from prison and in November 1955 he escaped again from a cell at Sherwood Prison. He was recaptured yet always protested his innocence, which he eventually established but only after he has served his sentence in Parkhurst Prison. At long last he was compensated by the Crown.
In 1964 there was yet another change when Sherwood PD became Nottingham Training Prison. Beside the mailbags and clothing made for Government departments prisoners were able to learn various trades and even enrol in educational courses up to Open University level. This was a far cry from the punitive regime of the prison’s first few years
History of Sherwood: A Nottingham Suburb
Terry Fry, 1989 pp 49, 50