Fremantle Prison description and photos - Australia: Fremantle (Topic)

Fremantle Prison description and photos - Australia: Fremantle. Detailed information about the attraction. Description, photographs and a map showing the nearest significant objects. The title in English is Fremantle Prison.

Photo & Description

Fremantle Prison is located in the urban area of Terrace. On an area of 60,000 square meters, there is a prison building, a security booth, small one-story living quarters and an exhibition of works by prisoners. All this is surrounded by walls around the perimeter. Fremantle Prison is listed as one of the 11 places in Australia where prisoners were held.

Actually, the prisoners themselves built this prison in the 1850s. In 1886, the building came under the control of the colonial government, which used it as a detention center for criminals. Only a century later - in 1991 - the prison was closed, and the building was turned into a historical monument. Today it is a museum run by the Western Australian State Government and offers day and night tours. Some excursions introduce legends about the ghosts allegedly living within these walls. Others lead to a flooded tunnel and underground aqueducts.

Construction of the prison began soon after the arrival of the Scindian in 1850 with 75 prisoners on board, and was completed in 1859.

In 1868, the link to hard labor in Western Australia ended, and the number of prisoners arriving sharply decreased. But Fremantle Prison has transferred many of the men and women convicted in Perth, and the prison retained its status as the largest in the state.

In 1896, a series of tunnels were built 20 meters under the prison in order to provide additional drainage area. The tunnels stretched for a kilometer, but by 1910 the need for them disappeared, and they were closed, later becoming objects of urban legends.

In 1907, with the onset of the gold rush in Western Australia and the rapid growth of the local population, the prison had to be enlarged due to the completion of a new sector. There are death row cells.

From 1939 to 1946, part of the prison was used by the AIF to hold war criminals. The last person to be hanged here was serial killer Eric Edgar Cook. The execution took place in 1964.

Interestingly, for almost a century and a half of its history, only one mutiny happened in the prison - it took place on January 4, 1988, when the temperature inside the building rose to a record 52.2 ° C. 70 prisoners took 15 officers hostage. The building was hit by a fire causing A $ 1.8 million in damage!

Probably, this rebellion played an important role in the fact that the authorities decided to close the prison - on November 8, 1991, the prisoners were transported to Perth, and the building was turned into a kind of museum. In June 2005, a network of underground tunnels was opened to the public. Today, Fremantle Prison is considered the best-preserved building in the country that housed inmates. Up to 130 thousand people visit it a year. The Anglican Chapel often hosts wedding ceremonies, the former hospital houses the Children's Literature Club, and the women's prison houses the College of Arts. There is a gift shop and a restaurant on site.

Of particular interest to visitors is the art gallery, which houses the works of former prisoners. Art therapy has been used for years for the education and rehabilitation of criminals, and today you can even buy the works you like. Decent works can be seen on the walls of some cells, for example, the works of the 19th century fraudster James Walsh, which were hidden under a layer of plaster for many years. Another famous prisoner artist is Dennis Nozworthy, who has stated that he understood art on death row. Some of his work is now in the collections of Curtin University, Perth and the Western Australian Department of Justice. Among the prison works and the creations of aboriginal prisoners.

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Topic: Fremantle Prison description and photos - Australia: Fremantle.