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Stirling Local History Society

Stirling's Prisons

There has probably been a prison of some sort in Stirling for as long as the town has existed. However, for centuries, prisons were not usually places where people were sent for a definite period of time after which they would be released.

They might be kept in prison till they paid a fine or provided security that they would pay a fine or found guarantees that they would not offend again; others would get out only after savage bodily punishment from whipping to branding to execution.

Better-off offenders were usually able to provide security for their future ‘good behaviour’. But most prisoners were poor – they had no money for a fine and no friends who would provide good security. Bailie Nichol Jarvie puts it neatly in Scott’s Rob Roy (chapter 10) “If ye hae nae purse to fine, ye hae flesh to pine" –If your purse is empty, then your body can suffer! So, prison was very unpleasant – but nobody imagined that it would help to ‘reform’ the prisoner. Even the fear of being returned to prison would not stop the hungry poor from stealing food to stay alive.

By the later eighteenth century, however, some people began to think that a suitable prison and prison regime which was harsh but not overtly cruel might reform offenders; there were many different views about whether prisoners should be totally isolated or not, whether their work should be useless or useful and so on. But most theorists thought that strict routines, lots of prayer and some education would do the trick. William Brebner was the leading proponent of the new ideas in Scotland, taking charge of the reformed Glasgow Bridewell. Elsewhere, however, change was slow and when Stirling built a new and larger prison around 1807-9 the new ideas were totally ignored.

Legislation in 1835 set up a Prison Board for Scotland (initially with very limited powers) and also provided for an Inspector of Prisons to be appointed. Frederick Hill (who had no previous experience of prisons) was delighted to get this post and worked in concert with Brebner. His Second Report (1836) describes his official view of Stirling which he visited on 24th Nov 1836. It is astonishingly trenchant;

I had heard a bad account of the Stirling goal ... before visiting it, and my examination fully justified these unfavourable 
reports. The prison ... is not an old one, not having been built more than 30 years. Great ignorance, however, of all the legitimate objects of imprisonment is manifest both in the choice of the site and in the construction of the building... the masonry, too, is so bad that holes can be easily made through the walls, so that even security, the most evident of all 
requisites in a prison, has not been attained or apparently cared for. As for reform of the offender, that is quite out of the question; nay, it is hopeless to prevent his becoming worse...

Traditionally, head burghs, such as Stirling, were entirely responsible for providing a prison for the surrounding sheriffdom, though there periodic disputes about how far they were bound to provide food for prisoners from the rural areas! The Burgh Council were initially delighted that new legislation in 1839, which created Prison Boards for each county, would throw more 
of the costs onto the county. But delight changed to horror when they found that the town’s total costs would still rise and that the new Board would have powers of compulsion. Further years of procrastination followed.        Continued

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