A historic view of Young Gaol, built in 1876 to replace the town’s overcrowded wooden lock-up. Photo: Young Historical Society.
This year marks 150 years since the distinctive brick gatehouse of Young Gaol was built, but its story really begins two years earlier with an audacious jailbreak that exposed just how inadequate the town’s old lock-up had become.
On a Saturday night in May 1874, two prisoners quietly went to work beneath the floorboards of their cell.
David Davis – better known to police by a string of aliases including Grattan, Bloomfield and “Jerry Blossom” – was awaiting trial for horse stealing.
Sharing the cell with Michael Lynch, who was on remand for larceny, the pair forced up three floorboards, dug through about 15 inches of soft earth beneath the building, removed a timber log under the wall and crawled into the exercise yard.
According to the Burrangong Argus, they then propped a broom against the stockade fence, climbed over it and vanished into the night.
The newspaper was scathing, suggesting the floorboards had been laid in such a way that they gave, “a prisoner contemplating escape the greatest comfort and encouragement”.
The pair allegedly stole two horses from outside Blount’s Hotel at Spring Creek before fleeing.
Police immediately telegraphed stations within 100 miles and while Lynch was captured near Gundagai the following day, Davis remained at large, reports suggesting he was bound for Albury.
It was a dramatic illustration of a problem the people of Young had been raising for years.
Barely a decade earlier, Lambing Flat had become one of Australia’s richest goldfields and when thousands flocked to the district in search of fortune, a quiet pastoral run was transformed into a bustling settlement almost overnight.
With the population explosion came claim jumping, theft, drunkenness and violence, while the infamous Lambing Flat riots of 1861 exposed just how fragile law and order could become on the frontier.
According to research by Karen Schamberger of the Young Historical Society, the town’s tiny watchhouse was already struggling to cope.
It contained just four cells and, during one week in 1871, held nine prisoners – three awaiting trial, one on remand and five serving sentences.
Female prisoners had no dedicated accommodation and were often transferred to Yass, while local residents increasingly petitioned for a proper gaol that reflected Young’s growing importance.
The answer arrived in 1876 in the form of a purpose-built regional gaol that reflected Young’s growing importance and was at the forefront of prison design in colonial NSW.
Its imposing brick gatehouse on Caple Street became the public face of the prison, admitting prisoners through an entrance that still stands 150 years later.
The 1876 gatehouse of Young Gaol, photographed during the prison’s years of operation. Today it is one of the few surviving reminders of the former gaol. Photo: Edwina Mason.
Behind the gatehouse stretched a substantial prison complex which architectural historian JS Kerr later grouped with Hay, Tamworth and Wentworth as part of what became known as the state’s “Hay-type” gaols.
Named after the town of Hay, these single-storey lock-ups were designed by colonial architect James Barnet to safely house regional prisoners without the elaborate and expensive two-storey construction typical of earlier colonial prisons.
Behind four-metre-high perimeter walls lay a quadrangle-style prison complex of cell blocks, exercise yards, workshops, kitchens, a hospital, stores and the gaoler’s residence.
Designed to accommodate up to 90 prisoners, the gaol operated almost as a self-contained community with three wells suppling water to the complex, including one about 70 feet deep that serviced washing facilities and a large vegetable garden within the prison grounds.
Here, life revolved around routine and work where prisoners learnt trades including saddlery, tailoring, bookbinding, brush making, tinware manufacture and shoe repairs, while a substantial library reflected Victorian ideas that education and useful work could help reform offenders as well as punish them.
Despite the later name, Young rated highly among the earliest examples of this type of gaol.
This was evidenced in April 1877; as plans were being prepared for Wentworth Gaol, the Controller-General of Prisons instructed that it should be designed “as one of the class now building at Young”, indicating Young Gaol had already become a benchmark for a new generation of regional prisons.
The new gaol was a significant improvement on the old wooden lock-up, but it was far from escape-proof.
Court reports reveal that prisoners occasionally still found ways to test its security.
On 15 September 1883, the Burrangong Argus reported that prisoner Peter Faucett pleaded guilty to escaping from Young Gaol in April that year.
Despite the offence, the gaoler Mr Gates spoke well of him, giving him, “a good character” before the court.
Faucett was sentenced to an additional month’s imprisonment with hard labour, to be served after completing the remainder of his original sentence.
The brief report offers a rare glimpse of the relationship between prisoners and staff, suggesting that even in a strict colonial gaol, good conduct could earn the respect of those charged with enforcing discipline.
Although built to accommodate far more prisoners, by 1903 the gaol housed an average of 31.6 inmates and cost the government £2259 a year to operate.
There was a certain irony in Young Gaol’s final decade.
After closing as a district gaol in 1914, it was brought back into service in 1918 as a branch of Parramatta Gaol for habitual offenders while Parramatta temporarily ceased operating as a prison.
Just five years later, when Young Gaol closed permanently in 1923, the situation had come full circle.
Parramatta had reopened, and Young’s inmates were once again absorbed into the state’s broader prison network.
Today, the Young campus of TAFE NSW occupies the former gaol site and although most of the gaol buildings have disappeared, the main gates and gatekeeper’s residence have been retained.
That seemed to be it until archaeologists recently discovered the prison had left a remarkable footprint beneath the ground.
Excavations undertaken during the Young Library project in 2022 uncovered the stone and brick foundations of demolished gaol buildings, brick-lined drains, pathways, yard surfaces and rubbish deposits, allowing researchers to reconstruct how the prison functioned.
The investigation also documented the everyday objects that once formed part of life behind the walls including leg irons, chains, locks, keys, cell door bolts, a large gate padlock, a gaol lamp, wooden paving blocks and an 1886 stores register recording the weekly issue of supplies.
Together with bottles, ceramics, clay tobacco pipes and animal bones from prisoners’ meals, they offer a rare glimpse into the daily lives of both inmates and warders.
Many of these items are now cared for by the Young Historical Society and can be viewed at the Young Historical Museum.
Original Article published by Edwina Mason on About Regional.
