In 1938 the bakery at Parramatta gaol was operated by ‘trusties’. These were well behaved men who had completed their initial sentence, but as habitual offenders were serving a final, indeterminate period. Freedom was not far off, conditional only on their continued adherence to prison rules. The
Read more →From 1905 until 1916, George Harris was identified as Prisoner 57 in Parramatta gaol. He would die in France in 1918 as Private 634. Between the two numbers is an extraordinary story, some of which has been told elsewhere on this site. By the time George was
Read more →Inside Parramatta Gaol, where Esther Bennett visited George Harris.
Read more →Parramatta Gaol has a history dating back to 1798, when the first building was described as, ‘a strong, logged gaol of 100 feet in length, with separate cells for the prisoners…and paled around with very high fences.’ By the early twentieth century it looked very different. James
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