Bye St Gate Gaol, Hereford.

SMR NO.     Grid Ref: SO 5125 4015

At the beginning of the 16th century the City Gaol in Hereford was situated in the southern section of the buildings that made up the Bye St Gate entrance to the City, on the north eastern side of the City Walls. The area is now the site of the Kerry Arms Inn and the City Ring Road, at the point where Commercial Street and Union Street meet.

In 1624/5 it was recorded that during a nine month period 12 prisoners in the Bye St Gate Gaol died. There was inquiry into the deaths of these prisoners and a jury of 15 men found that 9 of them had died by 'God's visitation', one had poisoned herself, one was drowned in the River Wye and one 'did casually fall out of the gallery of the Booth Hall'. (The Booth Hall being where sessions of the Justices of Assize or of the Peace heard pleas.) Morgan 'Hereford Poor and Prisons in Olden Days' Trans WNFC, 1966.

Bye St Gaol was notorious for its terrible living conditions and in 1691 it was even included in a booklet called 'The Cry of the Oppressed'. The entry concerning Bye St. Gaol is from a letter written by debtors in the gaol and details the cruel actions of the gaoler William Huck. (M. Pitt, 1691)

Corporal punishment was also carried out in the gaol and in 1699 we have a record of the gaoler and his deputy keeper being ordered to 'cause the bodies of seven prisoners to be duly whipt and after to set their bodies at liberty' (HCC Minutes 1699). This shows that corporal punishment was used as an alternative to a gaol sentence.

In 1792 an inspection of the prisons buildings was ordered and although estimates for alteration and repair were made they were apparently not extensive. A letter, written in 1803 by James Nield to Dr Lettson of London, and published in the Gentleman's Magazine in 1808 gives a good description of the Gaol:

'This gaol in the Bye St Gate, in which one room is called the Bridewell. It has a small Court with a sewer in it, and the Whipping-post. For Common-side Debtors here is a Free Ward, to which the Corporation allows straw: they have a little Court, about 15 feet square, with a sewer; and it is well supplied with water. Master's-side Debtors have two rooms in the \keeper's House, for which they pay 2s 6d per week each single bed; or if two sleep together 1s 6d each. For felons here are two small Courtyards, about 15 feet square, with a sewer in each and well supplied with water.

In one of the Courts, down eleven steps, are two horrid dungeons totally dark (apparently no longer used). The felons have also three close offensive Sleeping-rooms, which I found scattered over with loose straw on the floor, dirty and worn to dust. Here is likewise one room, justly denominated 'The Black Hole', which, if not impenetrably dark, has no light nor ventilation, save what is faintly admitted through a small aperture in the door: it is supplied with a barrack bedstead and loose straw; and in this wretched sink-hole was a poor deranged man, in the most filthy and pitiable state that it is possible to conceive'.

At the time that James Nield had visited the gaol the gaoler John Thomas was paid £13 a year with fees of 6s 8d and extras of 2s 6d. The gaol did not employ either a surgeon or a chaplain and the allowance of bread for prisoners was four pence a day.

In 1837 the City Council considered rebuilding the Bye St Gaol as the City Gaol but this was decided unsuitable and so the New City Gaol was built in Gaol St not far to the west, although Bye St Gate Gaol was still used up until 1842 when it was totally demolished.

MG