On the walls of the goal

Melbourne elders soon realised they had need of a goal. Small cramped alleys and lanes off the downtown streets grew to be a hotbed of larrikins, larceny, debauchery and violence. The ‘back slums’ they were called and the Melbourne lockup, which started out as a 2-roomed hut belonging to John Batman, one of Melbourne’s founders, was eventually replaced by a more significant structure that had a roll call of nearly 60 males and 9 females on its opening in 1845, just prior to the discovery of gold.

Numbers changed over time, with the wax and wane of the gold rush. The little huts and dirt tracks of the goldfields were soon replaced by wide streets and long boulevards making room for the many immigrants, including convicts, relocating from other states, who came further afield looking for work often well removed from the government seat that was Sydney and its surrounds. With the separation from New South Wales in July, 1851 Victoria could no longer send away her serious offenders, then with the discovery of gold just a month later the population grew sevenfold in just the ten years to 1860. 

The relatively new Melbourne Goal became quickly overcrowded so an extension had to be built, and that was no sooner completed when two more floors of debtor’s cells and single cells were added in order to cope with the influx. As well, temporary stockades were set up in more populous suburbs to try to alleviate the crises. Hulks were even moored in the bay to take some of the prison overflow short term. Growth became so rapid that nine complete new prisons were built in that decade, the largest being Pentridge, which opened in Coburg in 1858.

We toured the old Magistrate’s court on one of our days when we walked in downtown Melbourne. It sits on the site of the old Supreme Court where Ned Kelly was sentenced to death, and where many of Melbourne’s most notorious criminals stood to hear their grim fates, including hanging. Many of us wore costumes of the era and enacted bits of the trial of Ned Kelly. We walked through heavily graffitied cells and found time to read some of the very poignant comments of some of the inmates, both male and female. Often in a state of hopelessness. 

We learned of the in-house violence and tragedy which highlighted the sad plight of those who were unlucky enough to have to attempt to survive in such places. Australia’s early goals were far from pleasant.