Fremantle Prison

On another sunny and warm day, I walked to Fremantle Prison and took two very good tours with guides who explained about the facilities, the convicts kept there, and prison life. The tours went to the cells, the gallows and the chapel where the board on the wall behind the altar showing the Ten Commandments was very similar to the one in the Temple Church in London.
The prisoners came in the mid-19th century on prison ships from England and they were meant to have been convicted of low-level, non-political crimes, and when released, to become part of Western Australia's expanding population. However, in the 1860s, some Irish Fenians were sent and there was a famous escape of a few of them on a ship sent by American supporters in Boston.Read more