Just outside Belfast city centre lie two fascinating buildings that shed a light on the criminal history of the city over the past couple of centuries. On one side of the Crumlin Road is an imposing structure now sadly dilapidated – it is graffiti strewn and has weeds encroaching into walls, floors and ceilings. This is the former courthouse, now awaiting redevelopment into a luxury hotel, the victim of several arson attacks while it waits a new life. From the courthouse, there is a view directly opposite of where those unfortunate enough to be found guilty of an offence might have found themselves being sent: the Crumlin Road Gaol (they would not have had to cross the road to travel between the two buildings, for a tunnel underneath would have transported those awaiting trial or those who had been convicted, without them having to see the outside world).

Crumlin Road Gaol is today a popular tourist attraction, reflecting our interest in the dark history of the world, but back when it was opened in the 1840s, it would have presented a different image to those who had to stay there. It was far from a luxury hotel, but instead was a sometimes frightening, forbidding place, where small cells were ‘home’ to convicts, both those serving a set prison sentence, and those awaiting execution in its cell for the condemned.

In fact, prior to the gaol being built, Crumlin Road was regarded as being almost in the open country, a road with only around 12 to 15 houses on it. However, in the 1840s, it was recognised that a new gaol was needed to replace the current county gaol at Carrickfergus. Sir Charles Lanyon designed the new gaol from 1841, based partly on Pentonville Prison in London, and it was built between 1843 and 1845. In 1846, a sparse news story in the Irish papers declared that ‘Belfast gaol is in future to be the county prison of Antrim’, and the first contingent of male, female and child prisoners were marched on foot, in chains, from Carrickfergus Gaol to the new establishment on Crumlin Road. The gaol had space for new prisoners to be committed, stripped, photographed and bathed; holding cells for those waiting to go to court; padded cells; punishment cells; a condemned prisoner’s cell and a prison hospital. There were also workshops, stores, a woodyard and an exercise yard – there was a whole world within its walls. The early history of the gaol was even darker than one might expect: in October 1846, a woman named Jane Rennison, who had been sent to the new Belfast Prison for an assault on her husband, killed herself by hanging herself in her cell. This was the time of the Great Famine, and the gaol’s historians have noted that the famine led to more crime – primarily theft and burglary – due to impoverishment. In some cases, individuals committed crimes because they wanted to be admitted to the gaol; there, they would at least get regular meals, however poor the food might be.

By the 1880s, the sparsely occupied road had where the prison was situated had become an urban centre. This was not seen in wholly negative terms, for it was recognised that the road was also a centre for spinning and weaving, and that as the population had grown, so too had the number of ‘first class’ churches and schools there. Yet, of course, life at the gaol was not peaceful, and local men who worked there faced violence during their daily life. In March 1882, for example, one of the prison warders, Michael Largey, had been hit with a hammer thrown by prisoner John Foley. Foley, who was serving a 12-month sentence, had been put to work in the prison’s stoneyard, and had been singing while he worked. The warder told him to stop, and went to looked at his prisoner number in order to report him. Foley was angered by this, and threw the large hammer he had been using at Largey’s head. Luckily, he missed by a few inches, but then he lifted up a large stone and threatened to ‘dash his brains out’ with it. Luckily for Michael Largey, a second warder, Robert Weir, came past at this point and helped his colleague to secure Foley and take him to his cell.

The matter did not end there, however. A third warder, Robert Hodgins, went into Foley’s cell two days later and found that the prisoner had tried to destroy the room. His blankets, sheets and rug were all torn; the toilet had been broken, a gas pipe torn down, and the table broken into pieces. Foley was standing with his back against a wall, with a table rail in his hands. Hodgins asked him what he was doing, but got no reply. It seems to a modern reader that this tale of a prisoner’s violence was actually the result of John Foley’s frustration with prison life and rules, a sign that mentally he was not dealing well with his incarceration. There was little sympathy for him at the time, nor acknowledgement of the mental pressure he may have been under. Instead, a magistrate was summoned to investigate the alleged assault on Largey by Foley, and he was duly ordered to be tried at the next Assizes. When he appeared in court later that month, he was charged with intent to murder and common assault, and found guilty of the latter charge. He was described as an ‘unfortunate’ man who had been in prison 11 times for various offences, including one spell of 18 months for larceny. He had a tendency towards violence, and previously, while an inmate at Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison, he had committed an act of violence towards a warder there. He was now sentenced to another six months in prison, to start when his current term of imprisonment finished.

Those who had been sentenced to death would spend their last night in the condemned cell at the prison. This was a double-sized cell compared to the others, not to offer any degree of luxury, but in order to accommodate a warder overnight to watch over the condemned. At six o’clock in the morning, the prisoner would be woken for breakfast, before receiving the last sacrament from the prison chaplain. He or she would then be pinioned and led to the scaffold. In January 1889, it was cab driver Arthur McKeown’s turn to be executed. He had murdered Mary Jane Phillips at Robert Street in Belfast the previous August, her home described as ‘a house of ill fame in Robert Street, which is one of the worst districts in Belfast’. In an example of some of the most subjective Victorian journalism, one Irish newspaper stated that ‘the reputation of both the prisoner and the murdered girl is decidedly shady’. This seemed to be based on the fact that Omagh-born Mary Jane had been living with Arthur for several years, and had two illegitimate children by him. Their relationship was further complicated by the fact that McKeown was married and had lived apart from his wife (‘who is also a woman of loose character’) for some time.

Mary Jane had been the victim of an assault from a man’s hand, and from a sharp and heavy weapon. Arthur, 35, was quickly identified as a suspect – not only did he live with her, but he had already served a prison sentence for a prior assault on her. He was also still at the house when Mary Jane’s body was found, and although he had just washed his hands, his coat sleeves and shirt front were still saturated with blood. At the Mid Ulster Assizes in December 1888, Arthur McKeown was sentenced to death. He was ‘instantaneously despatched’ on the morning of 14 January from the prison’s scaffold.

By the time this Belfast prison reached its half century, in 1896, it had become established as a notorious place, although only five men would have been executed there by this point, and only the first of those was a public execution. It would only be five years later that its purpose-built execution chamber was used for the first time – on William Woods, who had been convicted of murdering his partner Bridget McGivern, and had a previous conviction for manslaughter. Arthur McKeown, and the other earlier unfortunate condemned men, had been executed elsewhere within the prison walls. In the 20th century, it would house a variety of people, including republicans, loyalists and suffragettes, and continue to see executions carried out there until 1961.