During the eighteenth-century Imprisonment was not the main form of punishment as it is today. Prisoners were made to do hard and monotonous labour, and some were kept in silence to reflect on their actions. Here, tasks included shoemaking, thrum or mat making, and walking the treadmill to grind corn. For more serious crimes, perpetrators were sentenced to death and faced a short walk from the condemned cells to the hanging platform outside, at the back of the museum building. In 1874, shoemaker Thomas Chamberlain was hanged for the murder of John Newitt, he was the last person to be executed at this gaol before it closed in 1880.
Northampton Museum and Art Gallery is part of the original Victorian addition to Northamptonshire’s County Gaol, which opened in 1791 and was expanded in 1846.
This cup and plate were used for Holy Communion services in the gaol’s chapel. The cup is inscribed with 1782, before the gaol opened, and the word ‘Gaol’ has been added later, suggesting that it was used at an earlier chapel. The chapel would have encouraged prisoners to repent for their crimes and seek forgiveness through breaking bread and drinking wine, symbolic of the body and blood of Christ.
Number 60 of the objects selected for the A History of Northamptonshire in 100 Objects exhibition 2025.
© NMAG
© NMAG
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NMAG
©
NMAG
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NMAG
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The Trustees of the British Museum