Inside Kingston Pen

Charles Dickens, who knew a thing or two about the horrors of Victorian prisons, was impressed when he visited the Kingston Penitentiary in 1842, seven years after it opened on the windswept shores of Lake Ontario. “There is an admirable gaol here,” he wrote in American Notes, “well and wisely governed and excellently regulated in every respect.”

Indeed, there was reason to be optimistic about an institution that was founded with the philosophy that discipline and labour would encourage clean living and lead a penitent man to embrace rehabilitation. With its metre-thick limestone walls and elegant Doric columns, Kingston Penitentiary was meant to display the power and majesty of the law. But, very quickly, that law was shown to be almost completely arbitrary: the first warden imposed a strict regime with whippings a daily occurrence, even for women and children...