The Hay Gaol is a heritage-listed former prison and now museum at 355 Church Street, Hay, in the Riverina region of New South Wales, Australia. It was an adult prison from 1880 to 1915 and 1930 until 1940, a prisoner-of-war camp during World War II, and a juvenile facility, the Hay Institution for Girls, from 1961 to 1974. It was designed by James Barnet and Colonial Architect and built from 1879 to 1880 by Witcombe Brothers. The site faces Church Street, and is otherwise bounded by Piper, Macauley and Coke Streets, north-east of the town centre. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 13 March 2009.
History
The first Gaol The original gaol at Hay was a police lock-up, located in Lachlan Street on the site of the present Hay Post Office. The lock-up was proclaimed a Public Gaol on 1 December 1870.New South Wales Government Gazette, No. 295, 6 December 1870, p. 2711. The gaol initially contained two cells to accommodate prisoners. During 1878, however, there was a large increase in the number of prisoners detained at Hay – 192 entries to the gaol (compared to just nine the year before) and 176 discharges (compared to thirteen previously). As a result, “much needed improvements” were made to the gaol, with the prisoner accommodation being increased by 1879 to four cells. In 1879 there were 173 entries and 175 discharges; and, in 1880, 154 entries and 158 discharges.’Prisons (Report for 1878)’, pp. 1–3 in New South Wales Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly, 1879–1980, Vol. 2, p. 973–975; ’Prisons (Report for 1879)’, pp. 1–3 in NSW V&PLA, 1880–1881, Vol. 2, pp. 149–151; ’Prisons (Report for 1880)’, pp. 1–3 in NSW V&PLA, 1881, Vol. 2, pp. 923–925.
The large numbers of prisoners detained at Hay from 1878 onwards prompted the Comptroller General of Prisons, Harold Maclean, to approve the building of new gaol facilities, construction of which began in 1879. When the new gaol in Church Street was ready for occupancy in late 1880 the old Lachlan Street gaol was down-graded to a “Watch-house or Lock-up only”.
Hay Gaol – 1880 to 1915
The new Hay Gaol in Church Street was built during 1879-80 by the local building firm of Witcombe Brothers. The perimeter consists of a five-metre-high () wall of locally produced red bricks, with a large central entrance gate (in front of a small barred entrance court). Two guard towers were placed at diagonally opposite corners of the perimeter wall. The main cell-block contained 12 cells (including two for female prisoners). The cells (apart from two of a larger size) measured 9 feet 9 inches by 10 feet 2 inches, each with cement floors and a galvanised roof. The compound also contained a solitary confinement cell, mess-hall, kitchen, meeting-room and officer's residence.The Witcombe Heritage: A History of the Buildings of Hay by Caroline Merrylees and Derek Woolcott (Hay Historical Society: 1993).
The Hay Gaol was officially opened in late 1880. A proclamation by the Governor of the Colony of New South Wales dated 21 December 1880 declared the "New Gaol at Hay" to be a "Public Gaol, Prison and House of Correction". A separate notice in the Government Gazette stated that the new gaol "has been appointed a place at which male offenders under order or sentence or sentence of transportation... shall be detained and be liable to be kept to hard labour".New South Wales Government Gazette, No. 508, 24 December 1880, p. 6641.
A visitor to Hay in early 1881 wrote: "The gaol is a really fine building and deserves mention; it faces one in a most ominous manner on coming into the town from Narrandera". The writer added: "As yet they have not got the hanging apparatus up".'Hay' (by "The Raven"), Town & Country Journal, 30 April 1881, page 848.
Hay Gaol initially operated under the control of the police. On 17 March 1882, however, the gaol was placed under the administration of its first gaoler, Ghiblim Everett. Everett's wife, Mary Ann, was the matron at the gaol; the remainder of the staff comprised a senior warden and four other wardens. Ghiblim and Mary Ann Everett were at Berrima before coming to Hay, where Ghiblim was chief warder at Berrima Gaol.Blue Books (New South Wales Public Service Lists), 1882-9, p.87; NSW birth registration details. The Hay Gaol facility continued mainly to be used to incarcerate comparatively short-term offenders from the surrounding districts. Ghiblim Everett was an active gardener and during his period as gaoler “he created a garden there which was one of the beauty spots of Hay”. A vegetable garden at the gaol, maintained by the inmates, supplied fresh produce for prisoners’ meals.Obituary – Ghiblim Everett, Riverine Grazier, 23 May 1898, p. 2; Hay Gaol reports (from 1896), Votes and Proceedings of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly.
It was used mainly for offenders with short sentences, as those imprisoned for long terms were sent to Goulburn Gaol. As the years went on Hay Gaol struggled to remain open, due to a lack of prisoners. The daily average number of prisoners at Hay during the period 1895-7 was 25 (1895), 17 (1896) and 14 (1897). Ghiblim Everett eventually retired as the gaoler at Hay (probably in about 1896), “because of being over the superannuation age, on a pension”. The Gaoler at Hay during 1897 was Benjamin Shaw. On 14 December 1897 P. Phelan took over this position. The first gaoler of the Hay Gaol, Ghiblim Everett, died in May 1898 at Hay.Obituary – Ghiblim Everett, op. cit.; 'Hay Gaol' (report) from 'Prisons (report for the year 1897)', New South Wales Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly, Vol. 3, 1898, pp. 26–27.
From 4 April 1899 the Hay Gaol was under the control of S. J. Nebbett, who took over from D. D'Arcy (previously Chief Clerk at Darlinghurst Gaol). In April 1899 lights were installed for the first time in all cells at the Hay Gaol, "a privilege highly appreciated by the prisoners, the monotony of the cells being very much relieved by lights and reading". Library books were issued twice weekly to all well-conducted prisoners, and "also slates and school books if required". Apparently some sort of rationalisation occurred during 1899, probably in regard to staffing at the gaol: "It was found possible to reduce Hay Gaol, making the sixth Prison [in New South Wales] so dealt with...".'Hay Gaol' (report) from 'Prisons (report for the year 1899)', New South Wales Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly, Vol. 2, 1900, p. 26.
By 1915 the gaol had only three prisoners being supervised by a staff of four. It was costing £582 per year to remain open and the former Governor of Parramatta Gaol, Superintendent O'Connor, deemed that Hay Gaol was "no longer useful". It was officially closed on 30 June 1915 (though it remained operating until 4 July 1915).New South Wales Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly, 1915–1916, vol. 4, p. 44; Riverine Grazier (newspaper), 25 June 1915; 13 July 1915.
Health services use Between the two World Wars, the Gaol buildings met Hay's medical needs. In 1919, during a local outbreak of the worldwide Spanish Flu epidemic, the Gaol was briefly used as an emergency hospital to isolate patients who couldn't be treated at the Hay Hospital. In 1921 Hay's Red Cross Society turned the Gaol into a maternity home. The two rooms at the front entrance became wards, as did the old hospital area. Many older Hay locals enjoy telling the tale that they were "born in the Hay Gaol."
A Gaol again – 1930 to 1940
In 1930 the maternity home moved to a new site in Hay. That year, the state's gaols were congested, a result of the new Consorting Act which gave police more powers to convict well-known criminals. It was decided to reopen the Hay Gaol and connect the building to town gas and sewerage. In August 1930 the former gaol at Hay was again proclaimed as a public prison, applicable from 9 September 1930. Harry Hood was appointed as the governor. The Gaol operated for ten years, in that time one escape was recorded; Reginald Arthur Dawson, a prisoner employed as a cook, scaled the wall of the Gaol using a rope made from towels and a poker. He was captured in a paddock five days later.
Prisoner of war camp
During World War II Hay was used as a prisoner-of-war and internment centre, due in no small measure to its isolated location. Three high-security camps were constructed there in 1940. The use of the Gaol as a detention and hospitalisation facility that serviced the POW camps from 1940 to 1946 brought aspects of the camps into the town's heart. The first internees were over two thousand refugees from Nazi Germany and Austria, many of them Jewish; they had been interned in Britain when fears of invasion were at their peak and transported to Australia in 1940 aboard the HMT Dunera. Interned under the guard of the 16th Garrison Battalion of the Australian Army they became known as the "Dunera Boys". Later that year began the arrival of Italian civilian internees. In February 1941, in the wake of the Cowra POW break-out, a large number of Japanese POWs were transferred to Hay and placed in the three high-security compounds. During 1946 the POWs who remained at Hay were progressively released or transferred to other camps, and the Hay camps were dismantled and building materials and fittings sold off by June the following year. The internment at Hay of the Dunera refugees from Nazi oppression in Europe was an important milestone in Australia's cultural history. About half of those interned at Hay eventually chose to remain in Australia. The influence of this group of men on subsequent cultural, scientific and business developments in Australia is difficult to over-state; they became an integral and celebrated part of the nation's cultural and intellectual life. The "Dunera Boys" are still fondly remembered in Hay; every year the town holds a "Dunera Day" in which many surviving internees return to the site of their former imprisonment. Today the Gaol is one of only a few buildings remaining in Hay associated with the camps.
It was de-commissioned as a prison on 31 October 1947.NSW Government Gazette No. 121, 29 August 1930, p. 3446; Merrylees & Woolcott, op. cit.; Haywire: The Wartime Camps at Hay, Hay Historical Society, 2006.
Second period out of prison use
After the Hay camps were broken up in 1946–7, the Gaol was used intermittently for emergency housing during the 1952 and 1956 floods, and as accommodation for Italian workers in town to build the new sewerage system.
Institution for Girls
From 1961 to 1974 the Hay Gaol was managed by the New South Wales Child Welfare Department as a particularly coercive maximum security institution for girls between the ages of thirteen and eighteen. The Hay Institution for Girls, as it was officially known, was established in response to wide scale rioting at Parramatta Girls' Home in 1961. The aim of Hay was to separate the girls involved in the riots and those whose behaviours generally were considered too difficult to be managed at Parramatta. Girls were sent to Hay for three month sentences. Many of the girls detained at Hay in the Institution were Aboriginal. In its conception, as a facility for maximum security segregation; in its governing according to strict discipline and routine; and in its housing in an old colonial prison, Hay mirrored The Institution for Boys in Tamworth previously established in 1947.