Bocardo (the City Gaol to 1771)
The drawing below made in 1770 shows Bocardo and the North Gate just before they were demolished. The church on the left is St Michael-at-the-Northgate, which then had battlements on its Norman tower. The artist who drew it, N. Calcott, would have been positioned in what is today the north end of Cornmarket but was then outside the city wall.
This map drawn by Agas in 1578 (Historic England CC51/00442) gives a bird's-eye view of the North Gate, looking south. At this point the wall still had battlements and Bocardo did not extend over it:
Originally felons who lived in the city of Oxford (which was then much smaller than it is today) were imprisoned in the Town Gaol or Goal. (The County Gaol at Oxford Castle was for those who lived in all parts of Oxfordshire outside the city, including villages such as Headington and Cowley.) The distinction became blurred in the nineteenth century, when people from the city can be found in the County Gaol.
Bocardo in Cornmarket was the Town Gaol from about the thirteenth century to 1771. It adjoined the city of Oxford's North Gate (also known as Bocardo Gate) next to St Michael-at-the-Northgate Church, and probably included the bastion shown on the right above. Eventually its cells spread over the gate itself. The first known instance of the use of the name Bocardo occurs in 1391. It is never used with the definite article
An Oxford city document dated 1 April 1530 records that “Richard Edys, nowe Keper of the Bockardowe, to enjoy the kepershippe of Bocardowe during life or good behaviour.”
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a number of people were imprisoned in Bocardo because of their various religious beliefs:
- In March 1554 the three Protestant martyrs remembered by the Martyrs' Memorial, namely Archbishop Thomas Cranmer and Bishops Latimer and Ridley,were all sent to Bocardo, where they debated in public with Roman Catholic theologians. The expenses for the last eleven days of Latimer’s stay at Bocardo from 7 October to 16 October 1555 are itemized in detail in the Oxford city accounts and include veal, larks, pork, roast beef, fresh salmon, stewed prunes, apples and pears, all washed down with wine; but the last items listed, including “thry lode of wod faggots to burne Rydlaye and Latimer” plus one load of furze faggots are chilling. On 16 October 1555 Bishops Latimer and Ridley were taken the short distance from Bocardo to be burnt to death outside the city wall in what is now Broad Street. Cranmer, who had only spent a short time in Bocardo, may now have been imprisoned in the nearby Martyr's Bastion. The door of Cranmer's cell in Bocardo was moved to the new city gaol, and is now at St Michael's Church.
- In 1589 two of the four Roman Catholic martyrs remembered on this plaque near the site of the former Holywell Gallows, namely Father George Nichols and Father Richard Yaxley, were imprisoned in Bocardo before going to London to be interrogated.
- In 1662 the Baptists Richard Tidmarsh, Lawrence King, and Richard Hatchman were imprisoned in Bocardo.
- In 1653 one of the earliest Quaker preachers, Elizabeth Fletcher, was incarcerated here.
In c.1635 the new Oxford City Bridewell was built next to Bocardo, just to the north of the city gate, as it was described as “without Northgate”. (The former Bridewell had already closed in 1626 when Dr Barker's house was described as “late Bridewell”, and on 23 May 1630 it was reported that the city had tried to buy the remainder of Edward Ward's lease of a messuage he held at the Northgate.)
Anthony Wood describes the North Gate and Bocardo in great detail in his “Survey of the Antiquities of the City of Oxford” which he composed in 1661–6 (reproduced in Andrew Clark (ed.), Wood's City of Oxford, Vol. 1, pp. 255–7). He says that after the Barons' War ceased in 1217, “halcion days appeared and our swords became rustie; and this place, for want of use, fell into the hands of the Mayor and bailives, who afterwards made it [a] common prison for debters and malefactors belonging to their owne city, which for the same use continueth to this day; and a prison for scollers for little faults.”
In the 1730s John Wesley used to visit the debtors in Bocardo Gaol once a month.
Some of the prisoners in this gaol were transported. Jackson's Oxford Journal reported on 5 May 1770: “Tuesday Morning the Transports from both our County and City Goals [sic] were removed from thence, in order to their being shipped off for the Plantations with those from the different Prisons in London and Middlesex.” On 5 December 1772 that newspaper quoted in full a fascinating letter from David Benfield in Maryland to David Whitton, the Keeper of Bocardo. Benfield had been committed to Bocardo for robbing Richard Crawford of St Thomas's parish and transported about two years previously. He told the Keeper that he was now living like a gentleman and performed “physick & Surgorey”, curing the lame and cutting cancers from three people's faces. He gives news of others who had been transported, and said that he would be very glad to hear from Whitton too.
The fate of Bocardo was sealed by the Mileways Act of 1771, which stated:
In order to open the Street at the North End of the Corn Market
To take down the North Gate, and so much of the Prison called Bocardo, and such houses and other Buildings on both Sides of the said Street, near Saint Michael’s Church, and purchase such Ground as shall be necessary to widen the said Street.
Bocardo was duly demolished later that year. Jackson's Oxford Journal of 21 September 1771 reported:
Yesterday the Workmen employed in pulling down part of the City Wall, adjoining to Bocardo, for widening the Northern Avenue conformable to the late Paving Act, found three Athenian Silver Coins of high Preservation; another of the same Coins had been found in taking down the Prison, some Days before.
The Bocardo's most famous prisoners were the Protestant martyrs in 1855 (Thomas Cranmer, Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley), and when it was pulled down in 1771 Alderman Fletcher arranged for the door of the cell in which they had been confined to be saved and fixed up in the City Gaol. It was then transferred to St Mary Magdalen Church, and is now in the tower of St Michael-at-the-Northgate Church.
The replacement City Gaol in Gloucester Green (1789–1878)
After a gap of about eighteen years, Bocardo was replaced by a new City Gaol (still often spelt “Goal”) in Gloucester Green. On 9 August 1786 the city council granted a lease of part of Gloucester Green on trust to Thomas Walker, Esq on which to build a new gaol and bridewell for the use of the city, and it opened in 1789. It is shown on Davis's map of Oxford which dates from the 1790s:
The City Gallows were at Greenditch (now part of St Margaret's Road), well outside the northern city wall. (At this time only county prisoners were hanged at the Castle Gaol.)
Jackson's Oxford Journal of 5 September 1789 reported on one of the first prisoners in this new gaol: “On Monday last Edward Coxhead, of St. Thomas's Parish, in this City, was fully committed to our new City Goal [sic], charged with robbing the Servant of Mr. Thomas, of this Place, Butcher, of a Neck of Mutton as he was returning to his Master's House....”
On 29 June 1796 the city council agreed to erect iron gates at the entrance to Gloucester Green opposite the great gates of the gaol.
Some of the prisoners in this new gaol were still being transported in the nineteenth century. Jackson's Oxford Journal reports:
- 8 November 1817 “On Thursday last Jacob Josephson and Elias Brown, two convicts under sentence of transportation, the former for 14, and the latter for 7 years, were removed from our city gaol to the hulks at Woolwich”
- 1 March 1823: “On Wednesday last William Mason and Phillip Wadkin, under sentence of transportation for life, were removed from our city goal [sic] to the hulks at Woolwich, until their sentences can be carried into execution”
Gardner's Directory for 1852 describes the gaol thus
The City Gaol which occupies the centre of Gloucester Green, is a substantial, well arranged edifice, completed in 1789. Its predecessor as a city prison was the upper part of the north gae of the city termed Bocardo The prison contains about 50 separate cells, and is also a house of correction. Mr. George Bossom is the present governor.
Jackson's Oxford Journal reported on 27 July 1872 that the daily average number of prisoners in the gaol for the last seven years had been 30. It continued that at the beginning of July 1872 there were only five prisoners in the gaol under short sentences for vagrancy and misdemeanour, and on 20 July 1872, for the first time since it was built in 1789, the city gaol at Gloucester Green was completely entry and it was thrown open to the public and a white flag was hoisted.
The following report in Jackson's Oxford Journal on 14 October 1871 describes both the original gaol and the improvements made that year, including the addition of a north wing and the moving of the chapel:
The position of the gaol in Gloucester Green to the east of the Cattle Market is shown on the detailed 1876 map of Oxford:
The gaol was included in those absorbed by the Government Prisons Bill of 1877, and closed in 1878, allowing much more room for the Cattle Market, which hitherto had been in two sections, one on each side of the gaol. Jackson's Oxford Journal of 1 March 1879 advertised a forthcoming auction of all the materials of the city gaol.
From 1878 to 1996 there was only one prison in Oxford, the one at the Castle, for all prisoners from the city as well as the county.
Gloucester Green City Gaol in the censuses
The City Gaol can be found in the censuses up to its closure
1851 census
The “City Goal” was Schedule No. 109 in the census for St Mary Magdalen
Full names of the prisoners are givenThe Governor was then George Bossom (54), who lived on the premises with his wife Ruth (65), who was the Matron, and Stephen Judd (28), who was the turnkey. On census night there were 23 prisoners, of whom four were women (two common prostitutes, a sempstress, and a charwoman). Ten of the men were general labourers. William Steptoe (x), a master baker, was one of the prisoners: he had pleased guilty at the Quarter Sessions of 8 April 1850 to stealing 250 pounds of bacon, the property of Jesse Hughes of St Clement's and was sentence to twelve calendar months of hard labour.
1861 census
The Gaol was Schedule No. 1 in Enumeration District 7 (part of the parish of St Mary Magdalen).
Only the initials of the prisoners are givenThe Chelsea Pensioner and former Sergeant Francis Walton was then the Governor, and he lived at the gaol with his wife Margaret (28), who was the Matron, and their three-year-old son. The only other official living on the site was the unmarried turnkey Frederick Everitt (40), who was also a Chelsea Pensioner. On census night there were twenty prisoners (17 men and 3 women), including six general labourers, two hawkers, a chimney sweep, and a 21-year-old student who was born in Prussia.
The last was Gustave Adolphe Selmar whose parents lived in Copenhagen, and Jackson's Oxford Journal reported on 27 October 1860 that as soon as he arrived in Oxford he visited four booksellers, stealing a book from one and selling it on to the next. He died at the City Gaol on 76 October 1862 and the jury at the inquest (which was reported on 1 November 1862) returned the verdict that he died of natural causes. His burial record in the St Mary Magdalen parish register named him as Gustave Adolphus Selmar, alias W. Amandud Bierregaard, and he is likely to have been buried in St Sepulchre's Cemetery.
Some mentions of prisoners in Bocardo in Jackson's Oxford Journal
26 May 1753
Reward of three guineas offered for the apprehension of Joseph Taylor, a sieve-maker and lath-render who was waiting in Bocardo to be transported. He was wearing a light brown wig, a dark blue grey coat, a white frock, a double-breasted linen waistcoat, leather breeches, and light grey worsted stockings, and had an iron fetter on his left leg.
16 July 1757
An unnamed person who lied at the Quarter Sessions to try to prevent his relation John Crawford alias Beauty Crawford from being transported. For this “audacious Piece of Villainy he was instantly committed to Bocardo”. Crawford himself had been convicted for stealing about 400 crayfish out of a stew (an artificial enclosure where fish were kept until needed for the table) at Godstow.
30 July 1757
John Jones, due to be tried at the Assizes for horse-stealing, escaped from the city gaol dressed in women's clothes. The woman who brought him those clothes was transported for seven years.
16 December 1758
Mr Haynes, the landlord of the Lamb pub in St Thomas's parish, was committed to Bocardo for threatening to shoot Alderman Ives.
5 January 1760
A gypsy caught leading a horse that he had stolen through Oxford was committed to Bocardo by the Mayor [Isaac Lawrence]
18 July 1761
Thomas Jennings, a cobbler waiting in Bocardo to be transported for seven years for stealing a small quantity of leather from another cobbler, was found to have hanged himself in his “apartment” in Bocardo by a woman who pretended to be his wife and had brought him some tripe for dinner.
3 April 1762
William Perrott, formerly a victualler of the city of Oxford and since a mariner, surrendered himself to the Goaler [sic] or Keeper of Bocardo in the City of Oxford with the intention of taking the benefit of a recent Act of Parliament, “An Act for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors”.
17 April 1762:
A staymaker called Hewitt, the Churchwarden of St Mary Magdalen Church, was seized on coming out of the vestry as a deserter from a regiment of Dragoons then in Germany, and carried to Bocardo for further Examination.
(John Hewit/Hewitt lived in Friar's Entry, but his shop was next to the Anchor pub in Cornmarket Street, and he obviously was not detained in the Bocardo for long, if at all, as he was advertising ladies' and children's stays in Jackson's Oxford Journal just five months later on 25 September 1762.
26 May 1764
John Smith, a butcher of Oxford who was better known as Flesby Jack, was committed to Bocardo for attempting to murder his wife by stabbing her in the neck at the Blue Posts in Butcher Row [Queen Street]
2 March 1765
Charles Aris (better known as Cagey Aris), a former matross [artillery soldier] was committed to the city gaol charged with stealing a pair of sheets and other things from the Ostler's Room at the Star Inn in Cornmarket.
23 March 1765
Moses Baker, an Oxford silk weaver, was confined to the city gaol for a robbery and murder near Coventry
6 July 1765
Sarah Powell, aged about 15 or 16, was committed to the city gaol for breaking open a chest in the house in St Clement's of Samuel Hornidge and stealing twenty shillings.
24 January 1767
William Hardiman, Thomas Williams, and Richard Baxter were committed to Bocardo after being charged with stealing game fowls from the house of William Carpenter in Brewer's Lane.
18 April 1767
Thomas Hutton, aged about 16 or 17, was committed to Bocardo for having hidden in a house the previous day and then when the householders had gone to bed having stolen nearly £3 from the breeches hidden under the pillow of one member of the family.
Definition of Bocardo in the Oxford English Dictionary
Logic. A mnemonic word, representing by its vowels the fifth mood of the third figure of syllogisms, in which the premisses are a particular negative and a universal affirmative, and the conclusion a particular negative, the middle term being the subject of both premisses: thus some M is not P; all M is S; some S is not P.
More information about Bocardo and Oxford's gaols:
- Victoria County History of Oxfordshire, Vol. 4: City of Oxford: Prisons
- Oxfordshire History Centre Blog: Prisons and punishment in 18thand 19th century Oxfordshire: Part 1
- Some executions at the county gaol