Prisons and asylums produced enormous quantities of paper: admission registers, case books, inspection reports. That paperwork is why we can say what happened inside them, rather than only what people later claimed.
Every story in Prisons & asylums
- Beechworth · 1867Beechworth Asylum: The Real History of Mayday HillsFor 128 years the asylum on the hill took in Victoria's unwanted. Most of the ones who died there were buried in graves nobody marked.
- Brighton · 1871The Poisoner Who Weaponised A Town's Sweet ShopsShe poisoned an entire town's confectionery to disguise the murder of a woman she hated, killing a child she never met.
Rome · 104 BCThe King Left To Starve Beneath RomeA Numidian king who beat Rome with bribery for years was finally stripped naked and left to starve in a pit.
Poveglia, Venice · 1922The Island Of The Dead In Venice's LagoonA tiny forbidden island soaked in plague pits and asylum horror sits in full view of romantic Venice.
Dunnottar Castle, Stonehaven · 1685The Covenanters' Vault Of Dunnottar Castle167 prisoners were crammed into a single cellar of a clifftop castle for refusing to abandon their faith.
Żagań · 1944The Murder Behind The Great EscapeThe film ends in a rousing adventure — the real mass breakout ended in the cold-blooded murder of fifty recaptured men on Hitler's direct orders.
Washington, D.C. · 1941The Lobotomy That Silenced A KennedyDoctors kept cutting into her brain until a conscious young woman stopped making sense.
London · 1858The Asylum Dickens Wanted For His WifeThe beloved author of A Christmas Carol tried to have his sane wife declared mad to be rid of her.
Andersonville, Georgia · 1864The Deadly Origin Of The Word DeadlineLong before it meant a due date, a dead line marked the boundary where Civil War prisoners could be shot on sight.
Redhill · 1987The Queen's Cousins Hidden And Presumed DeadListed as dead for decades, two first cousins of the Queen were quietly living in a long-stay institution.- Ahlden · 1694The Queen Locked Away For Twenty YearsBritain's first Hanoverian king arrived with no queen, because his former wife was locked in a remote manor, all but erased.
Tordesillas · 1509The Queen Locked Away For Forty-Six YearsBranded 'mad' by the men who wanted her throne, she may have been one of history's most cruelly wronged queens.
Rome · 46 BCThe Chieftain Who Surrendered To Save His PeopleThe Gallic leader who nearly beat Caesar rode out to surrender rather than let his starving people die, and spent six years dying slowly in a Roman prison.
Windsor · 1210The Warrior Wife King John Starved To DeathA woman who held a castle against thousands of Welshmen was locked in a dungeon by her own king and left to starve with her son.
Leonberg · 1615The Astronomer Who Raced Home To Save A WitchWhile her son mapped the orbits of planets, a sharp-tongued old herbalist sat in a cell accused of witchcraft.- Place de la Bastille, Paris · 1789The Prison Stormed To Free Seven MenA Paris mob expects to find a dungeon of political prisoners chained by a tyrant, and finds something far less dramatic instead.
Leap Castle · 1250The Pit Built To Make You ForgottenUnlike a dungeon with doors and gaolers, this drop into darkness offered no sentence, no ransom, and no way out.
Saint-Pierre, Martinique · 1902The Prisoner Saved By His Own CellA man thrown into solitary confinement for a bar fight becomes the only survivor when the mountain above his city erupts.
Moorfields, London · 1676The Hospital That Sold Tickets To Watch MadnessEveryone knows Bedlam charged a penny to gawp at the mad. The hospital's own archive says it never charged at all — and the only tickets in the story were the ones that shut the public out.
Newgate Prison, London · 1724The Thief Who Escaped His Own Execution CellChained to the floor of a condemned cell with hours to live, he picked his way out with a crooked nail.
Berwick-upon-Tweed · 1306Caged Above Berwick CastleFor crowning Robert the Bruce with her own hands, an English king locked her in an open cage on a castle wall for years.
Harvington, Worcestershire · 1606The Carpenter Who Hid England's PriestsA five-foot Jesuit carpenter carved hidden chambers into English manors for years, and the state never beat their locations out of him.
Tower of London, London · 1613Poisoned in the Tower Over a MarriageImprisoned on a diplomatic post designed to fail, he died slowly of a poison that took months to finish the job.
Tower of London, London · 1499Fourteen Years in the Tower for His BloodlineLocked away as a boy for the crime of his birth, he emerged so isolated he could no longer recognize an animal.
Bastille, Paris · 1669The Man Erased Behind a MaskA man who knew a dangerous royal secret was seized in the night and erased from the human race forever.- Tower of London, London · 1604The Rack Turned One Notch at a TimeSuspected of leaking palace blueprints, he was stretched on the rack one agonizing notch every twenty minutes.
- Southwark, London · 1569Bloody Bonner's Decade of RotThe bishop who sent dozens to the flames spent his final decade rotting in a foul, forgotten dungeon.
- Tower of London, London · 1568The Secret Marriage That Sealed Her FateA love match without the Queen's permission led to a slow, quiet erasure from the world.
- Tower of London, London · 1581The Cell Too Small to Stand or SitA prisoner was crammed into a stone box designed so his body could never fully rest.
- Tower of London, London · 1588The Spy Poisoned Drop by DropInstead of the rack, his jailers slipped mercury into his water until his body dissolved from within.
- Newgate Prison, London · 1537The Monks Starved in the DarkRefusing to bow to the King, ten monks were chained upright in darkness and left to waste away.
- Tower of London, London · 1570The Nobleman Erased in a Stone RoomA young man with royal blood was left to rot for over a decade in a single freezing cell.
- Windsor Castle · 1811The Mad King Chained Inside His Own PalaceBlind, deaf and screaming for hours, he was restrained by his own doctors while his family hid from him.
- Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin · 1916The Wedding Held Hours Before His ExecutionUnder armed guard, he married his fiancée in a prison chapel, then had ten minutes with her as a husband.
- Tower of London, London · 1536The Princess Who Lost Everything OvernightAt two she watched her mother beheaded — at three she had no gowns and no title.
- Columbus · 1930The Fire That Killed 322 Men Locked in Their CellsAs flames tore through an overcrowded cellblock, guards had the keys, and hundreds burned to death still chained inside.
- North Brother Island, New York · 1938The Cook Who Refused to Believe She Was Typhoid MaryShe infected dozens as an asymptomatic carrier and spent 26 years in forced isolation, still insisting she was innocent.