The Gaol on the Hill: The prelude to and construction of Bendigo’s sandstone gaol

Abstract

The gold rushes on the Victorian goldfields of the 1850s increased the population of the new colony seven times over. This created many problems for the new government, not the least of which was an increase in lawlessness which put authorities under severe pressure to house the rapidly growing convict population. Other issues confronting colonial prison administrators were the mobility of the population as gold seekers moved to the latest finds, the presence of a large Chinese population on the goldfields and the housing of the mentally disturbed. At the same time, new philosophies in prison design gave the Victorian government the potential to replace its first, hastily constructed, goals with the latest ‘state of the art’ prisons at strategic locations across the goldfields.