The Entire Story of Pentridge — Australia's Most Feared Prison and the Suburb Built Around It

The Entire Story of Pentridge — Australia's Most Feared Prison and the Suburb Built Around It A bluestone wall runs along Sydney Road for the length of an entire suburb, and for a hundred and forty-seven years the people of Coburg lived under it — a fifth of them earning their wages inside it. Ten men and women were hanged behind it. The last flogging in Australia was carried out behind it. And in 1987, in a seven-million-dollar "escape-proof" electronic unit, five men died behind doors a computer would not open. This is the entire story of Pentridge. In this video, we trace Pentridge from the sixteen prisoners marched up Sydney Road in December 1850 to a stockade of log huts, through the gold-rush Panopticon the prisoners built from their own quarried bluestone, the petition of 191 residents that renamed the village Coburg in 1870 to escape the gaol's stigma, the ten executions including Eddie Leonski and Jean Lee, the last flogging in Australia on 1 April 1958, the punishment block the prisoners called Hell and the Jenkinson Inquiry that heard 191 witnesses about it, the 1965 escape that killed warder George Hodson and the hanging of Ronald Ryan on 3 February 1967 for a bullet that was never found, the Jika Jika fire of 29 October 1987 and the coroner who found the prison system "moribund and corrupt" — to the closure of 1 May 1997, the sale of the site, the hotel now built inside the 1859 cell block, and the billboard on the same road that today reads "Escape to Pentridge." The town erased the name to save its property values. The developers sell it as the view. 🔍 TOPICS COVERED Pentridge Prison, HM Prison Pentridge history, Coburg Melbourne, Bluestone College, Ronald Ryan last man hanged in Australia, George Hodson, Ryan Walker escape 1965, Henry Bolte, Jika Jika fire 1987, Robert Wright Jika Jika, Hal Hallenstein inquest, H Division Pentridge, Jenkinson Inquiry 1973, last flogging in Australia 1958, William O'Meally, Eddie Leonski Brownout Strangler, Jean Lee last woman hanged, Chopper Read H Division, Gregory David Roberts Shantaram escape, Russell Street bombers, Craig Minogue, Ned Kelly remains Pentridge, Pentonvillains exiles Victoria, Batman treaty 1835, Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung, Pentridge redevelopment Shayher, Pentridge Village Coburg Quarter 📜 SOURCES This video draws on Public Record Office Victoria, including the Particulars of Execution Book, the Victorian Heritage Database (H1551), the reports of the Jenkinson Board of Inquiry (1973) and the Murray Board of Inquiry (1989), the findings of State Coroner Hal Hallenstein on the Jika Jika deaths, the National Museum of Australia's account of the Ryan case, Mike Richards's The Hanged Man, Bree Carlton's Imprisoning Resistance, the Australian Dictionary of Biography, the Encyclopedia of Melbourne (eMelbourne), the State Library of Victoria, Heritage Council Victoria, and contemporaneous reporting in The Australasian (20 June 1868), The Age, The Australian, the ABC and The Urban Developer. 🏛️ ABOUT THIS CHANNEL We explore the institutions Australia built to lock people away. The prisons. The asylums. The wards history tried to bury. If you want the record — not the ghost story — subscribe and turn on notifications. #Pentridge #PentridgePrison #Coburg #PrisonHistory #DarkHistory #AustralianHistory #Melbourne #Victoria