J. A. Edmison wrote in his book, The History of Kingston Penitentiary, “If [KP’s] walls could talk, we would indeed have stories of drama, of tragedy, of cruelty, of every vicissitude of human emotion.” Though Canada’s oldest and most notorious maximum-security prison closed in 2013, some of those stories have survived.
While KP has become one of Kingston’s top tourist attractions in recent years, this isn’t the first time in its history that sightseers have been allowed in. In the 1830s and 1840s, the new penitentiary charged admission to the “better classes” to gawk at the prisoners. Charles Dickens was one of those early tourists, and in his travelogue American Notes he wrote that KP was “well and wisely governed, and excellently regulated, in every respect.” He was deceived. An 1849 report detailed flagrant abuse of prisoners, and the warden was accused of “mismanagement or negligence reducing the penitentiary to a state of utmost disorder.” The Kingston Pen tours were cancelled in the early 1900s.
But now that tours of KP have resumed, you can get behind the prison’s foreboding walls. For tour tickets visit https://www.kingstonpentour.com/visit/admissions/
A visit to Canada’s Penitentiary Museum is a must when visiting Kingston Pen Tours. Admission is by donation, making it accessible for everyone to explore and learn. For more information, visit https://www.penitentiarymuseum.ca/
I have seen Kingston Penitentiary but I think I would like to go back and take the tour.
No comments:
Post a Comment