pending its completion, a portion of the Immigration Barracks in Princes street south was used as a temporary prison.
Whatever appearance the first gaol presented, the one that succeeded it was not, as an architectural structure, of a character to awaken admiration; nor, indeed, is the present one. It was a one-storied timber building about 24 feet long by 16 feet wide, with a row of narrow open bunks, immigrant-ship fashion, running down each side, and an open passage between the rows, entrance to the bunks being effected endways. Into this dormitory light was meagrely admitted from the Bay side through two or three small windows, with thin perpendicular iron bars, fixed on with screws. At the outer end of one of the rows of bunks were two closed-in solitary cells, or strong-rooms, if the word strong can in this connection be applied to ordinary planks of wood and to a wooden door. Seeing that, in many instances the world over, massive stone walls and iron doors have failed to prevent the escape of men of the Jack Shepherd class, it goes without saying that the matchboard cells of the old Dunedin Gaol were altogether inadequate to frustrate the efforts of even less desperate men bent on regaining their liberty. More than one broke out and escaped, only, however, to be recaptured; and one man, known as "Hobartown Jack," to whom a fellow-prisoner had passed a tomahawk through between the window bars, was only prevented from chopping the frail thing to pieces by a superior force overcoming him. This tiny and slim erection, which was suggestive of the idea of a travelling wild beasts' menagerie, stood on the present gaol site. Adjoining it was a yard about 60 feet by 40 feet, and both the prison and the yard, with the gaoler's residence, another small wooden edifice facing Stuart street, were surrounded by a paling fence six feet high, and with the rails placed inside. Without the aid of the rails as steps, however, any man of ordinary stature who objected to the deprivation of his liberty, could easily have hoisted himself over such a wall. The gaol lengthways faced the bay, the water of which washed up to the foot of the fence. On the opposite side of the street was the gaol garden (the ground now occupied by Findlay and Co.'s saw mill), and there the few prisoners reared vegetables for their and the gaoler's use. Making all allowance for the annoyance caused by occasional disturbing
