Monument record 0045200000 - HM PRISON, BIERTON HILL

The County Gaol was built in 1845 to replace premises behind County Hall. It provided cells for 250 prisoners, and had a chapel with 274 seats arranged so that prisoners could see the chaplain but not each other (B2).
After 1845 persons capitally convicted at Aylesbury were executed at the prison and the bodies buried in the prison grounds (B4).
Aylesbury Prison was built between 1844-47 using model plans drawn up by Joshua Jebb, who became the first Surveyor General of Prisons in 1844. The architect was Charles James Pierce. It was built as a male local prison with separate female and debtor's wings. A wing was added in 1902 (the State Inebriate Reformatory) (B8).
Buildings report dated Jun 1995 - Sep 1997 held at NMR (B7).
Aylesbury Gaol holds a significant place in the campaign for women’s suffrage. It housed a number of suffragette prisoners arrested during mass demonstrations by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), a militant suffrage organisation whose members used direct action in support of their campaign for the vote. In March 1912 suffragettes carried out a mass window-smashing raid in London. Holloway Gaol, the usual prison for suffragettes, could not cope with the numbers arrested, so many were sent to Aylesbury. On 5 April, the prisoners began a secret hunger strike which went undetected for several days, and when the authorities found out, hunger strikers were fed by force, although four were released on health grounds.
The Aylesbury hunger strike spread to other prisons to become the largest mass hunger strike undertaken by suffragettes, with over eighty prisoners taking part. Aylesbury became the focus for protests against forcible feeding and on 13 April 1912 over 100 protesters marched on the gaol to hold a meeting at the gates. Suffragette prisoners waved handkerchiefs from their cell windows.
The list entry was amended in 2018 as part of the centenary commemorations of the 1918 Representation of the People Act (B5).