I went to work for a couple of hours and then took off to my econ class. After that I went to my group meeting. Our final write-up over the presentation from last Friday is due this Friday. So far we have 29 pages!!! So we proofread and edited it today. All we have to do tomorrow is assemble the appendix and we should be good to go.
I then came home and started on my econ homework. We are getting into some pretty hairy material. I wish I would have had time to read the whole chapter but I could only thumb through and try to figure it out. There is no grade for the homework. It is mostly so we get an idea of how well we understand the subject.
We took off and went to Andrew's place for a steak dinner. YUM! After dinner we headed out to the Fremantle Prison for the Torch light tour!!! Well over here in Australia, torch = flash light. We got there and they passed out mini flash lights for everyone in the tour to use.
Here is the entrance to the prison.
This specific tour is mainly meant for adults, only because they tell the really gruesome stories
that went on in the prison. Built by convicts from England after 1829, its limestone edifices housed convicts until it became a regular prison, and was only closed in 1991, still housing
criminals in stone floored cells, no real heating, running water or toilets in each
cell. The last person to be hanged there was Eric Cooke in 1962, from memory, for the
crimes of serial killing.
The tour was conducted by one guide, who had all these stories to tell, and whose
narritive was complemented by actors bursting onto scene, scaring the hell out of
everyone, only to scare us further with the realism of a character straight from the prison's
history. It was quite impressive, and added that extra depth to what could have been a standard
tour.
Here is a picture of the yard where some prisoners were allowed to roam. There is an area where a vegetable garden used to be. It was banned after some prisoners figured out how to make a miniature distillery in a pumpkin.
One of the stories told was of a man on death row in 1916, who
attempted suicide by detonating dynamite in his mouth. (no one knows how he got a hold of dynamite). This failed, resulting in his left side of his face and his lower jaw being blown off. He survived, and when the time came months later for his court-ordered demise, the executioner was hesitant about the success of the hanging since the man did not have a jaw anymore. The hanging was carried out, but as the floor gave way and then man fell the noose tied around his neck slid up over where the jaw used to be and the guy's head popped right off!
Here is the gallows where the all of the hangings were conducted. As you can see the executioner would pull the lever and the floor beneath the man on death row would open and the man would drop to his death.
We stood on the ground floor of the prison and all of the cells were located for the next three stories above us. In the picture there is a net. This is because a man jumped over the rail in order to commit suicide. So 23 years later a suicide net was put in.
Back in the day prisoners would also be sentenced to lashings. They would be tide onto the wooden easel thing and get whipped. Here is Andrew demonstrating how the prisoner's would be positioned for their lashings.
Here is the solitary confinement building. The prisoners were kept in tiny rooms with no beds in the dark for 23 hours a day. The walls were 1 foot thick so that they were in total silence and could not hear anything. The doors were all locked as this is the place throughout the prison with the most active haunting.
After the tour we all went to a Spanish cafe whose specialty was hot chocolate, so of course
I went for the chai latte, and shared a slice of cheese cake. I stayed away from the hot chocolates as I had been warned that they were the equivalent of melting an entire block of chocolate and serving it as a drink. A little to rich and thick for me I'm afraid.
Went back home and finished my econ. Now I'm heading off to bed.
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