Just in time for Halloween, today we visited London's Clink Prison Museum. Dating back to 1144, this is the site of one of England's oldest prisons. The actual prison was burned down in 1790. Inside the museum visitors encounter several gruesome exhibits while listening to recordings of people screaming and moaning in pain. In its day, the prison was for debtors, heretics, drunkards, harlots and religious adversaries. It was owned and managed by the Bishop of Winchester whose palace was located nearby. "The Clink" derives from the sound of rattling chains that the prisoners wore or perhaps the sound of the prison door being bolted. It was a horrible place, worse than you can ever imagine.
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| The Heretic's Fork |
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Catholics and Protestants were both imprisoned
in Clink Prison, depending on the religion of the ruling monarch |
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| The Scold's Bridle |
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| "The Morning Star" Medieval Weapon |
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| Manacles |
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| Death Mask of Oliver Cromwell |
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Wall and window belonging to the
Bishop of Winchester's Palace
dating from 12th century |
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| Get me out of here! |
good timing putting a picture of you at the end. Though I knew of these prisons actually seeing the pictures is just beyond what humans do to each other. Also in the name of religion it was gone. So many of our sayings come from events we are not aware of such as "pulling my leg".
ReplyDeletemeant it was done in the name of religion.
ReplyDelete