Huron Historic Gaol

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Huron Historic Gaol

Established	1842
Location	Goderich, Ontario, Canada
Director	Beth Ross
Website	www.huroncounty.ca/museum

The Huron Historic Gaol was established as the jail for Upper Canada's Huron District. The land began to be cleared for the facility in Goderich, Ontario in 1838. The octagonal jail was designed by Thomas Young, modelled after Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon design for prison construction, common in mid-19th century Britain and North America. The facility was constructed between 1839 and 1842 using stone from the Maitland River Valley and from Michigan.

A temporary courtroom and Council Chambers were set up on the jail’s third floor. It was in this makeshift Council Chamber that the first Huron District Council meeting was held on February 8, 1842. The building served the dual purpose of jail and courthouse until the construction of the county courthouse was completed in 1856, in the centre of Goderich’s Market Square.

The site ceased functioning as a jail serving Huron County in 1972 and inmates were then transferred to Walkerton and Stratford jails.

[edit] Hangings

Three inmates were hanged at the jail and two were conducted publicly. On December 18 1861 William Mahone was hanged outside the jail walls. An exterior wall of the jail was the location of the last public execution that occurred in Canada, when on December 7, 1869, Nicholas Melady was hanged for the murder of his father and step-mother. Edward Jardine was hanged privately on June 16 1911.

Steven Truscott awaited execution in the Huron County Gaol from September 30, 1959, when he was convicted of murder, until his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment on January 22, 1960.