About This Attraction
The Lock Street Gaol was formerly a prison built in 1880 and South Africa`s first women`s gaol, which housed persons such as Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Daisy de Melker, a woman accused of poisoning two husbands and a son with arsenic. In this jail the first execution happened in 1882 where a drop gallow was placed in the hospital yard. In 1905 a gallows block was built and with it, three death row cells and an execution chamber, with more cells being added in 1909.