This page is a record of a book relating to Fremantle.
- Part of:
- Title: Secrets of the Prison House: An Inmate's View of Fremantle Prison 1903–1905
- Authors: Bert Leighton, Andrew Gill
- Published: 2025 Blatellae Books (Perth)
- Reference URL: https://freopedia.org/Secrets_of_the_Prison_House
- Tags: Fremantle Prison
- Authority control:
Edited and introduced by Andrew Gill.
From the Royal Western Australian Historical Society affiliate's newsletter, November 2025:
Bert Leighton served two years and nine months ‘hard labour’ of a five year sentence, for receiving stolen banknotes.
In 17 articles published after his release, Leighton described aspects and areas of the Fremantle Prison not mentioned in official reports, including the misery of separate treatment, the wasted hours spent in the prison yards, labour in the pump gang, singing in the Anglican prison choir, the absurd pomposity of the Sunday church parade, the poor quality of books in the prison library.
Leighton recorded the abuses he observed: the treatment of mentally unsound prisoners in separate treatment who were also subject to electric shocks- ‘bath and battery’, inconsistencies in granting remission for work within the prison, and the failure to observe the recommendations of the 1898 Penal Commission.
Leighton’s account is written with the passionate belief that only a prisoner could write an accurate account of the experience of being imprisoned.