The Bloody Code applied death sentences to a growing number of crimes, while others attracted cruel penalties of mutilation, burning and whipping.
A part of Kent’s penal legacy is its role in the domestic convict system that replaced transportation.
Chatham convict prison opened in 1856. It was a ‘public works’ prison, built to accommodate convicts who would hitherto have been sentenced to transportation.
Maidstone convict prison opened in 1909, built alongside the town’s nineteenth-century local jail.