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Rock College: An Unofficial History of Mount Eden Prison
Grim, Victorian, notorious—for 150 years Mount Eden Prison held both New Zealand’s political prisoners and its most infamous criminals. Te Kooti, Rua Kenana, John A. Lee, George Wilder, Tim Shadbolt, and Sandra Coney all spent time in its dank cells. Its interior has been the scene of mass riots, daring escapes, and hangings. Highly regarded historian Mark Derby tells the prison’s inside story with verve and compassion.
368 pages, Paperback
Published August 13, 2020
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Mark Derby
43 books5 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
1-tbr-owned-but-not-yet-read
August 21, 2020I was sent this as an ebook by a friend. I'm going to be an ARC reviewer! Not really, I don't have to read or review it, there was no 'exchange', just someone in books in NZ thought I would be interested in (yet another) prison book.
October 16, 2020
On each occasion a befuddled man, usually with little education or skills, who had killed another in a moment of rage, sometimes while drunk, was led to the scaffold to pay the penalty. Thus died Harry Whitland in December 1953. His last words to those watching were 'Merry Christmas'. That experience proved too much for the attending sheriff to bear.
You wouldn’t call Rock College an ode to Mt Eden Prison. Declared unfit for purpose on multiple occasions, it laboured on, not helped by an uncomfortably high national incarceration rate. It is however an outstanding local history, particularly because it has wider implications, like The Unfortunate Experiment or even on the personal level with The Big O
No matter how unappealing or shameful these events may be, nothing is to be gained by continuing to overlook them.
Rock College is a chronicle of how New Zealand treated the most vulnerable in our society (both by virtue of their incarceration and prior social standing).
Rock College asks what part of Western tradition were we drawing upon on when in 1842, The cell was so damp and rat infested that Coates did not consider it fit for habitation even by a lunatic? Or that we transported prisoners to Tasmania until 1853, or whipped young boys in prison in 1866? Before you think things improved quickly, in 1987 the Auckland Star wrote:
The law would not permit animals to be kept in such a place.
…and in 2004 the squalid and run-down building remained non-compliant with building codes.
How Judeo-Christian of us was it when religious objector William White was sent while ill to work in the quarry, to later die in 1919? That there were eight suicides in 1985, or ten in 1997? Or:
When questioned about the propriety of treating an insane man as an ordinary prisoner, Justice Minister Ernest Lee replied that 'Matthews was a man who should never be let loose on society', and offered the supposedly reassuring prediction that he would die in the prison 'within a comparatively few years'?
Is it the height of rationality when:
On the appointed evening he was brought down to the east wing, supposedly for exercise and a shower. Immediately afterwards, and without warning, his arms and legs were bound, and two priests arrived to deliver the final offices?
What were the lessons of the Enlightenment that resulted in a prison that in 1970 held a proportion of Maori that was five times their proportion of New Zealand’s population? That in the replacement prison we had staff of a private prison company taking bets on the outcomes of prisoner ‘fight clubs’?
Rock College is primarily anecdotal, in the sense there is anecdote after anecdote, from prisoner to Inspector of the Prisons, for over 150 years. I am comfortable (thanks to a sizable bibliography) Derby has done his ground work in putting together a detailed, yet very readable account. A strong recommendation for this one, as part of an insight to all our history, whether unappealing or shameful.
You wouldn’t call Rock College an ode to Mt Eden Prison. Declared unfit for purpose on multiple occasions, it laboured on, not helped by an uncomfortably high national incarceration rate. It is however an outstanding local history, particularly because it has wider implications, like The Unfortunate Experiment or even on the personal level with The Big O
No matter how unappealing or shameful these events may be, nothing is to be gained by continuing to overlook them.
Rock College is a chronicle of how New Zealand treated the most vulnerable in our society (both by virtue of their incarceration and prior social standing).
Rock College asks what part of Western tradition were we drawing upon on when in 1842, The cell was so damp and rat infested that Coates did not consider it fit for habitation even by a lunatic? Or that we transported prisoners to Tasmania until 1853, or whipped young boys in prison in 1866? Before you think things improved quickly, in 1987 the Auckland Star wrote:
The law would not permit animals to be kept in such a place.
…and in 2004 the squalid and run-down building remained non-compliant with building codes.
How Judeo-Christian of us was it when religious objector William White was sent while ill to work in the quarry, to later die in 1919? That there were eight suicides in 1985, or ten in 1997? Or:
When questioned about the propriety of treating an insane man as an ordinary prisoner, Justice Minister Ernest Lee replied that 'Matthews was a man who should never be let loose on society', and offered the supposedly reassuring prediction that he would die in the prison 'within a comparatively few years'?
Is it the height of rationality when:
On the appointed evening he was brought down to the east wing, supposedly for exercise and a shower. Immediately afterwards, and without warning, his arms and legs were bound, and two priests arrived to deliver the final offices?
What were the lessons of the Enlightenment that resulted in a prison that in 1970 held a proportion of Maori that was five times their proportion of New Zealand’s population? That in the replacement prison we had staff of a private prison company taking bets on the outcomes of prisoner ‘fight clubs’?
Rock College is primarily anecdotal, in the sense there is anecdote after anecdote, from prisoner to Inspector of the Prisons, for over 150 years. I am comfortable (thanks to a sizable bibliography) Derby has done his ground work in putting together a detailed, yet very readable account. A strong recommendation for this one, as part of an insight to all our history, whether unappealing or shameful.
August 3, 2022
A thorough and well-researched history of this medieval monstrosity, with my only note that, while it explores tirelessly the twentieth-century history of the prison and all its celebrity inmates, we seem to skip over the last 50 years (since 1970) in just 8 or 9 pages, which is a bit frustrating. Other than that, a useful and reliable text.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews