Convicts of ALABAMA STATE PENITENTIARY, 1846

For More Information On This Penitentiary History Visit http://www.doc.state.al.us/history.htm

   As a general rule of the early Alabama frontiersmen, the administration of justice was best left in the hands of the local citizens, or when available, with county officials. Even in the county seats, justice was
swift and harsh, as the towns vindictively encouraged their sheriffs to stage hangings in the public square. These festive spectacles attracted large crowds from miles around, eager for the entertainment atmosphere created by the settlement’s merchants. Floggings, branding, and other mutilation and humiliation punitive events were also made public. Hanging offenses included murder, rape, robbery, burglary, stealing slaves, rustling livestock, counterfeiting, and treason.
     On January 26, 1839, under Governor Arthur P. Bagby, the State Legislature enacted a criminal code that authorized a state penitentiary system.
       By August 21, 1839, after seeking a location that was central to Alabama, property for a prison was purchased adjacent to the Coosa River near Wetumpka. In October of that year, Governor Bagby laid the cornerstone of the Wetumpka State Penitentiary and by 1841 the 208 cell prison surrounded by walls twenty-five feet high was completed at a cost of $84,889. William Hogan was selected to be Alabama’s first prison warden.
      The first inmate entered the Wetumpka State Penitentiary (WSP) in 1842 with a twenty year sentence for harboring a runaway slave. WSP was called "The Walls of Alabama" or more diminutively as the "Walls." Once established, the prison population during this period was composed of white immigrants (99%) and free blacks (1%). The laws of the time said that enslaved blacks had no freedom to infringe upon, and were thus punished extralegally by their owners for alleged offenses.

CONVICTS OF ALABAMA STATE PENITENTIARY, November 1846