When Worcester's witches were burned on The Cross

These were, to avoid any undue handwringing, different days.

All remains of the jail, which stood in the Old Castle just south of Worcester Cathedral on land occupied by King’s School, have long gone as it was demolished in the early 1800s.

But some graphic details of what went on there still survive.

Old line drawing of the county prison being built of stone and brick in the first half of the 17th century

It was one of the sights of the city, although not quite a National Trust treasure of its day, and one of its traditions was that on Assize Sunday – the Sunday during or immediately after the Assize – convicted prisoners were paraded before the crowds.

For a swift 6d in their back pocket, the jailers would point out to onlookers the condemned.

Which was one way of supplementing what must have been a meagre income.

A print of Edgar Tower in 1794, when a lane to the left was the main entrance to the old County Prison (Image courtesy CFOW)

The prison should have been divided into two sections, one for felons who committed crime and another for debtors who merely owed money, but there was only an open ironwork railing separating the two and they could communicate as they pleased.

Because the debtors’ common room was far too small, it had to double as a chapel.

Edgar Tower undergoing substantial renovation in 2015

Neither was there a special room for the condemned criminal, they were simply chained to a post during the day near a door to the chapel/common room.

An early occupant was Ursula Corbett, otherwise know as the White Witch of Worcester, who actually lived at Defford, near Pershore, where she was accused of poisoning her husband of only three weeks.

She was burned at the stake at Worcester High Cross on March 14, 1661.

The jail was built sometime between 1621 and 1650 within the old castle precincts to serve as “a house of correction”.

The site of Worcester’s public gallows is still marked by this tree in a garden at the top of Redhill

Its entrance was via a lane on the south side of Edgar Tower and it had originally been a substantial structure of brick and stone.

As the years went on it became increasingly decrepit and insecure and there were numerous escapes.

By 1788 it had already been condemned by John Howard, the prison reformer, and the fertiliser really hit the fan in 1807 when leading judge Chief Baron Macdonald arrived for the Assize to be told all the prisoners in the important cases had disappeared.

After that a new jail was built in Salt Lane in 1813.

There were regular transfers of prisoners via the transports, or prison ships, that went down the river from Diglis to Bristol from where they were shipped out to the plantations, while executions took place on Redhill.

Processions from the prison to the gallows were often rowdy affairs, although sometimes there was genuine sorrow at the loss of the young life.

Worcester Cross in the early 1900s. No sign of witches, but the tram lines had just been laid

Berrow’s Worcester Journal reported one execution of a young soldier aged 23 for desertion: “the condemned man walking with his shroud behind the coffin, from the jail to the place of execution reading from a book – the procession was the most decent and solemn ever seen on such an occasion”.

Definitely not a day for dodgy dealing.