The Athenian State Prison
Paul Cartledge reconstructs the prison and execution-site of Socrates
Among the manifold and multifarious delights awaiting visitors to the new eighteenth-century gallery of the Museum of London are the original doors from Newgate Gaol now standing in a massive reconstruction of the prison's stone walls. Nearby are the cells from Wellclose Square lock-up, poignantly adorned with carvings of prisoners' names and incised images of gallows. These places of confinement may have been, as Roy Porter has drily put it, 'laws unto themselves'; but quite certainly they were (in the words of a contemporary) 'fitter to make a rogue than reform him'.
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