Forget Me Not

This post is going to take us a little bit away from our normal description of artifacts and talk about something else - dungeons!  Usually when we think of dungeons we think of some dark, sinister place underground far beneath a castle.  But did you know that dungeons also existed in many early jails?  Our own Kings Co. Jail at the Kings Co. Museum had a dungeon!

The picture you see below is the hatch in the floor where prisoners were put when they were being a little too much trouble.  It is just a dark hole - not even room to stand, no light, no fresh air, a prisoner could barely turn around.  Most visitors to the jail don't even notice the hatch until you point it out to them.  The thought of putting a living person in there is, well, very creepy.  The purpose was to inflict maximum psychological damage on a prisoner.  Fortunately this type of punishment was eventually outlawed and remains part of our hidden histories.