Prisoners their own warders : a record of the convict prison at Singapore in the Straits Settlements, established 1825, discontinued 1873, together with a cursory history of the convict establishments at Bencoolen, Penang and Malacca from the year 1797

A meticulous chronicle of Singapore’s convict jail from its founding in the early‑nineteenth century to its closure in 1873, this work also sketches the parallel establishments at Bencoolen, Penang and Malacca. Drawing on official registers, personal letters and contemporary reports, the authors—both seasoned colonial engineers—pair factual tables with richly detailed maps and illustrations that bring the stone walls and bustling workshops to life.

Listeners will be guided through the daily rhythm of the prison: the regimented drills, the skilled trades taught to the inmates, and the ways their labor shaped the young settlement’s roads, ships and public buildings. The narrative also touches on the administration’s experiments in discipline and reform, offering a window into broader colonial attitudes toward punishment. Though it stops before the final transfers of prisoners to the Andaman Islands, the account leaves a vivid impression of a vanished world where authority and survival were intertwined within the prison’s high walls.