Cape Town has had five major prisons during the past 360-odd years, starting with rooms of confinement in the mud-walled fort and dungeons in the bastions of the Castle.
The Council of Policy commissioned a stand-alone prison in 1711 which served the needs of the settlement for 70 years before falling into decay. In 1781, a new structure was erected in Justitie Straat (an extension of the Heerengraght), facing the Parade - the notoriously damp and unhealthy Tronk, which served as an abode of misery for 80 years.
This was followed by an imposing new structure in Roeland Street which housed prisoners from 1859 to 1970, when it was phased out, demolished and replaced by the Western Cape Archives building.
Since then, Pollsmoor (opened in 1964 and comprising five separate prisons) has served as the flagship Cape Town penal institution.
Alternative places of detention through the centuries include Robben Island, some military batteries, the Breakwater Prison, the House of Correction for women, convict stations, prisoner-of-war camps, asylums, reformatories, work colonies and holding cells.
The Tronk was relatively new when the British occupied the Cape in 1795. They took it over seamlessly, abolished certain methods of torture, and confirmed the supervisory powers of the fiscal.
Facilities were improved in the 1820s, but it was a place of barbarism according to some of the well-heeled visitors who applied to view awaiting trial and convicted prisoners - an aspect of cultural tourism that has since fallen into disfavour.
Writing in 1825, Dutch traveller Marten Douwe Teenstra (1795-1864) claimed to have witnessed appalling scenes, including cells in which Khoikhoi and slave prisoners lay all but naked, some chained like wild beasts. Meanwhile, tied to a post in the courtyard, a wailing female slave endured a punishment of 39 lashes at the request of her owner.
Further on, slaves dressed merely in breeches were driving the treadmill (an exhausting hours-long ordeal) while a callous, unkempt policeman kept guard.
Most would probably have preferred to toil in chains on the public works, which was the fate of most Cape Town prisoners.
The authorities were sensitive to the criticism that some slave convicts worked less and were better fed and clothed in prison than they were during service with their masters, and in 1826 the superintendent of police was instructed to keep them at such severe labour as their health and strength would permit.
When Dr James Barry inspected the Tronk in 1824, he was outraged to discover a convict with a broken femur suffering without medicine, proper food, clothing, a bed, a cushion or a blanket. His patron, Lord Charles Somerset, ordered the fiscal to arrange separate accommodation for the sick and provide them with the comfort their helpless condition required. This was grudgingly given.
* Jackie Loos' "The Way We Were" column is published in the Cape Argus every week.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.