Rotary jail

A rotary jail was an architectural design for some prisons in the Midwestern United States during the late 19th century. Cells in the jails were wedges on a platform that rotated in a carousel fashion. The surrounding of the entire level had a single opening, allowing only one cell at a time to be accessible.

Rotary jail in Gallatin, Missouri

Design and patent

The rotary jail was initially designed by architect William H. Brown, and built by the Haugh, Ketcham & Co. iron foundry in the Indianapolis, Indiana neighborhood of Haughville. Their 1881 patent[1] had the following description:

The object of our inventions is to produce a jail in which prisoners can be controlled without the necessity of personal contact between them and the jailer or guard ... it consists, first, of a circular cell structure of considerable size (inside the usual prison building) divided into several cells capable of being rotated, surrounded by a grating in close proximity thereto, which has only such number of openings (usually one) as is necessary for the convenient handling of prisoners.

Features
Detail diagram of central core plumbing connections to cell.

The pie-shaped cells rotated around a core having a sanitary plumbing system, which was considered an unusual luxury at that time. The cell block could be rotated by a single man hand-rotating a crank. It was connected to gears beneath the structure which rotated the entire cell block. The structure was supported by a ball bearing surface to allow for smooth rotation.

Condemned

The jails encountered problems almost immediately with inmates' limbs being crushed or interfering with the cellblock's rotation. Most of the jails had to be welded in a fixed position and refitted with individual cell accesses after only a few years.[2] All of them, except for one, were condemned by June 22, 1939. The Pottawattamie County Jail in Council Bluffs, Iowa, remained in use until December 1969. The rotary mechanism was disabled as late as 1960, following an incident.[3] The last operating rotary jail in existence is in Crawfordsville, Indiana.

Locations

Sources vary as to how many rotary jails had been built, with some sources claiming up to eighteen. Below are the known rotary jail locations:

Structures still standing (although turned into museums and now listed on the National Register of Historic Places):

Jails torn down:

References
  1. US 244358, Brown, W. H. & Haugh, B. F., "Jail or Prison", issued July 12, 1881
  2. Orange Bean Indiana 14 September 2008 - Indiana: Both First and Last in Rotary Jails
  3. Historical Society of Pottawattamie - History of the "Squirrel Cage" Jail
  4. Marimen, Mark; et al. (2008). Weird Indiana: Your Travel Guide to Indiana's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets. Sterling. p. 126. ISBN 978-1-4027-5452-4.
  5. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
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