Search For Old Jail Road !

The last fabulous huuuuge piece here is of the gateway of Madras Central Prison – 1837. 

This has an interesting story behind it.

 It was in the year 2009 when the Chennai High Court passed a verdict to send this piece of history to the gallows after it served its purpose for 172 years

. This prison has seen several important persons, including Subash Chandra Bose, Veer Savarkar, Annadurai etc. who served their grueling sentences here during the Indian Independence Struggle.

Though it was demolished in 2009, the Main gate, Jail Name plates and Cell no. 78 found a new home here in Steve Borgia Museum
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Where is or was the Old Jail, wonders Jayanthi Selvam, saying she uses Old Jail Road quite often. The road is the central portion of a three-part road, from east to west being Ebrahim Sahib Street, Old Jail Road and Basin Bridge Road in the southern shadow of what was the North, or Old Town, Wall, of which only the stretch preserved with the Maadi Poonga atop it is all that survives. It was south of a bastion of this wall that the Old Jail was established in 1804, though its roots go back to 1692.

The Old Jail’s premises, at the corner of Popham’s Broadway and Old Jail Road, was cleared of prisoners shortly after Independence and the campus was given to the Congress Prachar Sabha which ran a cottage industries training centre in the numerous buildings there.

When Kamaraj stepped down as Chief Minister in 1963, the enthusiasm for the training centre waned and the premises were handed over to the Central Polytechnic Institute and a new Arts College for Women in 1964.

 Four years later the last of the CPI’s constituent units moved to Adyar and the college expanded into the Bharathi Women’s Arts College. It was many years before the College got new buildings for its students, its early batches having used many a prison block, some of which survive, derelict, till today.

 S Muthiah, : H : 19 Oct 2014