Gevangenpoort Museum

When I was at Den Haag, I went to the Gevangenpoort Museum.  This is one of the places that has been at the top of my list of places to see since I read about it, before I even came to the Netherlands.  It is the old royal prison and has been turned into a museum.  It is supposedly so gruesome that they have a warning on the website that it is not suitable for children under the age of 9.  However, they also advertise the museum as a great place for children's birthday parties, so maybe they just tone down the gore, depending on age.  (You can see the English language museum page here.  However, it doesn't have nearly as much information as the Dutch language page which you can see here.)

The museum is really closely guarded, although I am not exactly sure why.  You can only go through with a guided tour, in small groups, and you are accompanied (and herded) by a security guard with a walkie-talkie.  It seemed a little like over-kill but maybe people get lost in there.  (Also, you weren't allowed to take any pictures, so this will be a boring post.)

The tour was only offered in Dutch but they had a little booklet in English which had a little paragraph about each room, which made it easier to follow along.  The guide was excellent (and spoke very clearly, as well) so I was able to follow most of what went on.  There were five in the group, besides me.  A guy and his high-school age daughter and a lady with her two boys.  The boys were probably around 10 and they were both well-informed and very fascinated with the museum.  The guide would ask them questions about different famous individuals who had been imprisoned in one of  the "fancy" cells and they seemed pretty knowledgable about all of those 17th century fellows as well as about Dutch prison history, generally.  They asked a lot of questions as well, which the guide seemed to enjoy--about the number of prisoners, how many people had died, what kinds of tortures were used, etc.  They didn't seem phased by the museum's official warnings about the danger of gore for kids.

The prison walls were made with 2x6s laid on their sides, which, I imagine, really made it impossible to dig your way out.  The main cells were about 12'x12', with the kind of toilet where the hole in the floor dropped straight to the sewer canal which ran underneath the prison.  (The boys thought that was pretty wonderful.)  These cells could hold up to 15 people and had no light or heat.  The guard turned out the light while we were in there and, even in the middle of the day, it was pitch-black.  I imagine that it would not be a fun place to be.  They had fancier cells where richer people could stay, in rooms by themselves, but where they had to pay for their own room and board.  The monthly cost for one of those cells, according to the guide, was twice the average yearly wage for working class folks of the time.  There was also a special room set aside for female inmates.  The stairs were all wooden and there were little narrow hall-ways and stairs that went all over the place.

By far the biggest hits, though, were the torture chambers.  There were two.  One, in the attic, was a torture chamber but also served as the place of execution for women who were to be hanged.  There were largish windows which looked down onto the public square outside and female criminals would be hung in front of the windows because, apparently, officials were afraid that if women were hung on the street level scaffolds like the men were, people would look up their skirts.

There was also a display of a set of branding irons.  People guilty of different crimes were punished by branding on various parts of their anatomy (thumb, hand, shoulder, etc) depending on the crime.  The figure of the brand, though, depended on the municipality which was punishing you.  For instance, if you were convicted of robbery in Leiden, you would be branded (on the thumb, I think) with the crossed keys which are the symbol of Leiden.  If you got in trouble in Den Haag, you would be branded with a figure of a stork holding a snake in its beak, which is the symbol of Den Haag.  The museum had a collection of a couple dozen of these brands and the two boys were able to identify most of the municipalities (I only knew Leiden and Den Haag).  I don't know if they had just made a collection of these brands for the purpose of the museum or if the prison had had the set originally so that they could mete out punishment on behalf of the other municipalities if needed.

The basement torture chamber was fairly gruesome.  They had the pincers they would use to rip off bits of people and more little stoves and branding equipment.  What was really terrible, though, was that the walls and floors were all lined with Delft tiles, so it was really pretty in there.  The guide said that the tiles were mis-fires from Delft and were therefore note sell-able so they were given to the prison.  The prison needed them (in just this one room) because they were easy to clean.  That strikes me as both very practical and really awful.

It was really a terrific museum and a terrific tour.  If I go back to Den Haag (I probably will) I will probably see if I can squeeze in another visit, since I get in free with my Museum Card.

By the way, the name Gevangenpoort means "Gatehouse"--it looks like a gate house and, I believe, it used to be a gate into the city ages ago.  However, "vangen" also means "to catch" or "to capture".  So, either it is a really terrific coincidence or it is an excellent pun.  Also, if you click here, you can see the Dutch Wikipedia article on the Gevangenpoort and it has pictures.  (I forgot to take a picture of the outside.)