Prisoner's shoe

Social History (Museum of St Albans)

Prisoner's leather shoe with buckle, hung out of the window of the Liberty Gaol (located in St Albans Abbey Gateway) to beg for alms. In the Gatehouse Prison, also known as the Liberty Gaol, offenders were given bread but there was no heating. Passing strangers often heard a pleading voice from within begging them to put alms into an old shoe, which the prisoners let down by string from a window, to enable them to have a fire. Apparently prisoners could escape from the prison by climbing out of a window and jumping onto a tree.

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