Some years ago I visited the Hong Kong Correctional Services Museum. I hasten to add the visit was connected to some research I was doing. Until then, I didn't even know there was such a place. Turns out the museum is on a sleepy road, the premises set amid dense tropical foliage, between Stanley Village and maximum security Stanley Prison. What a good little museum: well organized, well lit, well presented.
You get off to an entertaining start in the entrance lobby with the large wooden frame they used to tie prisoners upon before they flogged them. I observed that this was a special favourite with visiting parties of school kids.
Flogging? I am not sure when that stopped in the local penal system, but it has been stopped for a long time. Not how I imagined it, there is also (upstairs) a hangman's gallows, which has a roller system for the rope. Nothing like the kind you see in Westerns. Whether the one in the museum was real or a simulcra, I know not. But I do know that no one was executed in Hong Kong after capital punishment was abolished in Britain. Whenever that was. Early 1960s?
Having finished touring the museum, if you go round the back you discover a separate building that showcases prisoners' handicrafts, and a delightful sitting-out area with a view overlooking a placid bay. Having viewed all the other stuff, it really is nice to be back out in the freedom of the open air...
All this by way of introduction to the informative, entertaining, moving-parts: History of the Guillotine (Flash required).
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