National Prison Museum, Drenthe

Earlier this summer (as you know if you've been paying attention) we visited my old Uni mate who now lives in Drenthe - somewhere in the middle of The Netherlands.  One of our little trips out was to the National Prison Museum, aka the Pauper's Prison:

It was a fairly sobering experience, as you can expect.  While it started out as a good and honest venture back at the start of the 19th Century it ended up something a little different.  From what I could glean of the whole thing (which may not be that accurate given both my understanding of the Dutch language and the state of my hearing at the time - my tinnitus was playing up, badly) the initial idea was to provide quality accommodation for the nation's destitute and at the same time give them land enough to grow crops and provide for themselves.  Sounds OK so far.  The authorities rounded up people who looked like they needed rounding up and brought them to this purpose-built camp...they would now have shelter, heat, regular food and do honest toil on the land to make the whole venture self-sufficient.

It quickly became the place that no-one could leave.  Well, perhaps not strictly true as we read it was possible to buy your freedom but I got the impression that rarely happened.  So it became more of a prison than a place of refuge.  Inmates were allowed to marry and have children but there was a pretty strict regime of early morning starts, long hours of manual labour, a fairly institutional environment, meagre rations and basically not a lot else.

Nowadays the whole complex is given over to a museum dedicated to the lives of the people who lived there.  Some of their images appear on large displays in the courtyard that you can see in the photograph.  The 3 cards below each photograph give basic information about the person - name, height, weight etc as well as where they were from.  I suppose we should be thankful we have their photograph - it certainly makes the whole thing more personal.  But there's a terrible sadness in their faces - they were street beggars to begin with and then became inmates in a place where there was no freedom and very little free will.  They had hard lives, these people.