On a bright autumnal day, we (Trailblazers) crossed Bodmin Moor (today with a rare sunny smile on her face) to visit the still forbidding edifice of Bodmin’s former gaol.

Passing through the imposing entrance to the onetime prison, we were greeted by Bex, who was to be our guide on a historical journey from the 1700s to the beginning of the twentieth century, discovering along the way the realities of incarceration resulting from the justice and penal systems of the Georgian and Victorian periods.

The ‘Dark Walk’ is, if you’ll forgive the pun, a captivating experience; an experience in which one is immersed in a gruesome history.

The walk uses theatrical effects and state-of-the-art cinematic technology that allows us to travel back to Cornwall’s murky past – from the crimes to the courthouse and thence to the punishments that were meted out as part of the penal servitude of the times.

Punishments were harsh: from the monotonous hours spent on the treadmill (during a gruelling eight-hour shift on this machine devised by Sir William Cubitt, a prisoner would climb the equivalent of 2,400 metres), the crank, shot drill and picking oakum to, for more serious infractions of the rules, whipping and birching. All these ‘measures’ were intended to have been deterrents to reoffending, but, alas, they didn’t take account of the circumstances that may have led to the offending in the first place, such as poverty and its attendant scourges.

Although by contemporary standards they appear severe, the Victorians’ ‘reforms’ were an improvement on the conditions of such an institution as Bodmin gaol in the seventeenth century.

In the damp communal cells, sanitation was non-existent (in 1759 it was estimated that one in four prisoners died from a form of typhoid known as Jail Fever) with up to eight inmates housed in a cell with a floor area of three square metres, with no account taken of the age or sex of the prisoner or the category of his or her offence.

Shockingly, it was not uncommon for children to be imprisoned, accompanying their mother or father who had committed a crime, but also in these times criminal acts (petty crimes such as stealing a comb, a blanket or a piece of celery – violations of the ‘sanctity of property’) committed by children were judged in the same ways as those committed by adults. It wasn’t until the Children’s Act of 1908 that imposing adult sentences on children were outlawed.

As we wandered through the gaol’s historic corridors, we had the opportunity to engage with Cornwall’s rich cultural heritage while reflecting upon the everyday hardships facing the poorest in society and to understand the evolution of justice and morality in society where the purpose of prison has changed so that depriving offenders of their liberty is not only to punish but, where appropriate, also serves to reform and rehabilitate those who are capable of being reformed and rehabilitated so they can lead law-abiding lives.