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An infamous Australian prison held the unexpected: A record collection
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Pentridge Prison’s radio station played donated albums for its inmates. Twenty-six years after the site’s sale, a local shop has landed its vinyl collection.
ILLUSTRATION: YANN KEBBI/NYTIMES
RM Clark
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For more than 150 years, the 50cm-thick bluestone walls of Pentridge Prison saw it all.
On one side lay the quiet suburb of Coburg, in Melbourne, Australia, while on the other, some of the country’s most infamous criminals – including Mark Read (a gangster known as Chopper who asked a fellow inmate to slice off his ears) and Ned Kelly (the country’s most notorious 19th-century outlaw)– battled for dominance and survival, enduring solitary confinement and regular uprisings.
Since the prison’s closure in 1997, its grounds have become the home of a luxury hotel complex and a multiscreen cinema, complete with a craft beer bar and pricey wine cellars in the cells where prisoners once slept.
