It is not often that one has the opportunity to listen to a first person account of a topic for a column.  But my friend who was born in 1927 talked to me recently about living AT the first county jail when she was a child.  Her father was the jailer in charge there and his family lived in an apartment at the jail provided for one in his position.  Later in his career he became a deputy sheriff. The High Sheriff at this time was Walker E.  Allen. The jail and the courthouse were two buildings mandated by the legislative act in 1910 that created the new county.
Of course the family members were familiar with the jail and occasionally had access to the facility.  Now in her late 80s, she recalls the jail cells, the high booking desk with its tall stool where inmates were processed, the kitchen where the meals were prepared and the small opening through the cell doors where the serving trays were entered.  According to Stokes’ History of Dillon County South Carolina, when the jail first opened, the sheriff was allowed twenty-five cents PER DAY for dieting each prisoner.
Her brother then 4 or 5 years of age, she says, was once punished by her father when the son attempted to do one of the inmates a favor and hand him the key to the cell but unsuccessfully.
But what interested me most of all was her account of the hanging gallows that were an original part of the jail.  I assume when the jail was built, it was a common practice to include such a device in the plans, and I suppose that at one time punishment involving such was part of the duties of the county officials once the sentence had been approved.
Somehow I was under the impression that the execution device was in an upper part of the jail maybe in the attic where it might possibly have been moved but when the child saw it, it was on the first floor, rope and all.  I assume it was typical meaning the rope was secured securely to a stationary beam far enough off the floor so that when the rope was released, the victim would be left dangling and lifeless.   There was never a hanging carried out at the jail, and the device was mostly a curiosity for those to see who had other business at this early detention center.
Today, other forms of execution for capital crimes have been tried but perhaps without the ‘success’ rate of the sturdy rope.
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Bill Lee
PO Box 128
Hamer, SC 29547