Pudu Jail

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

The infamous Pudu Prison in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia has been a landmark in the city for many years with it’s imposing towers and unique murals painted on the exterior walls of the prison. This prison was the site where death row prisoners were jailed prior to execution and where drug offenders were caned. In 2010 it was demolished to make space for an urban development project on what is now a prime piece of city centre real estate. Pudu Prison, in Jalan Hang Tuah, Kuala Lumpur, was built and designed in 1891 and completed 1895 led by British state engineer and Director of Public Works Department, Charles Edwin Spooner, at a costs of RM 138,000. It’s design was copied from the Kandy prison in Bogambia, Africa and shaped like a butterfly or X structure. It originally had 240 cells on three floors, but more cells were added over the years. The prison’s gruesome condemned cell is located at block D where those on death row were prepped before being hanged at the execution room in the same block. Between 1960 and 1993, 180 convicts were hanged there. Pudu Prison was designed to house 600 inmates initially but with additional cells, its capacity was increased to 2,000. The Pudu Prison main entrance was situated in a two-storied building. The Administrative Offices was on the ground floor and on the top floor, six cells for European and Eurasian prisoners and two small rooms for storage of prison records. The female ward of the prison and the prison kitchen were separate areas on each side of the Administrative Block and leading from the main section of the prison were four three-storied wings. The prison hospital was close by, but separate from the main building. The prison was used to house criminals including drug offenders and was a location for administering corporal punishment by rotan caning. The canings were administered in a special “caning area”, so marked, not inside the building but in the grounds. After the fall of Singapore during World war II, from 1942-45, the prison became the central prisoners of war camp in Malaya during the Japanese Occupation. Many members of the Allied Forces and locals were tortured and beheaded, some heads stuck to poles for all to see. A prominent feature of the prison are the mural paintings on its outer walls done by former inmate Khong Yen Chong in the early 1980s. The wall murals of tropical scenes painted by the prisoners took them over a year to paint using 2000 liters of paint. The murals entitled the inmates to win a place in the Guinness Book of Records, for painting the world’s longest mural along the prison’s walls stretching out to more than 384m long and 4.5m high.