Kirkcudbright Tolbooth

Background

Kirkcudbright Tolbooth is a historic municipal building in Kirkcudbright in Kirkcudbrightshire in the administrative area of Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. Built between 1627 and 1629 to serve the town as a centre of commercial administration, a meeting place for the council, and a prison, it was used for all these roles until the late eighteenth century when the council moved much of its business to new, larger premises they had constructed across the street; the tolbooth remained in use as a prison until the early nineteenth century, after which it remained in council ownership and was put to a variety of uses. Amongst the people incarcerated in the tolbooth during its use as a prison were people accused of witchcraft, and as late as 1805 it was used to imprison a woman convicted of pretending to be a witch. It was also used to imprison Covenanters during the Killing Time of 1679–1688; in 1684 a crowd stormed the building, killing a guard and freeing the Covenanters held within. American naval hero John Paul Jones was held in the tolbooth in 1770, following his arrest on suspicion of homicide after a sailor under his command died following a flogging Jones had ordered.

Source: Wikipedia article lead, CC-BY-SA.

Same country, matched on type + security level where possible.

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Under CC-BY-4.0. Include the URL and access date; the site is a living reference and entries can change.

World Prisons. (2026). Kirkcudbright Tolbooth. Retrieved October 21, 2026, from https://worldprisons.com/prisons/kirkcudbright-tolbooth

"Kirkcudbright Tolbooth." World Prisons. Accessed October 21, 2026. https://worldprisons.com/prisons/kirkcudbright-tolbooth.

@misc{worldprisons-kirkcudbright-tolbooth,
  author = {{World Prisons}},
  title = {Kirkcudbright Tolbooth},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://worldprisons.com/prisons/kirkcudbright-tolbooth},
  urldate = {2026-10-21}
}