Begun in 1834, the Kingston Penitentiary assumed the proportions shown in this photograph by the end of the 1870s. The larger cross-shaped building housed male prisoners. Three of the four wings contained tiers of cell blocks overlooking a central rotunda, influenced by Bentham's Panopticon. The two large rectangular buildings along the side walls are the women's prison and the hospital. The smaller cruciform building at the left is the prison workshop. This aerial photograph was taken shortly after the end of World War I by flying aces Billy Bishop and Billy Barker. It is a pioneering example of this kind of photography in Canada.
When it was first built, the Kingston Penitentiary accommodated relatively few prisoners, and these were busily employed quarrying stone for the buildings. By the 1850s, however, when Upper and Lower Canada were united, the inmate population had increased fivefold. Following Confederation, the Kingston Penitentiary remained the principal establishment of the federal penal system, although regional institutions were set up during the 1870s at Dorchester, New Brunswick, Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, Quebec, Stoney Mountain, Manitoba, and New Westminster, British Columbia. Early in this century a separate women's institution was built across the street. In the 1930s and 1950s the Kingston Penitentiary was the scene of riots, when inmates burned down part of the central dome. The penitentiary was replaced in 1970 as the maximum security federal institution for the Ontario region by Millhaven Penitentiary.
