Prisoners at the Workhouse (Historical Marker)

Here follows the inscription written on this roadside historical marker:

Prisoners at the Workhouse
Workhouse Prison Museum at Lorton

The first 29 prisoners were housed in tents by the Occoquan River when they arrived from D.C. The first buildings were made of wood cut on the site and built by the prisoners. These gradually replaced during the 1920s by the buildings seen here today. The prisoners made the bricks, fired them in nearby kilns and built the dormitories, mess hall and administrative buildings. A Women's Workhouse, also made of wood, was designed to accommodate about 100 prisoners and opened in June 1912. These buildings were located across Ox Road (Route 123) about 1,000 feet behind you were standing. The Fairfax county Water Authority is located there now.

The first prisoners at the Workhouse were men who had been arrested and jailed for public drunkenness, petty theft, simple assault and non-support. Women were sentenced for soliciting, prostitution, disorderly conduct, vagrancy and intoxication.

In 1966, a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling made alcoholism a public health problem. Sixty percent of the Workhouse inmates were subsequently released, since most had been arrested for public intoxication. As a direct result, there were insufficient inmates to staff the farm and other Workhouse operations.

[Captions:]
G.E. Industrial Locomotive Engine, 1947, Lorton and Occoquan Railroad
Courtesy of Donald R. Henley, Jr.

The four-mile Lorton and Occoquan Railroad was built and maintained by prisoners. It was completed in 1925 and used to transport prisoners, building materials, industrial products, coal and sewage.

Miss Lucy Burns of C.U.W.S.,
in the Occoquan Workhouse, 1917,
Photo by Harris & Ewing
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

Beginning in July 1917 and continuing until November 1917, 72 members of the National Women's Party were imprisoned for voting rights protests in D.C. Most of these prisoners were jailed in the former medium-security Workhouse at Lorton, in wooden buildings that no longer stand.

Snowden Ashford, (1866-1927)
Municipal Architect for the District of Columbia
From A History of the City of Washington by Allan B. Slauson, 1903, Page 75.

Ashford was born and raised in Washington, D.C., trained as an engineer and worked as a draftsman for the Treasury Department's architect. In 1895, he became assistant inspector of buildings in the District of Columbia, and he was promoted to inspector in 1906. In addition to inspecting building sites, Ashford designed firehouses, police stations and schools in D.C. He designed or supervised the design of all District buildings constructed between 1895 and 1921, including the North Hall at Eastern Market.

The brick buildings on this campus were designed by Ashford and Albert Harris in 1915. The style, known as Colonial Revival, was chosen, according to Snowden to "dispel suggestion of a penal institution." The symmetrical façade of the long rectangular brick dormitory buildings, with the arched porticos along the covered arcade, exemplified dignity, simplicity and good taste. The sturdy buildings without fences or guard towers were designed to reflect the nation's colonial heritage of democracy and hard work.
From the Washington Post's 1903 A History of the City of Washington

In memory of Harry Lattimore, Lorton Historian and Founder, Lorton Heritage Society

Erected by Workhouse Prison Museum at Lorton.