The Bocardo Prison in Oxford

Oxford

The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...

, England existed until 1771. Its origins were medieval, and the most celebrated prisoners were the Protestant martyrs Thomas Cranmer

Thomas Cranmer

Thomas Cranmer was a leader of the English Reformation and Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI and, for a short time, Mary I. He helped build a favourable case for Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon which resulted in the separation of the English Church from...

, Hugh Latimer

Hugh Latimer

Hugh Latimer was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, Bishop of Worcester before the Reformation, and later Church of England chaplain to King Edward VI. In 1555, under Queen Mary, he was burnt at the stake, becoming one of the three Oxford Martyrs of Anglicanism.-Life:Latimer was born into a...

 and Nicholas Ridley

Nicholas Ridley (martyr)

Nicholas Ridley was an English Bishop of London. Ridley was burned at the stake, as one of the Oxford Martyrs, during the Marian Persecutions, for his teachings and his support of Lady Jane Grey...

 in 1555.

History

It was located near the church of St Michael at the North Gate; the prison consisted in fact of rooms in a watchtower by Oxford's North Gate, the tower being attributed to Robert D'Oyly

Robert D'Oyly

Robert D'Oyly was a Norman nobleman who accompanied William the Conqueror on the Norman Conquest, his invasion of England. He died in 1091.-Background:Robert was the son of Walter D'Oyly and elder brother to Nigel D'Oyly...

, a Norman of the eleventh century, though also said to be originally a Saxon construction of 1040; the gate itself was called also Bocardo Gate. The rooms were over the gate and in the tower of the church, and there was a box in the church for charitable contributions to the prisoners. John Powderham, who claimed to be the real king in the reign of Edward II of England

Edward II of England

Edward II , called Edward of Caernarfon, was King of England from 1307 until he was deposed by his wife Isabella in January 1327. He was the sixth Plantagenet king, in a line that began with the reign of Henry II...

, was imprisoned there in or shortly before 1318. The prison was demolished in 1771, for a road construction scheme, following an Act of Parliament in 1770, and as part of the wider city redevelopment in Oxford under John Gwynn

John Gwynn

John Gwynn was an English architect and civil engineer of the 18th century, and one of the founder members of the Royal Academy in 1768....

.

Name

Bocardo is also a mnemonic

Mnemonic

A mnemonic , or mnemonic device, is any learning technique that aids memory. To improve long term memory, mnemonic systems are used to make memorization easier. Commonly encountered mnemonics are often verbal, such as a very short poem or a special word used to help a person remember something,...

 for a traditional syllogism

Syllogism

A syllogism is a kind of logical argument in which one proposition is inferred from two or more others of a certain form...

 in scholastic logic. An example:

Some cats have no tails.
All cats are mammals.
Some mammals have no tails.


There is a folk-etymology for the name: because Bocardo was found to be one of the harder forms of valid syllogism for students to learn, it was said to be the name of a prison that was hard to escape from. One of the rooms in Newgate Prison

Newgate Prison

Newgate Prison was a prison in London, at the corner of Newgate Street and Old Bailey just inside the City of London. It was originally located at the site of a gate in the Roman London Wall. The gate/prison was rebuilt in the 12th century, and demolished in 1777...

was also named bocardo.