These are Strangeways most notorious inmates

Strangeways, officially known as HM Prison Manchester, has been home to executions, riots and some of Britain’s most notorious criminals.

It’s been home to some very infamous criminals over the years, as well as some people that will genuinely surprise you.

The prison isn’t too far from Manchester’s City Centre, and if those walls could talk…

David Dickinson
Let’s kick off with a weird one, shall we?! The nation’s favourite shade of orange and self-confessed antique expert, David Dickinson, served three whole years of a four-year sentence there.

It was way back when he was 19 and got arrested for fraudulent trading. He’s since described this time as ‘horrendous’ and that he learned to ‘take it on the chin and accept it was his own fault’.

Dale Cregan
Easily one of Manchester’s most notorious killers of this century is Dale Cregan. The one-eyed murderer began his life of crime from an early age dealing drugs.

Cregan shot Mark Short in the Cotton Tree Pub in Droylsden and attempted to kill three other men. He violently murdered Short’s father a few months later. He then made national headlines when he lured two female police officers to his property, ambushed them with gunfire and a grenade brutally murdering them both.

He handed himself in and was sentenced to life imprisonment with a whole life order on June 13th 2013.

Paul Taylor
The famous ringleader of the 25-day Strangeway riot of 1990, Paul Taylor famously ended up on the roof of the prison.

The riot is still the longest prison riot in British history. One prisoner was killed alongside 147 injuries to police officers. Taylor and Alan Lord were sentenced as the ringleaders and were charged with the murder of Derek White, a prisoner who died of his injuries from the riot.

Strangeways suffered extensive damages which required a £55m refurbishment of £55m.

Ian Brady
The child murderer and paedophile Ian Brady is one half of Britain’s infamous killing pair, The Moors Murderers.

The pair brutally murdered five innocent children and buried their bodies in the vast Saddleworth Moors. Brady was found guilty of three murders on 6th May 1966 and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Ian Brown
An unlikely person to ‘bump into’ if you ever found yourselves wandering the halls of Strangeways would be Ian Brown. But the Stone Roses frontman was sentenced to four months in the summer of 1998.

He was charged for threatening behaviour towards a British Airways flight attendant and captain. He served two months of his sentence and wrote three songs including ‘Free My Way’.

Emily Davison
Suffragette Emily Davison visited Strangeways twice in her efforts for the women’s rights movements. First for disrupting a meeting with Chancellor David Lloyd Geoge and throwing rocks at the windows. During this imprisonment, she went on a hunger strike losing 21 pounds and was released just five and a half days later.

Her second visit just two months later, for throwing stones, saw her in Strangeways for two and a half days. Davison later died after being kicked in the head by a horse during the suffragette’s demonstration where she ran onto the course at Epsom Derby.

Harold Shipman
Shipman is Britain’s most prolific serial killer, with his victim number lying between 215 and 260 people. He often targeted the elderly, injecting them with lethal doses of diamorphine.

His killing spree lasted for 23 years, creating one of the worst cases of serial killings ever documented. He was arrested on September 7, 1998, and was held in Strangeways. His trial took place at Preston Crown Court in 1999 and it took four months to find him guilty of just 15 cases of murder.

He was sentenced to 15 life sentences and a four-year sentence for forgery. He was transferred to Wakefield Prison in 2003 where he committed suicide on the eve of his 58th birthday.

Mark Bridger
Bridger was charged with child abduction, murder, and attempting to pervert the course of justice on October 6, 2012. April Sue-Lyn Jones disappeared after being sighted climbing into a van near her home a national and very public appeal followed to find her.

The morning after her disappearance, Bridger was arrested. He pleaded not guilty but a series of DNA evidence suggested otherwise. He also later confessed to a prison chaplain that he was ‘probably responsible’ for her death. He was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.