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Above: Jailer Gill (ret) at the controls of the rotary jail in Crawfordsville, Indiana.

Above: Drawing of a rotary jail by The Pauley Company of St. Louis who built the jail in Crawfordsville and Paducah.

Jailer Cliff Gill (ret) is still jailing as he visited a Rotary or squirrel cage jail museum in Crawfordsville,Indiana on October 26,2005..    He is seen here at the controls of the rotary jail. McCracken County had the same type jail built in 1884 and served as the county's lock-up until the 1936 WPA jail was built.   How the rotary jail worked is best explained by using a pie and placing it a circular squirrel cage after first slicing it into eight pieces.   There is one door in the cage and you rotate the pie slices to the single door to get them out. The rotary jail was on the cutting edge of jail technology for the late 1800's.   The rotary jail in Crawfordsville was used as a jail until 1973.
The squirrel cage jails had some draw backs.   One was that it took too long to remove the inmates from the cells in an emergency such as a fire. Jailer Gill (ret) made the visit to the Crawfordsville Jail museum as part of his research in writing a history of The McCracken County Jail.

   Paducah has another connection to Crawfordsville that is not widely know.   Union General Lew Wallace was division commander under General Ulysses S. Grant when he took Paducah in September 1861 without firing a shot.   Wallace stayed in Paducah as the commanding officer until Grant's army moved to Fort Donelson and Shiloh. Wallace gained immortality not by his military service but by writing the novel Ben Hur in 1880.


	Squirrel Cage Jail
		Above: Jailer Gill (ret) at the controls of the rotary jail in Crawfordsville, Indiana. Above: Drawing of a rotary jail by The Pauley Company of St. Louis who built the jail in Crawfordsville and Paducah. Jailer Cliff Gill (ret) is still jailing as he visited a Rotary or squirrel cage jail museum in Crawfordsville,Indiana on October 26,2005.. He is seen here at the controls of the rotary jail. McCracken County had the same type jail built in 1884 and served as the county's lock-up until the 1936 WPA jail was built. How the rotary jail worked is best explained by using a pie and placing it a circular squirrel cage after first slicing it into eight pieces. There is one door in the cage and you rotate the pie slices to the single door to get them out. The rotary jail was on the cutting edge of jail technology for the late 1800's. The rotary jail in Crawfordsville was used as a jail until 1973. The squirrel cage jails had some draw backs. One was that it took too long to remove the inmates from the cells in an emergency such as a fire. Jailer Gill (ret) made the visit to the Crawfordsville Jail museum as part of his research in writing a history of The McCracken County Jail. Paducah has another connection to Crawfordsville that is not widely know. Union General Lew Wallace was division commander under General Ulysses S. Grant when he took Paducah in September 1861 without firing a shot. Wallace stayed in Paducah as the commanding officer until Grant's army moved to Fort Donelson and Shiloh. Wallace gained immortality not by his military service but by writing the novel *Ben Hur* in 1880.

Squirrel Cage Jail