Another Landmark Disappears!

The destruction of the notorious landmark called Pudu Jail started today. After the prison moved to its new locale at Sungai Buluh, there were plans to make Pudu Jail into a museum of sorts of well as a kind of tourist attraction. All these grand plans are gone with the wind.

October 13,2009,bulldozers came into the old Pudu Jail and began on the demolition of part of Pudu Jail, to make way for a road expansion and tunnel project. The new tunnel road will allow motorists to bypass the crossroads next to the old prison, now closed for several years.

“We started demolishing the prison last Thursday. We will be building a tunnel that will end just before the traffic lights turning into Puduraya,” said a City Hall (DBKL) spokesman.

The project costing some RM83 million is earmarked for completion by September 2011.


As to the owner of the Pudu Jail land,apparently it belonged to UDA Holdings Sdn Bhd had which bought over the land from the government. The are planning on building a shopping mall on the location, something similar to the adjacent Berjaya Times Square.

Pudu Jail was built in 1895 by state engineer Charles Edwin Spooner as a prison to house criminals, including drug offenders.

The estimated cost of the prison at the time was RM327,627.

After operating for more than 90 years, it was closed following the 1986 execution of Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers, both Australian nationals. They were convicted for trafficking in heroin and were sentenced to death.

It was reopened in 1997-1998 as a museum and briefly in 2004.