It was first constructed starting in 1839, and during its operation as a prison between 1845 and 1924, it held and executed some of Australia's most notorious criminals, including bushranger Ned Kelly and serial killer Frederick Bailey Deeming.

Though it was used briefly during World War II, it formally ceased operating as a prison in 1924; with parts of the jail being incorporated into the RMIT University, and the rest becoming a museum.

[4] With the discovery of gold in 1851 (when the Port Phillip District became the new Colony of Victoria), and the resulting influx of population, law and order became more difficult to maintain.

[8] It also housed up to twenty children at a time – including those imprisoned for petty theft or vagrancy, or simply those staying with a convicted parent.

They could only bathe and change clothes once a week, and attend the chapel on Sundays (with a Bible provided to promote good behaviour).

[4] Male prisoners would perform hard labour – including breaking rocks, and other duties in the stone quarries, while women would sew, clean and cook.

[10] Historian and associate professor of Wollongong University, John McQuilton, states that the lack of monitoring for burial processes was odd, given Victorian society's normally brilliant attention to detail.

To have the last awful grapple with death set up like curiosity for the edification of a gaping multitude is a sickening contrivance unworthy of an advanced country.

It comprised a single-leaf trap cut into the metal walkway, with iron sockets in either wall above, into which the beam was placed for each hanging (a common design, used in other Victorian gaols at Ararat, Geelong, Beechworth, Ballarat, Bendigo, Castlemaine, Melbourne and Pentridge; and interstate at Adelaide and Long Bay, New South Wales).

[15] The first hanging of a woman in Victoria, Elizabeth Scott, was performed in the prison on 11 November 1863 – along with her co-accused, Julian Cross and David Gedge.

Colin Campbell Ross, an Australian wine-bar owner, was wrongly convicted of the rape and murder of 12-year-old Alma Tirtschke in December 1921.

The case, dubbed the Gun Alley Murder, was heavily influenced by public hysteria at the time, which ultimately served to condemn him.

At 16 years of age he ran away to sea, and thereafter, he began a long career of crime, largely thieving and obtaining money under false pretences.

[22][23][24] "Tragically two of these (Aboriginal) men, Tunnerminnerwait (known as Jack) and Maulboyheenner (known as Bob, or sometimes called Timmy or Jimmy), became the first people executed in the Port Phillip District.

This took place in 1842, a mere seven years after John Batman's fraudulent treaty with the Kuhn people, when the two Tasmanian Aboriginal men were publicly hanged for murder.

The contemporaneous executions were apparently quite a spectacle: one man, Maulboyheenner, twisting on the rope, strangled slowly in front of a crowd of 5000.

[73][74] As the gaol was progressively decommissioned, the building's fabric, including bluestone grave markers of executed prisoners, was incorporated into a sea wall at Brighton in Victoria in the 1930s.

After the end of the war, the section used for holding prisoners was then used only as a storage facility for the Victoria Police force, whose headquarters were nearby in Russell Street.

The Emily McPherson College was merged into RMIT University in 1979, bringing the gaol entrance gates, and other facilities alongside it.

[6] In 1957, the National Trust of Australia listed the Old Melbourne Gaol on its heritage register,[10] and a year later marked it as a site that needed to be preserved at all costs.

[4] As of 2010[update], the gaol is recognised as Victoria's oldest surviving penal establishment, and attracts approximately 140,000 visitors per year.

[81][82] In addition, the gaol had previously displayed the pencil used by Colin Ross to write a letter protesting his innocence, which he threw over the prison walls.

[24][86] In 2009, West Australian farmer Tom Baxter handed a skull to authorities, arguing that it was the one stolen from the gaol – while refusing to explain how he obtained it.

[86] Further examination confirmed that the Baxter skull was indeed the same one previously on display at the Gaol museum, however DNA testing in 2011 showed that it had not been Kelly's after all.

[24] Ned Kelly's actual remains were later located in the grounds of Pentridge Prison, and confirmed by DNA comparison to living relatives, including a piece of his skull.