Manchester Jail

In 1920 improvements to the City of Manchester were underway with the addition of a ‘new’ Manchester jail to replace the one that sat just northeast of the current cells. An editor of the Grant County Journal while on a trip to Hutchinson, Kansas worked out a deal with the City of Hutchinson on behalf of the City of Manchester for the old Reno County jail cells.

The two fused cells were discarded after the county built a new jail. They were purchased for $75 and arrived within the second week of March 1920. The steel cells were fused together creating a 5×7 mini jail compound. This gave Manchester a jail “equal to the average county jail in Oklahoma.”

By the summer a building for the jail cells was under construction. R.E. McCune is described as doing the carpenter work on the new jail building for the double steel cells. Its first use was on August 16, 1920, when Marshal Jas. Clary had come across a couple of intoxicated gentlemen who were put into the cells sober up.

Gallery Below of Manchester Jail

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