Gallery 7 (Formerly Courtroom 3) and Prisoner’s Dock

Gallery 7, or former courtroom 3, has a layout that is identical to Gallery 1. While some of the original features of this courtroom, such as the public gallery, are no longer accessible to the public, you will still be able to see the Prisoner’s Dock in the middle of the room. It is where the defendants stand, shackled, as the court addresses them. Walk around to the back of the dock and take a look inside. The defendants were led from the cells below through a network of passages linking the four courtrooms, and then up through the trapdoor into the dock. Many high-profile cases were conducted in the courtrooms of the Gallery. One of them, although conducted in another gallery, Gallery 10, was known as the ‘Double Tenth Incident’, named in reference to the 10th of October 1943, during the Japanese occupation. The Kempeitai, or military police arm of the Imperial Japanese army, arrested and tortured 57 civilians on suspicion that they were involved in raiding Japanese ships docked at the harbour. Although none of those arrested and tortured had any knowledge of the raid, 15 of them died in Singapore’s Changi Prison. After the war ended, 21 of the Kempeitai soldiers involved in the incident were charged with war crimes. From the main stop screen, you can tap on images of them standing at the prisoner’s dock of a courtroom in this building on the 21st of January 1946. The judge sentenced eight of them to death, acquitted seven of them, and charged the remainder with varying sentences ranging from one year to life. The National Gallery has conserved two of the ten original holding cells, which are underneath the courtroom. They can only be accessed during special tours, but you can see a picture of them from the main stop screen entitled ‘9.3 – Holding Cells’. As the defendants were not kept overnight in the cells, they were sparsely furnished, with only a toilet and a long concrete bench along the wall. The system for flushing the toilet was located outside the cells to prevent the defendants from harming themselves. Defendants were driven by van to the holding cells through the back entrance while awaiting trial. As many high profile cases took place within these courtrooms, the court went to great trouble to ensure that defendants could be brought into the holding cells and courtrooms without being seen by the public. Image © Darren Soh