BREAD FOR KINGS



It is one of the longest existing bakeries in the country, if not the longest. And in its heydays the Prison Bakery used supply bread to all government institutions including the Governor-General. The Prison Bakery has been churning out bread for inmates since 1920. It was then known as the State Bakery. It stopped for a brief period after the Suva Prison riots in 1979 when most of the facilities were burned down.

But the Prison Bakery which is now located as the Maximum Security Prison has scaled down operations over the years and are now only supplying bread to prisons in Naboro, Suva and Nasinu.  But plans are in the pipeline to develop the bakery into limited commercial operations. Bakery is among the various skills programmes that are available to inmates at the Maximum Prisons.

An entry in the Prisons archives in 1921 says, ‘A State Bakery was started at the Suva Gaol on the Ist January, 1920(instigated by Mr Norman B Casey), and has proved a great success. It was the means of supplying to the various Government institutitions at a price greatly less than those obtained elsewhere.’         

The list of customers included,

• His Majesty’s Gaol, Suva, Colonial War Memorial Hospital, Public Lunatic Asylum, Constabulary Department, Queen Victoria School, Sawani Provincial School, Boys’ Grammar School, Girls’ Grammar School, Harbour Master, His Majesty’s Customs, Central Medical School, Native Clerks, Clerks-in-Training, Immigration Department, HMCS Pioneer, Defence Force, Leper Barge, District Engineer, Suva, Suva Gaol staff.