Hi, I don't know if you're still thinking about this topic but as I found this forum on Google searching for 'Lancaster Avenue women's prison' I thought I'd share what little I had read about it to get me interested (I'm too young to remember it myself!). A football memoir from 1981, called Kicked Into Touch by ex City apprentice Fred Eyre; Fred Eyre stationers opened in July 1967 in, I quote, 'an old women's prison in Lancaster Avenue. It was open plan and had three curving galleries of wood, cast iron and glass. It had been built in 1871 and ran from Fennel Street at one end to Todd Street, near Victoria Station, at the other end, where there was a rather dubious looking night club.' He goes on, 'the former cells were now converted into little offices and the cells which looked out onto the main thoroughfare were now little shops'.
I was sad to read that its no longer there, as a non-Manc its conversion from one use to another reminded me of The Chapel pub... The book's a good read all round.