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constructing a women’s prison history. Inspired by Zedner’s work but moving away from other well-established women’s prison histories, I have drawn upon primary sources and critically used secondary sources to unfold the question of the historical ‘invisibility’ of women in penal practice.
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A: The book has two research foci: the historical development of women’s prisons in England (from the end of the 18 th century to the end of the 19 th century) and Askham Grange open prison for women (in the North of England). Both aim to illustrate what I refer to as the myth of prisoners’ reformation.
The Quaker philanthropist spearheaded a campaign that resulted in women-only prisons superintended by female guards, treated inmates with humanity, and emphasised rehabilitation. So, while...
Fry visited women in prisons and was very concerned about the conditions she found. Fry highlighted the ways in which female prisoners were being exploited by male prison warders.
- Abstract
- Establishing The Female Convict System
- Insanity, Suicide and The Infliction of Bodily Harm
- Debility, Disease and Physical Health
- The Closure of Brixton
- Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
In 1853, the gates of Brixton convict prison were opened for the reception of its first female inmates. One of several convict prisons established in the mid-nineteenth century, Brixton was unique in that it was designated exclusively for women and would remain so until 1869. When reflecting upon his early tenure as the prison’s Medical Officer in ...
The Penal Servitude Act 1853 replaced sentences of transportation, which had ceased to be a punishment option for women in 1852 when Van Diemen’s Land announced that it would no longer accept female transportees, with those of penal servitude. Initially, the minimum length of a sentence was 4 years, but following the passing of the Penal Servitude ...
In Victorian England, there were several public institutions intended to contain the women society placed within the brackets of ‘mad’, ‘bad’ or ‘sad’, including the prison, the workhouse and the asylum. Some women experienced incarceration in several of these institutions in the mid-nineteenth century. For example, a total of 70 women were removed...
In 1865, Henry Roome, Parkhurst’s Medical Officer, observed that ‘when a large number of women are congregated together, under circumstances of a depressing character, in cells too small for continuous day and night occupation, and fed on food not very stimulating, it is not to be expected that they will be entirely free from diseases arising from ...
In 1864, the Directors of Convict Prisons acknowledged that none of the female establishments, except Fulham Refuge, had been specifically constructed for women. Although the building itself had been adapted, the system in Brixton was only a slightly modified version of that designed for men. They continued, ‘it is scarcely possible to expect that ...
In August 1855, Jebb professed the ambition that the different establishments in the female convict estate would be ‘components of the same system’, wherein the progression of female prisoners through the classifications would ‘work smoothly and well’.115However, this system of orderly progression based upon the principles of reflection, discipline...
The author would like to thank the anonymous referees for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article. The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Wellcome Trust (Senior Investigator Award, grant number 103341/Z/13/Z).
- Rachel Bennett
- 2021
This research presents a revisionist prison history which brings to the forefront the relationship between gender and policy. It examines women’s prisons in England from the late 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century, drawing attention to the detrimental effect the orthodox closed prison has on penal reform.
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More than 300 suffragettes were incarcerated at Holloway prison during the early 20th century in one of the darker aspects of the campaign for the vote for women, and one that has historical and contemporary resonance for the women’s liberation movement.
