Female Convict Prisons 1852-1898

Abstract

Abstract As we noted at the beginning of the previous chapter, almost all those sentenced to custody in the second half of the nineteenth century went to local prisons. Only those found guilty of more serious crimes were subjected to penal servitude (long-term confinement with hard labour) in convict prisons. These longterm prisoners, or ‘convicts’ as they were generally called, made up only 2 per cent of those committed to prison. Short sentences in local gaols or houses of correction were, therefore, the ‘typical’ prison experience of female criminals. However, it was the far more contentious problem of how to provide for serious offenders sentenced to long terms that perplexed and engrossed contemporary policy makers and administrators. Since terms of penal servitude were set at a minimum of five years (later reduced to three), the proportion of women held in convict prisons at any one time was greater than figures for commitments alone would suggest. The implications of holding prisoners for five or even ten years necessarily meant that convict prisons were very different from local prisons (where as we have seen most prisoners were sentenced only to a few weeks or months). The basic components looked alike: both had their cells, workrooms, chapel, school, and nursery, both confined and regulated the lives of their inmates. However, the very purposes and priorities, as well as the experiences of staff and inmates, of the two tiers of the prison system were otherwise very different.