Women, Crime and Punishment in Ireland
Life in the Nineteenth-Century Convict Prison

Offers an intimate insight into women's experiences of the criminal justice system across urban and rural post-Famine Ireland.

Elaine Farrell (Author)

9781108839501, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 1 October 2020

330 pages
16 x 23.5 x 2 cm, 0.59 kg

'Elaine Farrell's meticulously researched monograph … the first comprehensive study of imprisoned women in Ireland, reconstructs the day-to-day experiences of convict women … to illustrate the lived reality of incarceration … This book is … not only a useful corrective to the oversized influence of the cult figure of the male Irish political prisoner, but also a welcome addition to nineteenth-century Irish social history.' William Meier, Victorian Studies

Focusing on women's relationships, decisions and agency, this is the first study of women's experiences in a nineteenth-century Irish prison for serious offenders. Showcasing the various crimes for which women were incarcerated in the post-Famine period, from repeated theft to murder, Elaine Farrell examines inmate files in close detail in order to understand women's lives before, during and after imprisonment. By privileging case studies and individual narratives, this innovative study reveals imprisoned women's relationships with each other, with the staff employed to manage and control them, and with their relatives, spouses, children and friends who remained on the outside. In doing so, Farrell illuminates the hardships many women experienced, their poverty and survival strategies, as well as their responsibilities, obligations, and decisions. Incorporating women's own voices, gleaned from letters and prison files, this intimate insight into individual women's lives in an Irish prison sheds new light on collective female experiences across urban and rural post-Famine Ireland.

List of figures and tables
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Introduction: 'Another generation of jail-birds'
1. 'A powerful engine in reforming the prisoner': the prison framework and the convict body and mind
2. 'A strange medley of character do these prisoners' friends present': family ties
3. 'Even in prison, they have those extreme friendships, antipathies, and jealousies': convict relationships
4. 'At first she refused to say how she got it': networks of acquisition
5. 'I will be very desolate leaving prison': liberation
Conclusion: 'I think of the time that you and myself ust [used] to be to gether'
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Crime & criminology [JKV], Gender studies: women [JFSJ1], British & Irish history [HBJD1]