Women, Crime, and Custody in Victorian EnglandThis book explores how the Victorians perceived and explained female crime, and how they responded to it - both in penal theory and prison practice. In Victorian England women made up a far larger proportion of those known to be involved in crime than they do today; the nature of female criminality attracted considerable attention and preoccupied those trying to provide for women within the penal system. Lucia Zedner's rigorously researched study examines the extent to which gender-based ideologies influenced attitudes to female criminality. She charts the shift from the moral analyses dominant in the mid-nineteenth century to the interpretation of criminality as biological or psychological disorder prevalent later. Using a wide variety of sources - including prison regulations, diaries, letters, punishment books, grievances and appeals, Dr Zedner explores both penological theory and the realities of prison life. This is a rich and scholarly study, which reveals much about the relationship between responses to female criminality and prevailing social values and concerns. |
Contents
FEMALE CRIME | 11 |
Explaining Female Crime | 51 |
Women and Penal Theory | 93 |
Copyright | |
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alcoholism ANON argued Association Aylesbury became behaviour Brixton cent chaplain character committed concern confinement corruption crime criminal women criminology defective deviance drink Drunkards drunkenness Duchess of Bedford example Farmfield feeble-minded women female convict prisons female criminality female prisoners femininity Fulham Gaol GLRO habitual Henry Mayhew historians History Home Office House of Correction Howard Association Ibid ideal imprisonment inebriate reformatories Inebriates Acts inebriety infanticide influence inmates insane institutions Jebb Joshua Jebb Judicial Statistics labour Lady Visitors less London male convicts Mary Carpenter Mayhew ment mentally deficient middle-class Millbank Minute Book Minutes of Evidence moral reform mother nineteenth century numbers of women offences penal policy Penal Servitude Acts penal theory problem proportion prostitution punishment RDCP reformatories regime Report role seen sentences separate sexual social society suffragettes summary offences tion Tothill Fields Transactions NAPSS Victorian warders Whilst woman women in prison women prisoners workhouse