We are delighted to publish this guest post by Esther Brot, who is currently pursuing her PhD in History at King's College London. She is writing her dissertation on the topic of the Corporation of London and the prisons of the City of London in the long eighteenth century. In 1717, the Court of Aldermen … Continue reading A Failure to Communicate: Authority in Eighteenth-Century Newgate
prison staff
Prisoners and Prison Staff at the Cold Bath Fields House of Correction
by Kiran Mehta In The Promise of Punishment: Prisons in Nineteenth-Century France, published in 1982, Patricia O’Brien argued that the prison guard was ‘the most important person in the operation of the prison’ and that ‘the whole disciplinary regime of the nineteenth century [could] be reduced to the dealings of the guard with the prisoner’. … Continue reading Prisoners and Prison Staff at the Cold Bath Fields House of Correction
Grates and Keys: Violence in Early Modern Prisons, Part II
Richard Bell's recent post showed how a humble garden billhook could a potential tool of violence against prisoners. Keys, doors, locks, and grates could wreak a subtler kind of violence. Barring visitors from a prison could be deadly. "When prisoners are sick," some Newgate debtors told the JPs in 1724, the underkeeper Mr. Perry "won’t let … Continue reading Grates and Keys: Violence in Early Modern Prisons, Part II
Violence, horticulture and wordplay in the King’s Bench
Violence in prisons is a perennial concern. This is not surprising–the very act of restricting liberty inevitably requires the use of force. In this post, I want to look at one episode in the King’s Bench prison that shows how threats of violence could be used in attempts to curtail resistance and restrict political action … Continue reading Violence, horticulture and wordplay in the King’s Bench
Early Modern Prisons 