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WOMAN IN PRISON by Caroline H. Woods
Jan. 8th, 2014 10:00 pmThis 1869 American book, written in New York, is depressingly similar to modern reports of prison abuses. Woods writes about taking a position as matron in a woman's prison, set above a small number of female prisoners, and quitting shortly afterward to write a tell-all book calling for prison reformation.
Woods comes across in her book as observant, sensible, and humane. She's flung into a difficult job with little to no on-the-job training. The scheduled hours are seventeen-hour work days with expectations of overtime. The Warden's wife is the official head matron but does absolutely nothing but collect a salary! The prisoners have it worse than the workers. The inmates' food is scanty and vile, the conditions depressing, and the punishments for infringing the rules inhumane. There are rats.
It should interest every man and woman as a matter of personal protection from the depredations of vice to know how convicts are treated, and to judge whether that treatment tends to reform the criminal, or to harden and lead him deeper into crime when he is let out into the world again to pursue his own ways.
Ought the punishment of criminals, who have been tried, convicted, and sentenced publicly, to be conducted in secret? It is to be presumed that the keeper of the prison is trusty. There should be no presumption in the matter. It should be known that he is so, and he should be kept so by the ceaseless vigilance of public inspection. What is the quarterly, or semi-annual visit of fifty or a hundred men when the visit has been notified, and the prison put in order for their reception, towards effecting that?
My residence in that prison led me to see that the descriptions of Dickens, and his compeers in the regions of fictitious writing, have given, not the poetic illusions of imaginary sufferings to the contemplation of the world—hardly a vivid picture of the truth.
God speed the day when our prisons and penitentiaries may take a place beside public schools, orphan asylums, houses of refuge, all institutions for the cultivation of a knowledge which tends to the elevation of virtue, and the suppression of vice, in the care of the public!
Reword this in modern terms and it's still some good ideas here. It's bad for a society to ignore the prison population and allow abuses.
The accounts of prison punishments are compelling but not sensationalistic. For instance, Woods speaks movingly but rationally about solitary confinement and its evils, quite some time before later academic studies will show the damage it can do to the human psyche. Says a female prisoner in the book:
"I have been in solitary ten days and ten nights; I have been carried from there to the hospital, fainted away dead, and my feet so swelled that I could not walk on them. I have been gagged till my jaws were so stiff and swelled that I could not shut my mouth. I have been in the dungeon in the cellar..."
There's also this passage about prison labour, which has something of a contemporary ring:
I saw that she was doing a beautiful piece of embroidery. When she [a prisoner, Mary Hartwell] saw that I noticed it, she held it up and exhibited it with a great deal of pride.
It was a night-gown yoke, in linen, of an elegant and elaborate pattern.
"Who are you doing this for?" I asked.
"This is for Mrs. Means." That was the Housekeeper.
That is what I call you up two hours and a half before she rises, to do, I thought.
"How many of you are there that can do such work?" I asked.
"Five of us can do this kind, and we can all do fine stitching, or crochet, or some kind of fine needlework."
There were ten of them to do the work in the Housekeeper's rooms, and those of the Supervisor. Quite an array of talent!
"You ought to see Ann Horton's work. She does all kinds beautifully. She stays up-stairs, and works all of the time. She had a sentence of three years; it's most out now. It would do your eyes good to see the piles and piles of nice things she has done for the Master's wife and the young ladies. The pillow-cases, and the yokes, and bands, and skirts."
"Has she been doing embroidery all of the time for three years?"
"Yes, ma'am, and nice sewing."
I thought three years of hard labor, from five in the morning till eight at night, must accumulate quite an amount in value, of such work, beside what was done at intervals of two or three hours at a time, by the other nine women.
In short, Woods is coming close to advocating socialism - namely, implying that the labourer has more of a right to the proceeds of their own labour than the boss does.
And in this passage, Woods comes across as practically advocating a Scandinavian model of prisons:
Kindness begets kindness. There are few human beings so totally depraved, desperately wicked as some may be, who cannot be aroused into appreciation of kind treatment. I have never met with one who could not. So harshness in a superior begets harshness in an inferior; and constant fault finding either arouses anger from its injustice, or paralyzes all effort to do well.
As are the manners of those who lead, so are the manners of those who follow. As a matter of policy, to restrain crime without regard to the teaching of religion, those who have charge of convicts should be gentle and humane.
It's possible to read a patronising note in the writer's attitude to the prisoners; this is the days before white-collar crime will become a slang term, and Woods believes that she herself is above this end. But this book comes across as a book which is intended to help. The writer's taken action, had real-world experience, and is trying to use it to help others. A 'patronising' attitude is also an obvious improvement on the attitude that the prisoners are lost, inherently degraded people who deserve to be treated like beasts.
This book is well written and about important subject matter. It's depressing to note how little we've changed.
Woods comes across in her book as observant, sensible, and humane. She's flung into a difficult job with little to no on-the-job training. The scheduled hours are seventeen-hour work days with expectations of overtime. The Warden's wife is the official head matron but does absolutely nothing but collect a salary! The prisoners have it worse than the workers. The inmates' food is scanty and vile, the conditions depressing, and the punishments for infringing the rules inhumane. There are rats.
It should interest every man and woman as a matter of personal protection from the depredations of vice to know how convicts are treated, and to judge whether that treatment tends to reform the criminal, or to harden and lead him deeper into crime when he is let out into the world again to pursue his own ways.
Ought the punishment of criminals, who have been tried, convicted, and sentenced publicly, to be conducted in secret? It is to be presumed that the keeper of the prison is trusty. There should be no presumption in the matter. It should be known that he is so, and he should be kept so by the ceaseless vigilance of public inspection. What is the quarterly, or semi-annual visit of fifty or a hundred men when the visit has been notified, and the prison put in order for their reception, towards effecting that?
My residence in that prison led me to see that the descriptions of Dickens, and his compeers in the regions of fictitious writing, have given, not the poetic illusions of imaginary sufferings to the contemplation of the world—hardly a vivid picture of the truth.
God speed the day when our prisons and penitentiaries may take a place beside public schools, orphan asylums, houses of refuge, all institutions for the cultivation of a knowledge which tends to the elevation of virtue, and the suppression of vice, in the care of the public!
Reword this in modern terms and it's still some good ideas here. It's bad for a society to ignore the prison population and allow abuses.
The accounts of prison punishments are compelling but not sensationalistic. For instance, Woods speaks movingly but rationally about solitary confinement and its evils, quite some time before later academic studies will show the damage it can do to the human psyche. Says a female prisoner in the book:
"I have been in solitary ten days and ten nights; I have been carried from there to the hospital, fainted away dead, and my feet so swelled that I could not walk on them. I have been gagged till my jaws were so stiff and swelled that I could not shut my mouth. I have been in the dungeon in the cellar..."
There's also this passage about prison labour, which has something of a contemporary ring:
I saw that she was doing a beautiful piece of embroidery. When she [a prisoner, Mary Hartwell] saw that I noticed it, she held it up and exhibited it with a great deal of pride.
It was a night-gown yoke, in linen, of an elegant and elaborate pattern.
"Who are you doing this for?" I asked.
"This is for Mrs. Means." That was the Housekeeper.
That is what I call you up two hours and a half before she rises, to do, I thought.
"How many of you are there that can do such work?" I asked.
"Five of us can do this kind, and we can all do fine stitching, or crochet, or some kind of fine needlework."
There were ten of them to do the work in the Housekeeper's rooms, and those of the Supervisor. Quite an array of talent!
"You ought to see Ann Horton's work. She does all kinds beautifully. She stays up-stairs, and works all of the time. She had a sentence of three years; it's most out now. It would do your eyes good to see the piles and piles of nice things she has done for the Master's wife and the young ladies. The pillow-cases, and the yokes, and bands, and skirts."
"Has she been doing embroidery all of the time for three years?"
"Yes, ma'am, and nice sewing."
I thought three years of hard labor, from five in the morning till eight at night, must accumulate quite an amount in value, of such work, beside what was done at intervals of two or three hours at a time, by the other nine women.
In short, Woods is coming close to advocating socialism - namely, implying that the labourer has more of a right to the proceeds of their own labour than the boss does.
And in this passage, Woods comes across as practically advocating a Scandinavian model of prisons:
Kindness begets kindness. There are few human beings so totally depraved, desperately wicked as some may be, who cannot be aroused into appreciation of kind treatment. I have never met with one who could not. So harshness in a superior begets harshness in an inferior; and constant fault finding either arouses anger from its injustice, or paralyzes all effort to do well.
As are the manners of those who lead, so are the manners of those who follow. As a matter of policy, to restrain crime without regard to the teaching of religion, those who have charge of convicts should be gentle and humane.
It's possible to read a patronising note in the writer's attitude to the prisoners; this is the days before white-collar crime will become a slang term, and Woods believes that she herself is above this end. But this book comes across as a book which is intended to help. The writer's taken action, had real-world experience, and is trying to use it to help others. A 'patronising' attitude is also an obvious improvement on the attitude that the prisoners are lost, inherently degraded people who deserve to be treated like beasts.
This book is well written and about important subject matter. It's depressing to note how little we've changed.
