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E-book Motherhood confined : Maternal health in English prisons, 1853–1955

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Penilaian

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Serving a sentence of fifteen years in prison in the late nineteenth century, Florence Maybrick lamented that to be sick in prison was a terrible experience. She recalled the desolation and indifference in treatment and vividly described ‘lying in silence without the touch of a friendly hand, the sound of a friendly voice or a single expression of sympathy or interest’.1 Between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century many women fell ill in prison, their incarceration often causing or exacerbating their sickness. Meanwhile, hundreds of women entered prisons pregnant, and many of them gave birth to their babies behind bars. Countless others left children on the outside. Some of these women had been in prison several times and were perceived to be hardened to its toils, while others were stepping through the prison gates for the first time. Susan Willis Fletcher, reflecting upon the commencement of her year in Westminster Prison in the late nineteenth century, spoke of something that united them all. When the key turned in their cell door, women said a silent ‘farewell to everybody and everything’ they knew.2The aim of imposing uniformity underpinned the creation of the modern prison system and shaped its administration thereafter. Despite this, carrying out research into the history of prisons and the experiences of the women who lived and worked within them reveals a skein of diverse narratives. There were those who completed their sentence without incident and others who constantly broke the prison rules and populated the tables of punishment, women who served only one sentence and others who entered into a cycle of recidivism. Some women bore the discipline of the prison with little evidence of it impacting on their health, while others were permanently damaged in body or mind by their time behind bars. Many of the women who walked through the prison gates between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century were mothers. It is their experiences that are explored in this book.In 1919 an enquiry was carried out into medical provisions in Holloway Prison, England’s largest women’s prison at the time. Its report, which is addressed in greater depth in a later chapter, made a statement worthy of note here, speaking as it does to a question that permeates this study. When illuminating what they believed to be ‘serious defects in the prison’s administration’ in terms of the availability of nursing staff and the conditions in which pregnant women were incarcerated, the enquiry committee explicitly expressed their belief that mothers, ‘whatever their delinquencies’, and their babies, who were innocent in the eyes of the law, were entitled to proper care while in the charge of the state.3 However, the boundaries dictating this ‘proper care’ were subject to repeated drawing and redrawing by prison administrators, staff and reformers alike throughout this period.

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Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

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No. Panggil

618.2 BEN m

Penerbit

London : Manchester University Press., 2024

Deskripsi Fisik

218 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9781526166791

Klasifikasi

618.2

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

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Subjek

Obstetric, Midwifery

Info Detail Spesifik

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Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

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Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

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