What was it like to be in prison in the past?
August 21, 2011 6:43 AM Subscribe
What are some materials about the history of punishment in Europe and America that really get across just what it would have been like to be a prisoner?
What I'm looking for are descriptions of conditions, particularly from the 18th century to mid-20th (but I'll take whatever you've got). I know conditions were pretty miserable for much of this period (albeit in different ways at different times), but I want something that makes you understand just how miserable it was -- I want materials that really explain what it was like to have been a prisoner at a given time. Since I'm particularly interested in the different reforms that prisons went through during this period, what would be ideal would be something that gave a snapshot of a prisoner's life during multiple periods.
I'm interested in history books, documentaries, youtube videos.... Anything! I would prefer ostensibly non-fictional resources, but I'll also take fictional suggestions (so long as they're accurate!).
What I'm looking for are descriptions of conditions, particularly from the 18th century to mid-20th (but I'll take whatever you've got). I know conditions were pretty miserable for much of this period (albeit in different ways at different times), but I want something that makes you understand just how miserable it was -- I want materials that really explain what it was like to have been a prisoner at a given time. Since I'm particularly interested in the different reforms that prisons went through during this period, what would be ideal would be something that gave a snapshot of a prisoner's life during multiple periods.
I'm interested in history books, documentaries, youtube videos.... Anything! I would prefer ostensibly non-fictional resources, but I'll also take fictional suggestions (so long as they're accurate!).
Check out Foucault's Discipline and Punish.
posted by Bromius at 7:51 AM on August 21, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by Bromius at 7:51 AM on August 21, 2011 [1 favorite]
There's always the Newgate Calendar, which surely must be online somewhere in full text form.
posted by elizardbits at 8:30 AM on August 21, 2011
posted by elizardbits at 8:30 AM on August 21, 2011
There is that show that builds historical stuff... Cable... I forget what it is called or what channel, sorry. But they make things, including punishment tools. Wheel, spinning cage, the rack, etc.
posted by Jacen at 9:14 AM on August 21, 2011
posted by Jacen at 9:14 AM on August 21, 2011
You Can't Win contains the author's accounts of being held in various prisons in the American west, and while the majority of the book is about his cons, he also focuses on prison reform quite a bit at the end (in the same way The Jungle turns to Socialism).
posted by quarterframer at 9:47 AM on August 21, 2011
posted by quarterframer at 9:47 AM on August 21, 2011
Charles Dickens talks a great deal about Eastern State Penitentiary in his American Notes. Might be worth checking out
posted by DeltaZ113 at 10:29 AM on August 21, 2011
posted by DeltaZ113 at 10:29 AM on August 21, 2011
There's various bits at the Victorian London site, such as this account of 'Three Years of Penal Servitude'.
posted by Abiezer at 11:36 AM on August 21, 2011
posted by Abiezer at 11:36 AM on August 21, 2011
What about memoirs, like Alexander Berkman's book Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist? It's a diary of his life in a Pennsylvania prison from 1892-1906. I've run into a couple other prison-autobiographies from the 19th/early 20th c. on places like Gutenberg and Google Books.
posted by theatro at 11:41 AM on August 21, 2011
posted by theatro at 11:41 AM on August 21, 2011
Foucault's Discipline and Punish has given rise to a huge scholarly literature on the history of prisons. Michael Ignatieff's A Just Measure of Pain and Patricia O'Brien's The Promise of Punishment are two of the heavyweight books in the field, but if you're looking for first-hand accounts of 'what it was like', you might try Philip Priestley's two books, Victorian Prison Lives: English Prison Biography 1830-1914 and Jail Journeys: The English Prison Experience since 1918. (The latter seems to be out of print, but there are extracts available on Google Books.)
Some Victorian prison writings have been digitised by the Internet Archive, including Five Years Penal Servitude, by One Who Has Endured It (1877), which Priestley calls 'the classic prison biography of the nineteenth century'. The author was Edward Callow, who was imprisoned for five years for forging a cheque. If you want a first-hand account of picking oakum in Newgate, or any of the other petty tyrannies and indignities of life in a Victorian prison, Callow is your man.
posted by verstegan at 2:32 PM on August 21, 2011 [2 favorites]
Some Victorian prison writings have been digitised by the Internet Archive, including Five Years Penal Servitude, by One Who Has Endured It (1877), which Priestley calls 'the classic prison biography of the nineteenth century'. The author was Edward Callow, who was imprisoned for five years for forging a cheque. If you want a first-hand account of picking oakum in Newgate, or any of the other petty tyrannies and indignities of life in a Victorian prison, Callow is your man.
posted by verstegan at 2:32 PM on August 21, 2011 [2 favorites]
I came in here to suggest You Can't Win as well, and since that's been done, I'll just add that in addition to a few US western frontier prisons, he contrasts the US system to the Canadian one of the same period, and the difference is stark.
Also, it's a fun read.
posted by unsound at 8:14 PM on August 21, 2011 [1 favorite]
Also, it's a fun read.
posted by unsound at 8:14 PM on August 21, 2011 [1 favorite]
I know somebody who gets very excited by prisons who has just bought a copy of Capital Punishments: Crime and Prison Conditions in Victorian Times by Steve Jones. (The title is misleading: it's about Victorian prisons and not the death penalty.)
posted by matsho at 6:00 AM on August 22, 2011
posted by matsho at 6:00 AM on August 22, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by easily confused at 7:32 AM on August 21, 2011