Victorian Prison Lives - Hardcover

Priestley, Philip

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0416347703 ISBN 13: 9780416347708

Publisher: Law Book Co of Australasia, 1985

Synopsis

Victorian Prison Lives is the first account of the process of imprisionment in England between 1830 and 1914 to be drawn largely from the writings of prisoners themselves. The period was in some ways one of great change, beginning with an astonishing penitentiary experiement when prisons were seen as moral hospitals. But this approach eventually gave way to the idea of penal servitude and created a legacy of harshness and suffering still preserved in the reputations of Portland Chatham and Dartmoor. It was only towards the end of the period that the concept of modern prison administration began to emerge. But while statutary changes where taking place there was an underlying continuity. This is examined in a series of chapters on every aspect of prison life - from admission procedure, fellow prisoners and the nature of hard labour, diet and discipline to the process of release, which for a long-term prisioner could be as daunting as entry into prison.

About this title

Review

You would not have enjoyed spending time in a Victorian prison, as Philip Priestley's beautifully written and genuinely terrifying study demonstrates. Synthesising a wide range of actual individual experiences, Priestley takes us through all the stages of incarceration, from 'The Cell' and 'The Daily Round' to 'Discipline', 'The Scaffold' (gulp) and, for those lucky enough to make it, 'Release'. The accounts he builds on range from the prison autobiographies of celebrated forgers like Austin Bidwell to accounts written under shamefaced pseudonyms (so potent was the stigma) such as 'One-Who-Has-Suffered'. And suffer they did, a suffering made worse by the fact that it was inflicted by the self-righteous in the name of justice. There is a point to Priestley's meticulously gathered, vividly presented material: an anti-prison point. He is never preachy about this, but in an elegant preface he points out how ineffective prisons are at reducing criminal behaviour. He thinks that the prison as idea and reality could vanish in the near future. This is an arresting thought: as he says, "the lunatic asylum and the workhouse, institutional contemporaries of the penitentiary, have both disappeared into historical oblivion. They sprang from the same sources of Enlightenment thought, were found not to work, and have been abandoned". Could prisons go the same way? --Adam Roberts

Book Description

A fascinating and disturbing look at punishment in Victorian England, based on prisoners' own accounts.

About this edition

• Publisher: Law Book Co of Australasia
• Publication date: 1985
• ISBN 10: 0416347703
• ISBN 13: 9780416347708
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 300