Women all through history have been imprisoned with men in refuges, workhouses and dwellings of correction, jails, debtor's prisons, and string of connections gangs, penitentiaries, reformatories, and correctional institutions. When it has been documented, often their imprisonment has been the source of anxiety and controversy. Above all, figures of incarcerated women and situation of their imprisonment have echoed not only broader socioeconomic truths and altering delineations of misdeed and types of penalty but also scene environment and place of women at time (Tademy 2001).
While there is the long history of women's imprisonment in Europe, Great Britain, and American colonies, only in 19th century did women start to be incarcerated for long time span of time in amenities constructed for that purpose. Earlier, women and their children could be discovered in localized almshouses and workhouses supplied for care and correction of poor and vagrant; in congested jails awaiting test and sentencing; or, after judgment, opposite penalty of death or its alternate, transport and service in bondage (Tademy 2001). During 18th and 19th centuries, Great Britain transported thousands, women as well as men, primarily to American colonies and, after American Revolution, to Australia.
Discussion
Women's Voices on Reform
At Sing Sing, assured of worth of penitentiary control and esteem for women, the distinct construction entitled Mt. Pleasant, which encompassed the nursery, was constructed in 1822. Its stormy history echoed increasing stress inside prison reform movements between male constituents, managers, and legislators, who were progressively supportive of solitary confinement, quiet schemes, and hard labor, and middle-class women “visitors,” who were not. Predominantly Quaker and Evangelical, these women rather than considered that consideration other than terror was key to proposal and, reflective of women's environment, homelike communal backgrounds other than solitude were locus of reformation.
Elizabeth Fry's Observations on Sitting, Superintendence and Government of Female Prisoners, released in 1827, became influential direct for an expanding number of middle- and upper-class women who conceived their own reformist organizations. The Association of Women Visitors and British Ladies Society for Promoting Reformation of Female Prisoners in England and aligned societies in Philadelphia and New York searched command over imprisoned women, while trying to pursue Fry's recommendations to be “at one time shrewd as serpents and innocuous as doves” when opposite male managers and legislators. Fry's dream needed the location divided from communicate with male inmates or agents, organized by full-time “pious and benevolent” feminine employees with aid of woman tourists who would, through “kind superintendence” and “tender” remedy, evolve their scheme of command and supervision. Her recommendations encompassed classification with progressive motivational phases of privileges, provision for devout direction, rudimentary learning, and relentless helpful labor to conceive both orderly customs and teaching for subsequent paid work as domestics or seamstresses (Tademy 2001).
After the sequence of disturbances in Sing Sing's Mt. Pleasant Women's Prison, in 1844 freshly nominated matron, Elizabeth Farnham, leveraged by Fry, was very resolute to change control and esteem that ineffectively “subdued” feminine convict into one mirroring ...