History of Women's Prisons

Houses of Correction, Local Jails, and Transportation

During the 16th and 17th centuries, numerous “houses of correction” were established to house women and men found wandering, begging, or engaged in petty thievery or prostitution, for corrective discipline and productive work. London's Bridewell, the first of many in England, opened in 1556 for the confinement of “idle, criminal and destitute women and men.” In 1602, the work of all the inmates in the Bridewell was leased to “three gentlemen,” who then proceeded to sell the “labor” of the women as prostitutes. The first house of correction constructed specifically for women was Amsterdam's Spinhuis. Opened in 1645, it was hailed for its order, cleanliness, and productivity. The women's spinning and sewing was overseen by a warder and his wife in a paternalistic setting whose motto rejected vengeance but affirmed “a compulsion for good,” and concluded: “My hand is stern, but my heart is kind.”

In Great Britain, men and women were housed together in overcrowded and diseased local jails for many years. In 1813, Elizabeth Fry began visiting the women in London's Newgate Prison with other Quaker women. Most efforts to segregate prisoners by sex are usually traced to this time, and the subsequent public outcry caused by the reformers’ reactions to what they saw. Reporting that nearly 300 women—“blaspheming, fighting, dram-drinking, half-naked”—with “their multitudes of children” were crowded into two wards and two cells while they awaited trial or after sentencing, faced death or transportation, Fry and her associates demanded changes in penal policy (Smith, 1962, p. 102). Ten years later in 1823, Parliamentary legislation required the separation of women, the appointment of a matron for their supervision, and no admission of men into their quarters unless accompanied by a woman officer.

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