Penitentiaries, Punishment, and Military Prisons by Angela M. Zombek

Author:Angela M. Zombek [Zombek, Angela M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781606353554
Google: s7CXtAEACAAJ
Publisher: Kent State University Press
Published: 2018-01-15T00:39:56+00:00

7

Fallen from Grace

The Experience of Female Inmates

In late April 1864, the Dayton Empire reported that the “beneficent” U.S. government was preparing a house in Cincinnati for the reception of female prisoners. “This indicates a renewal of the war upon women,” the journalist complained, and then wondered when someone would write a history of prisons like this and Camp Chase, where “many an innocent man and tender female have been shut within the foul and loathsome walls for months at a time, charged with no crime, conscious of no guilt, and discharged without trial.”1

Nineteenth-century Americans were accustomed to men facing incarceration, but female inmates shocked them. Throughout the century, prison officials had a difficult time deciding how to treat female inmates whom many considered, as L. Mara Dodge has noted, “more hardened and depraved than male inmates” and “beyond the hope of redemption.”2 Female penitentiary inmates were a rarity before the Civil War, officials did not make special accommodations for them, and none of the nation’s first penitentiaries had completely separate facilities for female convicts.3 The number of incarcerated women was small in the antebellum period. Seldom could more than one or two women be found in a Southern penitentiary before the Civil War and, generally speaking, the number of female inmates in the antebellum years rarely constituted more than 10 percent of the total population of prisoners and was often much less.4

Circumstances changed during the Civil War. According to Edith Abbott, wartime criminal statistics are hard to come by, but in general, the number of female inmates in penitentiaries peaked in 1863 and 1864.5 Military prisons also filled with female captives as war increased women’s visibility in the public sphere. Castle Thunder, for example, detained approximately one hundred women throughout its existence.6

Officials’ concern over female inmates heightened as the nineteenth century progressed. Wardens initially had sole oversight over female inmates, but by midcentury many penitentiaries employed a matron to provide special care for women. Officials segregated inmates by gender as best they could despite the absence of a female ward, and military prison officers followed suit. Wartime officials separated male and female inmates in newly established military prisons, and federal authorities established two female prisons, one in Louisville, Kentucky, and the other named Chestnut Street Prison, in St. Louis, Missouri, presaging the women-only prisons that sprang up after the Civil War.7

Regardless of where they were held, female inmates elicited public conversation about the morality of women and about the character of the authorities that detained them. Historians, however, have generally overlooked the fact that prisons are gendered institutions that reflect assumptions about proper male and female behavior.8 Imprisoned women faced an even harsher stigma than men since incarceration equated an irredeemable fall from grace. Female inmates nonetheless faced many of the same challenges as their male counterparts—they struggled to assert their identity, challenged the authority of captors, sought freedom by attempting escape, and maintained relationships with those at home despite stringent supervision. The press and penitentiary officials generally disparaged female criminals, especially black women, both before and during the Civil War.

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