Women as Offenders

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Women as Offenders
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The Punishment of Women

• 1500-1800

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Pre-Industrial Europe

• Symbolic and Physical Punishments

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Punishment Prior to 16th Century

• Direct physical responses
• Banishment
• Ritualized punishments
• Public shaming

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Main Methods of Punishment

• Whipping, hanging, public ridicule

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Public Humiliation of Women

• Ducking School
• Branks or Gossips Bridle
• Scarlet Letter for Adulteresses
• Public whippings and carting through streets for
  idle and lewd women

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18th Century Europe

• Theft by women such as housebreaking, theft from
  dwellings, shoplifting and pick-pocketing, were
  the majority of the offenses
• Violence rare but usually against members of
  their own household - children and servants

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Elizabeth Fry in England

• Quaker
• Established programs for women in British prisons
• Began as reformer, increasingly favored firm
  discipline

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Photos of Prisons in England After Fry
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The Branks

• Iron cage placed over womans head
• Had a spike or pointed wheel that was inserted
  into the offenders mouth to pin the tongue and
  silence the noisiest brawler
• Fastened to woman and paraded her through town
• Not removed until evil-doer had repented

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Public Chastisements of Women

• Linked to household domination
• Branks could be used inside the home with help of
  sheriff
• Fixed on one side of open fireplace with a hook
  to stop scolding propensities
• Ill hook you up.

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The Meaning

• Attack on body - branding and corporal
  punishments
• Served as moral lesson intended to deter behavior
• Symbolized the power to punish
• Public spectacles spread fear and obedience

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Systematic Confinement

• House of Corrections for wandering poor
• Poor seen as lazy, sinful, unproductive,
  dangerous, in need of suppression and social
  control
• State created regulations aimed at lengthening
  work day, putting max on wages

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Wandering and Begging

• Increased as serfs were kicked off land
• Were punished by flogging, mutiliation and death
  for repeated offenders
• Supplemented by systematic confinement
• Bridewells - St. Bridgets Well
• Created by merchants, statesmen, soldiers

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Who exacted the punishments?

• Sometimes legal and judicial system
• Just as important church and community
• Most brutal the right of monarchs and judges

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More Serious But Less Common Punishments in
Pre-Industrial Europe

• Boring of ear, dismemberment, hanging, burning to
  death, torture

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Forms of Confinement of Women

• Nunneries
• Monasteries
• Castles and watch-towers

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Symbolic Punishment

• Re-enactment of the crime
• Theatrical and brutal
• Directly demonstrates the final reckoning of the
  evil-doer

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Examples of Punishments

• French servant girls execution
• Dutch womans symbolic punishments didnt work

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What Crimes Were the Most Common for Women?

• Rarely violence
• Minor thefts with accomplices

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Special Treatment for Women

• Pleading her belly
• Adultery
• Murdering ones spouse
• Witchcraft

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Witchcraft Panics 14th - 17th Century

• 80-90 of those accused were women
• Older, independent, though relatively powerless,
  knowledgeable in art of healing

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Womens Bodies

• Instruments for
• Exorcising political and social evils
• Establishing the power of institutions
• Symbolic marking of boundaries of appropriate
  female behavior.

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Symbolic ChastisementsHighly Ritualized Shaming

• For perceived inversions of the natural male
  hierarchy
• For public quarrels and accusations relating to
  family reputations
• For letting your wife get away with adultery
• Cuckolds Court
• Riding Backwards on a Donkey

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If Men Grossly Overstepped Bounds of Punishment

• If they mutilated or nearly killed wife
• Rarely punished men

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The Role of Women in Society in Pre-Industrial
Europe

• Subservient to men in most spheres of life
• Especially within family, home, church
• Some women were economically independent (bakers,
  innkeepers, brewers)
• Speaking out against men was risky - could be
  defined as public nuisance, shrew, nag or common
  scold

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Photos of British Prisons After Frys Reforms
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Punishment of Women in 19th Century

• Impact of Great Awakening
• Industrialization Immigration
• Civil War
• Dominant sexual ideology
• The Cult of Domesticity

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American Womens Reformatories 1870

• Sexual Ideology Separate Sexual Spheres
• The Pure Reformatory Model
• Contrast Between Real Ideal Reformatories

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