Description
Book SynopsisExamines the lived experiences of women criminals in Pennsylvania from 1820 to 1860, mainly as they navigated the nineteenth-century legal and prison systems.
Trade Review“This comprehensive investigation of criminal women restores their agency and recovers the choices and strategies that were often hidden beneath official accounts of their deeds.”
—Susan Branson,author of Dangerous to Know: Women, Class and Crime in the Early Republic
“By focusing on the lived experience of women in the carceral system, Troublesome Women provides an important intervention in scholarship that emphasizes the power of the carceral system and universal ideas of womanhood.”
—Olivia Errico Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1 The Crimes
1 “With a World of Tears”: Women Criminals and the Use of Mercy and Femininity
2 “She Would Have a Divorce at the Risk of Her Life”: Women and Crimes That Challenged Social Limitations
3 “Amazonian Outbreak”: Antebellum Women and Political
Crime
Part 2 In Prison
4 “Disturbing the Other Prisoners”: Female Inmates in Pennsylvania Penitentiaries
5 “No Kind Treatment Can Subdue the Prisoner”: Chaos and Female Resistance in the County Jails
6 “Restoration to the Path of Virtue”: The Difficult Task of Reform
Conclusion
Appendixes
A County Crime Statistics
B Eastern State Penitentiary Female Demographics
C Western State Penitentiary Female Demographics
D Gender and Race of Moyamensing Admissions
Notes
Bibliography
Index
