Book contents
- Women, Crime and Punishment in Ireland
- Women, Crime and Punishment in Ireland
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures, Maps and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: ‘Another generation of jail-birds’
- Case Study 1 ‘The terrible temptation’
- Case Study 2 ‘A gang of coiners’
- Case Study 3 ‘The workhouse girls’
- Case Study 4 ‘A person of very superior attainments’
- 4 ‘At first she refused to say how she got it’
- Case Study 5 ‘A most remote part of the country’
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - ‘At first she refused to say how she got it’
Networks of Acquisition
from Case Study 4 - ‘A person of very superior attainments’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 September 2020
- Women, Crime and Punishment in Ireland
- Women, Crime and Punishment in Ireland
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures, Maps and Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: ‘Another generation of jail-birds’
- Case Study 1 ‘The terrible temptation’
- Case Study 2 ‘A gang of coiners’
- Case Study 3 ‘The workhouse girls’
- Case Study 4 ‘A person of very superior attainments’
- 4 ‘At first she refused to say how she got it’
- Case Study 5 ‘A most remote part of the country’
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The historian can glimpse prison networks, and connections between incarcerated participant women, at points where their activities clashed with prison regulations. Evidence of prison exchange networks was revealed when collusion was reported to officials, when illicit material goods were discovered on bodies or in cells, or when gossip about another inmate or staff member reached staff ears. Chapter 4 interrogates information and material goods transactions to discover the workings of networks and relationships behind bars. It offers an insight into ways the prison economy could facilitate networks that enabled women of different ages, backgrounds and circumstances to connect. The chapter is divided into three distinct sections. The first examines the exchange of information in prison, the second focuses on material goods networks, and the third considers how exchanges of information and goods impacted power relations and hierarchies. Evidence of female networks and partnerships indicates convict ingenuity and enterprise, cooperation and collusion. The prison thus offers a snapshot of nineteenth-century Irish society and a glimpse of (predominantly lower-class) female networks and relationships. This chapter demonstrates that in prison, as on the outside, community networks and cooperation were vital for social and economic survival.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Women, Crime and Punishment in IrelandLife in the Nineteenth-Century Convict Prison, pp. 181 - 204Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020