![]() ![]() ![]() Women were both marginal and yet immensely important figures in this process. ![]() They used punishment to classify and segregate people along lines of difference-crime, class, gender, race, and age-in order to identify those who might one day stand as citizens if properly reformed. When economic depression struck and crime rates spiked, the underclasses seemed more threatening than ever before.3 Elites did not stand idly by but rather invoked the authority of enlightened justice to reassert hierarchy and order. It was a tall order, made more challenging by the resistance of lower-class men working as watchmen, keepers, and guards who refused their orders, African Americans who fought back against unjust laws and people who claimed possession of them, Irish immigrants who stole items of small value to survive after serving out or abandoning their indentures, and working women who refused to give up their jobs and retreat from public life into the domestic fantasy of republicanism. A diverse class of white men, from ruling elites to middling artisans, cast their lot with the penitentiary system, hoping it would make them better men, bring back the gender roles of old, cultivate industrious habits, contain the threat of free blacks and immigrants, and regulate illicit sex. W with Great Britain finally came to an end, Pennsylvania’s legislature moved quickly to enact what it had first approved in the state constitution of : major revisions to the penal code to reduce the number of capital crimes and put an end to harsh punishment.1 Under the newly democratic government, more men than ever before gained importance in the body politic.2 But the Revolutionary promises-life, liberty, happiness-were quickly foreclosed by a revised penal system that disguised its violence under the rubric of humanitarianism, replaced slavery as the disciplinary authority in African American lives, and prized the property rights of the few over the human rights of the many. Busch, State Printer of Pennsylvania, ) VAG Vagrancy Docket, Philadelphia Prisons System, PCA Inspectors of the Jail and Penitentiary House, Philadelphia Prisons System, PCA HSP Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia MAG Magdalen Society of Philadelphia, HSP MCD Mayor’s Court Docket, PCA PCA Philadelphia City Archives PFT Prisoners for Trial Docket, Philadelphia Prisons System, PCA PG Pennsylvania Gazette PMHB Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography PPS Pennsylvania Prison Society, HSP PSA Pennsylvania State Archives, Harrisburg PSAMPP Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, HSP PSD Prison Sentence Docket, Philadelphia Prisons System, PCA Statutes The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from to , ed. Sexual Orderings Conclusion Appendix Notes Index Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations ix Introduction Chapter . Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ---- Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. U n i v e r si t y of pe n n s y lva n i a pr e s s ph i l a de l ph i aĬopyright ! University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Liberty’s Prisoners Carceral Culture in Early America A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher. Interdisciplinary in character, and with a special emphasis on the period from about to , the series is published in partnership with the McNeil Center for Early American Studies. Brown, Max Cavitch, and David Waldstreicher Exploring neglected aspects of our colonial, revolutionary, and early national history and culture, Early American Studies reinterprets familiar themes and events in fresh ways. EARLY AMERICAN STUDIES Series editors: Daniel K.
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