Guide to the Criminal Prisons of Nineteenth-Century England

There are big gaps in our knowledge of the penal system of nineteenth-century England. We don't even know how many prisons existed. This Guide recovers much of that lost landscape. It contains critical information about operational dates, locations, jurisdictions, population statistics, appearances in primary and secondary sources and lists of surviving archives for 844 English prisons-including local prisons, convict prisons, prison hulks and lock-ups used to confine those accused and convicted of crime in the period 1800-1899. Through analysis of the accumulated data, the book challenges several important assumptions on the emergence of the modern prison in Britain. It also draws attention to previously unexplored patterns in the preservation and management of penal records.