Prison – Journal of Victorian Culture Online

William Seymour: ‘The Female Cab Driver of Liverpool’

February 25, 2021 Billie-Gina Thomason Other, Victorians Beyond the Academy

On 10 February 1875, William Seymour, a cab driver, was remanded in custody and charged with stealing ‘22 lbs of beef’ and ‘5 lbs of veal’ from Mr Henry Moorby who owned a butcher’s on Leece Street in Liverpool.[1] Although William categorically maintained his innocence, he was charged with theft and the Liverpool Mercury commented that ‘upon the arm and breast of [his] coat were traces of suet which proved incontestably that he was guilty of the crime’.[2] Although this

The Secret of Lincoln Jail

July 4, 2013 lucinda matthews-jones Other

Review by Guy Woolnough, Keele University. Time Team Specials, Channel Four, 30th June 2013. The excellent ‘Secret of Lincoln Jail’ showed how history can and should be presented. The medium was used to deliver an interesting programme which did neither sensationalised its subject nor patronised its audience. It engaged with the serious issues without being overly complex or tedious. Lincoln gaol (the spelling I prefer) was used as the star, and enabled the presentation of a history of incarceration since

‘Reappraising Victorian Literacy through Prison Records’

September 2, 2010 helen rogers Other

In JVC 15.1, Rosalind Crone examines a host of evidence from Victorian prison records about prisoners’ schooling and their ability to read and write. What does this data tell us about the reading public in the nineteenth century and about the spread of literacy, especially among the labouring classes? Girls’ School at Tothill Fields Prison, from Henry Mayhew and John Binny, The Criminal Prisons of London and Scenes of Prison Life (London: Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1862), facing p. 356.