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Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution 1750-1850
Documents the new philosophy of punishment that replaced public punishment with imprisonment and rudimentary attempts at rehabilitation in an effort to control the criminal poor
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
288 pages, Paperback
Published December 5, 1989
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About the author
Michael Ignatieff
75 books151 followersMichael Grant Ignatieff is a Canadian author, academic and former politician. He was the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and Leader of the Official Opposition from 2008 until 2011. Known for his work as a historian, Ignatieff has held senior academic posts at the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, Harvard University and the University of Toronto.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 9, 2022
Prisons raise the issue of the morality of state power in its starkest form. Force being necessary to the maintenance of any social order, what degree of coersion can the state legitimately exert over those who disobey?
[To make this question slightly less academic: the author later became the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.]
This book describes a new philosophy of punishment as it emerged in England between 1775 and 1840... this form of carceral discipline "directed at the mind" replaced a cluster of punishments "directed at the body"... linked to changes in class relations and social tactics outside the walls.
First, context. Prior to 1775 (when war with America elimated the main destination for prisoner transportation) very few convicts were imprisoned, only about 2%, and generally not for long sentences. Serious crimes (or crimes considered serious by the elite!) resulted in execution or transportation. Less serious offenses were punished in immediate material ways such as whipping, the stocks, branding, etc.
The first measure to make up for the loss of the 13 Colonies was to build the Hulks, huge moored ships stuffed with prisoners. This drew attention to the issue of incarceration, which previously had been easy for most people to ignore. Local populace were unhappy with having the Hulks in the backyard, worried about escaped convicts, and alarmed by the Hulks unhygenic conditions, which frequently led to outbreaks of diseases such as typhus -- which sometimes spread to judges and juries, hences the authorities actually caring.
Rural enclosures and evictions, as well as masses of men returning from wars, led to increased unemployment. In the 1820s more and more people, including an increased number of minors, were incarcerated for petty crimes such as stealing food, disorderly conduct, or "absconding from service" (i.e. running away from your boss without permission; especially common for women servants). At the same time, prisons became increasingly punitive. Hard labor and supposedly non-violent punishments such as being straitjacketed and drenced in cold water often led to death for prisoners on near-starvation diets, and women prisoners had miscarriages due to the physical strain of walking the treadwheel and other labor.
In many prisons prisoners were not permitted to communicate in any way, even by glance or gesture. Some prisons masked convicts to ensure this. Cells were solitary and much forced labor was carried out within the cell. Even required religious observance involved being placed in small solitary stalls. Those who tried to communicate were moved to cold, unlit basement cells. It was not uncommon for prisoners to begin hallucinating and be removed to mental asylums. Others found ways to commit suicide, usually using materials from their labor.
So far I've just been describing prison conditions. Ignatieff fully researched the material conditions, including testimony from both prisoners and those involved in running the prisons. There's an entire biography of John Howard, the "father of solitary confinement." (Fun fact, he used to punish his son with solitary confinement, beginning when he was about 4. Even Howard's punitive contemporaries thought this was a bit much, and some suggested it was the cause of his son's eventually insanity. Nobody thought that meant he should't be determining the fate of prisoners, though.)
There are also long sections analyzing the words and attitudes of those in charge of punishing, or reforming prisons. These attitudes maybe hard for us today to understand, especially the better intentioned reformers. Their approaches so clearly did not work! How sincere were they? Hard to say. It's worth noting that England, like America today, had a much higher rate and length of incarceration than other European countries.
Ignatieff ends by stating, As much as anything else, it is this suffocating vision of the past that legitimizes the abuses of the present and seeks to adjust us to the cruelties of the future.
The prose here is fairly accessible. You don't have to be a historian to follow it, and he lays out the major historical shifts pretty clearly. In terms of understanding contemporary attitudes, it might be helpful to read something like The Emergence of Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century: A Privileged Moment in the History of England, Scotland, and France (or my review of said, if you're not up for a whole study!).
[To make this question slightly less academic: the author later became the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.]
This book describes a new philosophy of punishment as it emerged in England between 1775 and 1840... this form of carceral discipline "directed at the mind" replaced a cluster of punishments "directed at the body"... linked to changes in class relations and social tactics outside the walls.
First, context. Prior to 1775 (when war with America elimated the main destination for prisoner transportation) very few convicts were imprisoned, only about 2%, and generally not for long sentences. Serious crimes (or crimes considered serious by the elite!) resulted in execution or transportation. Less serious offenses were punished in immediate material ways such as whipping, the stocks, branding, etc.
The first measure to make up for the loss of the 13 Colonies was to build the Hulks, huge moored ships stuffed with prisoners. This drew attention to the issue of incarceration, which previously had been easy for most people to ignore. Local populace were unhappy with having the Hulks in the backyard, worried about escaped convicts, and alarmed by the Hulks unhygenic conditions, which frequently led to outbreaks of diseases such as typhus -- which sometimes spread to judges and juries, hences the authorities actually caring.
Rural enclosures and evictions, as well as masses of men returning from wars, led to increased unemployment. In the 1820s more and more people, including an increased number of minors, were incarcerated for petty crimes such as stealing food, disorderly conduct, or "absconding from service" (i.e. running away from your boss without permission; especially common for women servants). At the same time, prisons became increasingly punitive. Hard labor and supposedly non-violent punishments such as being straitjacketed and drenced in cold water often led to death for prisoners on near-starvation diets, and women prisoners had miscarriages due to the physical strain of walking the treadwheel and other labor.
In many prisons prisoners were not permitted to communicate in any way, even by glance or gesture. Some prisons masked convicts to ensure this. Cells were solitary and much forced labor was carried out within the cell. Even required religious observance involved being placed in small solitary stalls. Those who tried to communicate were moved to cold, unlit basement cells. It was not uncommon for prisoners to begin hallucinating and be removed to mental asylums. Others found ways to commit suicide, usually using materials from their labor.
So far I've just been describing prison conditions. Ignatieff fully researched the material conditions, including testimony from both prisoners and those involved in running the prisons. There's an entire biography of John Howard, the "father of solitary confinement." (Fun fact, he used to punish his son with solitary confinement, beginning when he was about 4. Even Howard's punitive contemporaries thought this was a bit much, and some suggested it was the cause of his son's eventually insanity. Nobody thought that meant he should't be determining the fate of prisoners, though.)
There are also long sections analyzing the words and attitudes of those in charge of punishing, or reforming prisons. These attitudes maybe hard for us today to understand, especially the better intentioned reformers. Their approaches so clearly did not work! How sincere were they? Hard to say. It's worth noting that England, like America today, had a much higher rate and length of incarceration than other European countries.
Ignatieff ends by stating, As much as anything else, it is this suffocating vision of the past that legitimizes the abuses of the present and seeks to adjust us to the cruelties of the future.
The prose here is fairly accessible. You don't have to be a historian to follow it, and he lays out the major historical shifts pretty clearly. In terms of understanding contemporary attitudes, it might be helpful to read something like The Emergence of Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century: A Privileged Moment in the History of England, Scotland, and France (or my review of said, if you're not up for a whole study!).
December 5, 2022
Read the Simplified Chinese version, but not here. First one-third was interesting but the latter two thirds rather boring.
March 3, 2012
I read this for a school research paper. It is very interesting and informative, but the number and frequency of exceedingly dry parts made me bump a star off my original rating of 4. It is a fairly easy read with interesting narratives about early British prisons. Tangents pop up here and there and never really get tied back to the main text, but otherwise it is a good and useful read.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews