Fulham Refuge

Last updated

"The Refuge for female convicts at Fulham", The Illustrated London News, 1858. The Refuge for female convicts at Fulham 1858.jpg
"The Refuge for female convicts at Fulham", The Illustrated London News , 1858.

Fulham Refuge, also known as Fulham Reformatory, [2] was a women's prison in Fulham in west London that opened in 1856 and closed in 1888. The prison was intended to provide skills for prisoners to help rehabilitate them on their release back into the community.

Contents

Site

The prison was located on land between Burlington Road and Fulham Road that had previously held a school (Burlington Academy), which closed in 1853, with the prison constructed on the site of the school's former cricket pitch. [3] The prison included a large building, which consisted of workshops, schoolrooms, dormitories, a bakery and wash house; officers' accommodation, and an infirmary. There were exercise grounds, a chaplain's house, along with an orchard and grounds. [4]

Ethos

Fulham Refuge was initially used as part of a three-stage rehabilitation process championed by Sir Joshua Jebb, the Director General of Prisons, [3] as women worked their way up from Millbank Prison, to Brixton Prison, before finally arriving at Fulham with a view to being reintegrated into the wider community. [4]

Fulham was the "most distinctively feminine of the early convict prisons", and tried to train women with skills suitable for subsequent employment, cooking, cleaning and laundry, with emphasis on "softening and civilising". [5]

Part of the reasoning behind calling it a "refuge" rather than "prison" was that potential employers might be less reluctant to employ such women and help them to transition back to respectability, especially as women were often judged more harshly than men; and that there was always rough work available for male former prisoners, but women were expected to be of "good character" for domestic service. [5]

Later years

Jebb's enlightened regime met with little success, and, after his death in 1863, the prison was expanded between 1870 and 1871 to hold about 400 women inmates and renamed Fulham Female Convict Prison. Numbers later fell and the prison closed in 1888, when the remaining inmates were transferred to HM Prison Woking. Burlington House was demolished in 1895, and the other buildings left empty until 1899 when they were sold for housing. [3]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Fry</span> Social reformer from England

Elizabeth Fry, sometimes referred to as Betsy Fry, was an English prison reformer, social reformer, philanthropist and Quaker. Fry was a major driving force behind new legislation to improve the treatment of prisoners, especially female inmates, and as such has been called the "Angel of Prisons". She was instrumental in the 1823 Gaols Act which mandated sex-segregation of prisons and female warders for female inmates to protect them from sexual exploitation. Fry kept extensive diaries in which the need to protect female prisoners from rape and sexual exploitation is explicit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HM Prison Pentonville</span> Mens prison in London

HM Prison Pentonville is an English Category B men's prison, operated by Her Majesty's Prison Service. Pentonville Prison is not in Pentonville, but is located further north, on the Caledonian Road in the Barnsbury area of the London Borough of Islington, north London. In 2015 the justice secretary, Michael Gove, described Pentonville as "the most dramatic example of failure" within the prisons estate.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HM Prison Holloway</span> Prison in London, England

HM Prison Holloway was a closed category prison for adult women and young offenders in Holloway, London, England, operated by Her Majesty's Prison Service. It was the largest women's prison in western Europe, until its closure in 2016.

Arkansas Department of Corrections

The Arkansas Department of Corrections (ADC). formerly the Arkansas Department of Correction, is the state law enforcement agency that oversees inmates and operates state prisons within the U.S. state of Arkansas. ADC consists of two divisions, the Division of Corrections (DOC) and the Division of Community Corrections (DCC), as well as the Arkansas Correctional School District. DOC is responsible for housing and rehabilitating people convicted of crimes by the courts of Arkansas. DOC maintains 20 prison facilities for inmates in 12 counties. DCC is responsible for adult parole and probation and offender reentry.

Federal Prison Camp, Alderson Women-only prison near Alderson, West Virginia, USA

The Federal Prison Camp, Alderson is a minimum-security United States federal prison for female inmates in West Virginia. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice.

This is a list of prisons in Hong Kong managed by the Correctional Services Department.

A reformatory or reformatory school is a youth detention center or an adult correctional facility popular during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Western countries. In the United Kingdom and United States, they came out of social concerns about cities, poverty, immigration, and gender following industrialization, as well as from a shift in penology to reforming instead of punishing the criminal. They were traditionally single-sex institutions that relied on education, vocational training, and removal from the city. Although their use declined throughout the 20th century, their impact can be seen in practices like the United States' continued implementation of parole and the indeterminate sentence.

Elmira Correctional Facility, also known as "The Hill," is a maximum security state prison located in Chemung County, New York, in the City of Elmira. It is operated by the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. The supermax prison, Southport Correctional Facility, is located two miles away from Elmira.

HM Prison Downview is a women's closed category prison. Downview is located on the outskirts of Banstead in Surrey, England, and is immediately adjacent to the southern boundary of Belmont in Greater London. The prison is operated by Her Majesty's Prison Service, and is situated in proximity to High Down Prison for men.

Southern Ohio Correctional Facility Maximum security prison in Scioto County, Ohio, U.S.

The Southern Ohio Correctional Facility is a maximum security prison located just outside Lucasville in Scioto County, Ohio. The prison was constructed in 1972. As of 2022, the warden is Donald Redwood.

Massachusetts Correctional Institution – Framingham is the Massachusetts Department of Correction's institution for female offenders. It is located in Framingham, Massachusetts, a city located midway between Worcester and Boston. The prison was once known as "Framingham State Prison". However, MCI Framingham is its official name and is favored. As of May 2022 there are approximately 190 inmates in general population beds.

The Oklahoma State Reformatory is a medium-security facility with some maximum and minimum-security housing for adult male inmates. Located off of State Highway 9 in Granite, Oklahoma, the 10-acre (4.0 ha) facility has a maximum capacity of 1042 inmates. The medium-security area accommodates 799 prisoners, minimum-security area houses roughly 200, and the maximum-security area with about 43 inmates. The prison currently houses approximately 975 prisoners. The prison was established by an act of the legislature in 1909 and constructed through prison labor, housing its first inmate in 1910. The facility is well known for the significant roles women played in its foundation and governance, most notably having the first female warden administer an all-male prison in the nation.

Ohio Reformatory for Women

The Ohio Reformatory for Women (ORW) is a state prison for women owned and operated by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction in Marysville, Ohio. It opened in September 1916, when 34 female inmates were transferred from the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus. ORW is a multi-security, state facility. As of July 2019, 2,394 female inmates were living at the prison ranging from minimum-security inmates all the way up to one inmate on death row. It was the fifth prison in the United States, in modern times, to open a nursery for imprisoned mothers and their babies located within the institution. The Achieving Baby Care Success (ABC) program was the first in the state to keep infants with their mothers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HM Prison Peterhead</span>

HMP Peterhead was a prison in Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, operating from 1888 to 2013. Since June 2016, the former grounds operate as the Peterhead Prison Museum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prison</span> Institution in which people are legally physically confined

A prison, also known as a jail or gaol, penitentiary, detention center, correction center, correctional facility, lock-up, hoosegow or remand center, is a facility in which inmates are confined against their will and usually denied a variety of freedoms under the authority of the state as punishment for various crimes. Prisons are most commonly used within a criminal justice system: people charged with crimes may be imprisoned until their trial; those pleading or being found guilty of crimes at trial may be sentenced to a specified period of imprisonment. In simplest terms, a prison can also be described as a building in which people are legally held as a punishment for a crime they have committed.

Luzira Maximum Security Prison

Luzira Maximum Security Prison is a maximum security prison for both men and women in Uganda. As at July 2016, it is the only maximum security prison in the country and houses Uganda's death row inmates.

Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women (LCIW) is a prison for women with its permanent pre-2016 facility located in St. Gabriel, Louisiana. It is the only female correctional facility of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections. Elayn Hunt Correctional Center is immediately west of LCIW. LCIW includes the state's female death row. As of 2017 the prison has temporarily moved due to flooding that occurred in August 2016, and its prisoners are housed in other prisons. The administration is temporarily located in the former Jetson Youth Center near Baker. By 2021 the Baker area address was given for the prison on the LCIW website.

New York House of Refuge

The New York House of Refuge was the first juvenile reformatory established in the United States. The reformatory was opened in 1824 on the Bowery in Manhattan, New York City, destroyed by a fire in 1839, and relocated first to Twenty-Third Street and then, in 1854, to Randalls Island.

Prisons, and their administration, is a state subject covered by item 4 under the State List in the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution of India. The management and administration of prisons falls exclusively in the domain of the State governments, and is governed by the Prisons Act, 1894 and the Prison manuals of the respective state governments. Thus, the states have the primary role, responsibility and authority to change the current prison laws, rules and regulations. The Central Government provides assistance to the states to improve security in prisons, for the repair and renovation of old prisons, medical facilities, development of borstal schools, facilities to women offenders, vocational training, modernization of prison industries, training to prison personnel, and for the creation of high security enclosures.

Woking Convict Invalid Prison was constructed in mid-19th-century England, primarily to hold male invalid convicts who previously had been billeted on hulks and had been moved to the temporary invalid prison at Lewes. The concept of a prison specifically for invalids was seen as progressive at the time.

References

  1. "London: The Refuge for female convicts at Fulham, antique print, 1858". Antique Maps and Prints. Retrieved 16 March 2017.
  2. "Fulham Refuge (sometimes called Fulham Reformatory), Middlesex: female prisoners". National Archives. Archived from the original on 7 February 2017. Retrieved 6 February 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 "Fulham Park Gardens" (PDF). LBHF. London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. Retrieved 6 February 2017.
  4. 1 2 "Fulham Refuge". Archaeology Data Service. Historic England. Retrieved 6 February 2017.
  5. 1 2 Norval Morris (1998). The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society. Oxford University Press. p. 307. ISBN   978-0-19-511814-8 . Retrieved 6 February 2017.

Coordinates: 51°28′15″N0°12′33″W / 51.47076°N 0.20906°W / 51.47076; -0.20906