Women and The Prison
In the early days of the prison, women inmates were held in the windowless and airless attic atop of the high security prison. They shared a single room and worked in the same area where they slept, primarily at "picking wool, knitting, and spooling." In 1838, all women prisoners were transferred to the then-new female wing at Sing Sing, but in 1892 the women returned to a new building added to the Auburn prison. The Auburn Women's Prison remained in operation until 1933, when a new maximum-security wing for female inmates opened at Bedford Hills.
Read more about this topic: Auburn System
Famous quotes containing the words women and, women and/or prison:
“... is it not clear that to give to such women as desire it and can devote themselves to literary and scientific pursuits all the advantages enjoyed by men of the same class will lessen essentially the number of thoughtless, idle, vain and frivolous women and thus secure the [sic] society the services of those who now hang as dead weight?”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“Between women love is contemplative; caresses are intended less to gain possession of the other than gradually to re-create the self through her; separateness is abolished, there is no struggle, no victory, no defeat; in exact reciprocity each is at once subject and object, sovereign and slave; duality become mutuality.”
—Simone De Beauvoir (1908–1986)
“Whensoever any affliction assails me, mee thinks I have the keyes of my prison in mine owne hand, and no remedy presents it selfe so soone to my heart, as mine own sword. Often meditation of this hath wonne me to a charitable interpretation of their action, who dy so: and provoked me a little to watch and exagitate their reasons, which pronounce so peremptory judgements upon them.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)