The historian can glimpse prison networks, and connections between incarcerated participant women, at points where their activities clashed with prison regulations. Evidence of prison exchange networks was revealed when collusion was reported to officials, when illicit material goods were discovered on bodies or in cells, or when gossip about another inmate or staff member reached staff ears. Chapter 4 interrogates information and material goods transactions to discover the workings of networks and relationships behind bars. It offers an insight into ways the prison economy could facilitate networks that enabled women of different ages, backgrounds and circumstances to connect. The chapter is divided into three distinct sections. The first examines the exchange of information in prison, the second focuses on material goods networks, and the third considers how exchanges of information and goods impacted power relations and hierarchies. Evidence of female networks and partnerships indicates convict ingenuity and enterprise, cooperation and collusion. The prison thus offers a snapshot of nineteenth-century Irish society and a glimpse of (predominantly lower-class) female networks and relationships. This chapter demonstrates that in prison, as on the outside, community networks and cooperation were vital for social and economic survival.

Chapter 2 draws heavily on surviving letters between inmates and their loved ones, listed addresses in prisoners’ files and visitor records in order to explore the impact of separation and ways families attempted to sustain bonds across lengthy prison sentences. Through four distinct sections, it offers a fascinating insight into family relationships, domestic arrangements, expected responsibilities and obligations. The first section examines the ways imprisoned women sought to maintain contact with their loved ones and vice versa through letter writing. The second section focuses on visitors received by inmates, revealing desires and obligations within the family unit. The third section examines convict mothers’ relationships with their children, some of whom were born in prison and others of whom accompanied their mothers to penal servitude. Changes to legislation and practices across the century restricted convict mothers’ time with their offspring and, towards the end of the century, meant that women with children had to find alternative means to fulfil mothering roles. The final section considers the influence relatives and friends could have on a convict’s release. While it is apparent that family relationships could be maintained, this chapter also shows evidence of strained relationships between incarcerated women and their families and friends.

The conclusion draws together the main themes from the book as a whole. It highlights the multitude of experiences behind bars, gendered differences in the structure and experiences of prisons, and changes in practice and policies over time. It emphasises women’s agency and survival strategies both during incarceration and on the outside. This conclusion also draws attention to the insights offered on women’s relationships with each other and with their wider families and their roles as mothers, daughters, sisters and wives or partners. The conclusion also reminds us that women established and maintained positive and negative relationships with the staff charged to manage them.

Through shared spaces and experiences, alliances, friendships and animosities developed between inmates from diverse backgrounds, as well as between prisoners and the staff charged with their care and control, Chapter 3 focuses on relationships that developed or were sustained in the predominantly female environment of the women’s convict prisons. Facilitated by the tendency for meticulous record-keeping in the vast penal system, this chapter relies heavily on records relating to perceived misbehaviour to demonstrate how alliances and rivalries were formed, expressed and navigated behind bars. This also includes an analysis of relationships that developed between staff and inmates across assumed boundaries of power. The out-of-turn conversations, laughter, name-calling and arguments indicate the interconnectedness of women’s lives behind bars. As this chapter shows, alliances and rivalries emerged despite the prison regime, but also perhaps because of it. It argues that the development of friendships and animosities was inevitable within the prison confines. This chapter also demonstrates that friendships forged or cemented in the institution were not necessarily forgotten on release.

This introduction sets up this book’s analysis in terms of the Irish female convict prison’s history, structure and space, the historiography of Irish punishment and imprisonment, and the sources and methods. It outlines how the Irish Convict System developed in the wake of the end of transportation. It explores the aims and motivations of the convict directors who headed the system, and demonstrates how the approach won immediate praise and had widespread international influence. Optimism that the Irish Convict System had solved recidivism, however, was not to last and in the 1870s the establishment of the General Prisons Board initiated further changes. This chapter also explores the establishment of a singularly female prison managed mostly by female staff. It demonstrates, using quantitative and qualitative evidence, that a stay in Ireland’s female convict prison was statistically unusual, even though the women housed therein were in other respects ‘ordinary’ women.

Chapter 1 explores how middle-class ideas about ‘civilising’ the masses and moulding women into responsible citizens influenced prison practices. It examines key aspects of a day in the Irish female convict prison. It first examines the classification system, established after transportation ended in 1853, through which convict women progressed. The second section outlines how the penal system sought to reform through schooling, religious instruction and practice, and work, while the third considers order and discipline. The chapter seeks to offer a glimpse of how inmates’ individual preferences, needs and demands could disrupt the structured prison regime. It demonstrates that many convicted women in Ireland deliberately and inadvertently thwarted attempts to impose uniformity and regulation.

Chapter 5 focuses on women’s release from prison using petitions that convicted women or interested parties wrote to lords lieutenant for release from prison or a reduction in sentence, as well as letters that ex-convicts wrote to prison officials in an effort to secure the balance of their gratuities. Women and men directly connected with the prison took an interest in a convict’s plans on departure to maximise her chances of successful rehabilitation and to prevent habitual criminality. The first section outlines the groups and individuals who influenced decisions about a woman’s release. The second and third sections examine how the domestic and employment situations to which an inmate would return could inform her discharge. These two sections document the fates of women after release and the realities of life in nineteenth-century Ireland. The fourth section offers an insight into legislation and practices that developed around convicts and habitual criminals, and the lived experiences for some repeat offenders. The final part of this chapter examines experiences for those women who sought to emigrate. This chapter argues that women’s intentions not to again offend could be thwarted at home or abroad by the challenging circumstances to which they returned.