Tuesday 14 January 1840 The Gaoler stops the prison visitor on her way to teach the boys in the House of Correction, informing Miss Martin that, once more, her young scholars have been in trouble. Only yesterday, the boys signed up to a set of rules drawn by their teacher, pledging to give up ‘quarrelling […]
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Monday 13 January 1840 Today the prison visitor must chide ‘the little boys’ again: ‘it made me very unhappy every day I came to find either one or other had been put into the cell or behaving ill this way or that’. ‘[I]f they wished me to teach them’, Miss Martin tells the sheepish boys, […]
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Sunday 12 January 1840 Sarah Martin gathers her strength to deliver her Sunday morning sermon in the prison chapel. Rarely does she miss a visit to the gaol but yesterday she regretted, ‘I am compelled by a bad cold to remain at home.’ In her absence, she now learns, the boys returned to their riotous […]
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Wednesday 8 January 1840 Today, as soon as Sarah Martin appears at the door of the dayroom in the House of Correction, Walter Tunmore flies forward to take his teacher’s paper case. ‘Them two boys’, he blurts out, ‘have been shut up in the cell for behaving ill – for singing.’ Indignant at Walter’s snitching, […]
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Tuesday 7 January 1840 Yesterday the boys in the House of Correction were restless and quarrelsome. Today, when Sarah Martin arrives to teach them, she asks ‘are you all prepared for me?’ ‘Yes, yes’ they cry. The prison visitor shows them ‘a handful of little books’ she has brought with her, ‘such as “Short Stories,” […]
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Monday 6 January 1840 ‘The young Boys have been very Idle’ the prison visitor Sarah Martin writes today in her Everyday Book. As wardsman, the inmate John Bevington is supposed to supervise the boys in the House of Correction and report any bad behaviour. Walter Tunmore, he tells Miss Martin, ‘does not like his book […]
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Sunday 5 January 1840 On Friday, Sarah Martin wrote of a sixteen-year-old factory girl imprisoned for stealing clothes from three women: ‘Martha Tan is improving in working and reading. Her manners are improved.’ Today she observes in her Everyday Book: ‘Martha Tan was in the cell for being overheard when using bad language.’ The girl […]
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Thursday 2 January 1840 We do not know if prisoners at Yarmouth Gaol welcomed in the New Year 1840 for the Gaoler made no note of any celebrations or disturbances. The wheels of justice, however, continued to turn. On New Year’s Day Joseph Burton, sailor, was admitted to the debtors ward, owing £1.1.3 debt and […]
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I am an historian reading for a DPhil in History at Balliol College, University of Oxford. My research is most concerned with housing in Britain during and after the First World War. I've been called a political historian, a social historian, and a cultural historian. I don't see any reason to be one and not the other.
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