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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Monday 30 January 1839 The three boys, sent down for 30 days hard labour 28 January 1839, are quick to make their presence felt in Yarmouth Gaol. Today, the Governor locks them in the solitary cells for 12 hours for ‘for fighting and making use of obscene language’. The boys must have been fighting with […]
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Sunday 29 December 1839 Last night Robert Harrod (15), William Hickling (14) and Walter Tunmore (12) spent the first night of their 30 day sentence in the House of Correction. Today they will spend much of the morning in the prison chapel, listening to Sarah Martin deliver one of her interminable sermons and, in the […]
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28 December 1839 On Saturday 28 December 1839 three boys were committed to serve 30 days Hard Labour at the House of Correction, Great Yarmouth.[i] On 2 January 1840 they were joined by two more boys, also sentenced to 30 days. Over the next month I will blog each day about the boys’ experience inside […]
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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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