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:
“The textile and needlework arts of the world, primarily because they have been the work of women have been especially written out of art history. It is a male idea that to be “high” and “fine” both women and art should be beautiful, but not useful or functional.”
—Patricia Mainardi (b. 1942)
“Back in the days when men were hunters and chestbeaters and women spent their whole lives worrying about pregnancy or dying in childbirth, they often had to be taken against their will. Men complained that women were cold, unresponsive, frigid.... They wanted their women wanton. They wanted their women wild. Now women were finally learning to be wanton and wild—and what happened? The men wilted.”
—Erica Jong (b. 1942)
“People have passed through a very dark tunnel at the end of which there was a light of freedom. Unexpectedly they passed through the prison gates and found themselves in a square. They are now free and they don’t know where to go.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)