Dorchester Prison
This Forgotten Women Friday will focus on women who were associated with Dorchester Prison, either as staff or prisoners. Some can be found in the prison in the census returns, others appear in the prison’s admission and discharge registers, which are available online on Ancestry. Some appear in both. The stories can be found below.
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Dorset County Gaol has been sited in Dorchester for more than seven hundred years. The seventeenth century building fell into disrepair and was replaced, in the 1790s, by a new building at Castle Hill, North Square. In an attempt to stop the abuse of female prisoners by male prisoners and staff, the 1823 Gaols Act stated that men and women should be segregated and that women should be supervised by female staff. According to the census, there were between eleven and twenty women in the gaol at any one time, between 1841 and 1871. These figures dropped to fewer than ten from 1881 to 1901. Most of the women had committed minor offences, such as theft, or had been drunk and disorderly and were serving short sentences. There were however inmates who had committed much more serious crimes, including assault or murder. The prison closed in 2013.
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Useful Records
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Original records relating to the prison are at Dorchester History Centre. Dorchester Prison Admission and Discharge Registers for 1782-1879 are on Ancestry, although those for 1859-1862 are missing. These are arranged over two pages; be sure to look at the next image for the right hand page of the book. Ancestry describes this database as follows:
​“This database contains a number of different records documenting prisoners in Dorchester Prison, including prisoner registers, description of prisoners books, and one volume with photographs of some of the prisoners between 1887 and 1901. Most of the records deal with prisoners held at the prison that currently stands on North Square, which was completed in 1795. Prior to this, the prison had been located in High East Street.”
Not all the women that we are researching can be found in these records but many can.
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The following may also be useful UK, Licences of Parole for Female Convicts, 1853-1871, 1883-1887 available on Ancestry.
“This database contains licences for women to be set at large in the UK between 1853 and 1887. The records can be searched by year of licence, name, estimated birth year, and court and year of conviction. Their contents varies but can include next of kin, religion, literacy, physical description, a medical history, marital status, number of children, age, occupation, crime, sentence, dates and places of confinement, reports on behaviour while in prison, letters or notes from the convict, and (from 1871 forward) a photograph.”
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Criminal Records held at the National Archives are also available on Ancestry and FindmyPast. The Research Guide on the National Archives website is a good introduction.
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Dorset baptism registers are also on Ancestry. Searching the latter using the keyword ‘Prisoner’ may reveal babies that were born to mothers who were in prison.
Many of these women appear in the newspapers, often as repeat offenders.
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The references for the census returns for Dorchester Prison are as follows:
1841 HO107 294/7 folios 28-31 20
1851 HO107 1858 folios 37-41
1861 RG9 1353 folio 103 The prisoners are listed by initials only. The gap in the admission books at this points means that we will only be using the staff from this census
1871 RG10 2010 folios 24-28 Although this lists the prisoners by initials only, we have been able to identify most of them from the admission books and if you have been allocated one of these women, you will have been given the full name.
1881 RG11 2110 folios 89-91
1891 RG12 1652 folio 57
1901 RG12 2001 folios 115-117
Useful Websites
The Prison: the story of an institution
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Clara Bartlett c.1855-? from Long Bredy, Dorset – Lawbreaking, Prostitution, Dorchester Prison. 5 minute read.
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