Just been reading a history of Bridewell, the original “house of correction” in London. Arguably the first such attempt to “correct” prisoners, and also perhaps the only long-time such institution to be housed in an honest-to-goodness palace. (Royalty having found the site at the meeting of the Fleet and the Thames rather too smelly.)
The first surviving record of an inmate is that of “a certain woman named Morton” who was charged on December 16 1556 with having abandoned her child in the streets of Southwark. She was whipped at Bridewell, then pilloried at Cheapside, with a paper on her head explaining her “crime”.
1610 George and Agnes Sturton were living in a single room in the parish of St Martin, Ludgate Hill when a man called and asked to be taken in as a lodger. Plague sores had already broken out on his body, and he offered them 30 shillings if they would hide him, and save him from the pest house. They agreed, but he died, and they locked his body in their room and fled. Neighbours, however, broke down their door and sent for the constable. Punishment: whipping.
1639 – Elizabeth Pynfould, alias Squire … petitioned the council. She had been a prisoners for seven years in Bridewell, having been committed by a Council warrant, she knew not why, unless it was for petitioning the Lords to cause her husband to allow her means of livelihood. She prayed for liberty, and to be supplied with means.
W.G. Hinkle, A History of Bridewell Prison, 1553-1700, Edwin Mellen Press, 2006. (Not unfortunately very well organised, and heavily reliant on secondary sources.)
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