A Gallery Guide
Washing Dancing Singing
Washing, Dancing, Singing An exhibition of historic photographs of women living and working in prisons. November 2019 to February 2020
Introduction
These poignant photographs captivated us from the moment they were carefully unwrapped in the museum store. As the tissue paper fell we noticed solidarity, togetherness and moments of joy within the bleak sadness of the context. The photographs were taken in several UK prisons and cover a period of 140 years. They arrived in the museum collection with little provenance and we wondered how these emotive pictures could be shared when we knew so little about them. The absence of information offered us both a freedom and a challenge. Why were the photographs taken, who took them, what are the stories of the women pictured? We shared the images widely and the insights and observations offered have informed the interpretive approach. In this guide we’ve presented quotes, lists and facts around rehabilitation, routine and recreation along with statements about women experiencing prison today. This exhibition is the start of a journey to represent multiple perspectives within our research around these extraordinary photographs. When you leave the gallery we invite you to consider your privilege, your freedom and the skills that you might share to enhance someone’s life within your community.
1
The photographs in the gallery have been grouped by the tasks the women are involved in.
The Zones
2
1
Mothering, Nurturing, Caring
2
Singing, Dancing, Exercising
3
Farming, Gardening, Growing
4
Eating, Cooking, Baking
5
Washing, Ironing, Cleaning
6
Sewing, Fixing, Mending
7
Reading, Writing, Learning
support
skill
enrich
equip
befriend
3
Mothering, Nurturing, Caring 4
Zone 1 17,240 children are affected by maternal imprisonment every year. Only 4 out of the 12 women’s prisons have mother and baby units. Around 600 pregnant women are held in prisons in England and Wales and some 100 babies are born to women in prison every year. Although national and international legislation exists to protect their health and well-being, many women do not get the care and support they are entitled to. 1830 – 1870 With the creation of female only prisons there was a real distinction with the presence of pregnant women and young infants. 1870 – 1910 Access to medical care during pregnancy was considered better for women in prison than the care some women in the community were receiving. A prison sentence was also seen as an opportunity to educate women on the values of motherhood and domesticity. 1910 – 1950
Some women’s prisons introduced educational classes for pregnant women and new mothers on how to care for their babies. These educational efforts were not delivered to all women’s prisons.
1950 – 1990 There was a growing desire in some women’s prisons to support women in the care of their children, from bathing a baby, to feeding young children and simple first aid. 2000 – 2019 The Birth Charter forms the basis of assisting the Prison Service to provide humane and consistent care for pregnant women in prison.
Holloway Prison 1950s To protect the rights and welfare of innocent babies born in prison, mothers must receive the same support with feeding and bonding as they would in the community. The Birth Charter gives a much-needed voice to pregnant women and new mothers in prison, helping to ensure that no baby is punished for being born in detention. Programme Director of UNICEF UK’s Baby Friendly Initiative, Sue Ashmore.
5
Singing, Dancing, Exercising 6
Zone 2 Self-harm is more common among women in prison than men: women make up 5% of the UK’s prison population but account for 28% of self-harm cases. Female prisoners are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators: 46% have suffered domestic violence and 53% have experiences emotional, physical or sexual abuse during childhood.
East Sutton Park No date I remember one woman saying she’d been in the grip of psychosis and an officer stayed with her holding her hand, right through the night; the woman said that was what had got her through… Mim Skinner Author, ‘Jailbirds’ 2019
7
Daily routine in Holloway 1930s Weekdays: 6.10am
Bell rings, prisoners rise
6.45am – 7.15am
Labour: laundry work, cleaning
7.25am
Breakfast
8.40am
Chapel
9.55am
Exercise
10.00am – 12.00pm
Labour Dinner served
1.40pm – 4.15pm
Labour
4.20pm
Supper
Daily routine Holloway 1970s 7.00am
All discharges to reception
7.45am
Wings unlocked
8.00am
Breakfast
8.30 – 9.00am
Exercise
9.00am – 11.30am
Work
11.45 – 12.00pm
Dinner
1.15 – 4.00pm
8
Work
4.15pm
Tea
5.30pm
Evening classes, social activity
7.30pm
Supper
8.00pm
All women checked in
10.00pm
Lights out
Stafford Prison 1900s
Daily routine today 8.00am
Work or education Women not involved in these activities are locked in their cell by 8:30am.
12.00pm
Lunch
1.15pm
Afternoon activities start
5.00pm
Evening meal
6.00pm – 7.15pm
Social time
9
Farming, Gardening, Growing 10
Zone 3 Today many of the 282 inmates at HMP Send are serving life or very long sentences. Up to 20 women train in the garden on a daily basis, 15 of whom are studying for a City & Guilds NVQ (level 2) in horticulture. The early 20th century was a time of public scepticism about the value of imprisonment. In 1910 Winston Churchill, as home secretary, had criticised the ‘terrible and purposeless waste’ entailed in giving half of all prisoners sentences of two weeks or less. Women are still given short sentences today. Gardening is among the best pastimes for both physical and mental wellbeing and has been used to help rehabilitate prisoners and give them hope for the future.
Holloway Prison 1950s The key to rehabilitation, according to Winston Churchill, was to enable prisoners, on release from penal servitude, to have a fair chance of taking their place in the ordinary life of the country.
11
Skilful Women 12
Hundreds of #SkilfulWomen photographs were shared during this project. Keep it going. Find a moment to pass on your skills to someone else and share a photograph of your skilful hands.
#SkilfulWomen
13
Eating, Cooking, Baking 14
Zone 4 The proportion of women serving very short prison sentences rose to 62% in 2017. 48% of women are reconvicted within one year of leaving prison. This rises to 61% for sentences of less than 12 months. Prisoners living in Holloway Prison, during the 1930s, ate their meals in their cells except first offenders, second offenders and young prisoners who ate together. The women had a variety of choices for dinner, but breakfast and supper were always the same.
Holloway Prison 1950s You bring somebody in for three or four weeks, they lose their house, their job, their family, their reputation. They come (into prison), they meet a lot of interesting characters and then you whap them on to the streets again. The public are safer if we have a good community sentence... and it will relieve a lot of pressure on prisons. Rory Stewart 2019 MP, Minister for Prisons 15
Meals in the 1930s Breakfast bread, margarine, porridge and tea Dinner
bread and any of the following – beans & bacon, preserved beef, roast or boiled beef, beef and treacle pudding, boiled beef and dumplings, haricot mutton, hot-pot, Irish stew, savoury bacon pie, meat pie, meat pudding, boiled mutton, roast mutton, sea pie, shepherd’s pie, soup, stewed steak, and treacle pudding
Supper
bread, margarine and tea
Meals today For women living in prison today breakfast is the same each day. It is often handed out the night before for them to eat in their cell before it is unlocked at 8am. Breakfast consists of a clear plastic bag containing four loose tea bags, four small sugar sachets, four packets of whitener and a tiny bag of cereal, muesli or porridge oats. Most closed prisons also provide a 0.25l carton of semi-skimmed milk and a kettle is provided in each cell. For midday and evening meals, nearly every prison now uses a pre-select system where a list of meals is displayed for each day and the women order the meal they prefer. There are usually five or six choices. Midday meal
Vegetarian Pasta Bake Chicken & Mushroom pie Halal Jamaican Beef Patty Corned beef & Pickle Roll Jacket Potato & Coleslaw
16
Holloway Prison 1950s The cost is immense – and not just in terms of putting them in prison in the first instance. The cost is immense in terms of what it means for society as a whole, for their children, and for their ability to get jobs and be re-employed Vicky Pryce Author ‘Prisonomics’ 2013
17
Washing, Ironing, Cleaning 18
Zone 5 Women make up around 5% of the overall prison population in the UK It costs between £37,000 and £66,000 per year to imprison one woman (2017/2018). Community sentences are far more economical; the most expensive community order is £5,000. Just before Christmas 1813 Elizabeth Fry visited the women’s section of Newgate Prison. She was shocked with what she saw. There were 300 women crammed into three rooms. Some were ill but could not afford treatment. Some were freezing but could not afford to pay for bedding. Some were fighting’. There were many children among them. She never forgot the sight of two women fighting over a dead baby’s clothes. She returned the next day with baby clothes and clean straw bedding. Three ideas are still present in British prisons that owe their origins to Elizabeth Fry: • Separate women’s prisons with a female staff. • Volunteer prison visitors. • A belief that prison is a place from which people can emerge as better individuals than when they went in: the idea of rehabilitation.
The Hermitage 1935 The prison system was designed for men, but women’s routes into criminality are very different, and their needs are very different. Rachel Holford, director of the charity Women in Prison 2014
19
Rehabilitation 20
The Lady Visitors’ Association, founded in 1901 and active at Holloway, was ‘a body of earnest and devoted ladies with experience of rescue work and a keen sympathy with even the most degraded of their sex’. In practice, these visits were reported to have incited jealousy, disrupted prison routine and provoked inmates into ‘simulating penitence’ to access privileges.
Holloway Prison 1950s Women required saving twice, firstly from their criminality and then from their deviance from expected female behaviour.
‘Disturbed Minds and Disruptive Bodies’ Rachel Bennett, Catherine Cox, Hilary Marland, 2018 21
Rehabilitation
Education and Training 1817
The Association for the Improvement of Female Prisoners in Newgate provided materials for women to sew patchwork. This enabled them to develop skills in needlework that could offer them employment after release from prison.
1830 – 1870 This period saw the creation of female-only prisons, and the separation of men and women in mixed prisons. The main task undertaken by women was laundry work. 1853
Brixton Prison opened as the first women-only prison. Women progressed through several disciplinary stages: separate confinement, associated labour, and transferral to femaleonly refuges. These establishments trained the women in domestic work and prepared them for eventual release.
1870 – 1910 Women’s prisons, shaped by the ideologies of domesticity and ideals of motherhood, focused on restoring female and maternal qualities.
22
1950 – 1990 Holloway Prison offered full-time and part-time education, with courses including British Industrial Cleaning Science (BICS), gardening, and painting. There were counselling groups, a swimming pool and gym. A hair salon (‘Hairy Poppins’) was introduced where prisoners could work towards an NVQ. 2016
‘Unlocking Potential: a review of education in prison’ by Dame Sally Coates, drew three main conclusions: 1. education in prison should improve the wellbeing of prisoners and increase their employment prospects 2. it would reduce reoffending and make communities safer 3. the present prison education system is inadequate for these purposes
23
Sewing, Fixing, Mending 24
Zone 6 20% of the women’s prison population is black, Asian and minority ethnic but they only comprise 11.9% of the women’s population in England and Wales. Over 12% of women in prison are foreign nationals. Some are known to have been coerced or trafficked into offending. Elizabeth Fry did not return to Newgate Prison until 1816. The chaplain and the gaoler both warned against going in. This time she appealed to the women to do something for their children. Her lack of fear and her directness made a huge impression and they started a school for the prison children. Elizabeth Fry formed a group of mainly Quaker women to visit the prison daily and make changes in the way it was run. A matron was appointed to run the women’s section, the women were supplied with materials to work at sewing and knitting to be sold and Bible readings were held. In 1818 Elizabeth Fry gave evidence to a parliamentary committee. This reported that her efforts had made the women’s section in Newgate an orderly and sober place.
East Sutton Park Borstal 1960s We train prisoners in high-quality, skilled, creative needlework, undertaken in the long hours spent in their cells. It fosters hope, discipline and self-esteem. We aim to allow prisoners to finish their sentences with work skills, money earned and saved, and the self-belief to not offend. Fine Cell Work
25
Government Policy
Government Policy on Prison Reform and Rehabilitation 1823
The Gaol Act included a number of Elizabeth Fry’s reforms. It stated that instruction in reading and writing is required in all prisons, prisoners were to be separated into categories and women had to have female gaolers and warders.
1830 – 1870 The Prisons Act 1835 stated that gaols where numbers exceeded fifty had to appoint school masters. At this time prison was seen as a deterrent to offending and reoffending. This was a significant move away from the reforming ideals of the past. 1870 – 1901 There was a shift in emphasis from prisons being a place of punishment to reform. Two new ideas were introduced ‘decarceration’ and ‘therapeutic incarceration’. Decarceration replaced sentences with supervision in the community. Therapeutic incarceration reduced the punishment in imprisonment. This led to a dilution of the separate system, the abolition of hard labour, and established the idea that prison labour should be productive. 1910 – 1950 The imprisonment of middle-class women, which was unusual, helped draw public attention to the treatment of incarcerated women. The suffragettes agitated for improved prison conditions. The Criminal Justice Act 1948 abolished penal servitude, hard labour and flogging.
26
2007
Jean Corston’s landmark review of the treatment of women with vulnerabilities in the criminal justice system proposed a reduction in the use of strip-searching and keeping non-violent offenders out of prison.
2013
Helen Grant Ministry of Justice Report into Female Offenders said that there was still more to be done to provide proper punishment, coupled with effective rehabilitation, to turn women away from crime. A new Advisory Board of key experts was established to help shape future policy in tackling female offending and drive through reforms.
2017
The Labour MP David Lammy’s independent review into the treatment of BAME individuals in the criminal justice system found that for every hundred white women sentenced to custody for drug offences, there were 227 black women.
2018
‘The Female Offender Strategy’ stated it would “help us deliver the best possible outcomes for women, placing greater emphasis on community provision and cutting the cost of female offending.”
2019
A year after the publication of the government’s Female Offender Strategy (2018) the Prison Reform Trust, in partnership with NHS England and NHS Improvement and the Centre for Mental Health, are bringing together allied organisations to support the delivery of better outcomes for women in the criminal justice system.
27
Reading, Writing, Learning 28
Zone 7 Women are imprisoned further from home than men and receive fewer visits, limiting their capacity to maintain relationships and family contact. Prisoners who receive visits from family members are 39% less likely to reoffend than those who do not. When we shared these photographs, people noticed flowers, photographs and familiar possessions in some of the women’s cells and a sparseness in others.
Things that women living in prison were allowed to have in their cell 1830 – 1870 Each cell wall had a list showing the daily prison routine. 1930s
In Holloway Prison mirrors were allowed in cells, and walls were painted pastel colours.
Now
Each prison has their own set of rules: some will have TVs, up to 12 books, some religious items, playing cards, jigsaws, and two boxes of personal items, including family photos.
Hill Hall Prison date unknown Another woman had camped in a bus shelter outside the prison gates on release, simply because she had nowhere to go. Mim Skinner Author, ‘Jailbirds’, 2019
29
A sequence of workshops in the museum explored the notion of comfort and discomfort on women’s well-being in prison. Here are some of the collaged responses participants made, adding colour, company and comfort.
30
comfort discomfort
31
Credits
A heartfelt thank you to the hundreds of wonderful people who volunteered time, energy and skill to this project An extra special thank you to volunteer coproducers Cinzia Greta Astrid Marrocco, Claire Roe, Natasha Clegg, Lynn Smith, Roseanna Davey, Kate W, Daniela Gentili, Micha Bradshaw, Paula Allison, Ray Cole. PEER PWR group at Nottingham Women’s centre Wamanuel group at Emmanuel House Russell Jenkins Steve Ingham John E Wright Nigel Garbett V21 Artspace Clare Richards Clean Break
This exhibition has been made possible through generous funding from Arts Council England.
32
#JusticeIdeas