Document Type
Book Review
Publication Date
2019
Keywords
Kingston Penitentiary, Incarceration of Women, Canada
Abstract
In 1846, prison administrators at the Kingston Penitentiary replaced the daily whipping and flogging of prisoners with a new form punishment - The Box. The Box, as Ted McCoy describes it in his new book, Four Unruly Women: S fries f Incarceration and Resistance from Canada's Most Notorious Prison, was a six foot tall, three foot deep coffin used to impose a form of extreme isolation on unruly prisoners. The Box became the primary form of severe punishment for women prisons at Kingston when flogging was abolished.
Four Unruly Women depicts a shocking portrait of the cruelty and inhumanity imposed upon the women imprisoned in Kingston Penitentiary between 1835 and 1935. McCoy also tells a powerful story about the incredible courage exhibited by women prisoners who resisted the practices of system oppression and patriarchy relied upon to structure the carceral environment in which they were imprisoned. In addition to floggings and extreme isolation these women were placed in dungeons, starved and, of course, sexually assaulted.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Elaine Craig, "Celebrating Four Unruly Women", Book Review of Four Unruly Women: Stories of Incarceration and Resistance from Canada's Most Notorious Prison by Ted McCoy, (2019) JOTWELL Equality.
Included in
Criminal Law Commons, Law and Gender Commons, Law and Society Commons, Legal Biography Commons, Legal History Commons
