Rosalind Crone is a lecturer in history at The Open University.
Prison History (www.prisonhistory.org) is a database which contains information on nearly 850 penal institutions which existed in 19th century England, including around 420 local prisons and 380 lock ups. For each institution, there is information about its operational dates, jurisdiction, location, population statistics, the primary and secondary sources which mention it, and a list of all the relevant and surviving archival documents which we have been able to find in repositories based in England. On accessing Prison History, users can either search for specific prisons or various types of prisons, or browse the lists of archival materials that we recovered.
One of the core aims of Prison History is to emphasise the importance of the local prison (and lock ups) in nineteenth-century society. It is an institution that has been largely neglected in the major studies of nineteenth-century imprisonment and I think it is time to redress the imbalance. To do that, I need help from local historians. My hope is that Prison History will be a useful resource for local historians, and also that local historians will want to get involved with this project, to help make the database an even better tool for local history, and, through emphasising the importance of prisons within nineteenth-century communities, to demonstrate the importance of local history research.
We have just soft launched Prison History in advance of the formal launch date on 6 July. I would be very grateful if you could circulate details of the resource to your members. I have a promotional flyer which I could email to you for circulation, or I could send you some copies in the post. We have also put a survey for local historians on the website to collect feedback – thoughts about the design of the site, and opinions on how develop the resource in the near future – it would be wonderful if some of your members were keen to complete the survey. There is a ‘submit feedback’ button on the website, or the survey can be accessed via this link: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/HR3CNLH
Finally, we are holding an event at the National Justice Museum in Nottingham on 6 July to launch Prison History. It is free to attend. All the details, including the programme, can be found here: https://www.prisonhistory.org/about/news-events/ but I would also be very happy to email you a copy of the event notice for distribution, if that would be easier. We would be so delighted if one or more of the members of your society were able to attend.
Rosalind
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