Welsh Journals

CONFINEMENT WITH HARD LABOUR: MOTHERHOOD AND PENAL PRACTICE IN A VICTORIAN GAOL* On 16 July 1864 Jane Bowen, a twenty-two-year-old farm servant from Llandeilo, was remanded to the county gaol at Carmarthen. Her personal details, recorded at the time of her reception into custody, reveal her to have been single, 5ft. 1 in. tall, with a florid complexion and a capacity to read and write imperfectly. It was this basic literacy which led to her incarceration, for she was convicted at the Assize on 8 March 1864 and sentenced by Williams J. to six calendar months' imprisonment with hard labour for the crime of sending a threatening letter. The letter, to Thomas Thomas, the son of Jane Bowen's former employer, warned that 'everything you got will be burnt all one night and me shall be in the middle of them fair bit you cant do nothing to me because I shall be ded that night wat will your fathear sauy'. The sender was attempting to arrange a meeting with Thomas and she had told her fellow servant, Rachel Thomas, that he had made her pregnant. At around 6.00 a.m. on 13 August 1864, Jane Bowen was delivered of a baby boy in the prison. The child was baptized a month later by the Revd Aaron Roberts. No father's name is recorded on the birth certificate, but the baby received the possibly suggestive name of Thomas Daniel. Thomas Bowen was not the only child to have entered the world behind the walls of Carmarthen gaol. In 1858 Margaret Jones, a twenty-four-year-old single woman sentenced to two months with hard I am grateful to all at Dyfed Archives, in particular Helen Palmer, for their assistance, and also to the staff of Gwynedd Archives and to Claire Breay. This article developed from an address given to the International Conference on Crime and Gender at Roehampton, London, in April 1995. 1 For Jane Bowen, see Carmarthen Record Office (hereafter Carm. RO), Felons' Register Acc.4916 (hereafter FR), no. 1005. For details of the trial, see The Welshman, 11 March 1864. For the baptism, see Carm. RO CPR/65.