The Women of Galway Jail

Galway was one of thirty-eight Irish towns which had a local prison in the late nineteenth century. Thousands of women were imprisoned there in this period, and this book looks at the socio-economic conditions in which these women lived, the crimees they committed and the treatment they received while in prison. Late nineteenth-century Galway was a place of high emigration and low standards of living for many people. Most of the women who were sent to jail in Galway in the latter half of the century were unskilled and unable to read or write. The crimes of which they were found guilty were predominantly, alcohol-related and they were much more likely to re-offend than men. Using a wide variety of sources. including prison registers, parliamentary papers, newspapers and personal accounts of prisoners, this book examines Galway’s women prisoners at a time when female criminality in Ireland was undergoing significant change.