Life and Death in Tudor Prisons
Lead Research Organisation:
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Abstract
Life and Death in Tudor Prisons (LDTP) will transform our patchy understanding of Tudor imprisonment. At present there are good accounts of the life of the London prisons, where traitors and religious dissidents joined metropolitan debtors and moral offenders. Yet remarkably little is known about the great mass of prisoners, held for everyday crimes – theft, murder, witchcraft – in county, town and episcopal gaols.
LDTP will change that, using an underexploited archival source to explore the wider prison population and their lived experiences. We will ask who was in prison, why, and how, other than execution, they died. Coroners’ inquests supply details of some 9,000 prisoners who died in captivity. They give names, sexes, places of imprisonment and dates of death for almost all. For many they identify the status or occupation, residence, cause of imprisonment, and nature and duration of the fatal illness. With this information we can reframe scholarly and popular understanding of Tudor imprisonment and share that insight with our heritage partners.
Our confidence in the project rests on two foundations. We have already used inquests for an ESRC-funded study of accidental death resulting in a book, articles and a deposited database. From that project we have proven methods for analysing inquest reports and photographs of the 11,000 needed for LDTP. We have also tested the potential of the prison inquests in a pilot project on 10% of the sample.
We shall produce two major articles. The first will illuminate the social and institutional history of imprisonment across Tudor England. For these purposes the inquests, especially when used in combination with other sources, reveal how people were sent to prison, what prisons were used, how many prisoners were in different prisons and how long they stayed. They also show the social interactions of prisoners, who often sat as jurors to give evidence about the deaths of fellow-inmates.
The second article, co-authored with project adviser and medical historian Dr Leah Astbury, will use the inquests to explore the history of health and disease. Epidemics can be tracked as they rose and fell in different prisons and lengths of infection for different conditions compared. The common fevers, dysentery and plague were varied by more unusual ailments such as pox and pleurisy. One in six dead prisoners was a woman and some gave birth in gaol. Prisoners’ health can be set in context by comparison with that of some 2,000 other victims who died suddenly from disease outside prison. Their illnesses were more varied, some suffered unsuccessful medical treatment, and they included many wandering poor.
The project data spreadsheet will be deposited for use by other researchers and by local and family historians. More dynamically, the findings will inform co-developed outputs with identified regional and national heritage organisations that care for former prison sites. Details of who was held and how they fared will inform public-facing programming and interpretation across these sites, creating pathways to real world impact. With Dr Astbury and our heritage partners we will hold quarterly online scoping meetings, co-facilitated by Oxford’s Heritage Partnerships Team, to plan a final in-person workshop at Lincoln Castle. The workshop, accompanied by a public lecture and targeted site visits, will co-develop targeted resources with the input of sector expertise to create a sustainable project legacy for curatorial and educational use.
LDTP will change that, using an underexploited archival source to explore the wider prison population and their lived experiences. We will ask who was in prison, why, and how, other than execution, they died. Coroners’ inquests supply details of some 9,000 prisoners who died in captivity. They give names, sexes, places of imprisonment and dates of death for almost all. For many they identify the status or occupation, residence, cause of imprisonment, and nature and duration of the fatal illness. With this information we can reframe scholarly and popular understanding of Tudor imprisonment and share that insight with our heritage partners.
Our confidence in the project rests on two foundations. We have already used inquests for an ESRC-funded study of accidental death resulting in a book, articles and a deposited database. From that project we have proven methods for analysing inquest reports and photographs of the 11,000 needed for LDTP. We have also tested the potential of the prison inquests in a pilot project on 10% of the sample.
We shall produce two major articles. The first will illuminate the social and institutional history of imprisonment across Tudor England. For these purposes the inquests, especially when used in combination with other sources, reveal how people were sent to prison, what prisons were used, how many prisoners were in different prisons and how long they stayed. They also show the social interactions of prisoners, who often sat as jurors to give evidence about the deaths of fellow-inmates.
The second article, co-authored with project adviser and medical historian Dr Leah Astbury, will use the inquests to explore the history of health and disease. Epidemics can be tracked as they rose and fell in different prisons and lengths of infection for different conditions compared. The common fevers, dysentery and plague were varied by more unusual ailments such as pox and pleurisy. One in six dead prisoners was a woman and some gave birth in gaol. Prisoners’ health can be set in context by comparison with that of some 2,000 other victims who died suddenly from disease outside prison. Their illnesses were more varied, some suffered unsuccessful medical treatment, and they included many wandering poor.
The project data spreadsheet will be deposited for use by other researchers and by local and family historians. More dynamically, the findings will inform co-developed outputs with identified regional and national heritage organisations that care for former prison sites. Details of who was held and how they fared will inform public-facing programming and interpretation across these sites, creating pathways to real world impact. With Dr Astbury and our heritage partners we will hold quarterly online scoping meetings, co-facilitated by Oxford’s Heritage Partnerships Team, to plan a final in-person workshop at Lincoln Castle. The workshop, accompanied by a public lecture and targeted site visits, will co-develop targeted resources with the input of sector expertise to create a sustainable project legacy for curatorial and educational use.