In 1561, a little-known constitution granted the College of Cambridge the facility to arrest and imprison any lady “suspected of evil”. For practically 350 years, the college used this legislation to incarcerate younger working-class ladies discovered strolling with undergraduates after darkish in Cambridge.
The ladies had been thought-about prostitutes and could possibly be forcibly taken to the college’s personal jail and sentenced to weeks of confinement by the vice-chancellor. Greater than 5,000 had been arrested within the nineteenth century alone.
Now, an area historian is looking for to shine a light-weight on what occurred to those ladies – a lot of whom had been youngsters – and is looking on Cambridge College to apologise or publicly acknowledge the injustices they suffered.
“None of the women ever got a fair trial, and none of them had actually even broken the law, according to the law of the land – there was no evidence of wrongdoing,” stated Caroline Biggs, writer of The Spinning Home: How Cambridge College locked ladies in its personal jail.
“The university didn’t really care how they were treated. They wanted the women to be removed from the streets so they couldn’t tempt the undergraduates.”
When ladies in Cambridge fell on exhausting occasions, it was simple to earn money from intercourse work: Cambridge dons weren’t allowed to marry till the Eighties, and lots of younger undergraduates had cash to spend. “Parents became very concerned that their sons would come to Cambridge and be contaminated by the local women,” stated Biggs.
In 1825, an act of parliament gave the college its personal police power of particular constables, nicknamed bulldogs, to patrol the city at night time. They labored alongside college officers referred to as proctors.
Biggs spent 5 years uncovering what occurred to the ladies by researching the college’s committal books, together with courtroom reviews and nationwide data. “Girls were arrested at night, taken to a cell in the prison, known as the Spinning House, and in the morning the vice-chancellor would come and ask: ‘Did she come quietly? Did she come meekly?’ And if she hadn’t, if she’d kicked off, chances are she’d get a longer sentence.”
Corporal punishments had been additionally used, Biggs found. In 1748, the vice-chancellor paid the city crier 10 shillings to whip “10 unruly women”, Spinning Home accounts present. Jail inspectors continuously condemned the jail, which the social historian Henry Mayhew referred to as an “abomination” in 1851, noting the keeper pulled the ladies’ hair in the event that they didn’t preserve quiet and threw them into solitary confinement.
“The prison was notoriously cold and damp, and the food was just bread and sometimes gruel,” Biggs stated.
In December 1846, the 17-year-old Elizabeth Howe died after spending an evening in a Spinning Home cell with a damaged window and a humid mattress.
Her solely crime had been strolling within the neighborhood of a brothel with a feminine pal. “I was so gobsmacked when I first read the inquest of her death, I couldn’t take notes. I wanted to cry,” stated Biggs, who’s giving a chat to the Mill Street Historical past Society in Cambridge this week.
In one other case, a councillor’s spouse and daughter had been stopped by proctors as a result of that they had walked forward of the councillor, unchaperoned. “It was a massive insult.”
The college made greater than 6,000 arrests, with many ladies held a number of occasions and detained for 2 to a few weeks at a time.
Biggs stated that the Spinning Home was only one methodology the college used to train “complete power and control” over the folks of Cambridge for hundreds of years. The college additionally managed the sale of wine and spirits, the licensing of pubs and the way a lot credit score college students had been allowed. “There was a power battle between town and gown in Cambridge which still exists today, I think, in some ways.”
In her e book, she focuses on 4 ladies who challenged the college in courtroom over their arrests.
In 1891, accused ladies had been lastly allowed authorized illustration after a nationwide outcry concerning the college’s powers and therapy of ladies. When Daisy Hopkins, 17, was arrested on the cost of “walking with a member of the university”, she was illegally tried for a special offence – immoral conduct.
Her case established an vital habeas corpus precedent nonetheless cited right this moment. The following scandal led parliament in 1894 to revoke the college’s Elizabethan constitution and take away the vice-chancellor’s energy to arrest and imprison suspected intercourse employees. The Spinning Home was demolished quickly afterwards.
Biggs would really like the college to work with town to erect a memorial plaque for the ladies, and maintain a public exhibition concerning the Spinning Home and its inhabitants. “I’d like the university to acknowledge that they did wrong,” she stated.
The College of Cambridge didn’t reply to requests for remark.
