Women, Old Age, and Imprisonment in Victoria, Australia 1860–1920

Abstract

Older and elderly women predominantly appear in criminological literature as victims of crime. However, a not insignificant portion of those imprisoned, both past and present, were women aged more than 50 years. Even so, research into older and elderly imprisoned women is lacking, in Australia and around the world. Historical prisoner records offer a possibility for beginning to rectify the lack of knowledge about this cohort. Using the Central Register of Female Prisoners from Victoria across a six-decade period from 1860 to 1920 the historical contextualization of older women as prisoners can begin and this article presents the findings of the analysis of the 652 prison records of older women. As this article argues, feminist historical criminology offers an opportunity to shine light on those women who have been made invisible in historical records.

Keywords::

• 19th century
• Australia
• female offenders
• imprisonment
• quantitative analysis
• Victoria

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author thanks the members of the Deakin University School of Humanities and Social Sciences Writing Group headed by Associate Professor Andrew Singleton for their feedback, recommendations, and support on an early draft of this article.