Like the Lord Mayor of Cork: The Condition of the Female Body in British Prisons, 1900-1939

During the Edwardian and interwar periods, the British public turned away from the brutality of the “silent system”, instead embracing ideals of humane and just prisons. Despite these changing views on incarceration, malnutrition and injury remained a reality for female prisoners. In many cases, this injury was self-inflicted as a form of protest against a variety of perceived abuses. Using Home Office memoranda, prison clinic reports, and official ledgers of hunger strikes, this paper argues that the female body served a site of power struggles between incarcerated women and the carceral state even after the transition away from the silent system. Injury and malnutrition operated as threats wielded by prison authorities, yet forms of self-injury such as hunger strikes were also used as a tactic by prisoners. While scholars have dedicated significant attention to self-injury on the part of political prisoners like Sinn Fein operatives and suffragettes, this analysis has not been extended to the vast majority of hunger strikers who belonged to neither of these movements. While often claiming Sinn Fein and suffragettes as their inspiration, most working-class female prisoners employed hunger strikes and self-injury as a way of protesting dehumanizing conditions such as inadequate food. Through this focus on the bodies of female prisoners, this paper argues for greater attention to the role of pain and health in larger processes of gendered class struggle and female resistance to state authority.