gendered order of labor was a one-way street. Men could safely take up women’s work, but women, however capable or strong, were not permitted to do the work of men.
Valuation of women’s work was generally half that given to men’s, a signal of their inferior position in the labor market more generally.130 An early group of Inspectors valued the work of women cooks and washers at one shilling six pence. The male cook, designated “the first cook,” was allotted three shillings three pence.131 In 1809, the value of women’s work was set at twenty-five cents per day for those “Spinners, washers, and other able bodied whose employment is irregular.”132 The same report assesses thirty cents a day to “able bodied men whose employment is irregular.” The value of women’s work actually declined over time. In 1812, it was set at “no more than 20 cents per day.”133 By 1816, one week of work in prison earned women one-third to one-half of what men earned.134 Women’s work was also used as a justification for serving female prisoners smaller quantities of food than men. Because their tasks were “less laborious” than men’s, they received the “same quality” of mush, potatoes, and bread but in smaller portions than the men received.135 This distinction between the valuation of men and women’s work was made passively. The Board presented their resolution that the payment for women’s labor be lowered using passive voice. The report claimed that because “no particular price is fixed” to women’s work, it was worth less than work that had a fixed price; yet the Inspectors themselves made the decision not to assign it a specific value. Just as men’s wages were determined by the number of pairs of shoes produced or number of nails headed, women’s work could have been valued by the number of shifts made or yards of flax spun. But it was not so valued.
While the Inspectors refused to recognize the value of women’s labor, others following the debates over penal reform noticed that women in prison labored productively and diligently—even as men were causing chaos in the streets with wheelbarrows. An essay in the American Museum, possibly written by the publisher Mathew Carey, highlighted women’s institutional labor: “Hitherto the female criminals, condemned to labour, have been prudently placed in the work-house, where, it is said, their earnings have been equal to the cost of their food and clothes.”136 Women served as model prisoners and showed how the system of forced labor could be economically advantageous, while wheelbarrow men demonstrated chaos, violence, and resistance. Even those women who were considered dissolute and incorrigible could be transformed by imprisonment and “gradually reconciled to labour and industry.” The key to this process was a careful balance between discipline and encouragement, delivered through a “strict but not cruel superintendence.”137 The American Museum was a popular publication that enjoyed a diverse readership, including some of the most powerful men in the country.138 Failure to address the gendered dimensions of penal reform, then, was intentional—and not because people did not realize that women were imprisoned.
Women’s productive labor was in fact vital to the maintenance of the institution.139 By the 1790s, women made the clothing for both themselves and male prisoners. Inspector Lownes reported, “Most of the clothing, at present, is spun, wove, and made up in the house, and is designed to be so altogether in future.”140 This was modeled after the system used in the House of Employment, where women were reportedly employed at “carding, spinning, knitting, sewing, & c.” for decades.141 Spinning was a common task for women and a staple of institutional work regimes.142 Women produced coarse linen for other convicts to wear and fine linen for sale to the public.143 Women worked at “washing and cleaning their apartments.”144 Vagrant women were left with the more repulsive task of “picking Hair.”145 Inmates picked a variety of materials for various uses: hair for bedding, okum for building, and wool for clothing. Picking hair was a “disgusting” assignment that reportedly could “create distemper.” A former inmate complained that the smell was so awful as “to cause many of them to vomit, and set all hands to coughing.”146
The number of references to naked prisoners or those “said to have no cloathing” highlights the urgency of the task at hand for women charged with making clothes. The Visiting Committee of PSAMPP reported in 1804 one “young woman of the name of Sarah Keys who is said to have no cloathing but a shift, Sarah Hopple in near the same situation.”147 The material used to make the clothing was “tow-linen,” the grade of material often used for “wagon-covers and house-cloths, not even bleached.”148 This was the same grade of cloth specially imported to clothe slaves in Caribbean and southern colonies. Men assisted women with clothing production, as they wove the fabric while women “made up” the article itself.149 This was consistent with artisan work practices also going out of fashion during the period. Women and children spun, men wove, and women sewed the clothing. Women’s labor in prison was both indispensable and hidden, much as the work of enslaved and indentured servants was for centuries. The system of sex-segregated labor in which women produced much of the clothing and bedding used by prisoners cultivated a culture of men’s domestic dependence on women and women’s economic dependence on men in return. The prison-based economic system exploited women’s labor for the gain of the institution. As a prisoner, a woman sustained male prisoners for nothing in return.150
African American and first generation immigrant women faced greater limitations and were disproportionately restricted to domestic work as servants, seamstresses, and laundresses. It was generally impossible for women to earn enough money to cover their expenses, pay off fines or fees, and have anything to keep for themselves. The only existing record of a financial account for a woman in the penitentiary’s early years reveals that the low pay rate scarcely came close. The account of Elizabeth Clinton from York County covers the period from December 31, 1803, to April 15, 1804. In that time, she received provisions worth $13.60 along with shoes $.93, blankets $2.50, and clothes $5.98, costing a total of $23.01. Her total earnings paled in comparison. She was “compensated” $5.00 for her washing and $7.60 for her sewing, a total of $12.60, leaving her indebted to the institution for $10.41.151 Records such as these were more commonly kept for prisoners from counties outside Philadelphia because city commissioners sought reimbursement from surrounding counties.
The fulfillment of the domestic tasks of the penitentiary necessitated a steady flow of women into the prison. This remarkable dimension of the relationship between gender and punishment has scarcely been acknowledged by either reformers or historians. This correlation is only noted in a reprinted account from a British prison that PSAMPP circulated in 1790. The passage argued that a larger prison could hold more women who could do more work—and even be offered more diverse duties.152 The system required the imprisonment of enough women to get the work of the prison done. Inspectors may have welcomed the imprisonment of skilled spinster Mary Davis and others like her who could train women and oversee the production of clothing.153 A consistent population of women in prison enabled the management to ensure sufficient coverage of certain tasks, such as cleaning, spinning, making clothing, and caretaking. This is verified by the fact that women’s prison activity was always productive and never punitive. While a treadmill was authorized to be built in the city’s prisons, it was directed at men “to be used as a species of hard labour for such male prisoners as are liable to be placed to such punishment.”154 Popular opinion was against having women on the treadmill because there were other forms of employment more “congenial to the habits of their sex.”155 This remark refers not only to labor that was not physical but more importantly for work that was domestically productive.
Institutional work regimes narrowly defined and undervalued the productive labor of women, but beyond the walls of the prison, women’s work took many different forms and played a crucial role in early American economies.156 Women worked in public markets, both formal and illicit, selling and bartering goods. They kept shops, taverns, and inns. Servants and slaves would handle whatever tasks they were assigned in homes, shops, and markets before picking up side jobs to earn extra money in their free time. For poor women, work always expanded far beyond the four walls of home. Economic pressures as early as the
