could one find salvation—and be worthy of readmittance to the polity.75
Because family was both so prized and so perilous, family would be denied those who violated the law. Family ties were already stretched for everyone by years of extended separations caused by war, politics, and economic necessity.76 The actual consequence of imprisonment for most families was financial peril. Laboring families required income from all their members, including adult men and women as well as older children. The imprisonment of either a man or a woman would result in a lost source of income for the family. If a prisoner was the single or primary earner in his or her family, this would be devastating. The famous bigamist, kidnapper, and counterfeiter Ann Carson described herself as the primary earner in her family, and the chaos her imprisonment triggered. She reported, “My family were, by my confinement, thrown into a state bordering on distraction; ever accustomed to have me at the head of both business and household, they knew not how to proceed without my presence.”77 Carson was one of many who served as the anchor of both home and work for a family. No one disputes the fact that Carson was a successful businesswoman who ran a small shop dealing in fine china and other imports. She was one of a sizable number of women in Philadelphia who managed their own businesses and asserted their economic independence in the process. Women like Carson exhibited a great degree of innovation, autonomy, and success while navigating the economic and social constraints of the city. Her family’s hardship was a real and tangible consequence of her imprisonment.
Carson was not exactly a typical prisoner—her crimes were more serious, diverse, and publicized than those of most women. She probably earned more money as well. But she was part of a large group of women whose personal and family economies were thrown into chaos by imprisonment. Women imprisoned without trial for minor social transgressions under the vagrancy act faced incredible challenges.78 Who would run Elizabeth Ferguson’s beerhouse while she sat in prison for thirty-six hours on charges of intoxication? How much income did Mary Williams lose when she was held with five other women on charges of running a disorderly house? Did Mary Brown, a free black widow who labored as a washerwoman, lose clients when she was locked up for socializing with friends and deemed a “riotous” disturber of the peace?79 Constables, night watchmen, clerks, and judges did not trouble themselves with these questions—though they freely complained of the consequences when women were unable to support themselves.
Imprisonment could destroy a woman’s ability to earn money, keep a job, and raise her children. Institutional policies regarding children ranged from indifference to strict superintendence. Either could be devastating to mother, child, and their relationship. Some women moved between the almshouse and the prison, reflecting a cycle of poverty and imprisonment with no clear way out. Other women were devastated to learn that their children were bound out when they were in prison. In colonial times, infants and very young children could accompany their mothers to jail. This practice persisted in the first few decades of the nineteenth century.80 Women with very young infants or who actually gave birth in prison were allowed to keep them by their side. In 1787, Catherine Usoons pleaded for some relief from prison or labor or both, in part because she was working “with my young infant at my breast.”81 The Visiting Committee reported that “some females” furnished “a gift” of clothing for a child recently born in the prison in 1800.82 Inspectors John Harrison and John Bacon noted on April 28, 1817, that a prisoner Dobly Miller gave birth to a boy.83 Other women had children of indeterminate ages with them. For example, in 1800, a woman named Ruth Moore, who appealed to the mayor for a discharge, was described by the Visiting Committee as “an Indian Woman with her child.”84 In 1804, reformers mentioned prisoner “Ann Keating and her child,” as well as reporting the purchase of two yards of flannel for Mary Gale’s child.85 These children were probably infants or very, very young. The fact that women would keep their young children with them in prison was utterly shocking and astounding to reformers who complained about the practice. Writing to the Supreme Executive Council, PSAMPP members noted, “Children both in the goal and workhouse are frequently suffered to remain with their parents whereby they are initiated in early life to scenes of debauchery dishonesty and wickedness of every kind.”86 Reformers sought to rid the prison of children for their own protection, despite the fact that many had nowhere to go. A single, divorced, or widowed woman’s children would have been removed to the almshouse or bound to a local family if other relatives were not available to take care of them during their mother’s imprisonment.87
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