Dislocations of the self: Eliza Farnham at Sing Sing Prison

Abstract

Early in 1844 Eliza Farnham (1815–64) was appointed to the post of matron at the first purpose-built women's prison, the women's section of Mount Pleasant Prison in New York, the institution popularly known as Sing Sing. Her appointment, which she won through her connection with Horace Greeley and the reforming circles of New York, brought her, at first, a burst of favourable attention and subsequently considerable notoriety. The precise reasons for this reversal are a matter of varying interpretations, but the defining impulse of Farnham's tenure at Sing Sing is not: Farnham's particular interest was in campaigning for phrenology, perhaps the most popular of the new psychologies of the period, as a means to diagnose and cure female prisoners. This psychological science was based on the premise that there was a match between character and the outer shape and protuberances of the head; character could be read by studying the head's surface. During this period, phrenology was often linked with the figure of the criminal, indeed phrenology first evolved in the work of Franz-Joseph Gall and was subsequently frequently explained through descriptions of prisoners and the inhabitants of asylums. Farnham was a pivotal figure in the argument for phrenology's efficacy in treating prisoners in New York in the mid-1840s.

Two Regimes of Prison Data Collection

“…No longer permitted to delegate Black people to a bottom-class citizenry through the institution of slavery, more innovative techniques had to be developed to explain why a delegation must be made. Those first iterations of census prison data collection coincided with a revival of racial science around the globe (Riegel, 1933;Shaler, 1890), which eventually found its way to the practice of crime and prison data collection (DuBois, 1897;Floyd, 2006;Hoffman, 1896 (Muhammad, 2010). of the "criminal tendencies" of the African American, "from all the evidence obtainable it seems clear that Southern agriculture is become increasingly diversified, and is demanding and receiving a constantly increasing amount of industry, energy, and intelligence,-characteristics which the whites more generally possess or more readily develop" (Willcox, 1899, p. 11).…”

“Assuming the privilege” of bridging divides: Abigail Fowler-Chumos, practical phrenology, and America’s Gilded Age.

“…Indeed, as an ideology and historiographic device this concept and the closely related "cult of true womanhood" (Welter, 1966) form the vertebrae of 19th-century women's history (Kerber, 1988). It serves a similar function for some histories of women in the sciences (e.g., Abir-Am & Outram, 1987;Lindsay, 1998) in-2 Exceptions do exist, with scholars like Floyd (2006), Spiegel (1995), andTwine (2002) including some consideration of gender in their discussions of phrenology.…”

“…This pairing of identity and work would have a significant impact on American women. Throughout the century and particularly after the Civil War, women took up practical phrenology as well as other entrepreneurial and professional endeavors (Floyd, 2006; Stern, 1971). Though inconsistent with the separate spheres doctrine (and perhaps part of the reason for its increasing ideological rigidity), such vocational activity was also a logical consequence of the various destabilizing features of America’s Gilded Age (Sandage, 2005).…”

“…When it came to specific practices, newspaper articles and advertisements suggest Abigail stayed true to many of Orson’s teachings. In particular, Orson and other practical phrenologists were concerned with assessing surfaces, be they skulls, bodies, or surroundings (Floyd, 2006). In creating educational, vocational, and marital profiles and recommendations based on what they felt, saw, and surmised, practical phrenologists: self-consciously developed their powers of observation.…”

A critical impasse

“…She was especially unusual in choosing Dickens; where fiction was allowed to prisoners during this period, it took the form of 'moral tales.' There was also a diminution of religious instruction -the mainstay of rehabilitative practice at this time --under Farnham's regime (Floyd, 2006).…”