‘The god of criminals is their belly’: diet, prisoner health, and prison medical officers in mid-nineteenth-century English and Irish prisons
Catherine Cox,
Hilary Marland
Abstract:Existing scholarship on prison diets has emphasised the role of food and its restriction as a key aspect of the deterrent system of prison discipline introduced in the 1860s. Here we suggest that a strong emphasis was placed on dietary regulation after the establishment of the reformist, but also ‘testing’, separate system of confinement in the mid-nineteenth century. While the impact of diet on the physical health of prisoners was a major concern, we argue that the psychological impact of food was also stress… Show more
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