House of correction

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
This article is about the facility established under the Elizabethan Poor Law. For correctional facilities, see Prison.

The house of correction was a type of establishment built after the passing of the

Elizabethan Poor Law.[1]
However the houses of correction were not considered a part of the Elizabethan Poor Law system because the Act distinguished between settled poor and wandering poor.

Bridewell Prison

The first

Bridewell Prison, and the Middlesex and Westminster
houses also opened in the early seventeenth century.

Due to the first

reformation of manners
campaign, the late seventeenth century was marked by the growth in the number of houses of correction, often generically termed bridewells, established and by the passage of numerous statutes prescribing houses of correction as the punishment for specific minor offences.

Offenders were typically committed to houses of correction by

petty theft, and "loose, idle and disorderly conduct" (a loosely defined offence which could involve a wide range of misbehaviour). Over two-thirds of the prisoners were female[citation needed
].

More than half of offenders were released within a week, and two-thirds within two weeks. In addition to imprisonment in a house of correction, over half of the convicted were

whipped
, particularly those found guilty of theft, vagrancy, and lewd conduct and nightwalking (prostitution).

Virtually all the prisoners were required to do hard labour, typically beating hemp.

In 1720 an act allowed the use of houses of corrections for pretrial detention of "vagrants, and other criminals, offenders, and persons charged with small offences". By the 1760s and 1770s, prisoners awaiting trial accounted for more than three-quarters of those committed to the Middlesex and Westminster houses.[2]

Current facilities called house of correction

In the

jails.[3] The same is true for the State of Maryland.[4] Milwaukee County, Wisconsin maintains a separate house of correction
from its downtown jail facility.

References

  1. ^ "The 1601 Elizabethan Poor Law". www.victorianweb.org. Retrieved 18 November 2018.
  2. ^ "Background – Houses of Correction – London Lives". www.londonlives.org. Retrieved 18 November 2018.
  3. ^ "The New Billerica House of Correction". Archived from the original on 5 December 2010. Retrieved 10 August 2009.
  4. ^ "DPSCS – Facility Locator". www.dpscs.state.md.us. Retrieved 18 November 2018.
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