The Women of Galway Jail: Female Criminality in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

Galway was one of thirty-eight Irish towns that had a local prison in the late nineteenth century, housing thousands of women. In this book Geraldine Curtin examines the socioeconomic conditions in which these women lived, the crimes they committed, and the treatment they received while in prison. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, including prison registers, parliamentary papers, newspapers, and personal accounts of prisoners, the author offers an in-depth look at Galway?s women prisoners at a time when female criminality in Ireland was undergoing significant change.