Prison Registers, Their Possibilities and Their Pitfalls: The Case of Local Prisons in Nineteenth-Century Quebec

The authors present a methodological discussion and analysis of nineteenth-century local prison registers, using two datasets drawn from the common gaols of Quebec City (1813–1871) and of Montreal (1836–1899). They first examine the analytical possibilities offered by the wealth of serial data in these sources, concentrating especially on marital status and on the reconstruction of prisoners' incarceration histories. They then turn to the pitfalls inherent in exploiting such administrative records, notably the vagaries of social categorization and of stature measurement, arguing for the importance of reconstructing the legal and administrative contexts of prisoner data collection.

History of the Family

Vol. 20

no. 2

163-188

June 2015

en