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

Type of resource
Authors/collaborators
Title
Prison Registers, Their Possibilities and Their Pitfalls: The Case of Local Prisons in Nineteenth-Century Quebec
Abstract
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.
Publication
History of the Family
Volume
Vol. 20
Issue
no. 2
Pages
163-188
Date
June 2015
Language
en
Citation
Fyson, Donald, and François Fenchel. “Prison Registers, Their Possibilities and Their Pitfalls: The Case of Local Prisons in Nineteenth-Century Quebec.” History of the Family Vol. 20, no. 2 (June 2015): 163–188.
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