Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part 1 The Crimes

1 “With a World of Tears”: Women Criminals and the Use of Mercy and Femininity

2 “She Would Have a Divorce at the Risk of Her Life”: Women and Crimes That Challenged Social Limitations

3 “Amazonian Outbreak”: Antebellum Women and Political

Crime

Part 2 In Prison

4 “Disturbing the Other Prisoners”: Female Inmates in Pennsylvania Penitentiaries

5 “No Kind Treatment Can Subdue the Prisoner”: Chaos and Female Resistance in the County Jails

6 “Restoration to the Path of Virtue”: The Difficult Task of Reform

Conclusion

Appendixes

A County Crime Statistics

B Eastern State Penitentiary Female Demographics

C Western State Penitentiary Female Demographics

D Gender and Race of Moyamensing Admissions

Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Erica Rhodes Hayden is Associate Professor of History at Trevecca Nazarene University.

Reviews

“By focusing on the lived experience of women in the carceral system, Troublesome Women provides an important intervention in scholarship that emphasizes the power of the carceral system and universal ideas of womanhood.”—Olivia Errico Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography

“. . . a unique contribution to the literature on women and criminality in Pennsylvania during the antebellum era.”—Theresa McDevitt H-Penn

“This comprehensive investigation of criminal women restores their agency and recovers the choices and strategies that were often hidden beneath official accounts of their deeds.”—Susan Branson, author of Dangerous to Know: Women, Class and Crime in the Early Republic