Prisons

There is a substantial literature on Connecticut's infamous Newgate Prison, the colony and state jail from 1773 to 1827, when the Wethersfield facility opened. That literature is often focused on the copper-mining aspects of the institution, and such pieces are listed in the "mining" section of this bibliography. To put Newgate Prison in national and historical perspective, see 0. F. Lewis, The Development of American Prisons and Prison Customs 1776-1845 (Albany, 1922). The standard history is Richard H. Phelps, Newgate of Connecticut: A History of the Prison (1844 and other editions; reprinted New York, Arno, 1969). The Phelps family owned the site throughout much of the nineteenth century and promoted it as a tourist attraction Perhaps the quickest and easiest way to learn about the prison is to read "Penal and Reformatory Institutions," in George Clark's A History of Connecticut cited above under "Popular Histories." Another, though less accessible, account is a ten-part illustrated series that mixes much fancy with fact George H. Hubbard's "Legends of Old Newgate" in New England Magazine (1906-1907). Herbert H. White tells of the experiences of Tories and British prisoners held in Newgate in "British Prisoners-of-War in Hartford during the Revolution" Papers of the NHCHS 8(1914): 255-76. See also E. A. Start, "The New England Newgate," New England Magazine 3(November, 1890); and N. H. Egelston, "The Newgate of Connecticut, the Old Simsbury Copper Mines." Magazine of American History 15(April 1886).

For the modern era, students will have to look to reports and publications of the State Department of Corrections. But see

Brown, Emily Sophie. "The County Jail in Connecticut" Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology 17(1926):369-76.

Rogers, Helen Worthington. "A History of the Movement to Establish a State Reformatory for Women in Connecticut" Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology 19(February, 1929)4:518-41. Rogers finds only sixty women charged with crimes in the entire colonial period, but the focus of this discussion is the nineteenth-century movement to establish a separate women's prison. After fifty-three years of agitation, such an institution was mandated by a law of 1917.

"The Origins of the Connecticut State Police Department," by Thomas E. Tighe (Hartford 1970), a twenty-eight-page typescript at the State Library, provides a useful discussion of its subject. Established in 1902 as one of the first state police departments in the nation, it was originally "chiefly organized for the suppression of commercialized vice with particular reference to the state's liquor and gambling laws .... [It] was not to place the entire state, county and city constabulary under paramount state control ... but rather to remedy the degree of lawlessness found in our cities and towns" by supplementing local police. (p. 4) The Traffic Quarterly is a hard-to-find item, but it published E.J. Hickey's "Connecticut's State Police [1903-1950)]" 4(October, 1950).