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Mary Gordon (prison inspector)

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Mary Gordon
Born
Mary Louisa Gordon

(1861-08-15)15 August 1861
Seaforth, Lancashire, England
Died5 May 1941(1941-05-05) (aged 79)
Crowborough, Sussex, England
NationalityBritish
Occupation(s)Physician and prison inspector
Known forFirst British female prison inspector
Notable workPenal Discipline (1922)
Chase of the Wild Goose (1936)

Mary Louisa Gordon (15 August 1861 − 5 May 1941) was a British physician and prison inspector. After graduating from the London School of Medicine for Women in 1890, Gordon worked at the East London Hospital for Children, the Evelina London Children's Hospital, and later had a private practice in Harley Street. While working as a physician, she made a number of public addresses and wrote publications on topics including the effects of prostitution and alcohol dependence on women.

Gordon was appointed as the first British female prison inspector in 1908. During her time as prison inspector, she enacted a number of improvements including on labour, supported the British suffragette movement, and secretly communicated with the Women's Social and Political Union about conditions in prisons. After retirement in 1921, she wrote the book Penal Discipline (1922) which advocated for reforms to the prison system, and the historical novel Chase of the Wild Goose (1936) based on the Ladies of Llangollen.

Early life

Gordon was born in 15 August 1861 in Seaforth, Lancashire, to James Gordon and Mary Emily Carter. Her father sold hide and tallow.[1] She had nine siblings and two step-siblings.[2][3] Gordon studied at the London School of Medicine for Women, and qualified as a doctor in 1890. After graduation, she worked part-time as the librarian and curator of the school. She later worked as a clinical assistant at the East London Hospital for Children and at the Evelina London Children's Hospital. Gordon joined the Association of Registered Medical Women (ARMW), a precursor to the Medical Women's Federation, in 1891.[4] She also later worked as a physician in Harley Street, London.[5]

During this time, she contributed a number of publications, and public addresses regarding a variety of topics including the effects of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), prostitution, and alcohol dependence on women. This included writing a letter which had been signed by 73 members of the ARMW in 1898 to Lord George Hamilton, the Secretary of State for India, to criticise measures enacted in the previous year to combat the spread of STDs in the military stationed there.[4][6] In 1907, she wrote a novel called A Jury of the Virtuous under the pseudonym of Patrick Hood.[3] It was about a convicted forger who is released from prison at the age of 26, and finds it difficult to reintegrate into society.[7]

Career

In March 1908, Gordon was appointed as a prison inspector.[1] She was the first woman to hold the position.[1] Her role involved the inspection of the female wings[1] of 47 prisons, and the training of female prison officers. She had no formal training prior to being appointed therefore Gordon visited prisons in Europe in order to learn best practice.[8] She soon identified that the majority of female prisoners had short sentences with high rates of recidivism. Gordon supported a rehabilitative approach in prisons to combat this.[9] She organised the prison labour so that menial tasks such as cleaning were assigned to short-term inmates while more productive roles were given to long-term inmates such as training for jobs when released.[10] Gordon is also credited with physical improvements in conditions in British prisons, such as better lighting in jail cells with the use of clear glass in windows,[11] and introducing notebooks to HM Prison Holloway.[12]

She was a supporter of the British suffragette movement, and secretly communicated with Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence and the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) about the state of prisons, and incarcerated leaders such as Emmeline Pankhurst. When the WSPU headquarters were raided by the police on 23 May 1914, this correspondence was discovered and she was asked by the Home Office to renounce her association with the movement, which she refused to do so. During the First World War, she served from July to December 1916 with the Scottish Women's Hospitals for Foreign Service in Macedonia.[8][13] By the end of her career, she was marginalised and isolated for her association with the suffragette movement and her "feminist" approach to her role.[14] When she asked for an increase in her salary in 1919, an official replied by describing her appointment as a "sop to feminism" and that any further increase would be "a concession to the claims of feminism".[15]

Retirement and later life

She retired in 1921.[1] The following year Gordon wrote the book, Penal Discipline, in which she advocated for reforms to the prison system. She felt that prisons were too focused on punishment, and discipline which encouraged recidivism. Gordon argued for more focus on rehabilitation which included seeking prisoners' views on what would prevent them from reoffending. On one occasion, she describes helping an inmate who was frequently arrested for stealing men's clothes. The inmate told her that "she felt it impossible to live as a woman, but could live as a man, and enjoyed men's work". Gordon provided her with men's clothing and a train fare to South Wales, where she obtained work as a coal miner. The former inmate later wrote to Gordon to inform her that in the year after her release, she was "living respectably", and had experienced her first Easter out of prison in ten years.[1][3][16] The book along with Sidney and Beatrice Webb's report English Prisons Under Local Government, and Stephen Hobhouse and Fenner Brockway's English Prisons Today prompted calls for an inquiry into prison conditions. Initially this was thought likely as prison commissioners had recognised the need for it but after the 1922 general election, the new Home Secretary William Bridgeman, 1st Viscount Bridgeman decided against it.[17]

In later life, Gordon studied analytical psychology with Carl Jung, and his wife Emma in Switzerland.[18] In 1936, she wrote the historical novel Chase of the Wild Goose, based on the Ladies of Llangollen.[19] The book was dedicated to Emma Jung.[20] It was published by writer Virginia Woolf, and her husband Leonard.[21] Gordon was highly critical of Virginia Woolf's 1940 biography of artist Roger Fry particularly in its portrayal of his wife, the artist Helen Coombe, who she was close friends with. She wrote a letter to Woolf describing her reservations about the book. Gordon felt that Coombe had been described in the book as "only the pitiful nebulous ghost she had to be" rather than the brave and charismatic woman that she knew from her youth. She also felt it did not discuss the potential contribution, from her point of view, of Fry's extroverted personality to the deterioration in Coombe's mental health in later life.[22] It is not known whether Woolf replied to the letter but in previous brief references to Gordon in her writing she did not describe her with warm words.[23]

Gordon died on 5 May 1941 in the town of Crowborough, Sussex, at the age of 79.[1]

Published works

  • A Jury of the Virtuous (1907), written under the pseudonym Patrick Hood
  • Penal Discipline (1922)
  • Chase of the Wild Goose (1936)

Bibliography

  • Cheney, Deborah (10 August 2010). "Dr Mary Louisa Gordon (1861–1941): A Feminist Approach in Prison". Feminist Legal Studies. 18 (2). doi:10.1007/s10691-010-9151-4. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Oakley, Ann (1 March 2019). Women, peace and welfare: A suppressed history of social reform, 1880–1920. Policy Press. ISBN 978-1-4473-3262-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Smith, Martin Ferguson (2 March 2016). "Virginia Woolf and 'the Hermaphrodite': A Feminist Fan of Orlando and Critic of Roger Fry". English Studies. 97 (3). doi:10.1080/0013838X.2015.1121724. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g "Gordon, Mary Louisa". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/56108. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ^ Smith 2016, p. 283.
  3. ^ a b c Oakley 2019, p. 204.
  4. ^ a b Smith 2016, p. 284.
  5. ^ "A New Post for Women: Inspection of Prisons". The Guardian. 14 March 1908. p. 8. Retrieved 22 December 2019 – via Newspapers.com. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help)
  6. ^ Cheney 2010, pp. 116–117.
  7. ^ "Reviews". The BMJ. 2 (1907): 1431. 16 November 1907. doi:10.1136/bmj.2.2446.1430.
  8. ^ a b Oakley 2019, p. 205.
  9. ^ Cheney 2010, p. 130.
  10. ^ Cheney 2010, p. 132.
  11. ^ Oakley 2019, pp. 205–206.
  12. ^ "Suffragists Released: A Woman Prison Inspector's Work". The Guardian. 1 August 1908. p. 9. Retrieved 22 December 2019 – via Newspapers.com.
  13. ^ Smith 2016, p. 285.
  14. ^ Cheney 2010, p. 115.
  15. ^ Cheney 2010, p. 126.
  16. ^ Gordon, Mary. "Penal Discipline". Internet Archive. pp. 71–72. Retrieved 18 December 2019.
  17. ^ Bailey, Victor (9 April 2019). The Rise and Fall of the Rehabilitative Ideal, 1895–1970. Taylor & Francis. p. 41. ISBN 978-0-429-66388-8.
  18. ^ Oakley 2019, pp. 206, 403.
  19. ^ "Chase of the Wild Goose". The Spectator. 7 August 1936.(subscription required)
  20. ^ Oakley 2019, p. 206.
  21. ^ Smith 2016, p. 277.
  22. ^ Smith 2016, pp. 287–289, 294.
  23. ^ Smith 2016, pp. 279, 289.
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