Bridewell

[Joel S. Berson]

At 6/6/2012 02:03 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
>
>On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 11:32 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> > I suspect Wilson will soon tell us that "Bridewell" would not be in
> > the vernacular of an African-American woman  in 1818.
>
>Unless the woman quoted was *not* using "bridewell" as a synonym of
>"penitentiary, prison" then I have every reason to expect that a black
>woman self-identifying as a "habitual criminal," in current language,
>would indeed have "bridewell" as a part of her active vocabulary at a
>time in which it was part of the active vocabulary of the
>constabulary.

As I wrote, I may be wrong.  I was -- Bridewell was common in America
in the 18th and into the 19th century.  (I don't recall the word
occurring frequently in New England newspapers of the mid-18th
century, except in articles from England.  "Goal" and "prison" were
much more the usual terms for the local facilities.  But a bit of
investigation in EAN shows me that it was used in Boston papers in
the 1720s to refer to a local institution, and I didn't look
later.  And it shows up in 19th Century U.S. Newspapers.)

Joel

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