Bridewell

[paul johnson]

As a 77 year old, I clearly remember my parents using Bridewell in
Chicago in the 40s and 50s.  I thought that Cook County Jail was named
after somebody named Bridewell, with a grandfather and 4 uncles on the
force and Irish it was standard english to me.

On 6/6/2012 11:12 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> 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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"I wouldn't be caught dead marrying a woman old enough to be my wife."

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