‘Up with the Brave’: Gender, Transgression and Judges’ Use of Catholic Convents in England and Ireland, 1930-1959

Mairead Enright*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Using newspaper coverage of women’s and girl’s property offences in minor English and Irish courts, I analyse courts’ use of Catholic convent institutions between 1930 and 1959. Coverage of minor local hearings offers access to everyday cases, where boundaries between moral and legal transgression were blurred. I explore three interlocking themes in newspaper reports. First, those courts sent to convents were punished, at least in part, for breaching prevailing gendered moral norms. Second, judges represented convents as sites of moral reform; justifying convent detention by reinforcing gendered notions of damaged female agency. Finally, judges sent women and girls to convents even when they publicly resisted. In these ways, courts reinforced reliance on convents for gendered ‘moral reclamation’. In the conclusion, I explore the argument’s implications for state reckoning with historical abuses in institutions like Ireland’s Magdalene laundries, showing how abolition feminist legal histories can pose new questions about relationships between law and the. experience of mass incarceration
Original languageEnglish
JournalLaw and History Review
Publication statusAccepted/In press - 12 Oct 2024

Bibliographical note

Not yet published as of 30/01/2025.

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