Two interior views of a cell at Eastern State Penitentiary, from Richard Vaux’s Brief Sketch of the Origin and History of the State Penitentiary for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, 1872. The first photograph is taken while standing in the corridor, the second, while standing in the yard.
Featured on PDR in the essay The Silent Treatment: Solitary Confinement’s Unlikely Origins
Characterised today by the noise of banging, buzzers, and the cries of inmates, solitary confinement was originally developed from Quaker ideas about the redemptive power of silence, envisioned as a humane alternative to the punitive violence of late-18th century jails. Revisiting Pennsylvania’s Eastern State Penitentiary, Jane Brox discovers the spiritual origins and reformist ambitions of solitary’s early advocates, and sees their supposedly progressive desires come to ruin by the 20th century.
Also appearing in the essay…
Two Interior Views of a Cell at Eastern State Penitentiary
Date
1872
From
Brief Sketch of the Origin and History of the State Penitentiary for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
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