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PALGRAVE
STUDIES
IN PRISONS
AND PENOLOGY

The Prison
Boundary
Between Society and
Carceral Space

J ENNIFER T URNER
Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology

Series Editors
Ben Crewe
Institute of Criminology
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, United Kingdom

Yvonne Jewkes
School of Applied Social Science
University of Brighton
Brighton, United Kingdom

Thomas Ugelvik
Department of Criminology and
Sociology of Law
University of Oslo
Oslo, Norway
This is a unique and innovative series, the first of its kind dedicated
entirely to prison scholarship. At a historical point in which the prison
population has reached an all-time high, the series seeks to analyse the
form, nature and consequences of incarceration and related forms of pun-
ishment. Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology provides an important
forum for burgeoning prison research across the world.
Series Advisory Board: Anna Eriksson (Monash University), Andrew
M. Jefferson (Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims),
Shadd Maruna (Queen’s University Belfast), Jonathon Simon (Berkeley
Law, University of California) and Michael Welch (Rutgers University).

More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14596
 Jennifer Turner

The Prison Boundary

Between Society and Carceral Space
Jennifer Turner
Leicester, United Kingdom

Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology

ISBN 978-1-137-53241-1 ISBN 978-1-137-53242-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-53242-8

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016940634

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and trans-
mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
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The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London
For Jackie and Simon
 Acknowledgements

Without the unwavering support and inspiration of my friends, family,

and colleagues, this collection of words would never have made it into a
book. My thanks for all parts of this monograph belong to each of you.
Each page was made possible by colleagues at the Department
of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University, and the
Department of Criminology, University of Leicester, who provided inspi-
ration and relief in equal measure. I am grateful to have experienced such
supportive and vibrant environments throughout my career. My sincer-
est thanks go to Julia Willan, Dominic Walker, and the whole Palgrave
Macmillan team for seeing this project through with such professional-
ism. My thanks go also to the editors Ben Crewe, Yvonne Jewkes and
Thomas Ugelvik for finding a space for my work amongst such presti-
gious others in the Palgrave Studies in Prisons and Penology book series.
A whole chapter of thanks goes to my wonderful friend and generous
colleague Sarah Mills. Your confidence in my work helped me to plough
through the most difficult of paragraphs; and your shrewd editing cor-
rected them once I had managed that. Another chapter, as it were, is for
Dominique Moran, who has been a constant source of inspiration, pav-
ing the way for emerging carceral scholars like me and acting as a point
of reference for every sensible decision I ever made.

vii
viii Acknowledgements

I am hugely indebted to my parents, Jackie and Simon and my sister,

Naomi. You have all been there from cover to cover reminding me that
hard work is rarely unrewarded.
And to Kimberley Peters, who has been the spine holding this whole
thing (and me) together for the last two years. Not everyone is lucky
enough to find a partner who is such a talented and selfless colleague
and I cannot express how grateful I am for all you have done to push me
further, make me think harder, and write something of which I can be
truly proud.
 Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Conceptualising ‘Inside’ and ‘Outside’ 27

3 Legislating a Prison Boundary in England and Wales 63

4 Tourism on the Prison Boundary 95

5 Working Towards a Boundary Crossing 139

6 Complicating Carceral Boundaries with Offender Art 183

7 Conclusion: A Boundary Patchwork 221

ix
x Contents

Appendix A: Chronology of Key Legislation Relating

to the Development of the Penal System in England
and Wales 239

Index 245
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 The exterior of Strangeways prison

(now HMP Manchester), UK 32
Fig. 2.2 The exterior of HMP Leicester, UK 33
Fig. 4.1 View from cell room looking out onto main atrium of
the ‘landing’ at The Malmaison, Oxford Castle, UK 104
Fig. 4.2 Graffiti carved into the wall of the exercise yard of
The Old County Gaol, Nottingham, UK 110
Fig. 4.3 The atrium of ‘A Wing’ at The Malmaison, Oxford Castle, UK 120
Fig. 4.4 The now exclusive leisure space of the former exercise yard
of HMP Oxford, UK 121
Fig. 4.5 View of the former exercise yard of HMP Oxford, UK, with
particular attention to the original ‘gutters’ to the right
of the shot, which are now ‘ensuite’ private gardens in
the basement hotel rooms 122
Fig. 4.6 Being photographed on the in-cell lavatory 124
Fig. 4.7 Improvised weapons in glass boxes at the Galleries of
Justice, Nottingham, UK 125
Fig. 6.1 Death in Custody Anon. (HMP Bullingdon) Bronze Award
for Portraits 190
Fig. 6.2 The Visit Anon. (HMP Shepton Mallet) Paul Hamlyn
Foundation Bronze Award for Oil or Acrylic 194
Fig. 6.3 Behind Me (Self Portrait) Anon. (HMP Lowdham Grange)
The Co-operative Chair’s Platinum Award 2011 200

xi
xii List of Figures

Fig. 6.4 ‘Please do not touch’ sign alongside exhibits at the Art by
Offenders exhibition 207
Fig. 6.5 They Still Wear Suits Like This, Don’t They? Anon. (HMP
Shepton Mallet) Victor Roberts Highly Commended
Award for Portraits 210
Fig. 6.6 My Reflection in Death in Custody Anon. (HMP Bullingdon)
Bronze Award for Portraits 211
 List of Tables

Table 3.1 Key events relating to the penal system in England and
Wales since 2000 83
Table 5.1 Type of assistance and mode of delivery (adapted from
Webster et al. 2001, 22) 150
Table 5.2 Prison reception and discharge figures (England and Wales,
quarter ending Sept. 2011a) 169

xiii
 1
Introduction

On Tuesday 24 April 2012, an online newspaper headline caught my

attention. It read: Clink clip every trip for prison van barber. The article
told the story of a mobile barber, Stewart Vine, who set up shop in the
back of a decommissioned prison van. Vine, a former delivery driver, was
reportedly inspired by the many similar vehicles he had seen on the roads
during his travels. The van was acquired from a firm in Dorset, following
the decommissioning of fleets of prison vehicles in January 2012, when
new contracts were awarded to private firms GEOAmey and Serco for
the provision of security services across the UK. Prior to the privatisa-
tion of prison transport services, decommissioned security vehicles had
been destroyed. The conversion of the van into a barber shop cost Vine
between £8000 and £10,000. Today, the secure compartments formerly
housing four prisoners in transit have been replaced with two barber’s
chairs, a waiting area and a television. Vine regularly parks up his busi-
ness at a service station in County Durham and also frequents farmers’
markets to give people living in remote areas or those with limited trans-
port facilities the opportunity for a haircut. Vine commented that, ‘[t]
he van attracts a lot of attention and gets a lot of smiles when people see

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 1

J. Turner, The Prison Boundary,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-53242-8_1
2 The Prison Boundary

it and things are going well’ (Fay 2012, no page). The article, however,
reported that the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) was ‘concerned’ about the
selling-off of these vehicles in case they could be used be used to facilitate
an escape from prison (Fay 2012, no page).
Mr. Vine’s prison van leads us to the first significant aspect of this
book: the prison boundary. Vine’s van acts as a material manifestation
of the multitude of physical and symbolic connections that make up the
contested, fluid border between being either ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ prison
and general society (n.b., from here on I will use the terms ‘inside’ and
‘outside’ without quotations to avoid confusion; however, any such refer-
ences should be taken to imply the fraught nature of inside/outside dis-
tinctions vis-a-vis the prison boundary. The terms are further developed
at the beginning of Chap. 2). Despite the often peripheral locations of
prisons, the inter-linkages between society and spaces of incarceration
are numerous and complex - involving, for example, a range of goods,
services and people to facilitate the running of the prison; or the develop-
ment of media representations acutely related to contemporary societal
perceptions of crime and punishment (Turner 2013a, b, 2014) - and it
is that complexity which I endeavour to address here. Throughout the
course of this book, I address both the physical and metaphorical experi-
ences that arise in and around the penal context through a series of case
studies. Specifically, I examine the interactions between the prisoners on
the ‘inside’ of the system and the people ‘outside’ of it: interactions which
are themselves generated by the conceptual and physical prison boundary.
Vine’s van encapsulates how prisons have come to be seen not as sepa-
rate, peripheral sites, but as windows onto (or even organising principles
of ) modern social, political, and even economic orders. Much literature
has sought to overturn the presumption of a closed-off prison world, illus-
trating how the policies and practices that animate prisons go beyond the
physical boundary of the prison wall (Baer and Ravneberg 2008; Gilmore
2007; Loyd et al. 2009; Pallot 2005; Vergara 1995; Wacquant 2000,
2001, 2009). Substantive literature exists on asylum seekers and political
prisoners, on detainment per se, and on the reification and permeabil-
ity of boundaries (within, for example, geography [see Conlon and Gill
2013; Gill 2009; Moran et al. 2011, 2012] and other disciplines such as
criminology [see Pickering 2014; Pickering and Weber 2006]). In particu-
 1 Introduction 3

lar, recent scholarship has placed detention centres within a geographical

imaginary that extends well beyond their physical location and the prac-
tices therein, particularly due to the transfer of detainees across national
boundaries. What is more, it has been argued, naturalising or ignoring
this symbiotic relationship serves to hide the crucial role of the penal sys-
tem in contemporary society. Indeed, Peck (2003) and Gilmore (1999,
2007) recognise that the prison system has become a key component of a
state-based strategy of regulating a potentially unruly urban poor, whilst
others have argued for the instrumental role of prisons as a recession-proof
economy (Bonds 2006, 2013; Dyer 2000; Lemke 2001; Venn 2009).
Certainly, the leaning of the press reporting towards the economic via-
bility of Vine’s van as a business venture parallels the emphasis given to the
economic and political dimensions of the prison within geographical and
sociological inquiry. More specifically, it alludes to the increasing privatisa-
tion of the prison service as an outsourced public service. In this example,
the increase in privitisation has direct consequences, such as the selling-off
of former prison vehicles as a cost-saving exercise for prison management,
which raises tensions around the practice of penal services as a profit-
making business, and the techniques of management for efficiency and
productivity that such business necessarily entails. Further, Stewart Vine’s
prison van becomes contentious in regard to its potential availability for
criminal uses. In selling off these vehicles, the Ministry of Justice has itself
recognised that ‘[w]hile the sale of such vehicles is lawful, it does give
cause for concern. Criminal appropriation of such vehicles could pose a
threat to prison security’ (Fay 2012, no page). Such sentiments play upon
the concerns of the ‘law-abiding’ reader: i.e., these vans may aid inmates
to escape from prison, resulting in the untimely release of those individ-
uals whom society has deemed undesirable and threatening. But, more
than that, the potential compromise in security unveils a chink in the
armour of the penal system itself—an institution that has become central
to the regulatory fabric of contemporary society. In highlighting a fragile
point of the physical infrastructure of the prison, the wider ideology of the
penal system is also weakened. Therefore, a regime that has become the
crucial means of disciplining and controlling a population becomes more
precarious as we are made to envision a way in which the ‘outsiders’ it is
4 The Prison Boundary

supposed to contain might escape into a life alongside the ‘good’ citizens
they are excluded from. The boundary of the prison becomes altogether
much closer to home than we would like to think.
Philosophers, historians, and sociologists have also been central to the
discussion of the boundary between prison and society (Foucault 1977;
Franke 1992; Garland 1990; McConville 1981; Morris and Rothman
1995; Radzinowicz 1948; Radzinowicz and Hood 1986; Sharpe 1990,
1998). Here, implicit geographies can be discerned, with work exploring
the activism around (to give only one category of many) political prison-
ers. For instance, the activism around the imprisonment of American
Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier (Mathiessen 1991) or IRA mil-
itants (Clarke 1987), calls into question the active boundary between
political opposition and crime. Moreover, innovative political art, such
as the Million Dollar Blocks project (2006) based at the Justice Mapping
Centre at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation
at Columbia University, places prisons in the context of housing policy in
particular and state budgetary priorities more generally.
Even outside the specific realm of political activism, the popular and
scholarly discussion of the porous boundary between prison and society
proliferates at a rapid clip. Media reports on gang activity point to strong
links between incarcerated gang members and those on the outside,
and suggest that prisons are instrumental as recruiting stations (Spergel
1990). Prisons arguably reproduce and often exacerbate social problems,
like the spread of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis (Buntman 2009, 407).
For example, as Stern (1998) suggests, certain sectors of society expect
to spend time in prison to one degree or another, more so if their rela-
tives were incarcerated at some point. In a different register, religious
groups, as well, may find rich sources of converts within prison walls
(Johnson 2004; Johnson et al. 1997). Ethnographers Marchetti (2002)
and Comfort (2002) explore factors such as the forced transfer of prison-
ers and the performance of certain ‘outside’ behaviours such as kinship
gatherings and family celebrations behind bars, respectively. Combessie
(2002), also an ethnographer, examines notions of good and evil exhib-
ited in the labelling of officers and inmates, and the stigma of ‘evil’ that
can be attached to ex-convicts on the ‘outside’.
 1 Introduction 5

Whilst previous scholarship has focused attention on the prison

boundary, and relations between ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, it has not yet
interrogated the work of the boundary as a process in creating and sta-
bilising these categories. Nor have the meanings, practices, articulations,
materialities, and embodied performances that are in turn produced by
that stabilisation been sufficiently examined. The second key aspect of
this book takes up this gap in contemporary scholarship, addressing the
boundary-as-process: the everyday cultural practices and performances
entangled within and between the penal system, at the boundary itself.
This book acts as both a manifesto and an implementation of my encoun-
ters with both of these key themes. As a geographer-criminologist having
worked in both disciplinary departments, I sit on the border between two
disciplines, concerning myself with not only prison and its spatial mani-
festations, but also, and more importantly, with the cultural practices
that may permeate these spatial relationships.
Much of the academic discourse on the subject, however, explores the
connections between prison and society chiefly at the abstract level of
social, political, or economic function, arguing that prisons have a differ-
ent, less constructive, more important, or more central functional place in
society than is commonly assumed. Criminological analysis of the prison
has largely focused on objective data collation and statistical outputs—
reducing those involved with the penal system to inhuman objects, with
serious moral as well as analytical consequences. As Bosworth et al. note:

This tendency to downplay the emotional components of their research

projects goes hand in hand with a more general failure to discuss the way
that most prisoners conceal a tumult of unplumbed anger, frustration, fear,
and outrage at their imprisonment. Without acknowledging their own
emotions and the feelings of their contributors, criminologists too may
disguise the waste of existence most prisoners experience year after year.
This may, in turn, weaken their analysis and their ability to critique the
penal system. (2005, 259)

As a geographer, I am interested in the prison/non-prison divide as

an inside/outside boundary constituted as a set of connections that work
6 The Prison Boundary

to construct, reinforce, and transgress that boundary. However, as a cul-

tural scholar I am also intrigued by the personal attachments created by
these connections. In order for prisons to have the functions ascribed to
them, there must be various kinds of flows and exchanges across prison
borders—flows of human bodies, funds, goods, family members, docu-
ments, oral communications, and contraband (Valentine and Longstaff
1998). Indeed, the points at which these flows and exchanges are scruti-
nised and regulated constitute ‘the boundary’ through the act of contra-
vening it. This regulation includes mechanisms within the prison, such
as the material apparatus of separation during visits, prison supply and
waste procedures, protocols of conduct between inmates and guards, etc.,
and mechanisms beyond the prison, such as tagging and curfew practices,
or requests for parole. The politics and practices of this boundary traffic
bring with them associated meanings and attachments, all contributing
to a unique interaction with the prison boundary. For example, inmates
often retain meaningful friendships developed inside prison; or remain
associated with the stigma of prison, once outside prison walls.
For many academics, the most timely sets of connections to consider
are those that relate to prisoner reoffending and rehabilitation, based on
the premise that developing stronger links between prisoners and the
communities into which they will be released helps to reduce levels of
recidivism. The impact that a positive family relationship, in particular,
can have upon the reduction of recidivism is widely attended to by both
scholars across a variety of disciplines (Comfort 2002, 2008; McGarrell
and Hipple 2007; Mills and Codd 2008) and official reports (Her
Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons and Probation (HMIPP) 2001; Home
Office 2004, 2006). In the following section I focus more specifically on
these types of connections, which explicitly conceptualise a relationship
between culture and prison.

1.1 The Culture of Prison

Scholars of the political economy concern themselves with the study of
the relationship between economic and political processes (Stern and
Reve 1980). Attention to this relationship has encompassed a long his-
 1 Introduction 7

tory of flux, largely precipitated by various versions of Marxist dialectical

and analytical articulations. In its early guises, ontological attention to
culture has involved the abstract delimitation of the ‘cultural’ from the
‘economic’. However, following this, scholarship has made significant
efforts to subsequently assert their entanglement. The cultural turn now
stresses the importance of the diverse social relations between economics
and state-shaping behaviour. As such, everyday behaviours—or cultural
processes—are negotiated. This notion situates this book in a clear posi-
tion: not ignoring political-economic factors that (re)produce the prison
boundary, but rather foregrounding their entanglement with cultural fac-
ets. As Mitchell explains, culture is not in opposition, or separate from
economics, politics, and social life. Indeed, ‘none of these realms is really
independent of one another’, and further, ‘the reason for defining culture
… is that it allows us to see how the different realms interact with each
other’ (Mitchell 2000, 13–14).
In what follows, I understand culture in respect of shifts central to
the so-called ‘new’ cultural geography: culture as ideology and mean-
ing, culture as embodied practice and performance, and culture as mate-
rial/informed by materiality (see Crang 1998; Horton and Kraftl 2013;
Jackson 2000a; Mitchell 2000). Culture is also taken to refer to ‘everyday’
routines, rituals and activities, rather than seemingly exceptional or even
sensational manifestations of culture (Crang 1998). Very recent work
amongst carceral geographers1 acknowledges an interest in the culture of
prison as described in this way. For example, the everyday cultural prac-
tices enacted within prison are ripe for critique. Cohen (2011), among
others, considers such everyday practices when he dwells on the impor-
tance of acknowledging an embodied, penal experience. These avenues
are also being explored by McWatters (2010) and Mitchelson (2010),
who emphasise the narrativisation of prisoners, while Moran (2013a),
draws together recent work on emotion and affect as a means of under-
standing the personal experience of carceral space—that is, the experi-

1
Throughout this book, I shall be referring to a geographical sub-discipline that has come to be
known as carceral geography. The term was coined to describe the new and vibrant field of geo-
graphical research into practices of incarceration (Moran et al. 2011, 2012, 2013).
8 The Prison Boundary

ence of prison visiting rooms as liminal (in-between), yet transformative,

spaces.
Recent scholarship had also attempted to document the mundane
activities of prison life, together with their symbolic as well as affective
importance. This can be seen in the scholarly focus on the placement of
material things, such as the significance of displaying toiletries and air
fresheners in cells (Baer 2005) and the role of vision in the production of
spaces (Van Hoven and Sibley 2008). Other work concerns the apparent
complexity of personal attachments to the prison environment, and the
potential impact this has for rehabilitative activities. Cohen (2012), for
example, calls for a renewed attention to the processes that create a sense
of place in the arguably ‘placeless’ prison. He assesses the transformation
of prison space that can occur in the classroom, the visiting room, the
clinic, the workplace, and the studio, and demonstrates their potential
for constructive engagement, and therefore reduction of recidivism. In
this, we find a wealth of opportunity to consider how (variously acces-
sible) vernacular aspects of everyday life—a current discourse for cultural
geographers (see Eyles 1989; Holloway and Hubbard 2001)—become a
reservoir for the performance of appropriate prisoner behaviours. I take
my lead also from Bosworth (2007a), who discusses how the everyday
language used in prisoner information pamphlets may have an impact
upon social rehabilitation. She writes that their corporate style, ‘[o]nce
translated into the mundane and the banal, they have, in turn, become
the values inscribed in, and underpinning, the experience of prison itself ’
(Bosworth 2007a, 68).
Building off of the focus on the mundane or everyday in prison schol-
arship, Moran et al. (2009), further discuss how institutional activities
are assigned according to strict gender stereotypes, reflecting wider soci-
etal ideologies as to appropriate behaviour. A line of inquiry into the
paradoxical status of the prisoner as someone both outside of the fabric
of society, and aspirant for re-integration has also emerged (Gill 2010,
2011; Lowen 2011; Michalon and Clochard 2010; Mitchelson 2010;
Moran et al. 2012). Rose describes a situation wherein incarceration has
been used to detain members of society who detract from the ideal, even
though these ‘incorrigible individuals’ are then supposed to conform to
the concept of the responsible, modern citizen. Rehabilitation strategies
 1 Introduction 9

used in order to create this condition, he argues, are a form of ‘work expe-
rience’ in this regard (Rose 2000, 330). The intent here is to ‘remoralise’
and ‘responsibilise’ individuals to cultural norms such that they are able
to work without benefit and further support: in short, ‘to reconstruct
self-reliance in those who are excluded’ (ibid, 334). Isin and Nielsen refer
to these as ‘acts of citizenship’; that is, situations that empower people
enough to be able to claim their rights as well as perform their obligations
(2008, 2). Similar examples of projects designed to help prisoners gain a
sense of ‘giving something back’ through purposeful endeavours include
such things as the US ‘Puppies behind Bars project’ where prisoners raise
guide dogs for the blind (Cheakalos 2004) or ‘strengths-based’ or ‘restor-
ative’ activities with ‘worthy causes’ including repair of wheelchairs and
community regeneration schemes (Burnett and Maruna 2006), and help-
ing the elderly (Toch 2000).
To date, such rehabilitation-focused critical interventions do not as
yet parallel the breadth of issues tackled in other disciplines, particularly
criminology, sociology, anthropology and performance studies, wherein
we can find, for example, work on both the vital and damaging links
between families and their incarcerated relatives (Christian and Kennedy
2011; Codd 2008; Comfort 2008; Novero et al. 2011), and the study of
prison officers and how their particular work ethics can influence behav-
iour and individuals’ motivation for reform (Nielsen 2011; Tait 2011).
Recent work in these other disciplines goes beyond the construction of
the incarcerated individual as a passive subject, noting instead the agency
of the individual prisoner in shaping research carried out upon them
(Edens et al. 2011; Fraser et al. 2010), or prisoners taking direct action to
prevent themselves becoming associated with negative identity construc-
tions (Sloan 2012). Thus, if we re-frame our ideas of successful rehabili-
tation to include offenders actively making choices about and changes
to their lives, there are clear pathways that would create a demand for
research that engages with the prison as an affective environment. In an
effort to achieve such a re-framing, scholars have commented upon such
things as the better access to healthcare within some prisons as opposed
to the outside world (Moffic 2010), to the changing ‘sense of well-being’
within prison (O’Callaghan et al. 2009), or indeed, the friendships that
may occur from time spent in prison (Bronson 2008; Caine 2006).
10 The Prison Boundary

These findings point to a more complex, sometimes positive, experience

of prison life, wherein rehabilitation, for example, becomes a means of
animating feelings of trust, friendship and so on.
Significantly though, no one has yet paid sustained spatial attention
to these cultural manifestations of engagement with the penal system. In
particular, no one has yet attended to the cultural relationship between
the prison, its boundary and the ‘outside’. For example, what kind of
experiences might members of the public visiting Mr Vine’s mobile barber
shop have had in relation to its former use as a prison van? Furthermore,
how might this have related to their existing interactions with, or percep-
tions of, prison? And, moreover, what do these cultural and experiential
interactions with prison spaces add to the complex relationships between
prisons and the world outside of them? This tendency toward the mar-
ginalisation of avowedly cultural concerns is mirrored, I want to suggest,
in the literature on the prison boundary.

1.2 Questioning the Prison Boundary

Whilst I acknowledge the salience of political and economic analyses of
the prison and its broader role in society, I want to draw explicit attention
to the prison in relation to tensions, materials, and sensibilities that have so
far been deemed ephemeral to critical analysis. I call for the cultivation of
a conceptual repertoire more associated with cultural studies (geography
in particular), dwelling on meaning, performance, media, embodiment,
materiality, and spectacle, in order to provide an expanded inquiry into
the relational, fluid, contradictory, and nuanced spaces of imprisonment.
Via this new conceptual framework, I open up the cultural-political
space of the prison in order to explore the prison boundary at the level
of the individual. Then, I explore the affective dimensions of human
experience in carceral space via, for example, carceral spectacles, and
the embodiment and performance of relationships between, and identi-
ties constructed by, prison and society. Building on the specific work of
Gould (2011), who questions our individual perceptions of the prison
world in relation to the performance of media spectacle, I focus upon
specific examples that draw out the complexity of the relationship
 1 Introduction 11

between prison and the world ‘outside’ of it. I also take into account the
work of cultural geographers attending to the relationship between con-
sumption of objects and spaces (Goss 2004; Gronow and Warde 2001;
Jackson 1992; Slater 2003). I have written this book with these emergent
debates in the field of carceral studies very much in mind. Moreover,
the issues raised throughout The Prison Boundary have importance for
broader debates in the study of boundaries, bodies and the production
of knowledge.
My attention to the personal level at which the prison boundary mani-
fests itself relates to the scholarly shift towards an examination of the role
of the body as a geographical site that facilitates our engagement with the
world (Valentine 1999). Traditionally, vision has dominated understand-
ings of human perception and engagement with space and place. But in
recent years, attention within the social sciences has seen beyond, as it
were, the visual world alone. Highlighting the dissatisfaction of the con-
ceptualisation of the body as an autonomous system for gaining sensory
experiences, Dixon and Straughan report the new emphasis

upon the myriad interrelations that are thought to exist between and
among the ‘interiority’ of the human body—that which we may refer to as
the psyche or even the soul, but also the meat, flesh and bones of the
soma—and the ‘exterior’ world of other people, life forms and objects.
(2010, 450)

Inmates in UK prisons usually have limited opportunity to visually

experience the landscape in their immediate vicinity. In their immo-
bile living environment, the view from the cell window or the exercise
yard offers a similar stasis. With little movement beyond these spaces,
the onus on the vision of some prisoners seems altogether redundant.
For this reason, critical attention to the role of vision in prison spaces
famously discusses surveillance as an element of a disciplinary regime,
illustrating Bentham’s panopticon2 as the optimum method of promoting

2
The Panopticon is a type of institutional building designed by English philosopher and social
theorist Jeremy Bentham in the late eighteenth century. The design consists of a circular structure
with an “inspection house” at its centre, from which the managers or staff of the institution are able
to watch or observe (-opticon) all (pan-) the inmates, who are stationed around the perimeter.
12 The Prison Boundary

self-surveillance (see Foucault 1977). Whilst vision is important, it is

clear that ‘[l]imiting this project to the visual would be to tell only half
the story’ (Adey 2005, 202). Any such ‘focus solely on the experiences,
practices, design … through the ocular and representative, denies the per-
formative, non-representational practices and felt experiences …’ (ibid).
As Susan Smith has noted, ‘senses other than sight might contain and
construct geographies which are rather different from those encountered
in the visible world’ (Smith 1997, 503–504). Accordingly, in order to
tell a more complete story of the negotiations between the ‘inside’ and
‘outside’, at various points in the book I attend to the physically felt and
embodied ways in which prison is touched. For example, Chap. 4 consid-
ers the importance of hapticality (see Paterson (2007) for a wider discus-
sion) in the lived experience of commodified prison landscapes such as
hotels and museums.
There is a greater complexity to such non-representational literature,
however, when we consider it in direct relation to the prison environ-
ment. Developing spatial connections to others are no doubt problematic
for those who are incarcerated. As discussed earlier in the chapter, prisons
have traditionally existed on the periphery of society, creating a literal dis-
tance from those who are not incarcerated. However, even if we disregard
this literal distance, inmates themselves may be considered out of touch
with contemporary society. Being ‘out of touch’ in a temporal sense then
translates into a literal, physical difficulty with tangible, physical con-
nection between ex-prisoners and those who have never been incarcer-
ated. Physical touch is also frowned upon within the prison environment,
particularly as it may be associated with sexual abuse (Houston 2009,

These inmates would not be able to tell whether or not they were being watched. The rationale was
predicated on the ability of the prisoner to self-regulate their behaviour once they thought they
were being watched by all others also imprisoned within the radial layout (see Bozovic 1995).
Bentham found that this basic plan would be applicable to all types of institution, including hos-
pitals, schools, sanatoriums, and asylums, but it is the prison that is most widely understood by the
term. Pentonville Prison, built in 1842 in inner-North London, exhibited the closest resemblance
to Bentham’s Panopticon design. It was originally designed to hold 520 prisoners, each held in a
cell measuring 13 feet long, 7 feet wide and 9 feet high. Although Bentham’s Panopticon was never
fully realised, some of the design ideas were replicated in nineteenth-century Europe and America,
with particular influence upon the architecture of high security prisons, or those which we now
term the ‘Supermax’ (see Rhodes 2002).
 1 Introduction 13

97–98). Yet the importance for prisoners of ‘keeping in touch’, both liter-
ally and metaphorically, with family and friends is paramount.
Recent work within the literature on touch posits the skin as the main
interface between person and world; touch stimulates sensations, prompts
behaviour and activates memories (Critchley 2008). The body acts as
an anchor point for memories (Krasner 2005) and relies upon making
contact with artefacts to generate tangible links to memories and places
(Rowles 1978). Touch is not only important to our memory, though—it
is vital to our sense of self.
Following the work of Tuan (1974), Rodaway explains that to lose
touch (or to have it denied) ‘is to lose a world and, in effect, our sense
of identity, even awareness of being’ (Rodaway 1994, 44). For prison
inmates, this is a serious challenge, particularly if they face a long jail
term far away from their families and home communities. While our
understanding of touch must begin from the concrete, physical point of
contact, philosophers such as Emmanuel Levinas (1981) conceptualise
touch not merely as a physical relationship, but rather as an ethical rela-
tion between the self and the other. Re-conceptualising the traditional
understanding of touch allows for a different understanding of how indi-
viduals and objects experiencing a physical distance may still be within
reach of one another. I take Levinas’ philosophical and ethical argument
as a point of departure, questioning the nature of the prison boundary
as not only a political or economic border, but a point of entry through
which we may interrogate the cultural processes surrounding the rela-
tionship between prison and free society. How might outside spaces be
symbolically touched by prison spaces? How can prisoners ‘keep in touch’
with the outside, if they cannot physically access it? These are the ques-
tions that the following chapters address, as I work through the process
of conceptualising ‘touching the outside’ or ‘touching the inside’ both
physically and metaphorically.
The Prison Boundary interrogates the generation of different types of
knowledge about prisons via the senses, particularly vision and touch,
which both acquire and make sense of such knowledge. Moreover, the
book functions as an acknowledgement of the absences brought about by
such an engagement with the senses. The relative inaccessibility of prisons
in the research field is itself part of a wider geography of the presence and
14 The Prison Boundary

absence of penal spaces in the public realm. Prisons are not spaces ordi-
narily viewed or visited by the general public, and the process by which
researchers can access these spaces for research involves a complicated
appraisal of both security and ethical considerations. This has tremen-
dous import in the context of prisons and prisoners, which traditionally
exist as both locations and identities at the periphery, both ‘out of sight’
and ‘out of touch’ with the rest of society. Many of the methods through
which individuals traverse the border render the experience multisensory
and multi-faceted, dependent upon individual positionality.
In light of these debates, I aim to draw out the cultural complexity of
the purported boundary between prison and non-prison, examining the
pertinent histories and geographies of the penal system and its bearing
upon both the populations it houses and those that interact with it in a
wider sense. I problematise the notion of the prison as a discrete, self-
contained entity, opposed to outside society. Further, I draw out how
various subjectivities are constructed via their purported relationship to
the prison, and to each other, and how individuals within these cohorts
seek to engage through varied embodied practices, from the labouring
of prisoners working in the community on day release, to the material
consumption of a prisoner experience in so-called penal tourism, to the
media spectacle of incarceration. In analysing these practices, I address
key disciplinary mechanisms and narrative structures that provide a
sense of cohesiveness and homogeneity to people and things, such that it
makes sense to talk in categorical terms of ‘prisoner life’, for example, but
also how these cut across, undermine and even transform the boundary
between the prison and everything non-prison or ‘outside’.
A desire to move beyond the predominant political-economic theo-
risations of the relationship between prison and society underpins my
work in The Prison Boundary. Specifically, I use a dual methodologi-
cal agenda to achieve two outcomes. First, I examine how individuals
might gain knowledge of and indeed shape prison environments when
access is so restricted; secondly, I examine how prisoners themselves
access and generate distinct experiences surrounding attachments with
the world outside of prison. The chapter to follow explores both the
problematic nature of such overly-neat inside vs. outside categorisa-
tions, and the notion of the ‘boundary’ in more detail. I explore the
 1 Introduction 15

identities created in the liminal space between inside and outside, par-
ticularly in relation to the specificities of the prison as a space of reha-
bilitation and reform.

1.3 Book Outline

From this introduction, the book continues in Chap. 2 with an appraisal
of the literature attending to the relational, fluid, contradictory, and
nuanced spaces of imprisonment. Noting specifically the complexity
of the boundary between the ideas of a prison ‘inside’ as opposed to a
society ‘outside’, I consider the importance of activities that attempt to
traverse or undermine this boundary. I conclude the chapter by introduc-
ing the consumption of penal spaces as a means to construct identities
and cohorts. Through this conceptual framework, I advance the cultural
exploration of the relationships between prison and society.
The empirical element of the book begins with Chap. 3. Here, I pres-
ent a background contextualisation of the prison system and its history.
This background draws on an analysis of historical texts, focusing on
the detailed legislative chronology of the penal system in England and
Wales, collated using records held by The National Archives and the
Parliamentary Archives alongside a variety of additional governmental
and other organisational materials. This historical analysis contextualises
the research to follow, which is based in England and Wales. This chro-
nology reveals two distinct patterns. First, prison develops over time as a
space for the production of useful individuals through modes of regula-
tion and programmes of rehabilitation (cf. Foucault 1977). Second, leg-
islative changes chart wider societal tendencies in which the spectacle
of punishment, although increasingly physically invisible to mainstream
society, has been displaced from the kerb-side gallows into various cul-
tural media. These unique histories and geographies of the penal system
in England and Wales are where debates are both manifest and initiated,
and tensions arise surrounding the construction of an inside/outside
binary between prison and wider society. The prisoners housed in prison
buildings become further closed off from public view, rendered liminal
in a unique spatial relationship, neither in nor out of everyday society.
16 The Prison Boundary

It is this latter conundrum that creates the impetus for current scholarly
debates that help form the wider context for this book on the presence of
prisons and prisoners. By considering legislative developments, we move
into a realm whereby we can visualise and theorise how political and
economic decisions have impacted on everyday cultural practice; that is,
how such decisions have facilitated the creation of particular identities
and cohorts (prisoner, prisoner families, wardens, managers, authorities,
and so on) and the tensions that surround these constructions.
Moving beyond the productivist paradigm of critical prison studies,
Chap. 4 pays further attention to the construction and renegotiation of
prison/non-prison boundaries through practices in which both the pris-
oner and prisons become objects for consumption for non-prisoners.
This process of objectification and consumption, rearticulates, responds
to, and reworks the prison boundary. Specifically, I demonstrate how fol-
lowing the disappearance of corporeal punishment from public space to
the ‘closed world’ of the prison, the spectacle of punishment has been dis-
placed into other cultural constructions such as architecture, literature,
and the media. Then, I focus attention on one way in which the prison is
often experienced as a cultural construction by the majority of those who
live ‘outside’ in free society: as a kind of ‘penal tourism’, where former
sites of incarceration are transformed into tourist attractions. Fieldwork
entailing site visits, archival research, and researcher participation was
undertaken at prison-related visitor sites. Chiefly, I investigated those
sites that harness penal history as a commodity available for sale to the
general public, including hotels and restaurants, conventional museum
exhibits, and ‘museum theatre’, whereby actors engage with visitors in
performance-led tours. In analysing how these transformed prisons work,
I argue that such spaces of pseudo-carceral experience rely on a purpose-
fully designed, yet ambiguously felt, construction of incarceration. This
mismatch between design and reception places penal tourism in an awk-
ward conundrum. The construction of penal spaces as commodities for
tourist experience involves the strategic transformation and spectaculari-
sation of such spaces. As the prison world is so relatively unknown to
most members of the (supposedly) law-abiding population, these con-
structions often relate errors about or exaggerate certain aspects of the
Another random document with
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He kin’ o’ l’itered on the mat,
Some doubtfle o’ the sekle;
His heart kept goin’ pity-pat,
But hern went pity Zekle.

An’ yit she gin her cheer a jerk

Ez though she wished him furder,
An’ on her apples kep’ to work,
Parin’ away like murder.

“You want to see my Pa, I s’pose?”

“Wal ... no ... I come designin’”—
“To see my Ma? She’s sprinklin’ clo’es
Agin to-morrer’s i’nin’.”

To say why gals act so or so,

Or don’t, ’ould be presumin’;
Mebby to mean yes an’ say no
Comes nateral to women.

He stood a spell on one foot fust,

Then stood a spell on t’other,
An’ on which one he felt the wust
He couldn’t ha’ told ye nuther.

Says he, “I’d better call agin;”

Says she, “Think likely, Mister”;
Thet last word pricked him like a pin,
An’ ... Wal, he up an’ kist her.

When Ma bimeby upon ’em slips,

Huldy sot pale as ashes,
All kin’ o’ smily roun’ the lips
An’ teary roun’ the lashes.

For she was jes’ the quiet kind

Whose naturs never vary,
Like streams that keep a summer mind
 Snowhid in Jenooary.

The blood clost roun’ her heart felt glued

Too tight for all expressin’,
Tell mother see how matters stood,
An’ gin ’em both her blessin’.

Then her red come back like the tide

Down to the Bay o’ Fundy,
An’ all I know is they was cried
In meetin’ come next Sunday.

A RAINY DAY
By Ellye Howell Glover

I simply cannot understand

Why grown-ups always say,
“Don’t spend your money, little boy;
Save for a rainy day.”

Once, when the circus was in town

I asked Bob for a quarter;
He said, “You’re so extravagant,
For shame; I think you’d oughter—

“Save all your pennies; after while

You’ll need them, silly baby;
For if you spend them all, you’ll go
Out to the poorhouse—maybe.”

And so I waited till next time

When it rained cats and dogs;
I took the big umbrella, and
Put on my oldest togs.

And when they stopped me with the words

I knew of course they’d say,
I hollered, “I must spend my dime,
Cause it’s a rainy day.”

SCHOOL’S COMMENCED
By Leonard G. Nattkemper

Well, I guess I’ll have to go—

For school’s commenced again, you know;
An’ now I’ll have to be polite,
An’ watch my words wif all my might.

I wish the school ’ud blow away,

Or teachers all were sick to-day;
For nen I’d be just what I am,
An’ play all day wif Jake an’ Sam.

I guess us boys ’ud ruther be

The pirates on a stormy sea,
That shoot wif guns an’ cut wif knives,
Than spend in school most all our lives.

I can’t see why Ma thinks ’at school

Is better place than swimmin’ pool;
Or that I’ll learn more in a book
Than from my pal, the flowin’ brook.

It may be so, but I don’t care,

I’d ruther be a-dreamin’ there
How fine it is to be like men,
An’ never go to school again.

My Ma an’ Pa both said that they

Would be so glad when I’m away;
An’ so, I guess I’ll have to go—
For school’s commenced again, you know.
 UNDERSTAENDLICH
By Edmund Vance Cooke
(ABRIDGED)

Dhe contrariest t’ing on dhe erd is men,

Aber wimmens arr twice so contrary again,
Andt I am twice so contrary as you,
Andt you arr as worse as dhe worst one too;
Now, ain’d dhat zo?

You like to haf hoonger by dinner, you say,

Aber vhy do you eadt, so dat hoonger go ’vay?
You like to be tired, so you schleep like a top,
Andt you like to go schleep, so dhat tired feeling shtop;
Now, ain’d dhat zo?

You like to haf sugar on sauer t’ings you eadt

Andt you like to haf sauer mit dhe t’ings vhat arr sweet,
You like to be cold when dhe vetter is hot;
Andt it is cold, ach, how varm you vould got!
Now, aindt dhat zo?

How you shdare at dhe man vhat can valk up dhe street
On his hands, yet you valk twice so goodt on your feet,
Vhat a long mind you haf, if I’m in your debt,
Budt if you arr in mine, O, how quick you forget!
Now, aindt dhat zo?

Are you single? You like to be married, of course.

Are you married? Most likely you like a divorse!
Andt if you vas get unmarried, why dhen
You go righd avay and got married again.
Now, ain’d dhat zo?

It is bedter to laugh; it is foolish to fight

Yoost because I am wrong and because you ain’d right,
It is better to laugh mit dhe vorld, up and down
From dhe sole of our headt to the foot of our crown;
Now, ain’d dhat zo?

Zo, dhen you laugh at me andt dhen I laugh at you,

Andt dhe more dhat you laugh vhy dhe more I laugh, too,
Andt ve laugh till ve cry! Vhen ve cry, aber dhen,
Ve will bot’ feel zo goot ve go laughing again!
Now, ain’d dhat zo?

A THURRU’ REST
Anonymous

Examination’s over ’n’ I don’t care if I passed,

An’ I don’t care if I didn’t fer vacation’s come at last!
I thought ’twould never git here, fer the days dragged by as slow
As Davy Jones’s ma, who calls ’n’ don’t know when to go.
Pop says I ort to go to work, but ma says she knows best,
’N’ what a boy of my age needs is just a thurru’ rest.

So me an’ Dave’ll get up every mornin’ bright ’n’ soon,

An’ pitch ’n’ ketch till breakfast, ’n’ bat up flies till noon.
’Cause after dinner every day the Hustlehards—his nine—
Is goin’ to play a series fer the champeenship with mine:
The one behind at dark has got to say the other’s best.
Gee! ain’t I glad vacation’s here ’n’ I got time to rest.

Then I’m a-goin’ to learn the other fellers how to dive,

An’ rassle Billy Potter, best thirteen in twenty-five!
’N’ after supper Dave ’n’ I are goin’ to have a race,
Ten times around the block, ’n’ if I win he’ll bust my face.
That’s what he says! But he’ll find out which one of us is best;
I’m feeling pretty strong now since I’m havin’ such a rest.

There’s goin’ to be a picnic ’n’ you bet yer life I’m goin’;
I’m entered in the swimmin’ race, ’n’ greasy pole, ’n’ rowin’,
The sack race ’n’ potato race are mine, I bet a dime,
’N’ in “the mile” I simply got to win the prize fer time,
’Cause it’s a ticket to the Gym. I like that prize the best,
Fer a feller needs some exercise as well as just a rest.

I’m goin’ to visit Uncle’s farm. He lets me do the chores

’N’ work just like the farm-hands do, right in the fields out-doors.
I’m goin’ to git a bag to punch, so’s I won’t git too fat:
We’re goin’ to have a six-day race—I got to train fer that.
I want to do so many things, I don’t know which is best;
I bet vacation’s over ’fore I get a thurru’ rest!

NO SHOOTIN’ OFF THIS YEAR

Anonymous

There ain’t no Declaration. Naw

There ain’t no Fourth-July.
There ain’t no “free ’n’ equal” law,
’N’ Washin’ton could lie.
They never dumped no Boston tea;
It’s fakey, all you hear,
Fer pop says there ain’t goin’ to be
No shootin’ off this year.

They talk about pertectin’ us

To keep the Fourth in peace;
But we ain’t makin’ any fuss,
Ner askin’ fer police.
We ain’t afraid of smoke ’n’ noise,
Er little lumps of lead;
’N’ why should they blame livin’ boys
Because some boys is dead?

It ain’t my fault the fuse went out

’N’ Tom went up ’n’ blew;
Besides he’s just as well without
His extry ear er two.
They cut off Oscar’s leg, but he
 Don’t seem to miss it much;
He’d beat us hoppin’ yet, if we
’Ud let him use his crutch.

It ain’t my fault that Willie blew

His hand off, like a chump;
I told him what those big ones do;
He needn’t ’a’ took the stump.
It ain’t my fault a rocket flies
’N’ hits some him er her;
Somebody’s got to wear glass eyes;
That’s what glass eyes is fer!

It ain’t my fault the stuff was bad

They made Jim’s pistol of;
Besides the preacher said, “We’re glad
He’s happier up above!”
Bet I’d be happier, anyhow,
Most any place but here,
Where they ain’t goin’ to allow
No shootin’ off this year!

HAUL AWAY, JOE

By Charles Keeler

O Oi wuz a loafin’ lubber but bedad I learned to wurrk

Whin Oi loighted out o’ County Corrk along wid Paddy Burrke.
We stowed abarrd a coaster an’ her skipper wuz a brick;
Begorrah if yez didn’t moind, he’d boost yez wid a kick!
Away, haal away, haal away, Joe!

Th’ pigs wuz lane in County Corrk, th’ men all starrved on taties,
But Oi shipped upon a Yankee barrk, and better, faith, me fate is!
Och Oi hed an Irish darlint, but she ghrew so fat an’ lazy
Thet Oi bounced her fur a Yankee gurrl, an’ surre but she’s a daisy!
Away, haal away, haal away, Joe!
O since Oi lift auld Ireland Oi’ve poaked thro’ miny plaices,
Oi’ve wurrked me way, Oi’ve arrned me pay at haalin’ shates an’
braces;
On farrin’ shorres Oi’ve sot me eye on gurrls iv iv’ry nashin,
Me Yankee gurrl hes ne’er a mate throughhout th’ woid creashin!
Away, haal away, haal away, Joe!

—Copyright by the publisher, A. M. Robertson, San Francisco, and

used by his kind permission.

BLACK SAILORS’ CHANTY

By Charles Keeler

Yo ho, ma hahties, da’s a hurricane a-brewin’,

Fo’ de cook he hasn’t nuffin fo’ de sailah-men a-stewin’,—
He am skulkin’ in his bunk, am dat niggah of a cook,
An’ his chaowdah ’m in de ocean while de pot am on de hook.
You can chaw a chunk o’ hahd-tack mos’ as tendah as a brick,
But d’ain’t no smokin’ ’possum when de cook am lyin’ sick.

Ah remembah in de cane-fiel’ we hed pone-cakes ebry day;

Slack yo line a bit, ma hahties! pull away! pull away!
An’ Ah ’low Ah’m feelin’ homesick, jes’ t’ mention ob ma honey,—
She’s a libbin’ at de cabin an’ she’s out o’ cloes an’ money.
While we chaw a chunk o’ hahd-tack mos’ as tendah as a brick,
But d’ain’t no smokin’ ’possum while de cook am lyin’ sick.

O ma po’ neglected Liza an’ her piccaninny Jo,

Ah’s ben roamin’ sence Ah left her case Ah wanted fo’ to go!
Ah’s ben hustlin’ roun’ de islands, navigatin’ all de sea,
While ma honey specs a hungry shark done stuff hisself wid me.
While we chaw a chunk o’ hahd-tack mos’ as tendah as a brick,
But d’ain’t no smokin’ ’possum while de cook am lyin’ sick.

—Copyright by the publisher, A. M. Robertson, San Francisco; and

used by his kind permission.
 JOSIAH AND SYMANTHY
By Fred Emerson Brooks

Josiah loved Symanthy

And Symanthy loved Josi’,
Which you couldn’t fail to notice
In the rollin’ of the eye;
But they never told each other,
On account o’ bein’ shy,
’Pears to me!

But they kept right on a-lovin’

Jes like any couple would.
Weren’t no reason why they shouldn’t,
Ner no reason why they should,
’Cause there wa’n’t no p’ints about ’em
Cupid reckoned on as good,
’Pears to me!

Now this love disease is mortal,

’Cause it tackles mortals so,
An’ the oftener you have it
The worse it seems to grow;
More you try to hide the symptoms,
More the symptoms seem to show,
’Pears to me!

Josiah was uneasy

When Symanthy wasn’t near,
An’ he got still more uneasy
Whenever she’d appear.
But sittin’ down beside ’er
Got his joints clean out o’ gear,
’Pears to me!

He put his arm behind ’er,

An’ then he pulled it back
Until Symanthy giggled:
“Guess yer gittin’ on the track
By the way yer flusticatin’;
Kind a-lookin’ fer a smack,
’Pears to me!”

Then Josiah stopped a minute,

Jes consid’rin’ how ’twould be
An’ how best to go about it,
’Cause he hadn’t much idee;
But he knew ’twas waitin’ fer him,
By Symanthy’s shy te-he!
’Pears to me!

Then Symanthy got pretending,

She was bitin’ off her thumb,
But she wasn’t—she was waitin’
For whatever chose to come;
While Josiah’s tongue kept rollin’
In his cheek, like chewin’-gum,
’Pears to me!

When Josiah was persuaded

That Symanthy wouldn’t shout,
Wa’n’t a-jokin’, ner a-foolin’,
Ner a-fixin’ to back out,—
Then he buckled up his courage:
Kissed her cheek or thereabout,
’Pears to me!

Then he asked ’er if she’d have him,

An’ she answered: “What d’ ye guess?”
Said he wa’n’t no good at guessin’;
So she smiled an’ snickered: “Yes!
Since I git ye all fer nothin’
I couldn’t do no less,
’Pears to me!”
When the Squire asked ’em the questions—
On the weddin’-day they set—
Which some people answer quickly
An’ about as soon forget,—
Symanthy said: “I reckin!”
An’ Josiah said: “You bet!”
’Pears to me!

When they took their weddin’ journey

Up an’ down the city street,
Josiah told Symanthy
That he guessed they’d have a treat:
So they went an’ got some oysters—
What they never yet had eat,
’Pears to me!

Then Josiah, sort o’ thinkin’,

Said: “I thought they had a shell;
What the slipp’ry things resemble
I’ll be switched if I can tell;
An’ they look so pale an’ sickly
Kind o’ reckon they ain’t well,
’Pears to me!”

“I wonder how they eat ’em?”

Said Symanthy, “How’d I know?
I’ve eat everythin’ that you have
Ever since you’ve been my beau!
But I’ll bet a cent ye dasn’t
Put one in an’ let ’er go!
’Pears to me!”

While Symanthy eat the crackers

Josiah let one slip;
Said it didn’t taste like nothin’;
Wasn’t ripe; then closed his lip;
Vowed he wouldn’t eat another,
Fear ’twould spile his weddin’ trip,
 ’Pears to me!

When the tip-expectin’ beggar

Bowed, an’ smilin’ meekly, said:
“Colonel hasn’t feed the waitah!”
Then Josiah jerked his head—
“You can feed on them ’ere oysters
If the pesky things ain’t dead,
’Pears to me!”

—Copyright by Forbes & Co., Chicago, and used by kind

permission of author and publisher.

CHARLIE JONES’S BAD LUCK

By A. J. Waterhouse
(As discussed by little Willie)

I don’t care if Charlie Jones

Is better ’an I be;
An’ I don’t care if teacher says
He’s smart ’long side er me;
An’ I don’t care, w’en vis’tors come,
If she on him does call;
He ain’t got measles, like I have—
He don’t have luck at all.

He never had the whoopin’ cough,

Ner mos’ cut off his thumb,
Ner ever fell an’ broke his leg
An’ had a doctor come.
He hardly ever stubs his toe,
An’ if he does, he’ll bawl!
There’s nothin’ special comes to him—
He don’t have luck at all.

An’ I don’t care if he can say

 More tex’s an’ things ’an I;
He never burnt both hands to once
’Long ’bout the Fo’th July.
He never had the chicken-pox,
Ner p’isen oak—las’ Fall!
He can’t be proud o’ nothin’ much—
He don’t have luck at all.

—From “Lays for Little Chaps.”

KISSING’S NO SIN
Anonymous

Some say that kissing’s a sin;

But I think it’s nane ava,
For kissing has wonn’d in this warld
Since ever that there was twa.

O, if it wasna lawfu’,
Lawyers wadna allow it;
If it wasna holy,
Ministers wadna do it.

If it wasna modest,
Maidens wadna take it;
If it wasna plenty,
Puir folks wadna get it.

IF I DARST
By Eugene Field

I’d like to be a cowboy, an’ ride a firey hoss

Way out into the big and boundless West;
I’d kill the bears an’ catamounts an’ wolves I come across,
An’ I’d pluck the bal’ head eagle from his nest!
 With my pistol at my side,
I would roam the prarers wide,
An’ to scalp the savage Injun in his wigwam would I ride—
If I darst; but I darsen’t.

I’d like to go to Afriky an’ hunt the lions there,

An’ the biggest ollyfunts you ever saw!
I would track the fierce gorilla to his equatorial lair,
An’ beard the cannybull that eats folks raw.

I’d chase the pizen snakes

An’ the pottimus that makes
His nest down at the bottom of unfathomable lakes—
If I darst; but I darsen’t.

I would I were a pirut to sail the ocean blue,

With a big black flag a-flyin’ overhead;
I would scour the billowy main with my gallant pirut crew,
An’ dye the sea a gouty, gory red.

With my cutlass in my hand

On the quarterdeck I’d stand
And to deeds of heroism I’d incite my pirut band—
If I darst; but I darsen’t.

And, if I darst, I’d lick my pa for the times that he’s licked me,
I’d lick my brother an’ my teacher, too,
I’d lick the fellers that call round on sister after tea,
An’ I’d keep on lickin’ folks till I got through.

You bet. I’d run away

From my lessons to my play,
An’ I’d shoo the hens, and tease the cat, an’ kiss the girls all day—
If I darst; but I darsen’t.

DERNDEST GAL I EVER KNOWED

By Herbert Bashford
Derndest gal I ever knowed,
Neatest gal I ever seen,
Lived down in the Red Ravine
Jest below the county road,
Guess she wuz about sixteen—
Sophy wuz her name, an’ she
Wuz ez cute ez cute kin be.

When I’d go t’ town I brung

Her the biggest lot o’ stuff,
Pop-corn, likrish, ’n’ enough
Candy fer t’ fill a room.
Once she hit me with a broom
Cuz I kissed her on the cheek,
An’ the midget wouldn’t speak
T’ me fer, perhaps, a week.

When I’d raise my eyes to hern

Jeminny! my cheeks ’ud burn
An’ git redder ’n’ a beet.
Oh, she looked jest powerful sweet!
When I’d try to call her dear,
Why, I’d feel so doggoned queer
That I’d lean ag’in’ th’ fence
’Zif I didn’ hev no sense,
Twist th’ buttons on my vest,
Ast her who she liked th’ best,
Ast her if it wuzn’t Bill,
Er old Jones thet run th’ mill,
Keep a-hintin’ ’round, yuh see,
Till she’d up an’ say ’twuz me.

I wuz jellus o’ Jim Pike,

Jellus ez th’ very deuce
Though there didn’t seem much use,
Fer his freckles wuz so thick,
An’ his hair wuz so like brick
Thet a feller one day said
Yuh could toast a hunk o’ bread
Ef yuh’d hold it nigh his head.
He wuz awkarder’n sin,
Never fished along the crick
But he’d hev t’ tumble in.

Sophy ’peared t’ pity Jim,

While I thought if I wuz him
I’d go off ’n’ hide somewhere,
Else put plaster on my hair.
But this homely, lantern-jawed
Lookin’ cuss stood ’round ’n’ chawed
On a plug o’ terbacker
Half his time ’n’ talked t’ her
Of his love, till I jest told
Him t’ mosey, an’ he rolled
Up his sleeves ’n’ landed me
Plumb betwixt th’ eyes, then he
Went to Sophy, an’, sir, she
Married him! The pesky mule!
Wuzn’t she a reg’ler fool?
I wuz jest tetotally blowed—
Derndest gal I ever knowed!

—Copyright by Harr Wagner Co., San Francisco, and used by kind

permission of author and publisher.

ON NEWBRASKY’S FERTILE SHORE

By Herbert Bashford

Oh, I am so orful humsick! An’ I feel so wretched queer!

Ephrum, he has gone a-ridin’ on a wild eclectric keer,
Rhody—that’s my only darter—she has gone an’ left me, tew,
Both a trapesin’ ’round like ijits—wonder what’s th’ next they’ll do?
They don’t seem to think they’re darin’ Providence right in th’ face,
Ridin’ without hoss er engine ’n’ goin’ at a break-neck pace:
Course I needn’t stand here waitin’, both insisted I should come,
But I vow I’ll not be reckless when I am so fer from hum:
Clear out here by th’ Pacific, jist as fur as we kin git,
An’ if we stay here much longer I declare I’ll hev a fit.
It’s th’ most deceivin’ kentry as ever’ one’ll say
Ever’ drap o’ water salty in th’ hull o’ Frisco bay.
Oh, I’ve tramped these pesky sidewalks till my feet is lame an’ sore,
An’ a-yearnin’ ever’ minute fur Newbrasky’s fertile shore!

Then they brag about their scenery! Californy! Humph! O dear!

Scenery! Well, jest speaking plainly, I don’t see no scenery here:
Nothin’ but the mount’in ranges rarin’ up so ’tarnal high
Thet a buddy kint look nowheres ’cept the middle o’ th’ sky.
Mount’ins, everlastin’ mount’ins, hills ’n’ woods ’n’ rocks ’n’ snow,
Where th’ scenery is they’re braggin’ on I’m th’ one as wants t’ know.
Let ’em stand in Lincoln county jest aback our cowyard fence,
An’ if they don’t say there’s scenery they hain’t got a mite o’ sense;
Why yuh kin look fur miles around yuh an’ see nothin’ but th’ flat
Level prairie in th’ sunshine kivered in its grassy mat.
That is scenery—yuh kin look there jest as fur as yuh kin see
With no hills a-interposin’, er no rocks, er airy tree.
Oh, I’ve told my husband, Ephrum, that I’d gallavant no more
When ag’in I’d sot my foot on old Newbrasky’s fertile shore.

Then I’m worried so ’bout Rhody, fur she’s missin’ ever’ day
All her lessons on th’ melojun that paw bought fur her last May,
An’ she could perform amazin’; she could play “Old Hundred” nice
An’ another song beginnin’ “Happy Day that Fixed My Ch’ice.”
Yes, th’ singin’ teacher told me as we parted at th’ keers,
He was shore she’d play th’ organ in th’ church ’fore many years.
Now her notion’s highkerflutin’, a pianner she wants now,
An’ her paw sez he will get it soon as he kin sell a cow,
Sez he kin dispose o’ Muly—I jest told him no sir-e-e
Not fur no new-fangled nonsense—Muly’s my cow, an’ you see
He’s jest got a spite ag’in her ’cause she’s got a lengthy tail
An’ in fightin’ skeeters sometimes whicks it in th’ milkin’ pail.
Oh, I’ll be the gladdest mortal when I reach th’ kitchen door
Of that dear old farmhouse standin’ on Newbrasky’s fertile shore!

No, I don’t enjoy th’ city where the wimmen folks is dressed
Monday an’ clean through till Saturday all in their Sunday best.
I jest like to ketch my wrapper up ’n’ pin it ’round my waist,
Carin’ not a single copper if my shoe-string comes unlaced,
Then go out an’ milk old Muly an’ turn out th’ spotted calf
While th’ chickens giggle ’round me an’ the speckled roosters laff,
Then go in th’ summer kitchen, set me down an’ churn a spell,
Till time comes t’ put th’ victuals on an’ ring th’ dinner bell.
Yes, I love th’ peaceful quiet o’ th’ farm where it’s so still,
Nothin’ but th’ ducks a-quackin’ ’n’ pigs a-squealin’ fur their swill,
Nothin’ but th’ geese a-clackin’ ’n’ the bawlin’ o’ th’ cows,
An’ th’ nickerin’ o’ th’ hosses as they’re comin’ t’ th’ house;
Oh, I want t’ leave th’ city with its racket an’ its roar
An’ git back there t’ the silence o’ Newbrasky’s fertile shore!

—Copyright by Harr Wagner Co., San Francisco, and used by kind

permission of author and publisher.

“FUZZY-WUZZY”
By Rudyard Kipling

We’ve fought with many men acrost the seas,

An’ some of ’em was brave an’ some was not:
The paythan an’ the Zulu an’ Burmese;
But the Fuzzy was the finest o’ the lot.
We never got a ha’porth’s change of ’im:
’E squatted in the scrub an’ ’ocked our ’orses,
’E cut our sentries up at Suakim,
An’ ’e played the cat an’ banjo with our forces.
So ’ere’s to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your ’ome in the Sowdan;
You’re a poor benighted ’eathen but a first-class fightin’ man;
We give you your certifikit, and if you want it signed
We’ll come an’ have a romp with you whenever you’re inclined.
We took our chanst among the Kyber hills,
The Boers knocked us silly at a mile,
The Burman guv us Irriwaddy chills,
An’ a Zulu impi dished us up in style;
But all we ever got from such as they
Was pop to what the Fuzzy made us swaller;
We ’eld our bloomin’ own, the papers say,
But man for man the Fuzzy knocked us ’oller.
Then ’ere’s to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, an’ the missis and the kid;
Our orders was to break you, an’ of course we went and did.
We sloshed you with Martinis, an’ it wasn’t ’ardly fair;
But for all the odds agin you, Fuzzy-Wuz, you bruk the square.

’E ’asn’t got no papers of ’is own,

’E ’asn’t got no medals nor rewards
So we must certify the skill ’e’s shown
In usin’ of ’is long two-handled swords;
When ’e’s ’oppin’ in an’ out among the bush
With ’is coffin-’eaded shield an’ shovel-spear,
A ’appy day with Fuzzy on the rush
Will last a ’ealthy Tommy for a year.
So ’ere’s to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, an’ your friends which is no more,
If we ’adn’t lost some mess-mates we would help you to deplore;
But give an’ take’s the gospel, an’ we’ll call the bargain fair,
For if you ’ave lost more than us, you crumbled up the square!

’E rushes at the smoke when we let drive,

An’, before we know, ’e’s ’ackin’ at our ’ead;
’E’s all ’ot sand an’ ginger when alive,
An’ ’e’s generally shammin’ when ’e’s dead.
’E’s a daisy, ’e’s a duck, ’e’s a lamb!
’E’s a injia-rubber idiot on the spree,
’E’s the on’y thing that doesn’t care a damn
For the Regiment o’ British Infantree.
So ’ere’s to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your ’ome in the Sowdan;
You’re a pore benighted ’eathen but a first-class fightin’ man;
An’ ’ere’s to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, with your ’ayrick ’ead of ’air—
You big black boundin’ beggar—for you bruk a British square.

THOUGHTS FROM BUB

By Leonard G. Nattkemper

My name is Bub, ’cuz papa sed

He’d ruther call me so than Ned.
But mamma calls me ’ist her beau—
W’en I am good, I mean, you know.

So, I ’ist hardly knows my name

I guess—I bet ’ist all the same,
I’m papa’s boy an’ mamma’s dear,
An’ I be glad ’ist ’cuz I’m here.

It’s hard to make a name, I s’pose,

W’en they have used ’bout all o’ those
That they have heard or that they’ve read—
O’ course, there’s more w’en people’s dead.

An’ now I wonder if that I

Will leave my name w’en I must die.
I guess it’s so, ’cuz we ’ist call
Angel’s last name for them all.

I’m glad I’m not an angel yet,

Whose names are less than mine, I bet,
Still it must be nice to see
All the folks that used to be.

Oh, my, I don’t know what to say

About my names, ’cuz every day
My mamma finds a new one, too—
I’m ’fraid she’s left no names for you.

The bestest thing in all this worl’

Is, I’m a boy an’ not a girl,