Bad Girls

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What to expect

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING

A history of a century of women, punishment and crime in HM Prison Holloway.

Society has never known what to do with its rebellious women.

Those who defied expectations about feminine behaviour have long been considered dangerous and unnatural, and ever since the Victorian era they have been removed from public view, locked up and often forgotten about. Many of these women ended up at HM Prison Holloway, the self-proclaimed 'terror to evil-doers' which, until its closure in 2016, was western Europe's largest women's prison.

First built in 1852 as a House of Correction, Holloway's women have come from all corners of the UK - whether a patriot from Scotland, a suffragette from Huddersfield, or a spy from the Isle of Wight - and from all walks of life - socialites and prostitutes, sporting stars and nightclub queens, refugees and freedom fighters. They were imprisoned for treason and murder, for begging, performing abortions and stealing clothing coupons, for masquerading as men, running brothels and attempting suicide. In Bad Girls, Caitlin Davies tells their stories and shows how women have been treated in our justice system over more than a century, what crimes - real or imagined - they committed, who found them guilty and why. It is a story of victimization and resistance; of oppression and bravery.

From the women who escaped the hangman's noose - and those who didn't - to those who escaped Holloway altogether, Bad Girls is a fascinating look at how disobedient and defiant women changed not only the prison service, but the course of history.

(P)2018 Hodder & Stoughton Limited

Critics Review

  • Readable, compelling and illuminating

    The Bookseller

  • Caitlin Davies writes with warmth, empathy and humour about the women – some brave and rebellious – who spent time in Holloway Prison. Assiduously researched, Bad Girls documents interweaving struggles against prejudice, injustice, ignorance and poverty . . . the real history of Holloway is written in this insightful and thought-provoking book – which makes for a ripping good read

    Jeremy Corbyn

  • Davies’s absorbing study serves up just enough sensationalism – and eccentricity – along with its serious inquiry . . . Davies captures the sense of camaraderie that blossomed inside Holloway, occasionally between warder and inmate . . . Davies uses the prison as a prism through which to chart changing attitudes to women over the past 164 years – beginning with the Victorian notion of “double deviance”, which suggested that female criminals had broken not only the law of the land, but that of nature by committing “unwomanly” acts

    SUNDAY TIMES

  • It’s such a great read . . . fascinating

    Jo Good, BBC Radio London

  • A rich, superbly researched, definitive history of Holloway Prison . . . There are so many heartbreaking stories within stories in the book’

    The Herald

  • Meticulously records a much-needed and balanced history of this home to “royalty and socialites, spies and prostitutes . . . Nazis and aliens, terrorists and freedom fighters” and thousands of very ordinary desperate women

    Observer

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