Penitentiary Records for Stone in Kent

[BourneGooner]

Can anyone help??
I'm trying to find out why my wife's great grandmother Selina J Joby is listed on the 1881 census as an Inmate for the above penitentiary and a Labourer Facory girl.
Another relative has written to Kent Archives but all she got back was a quote from Kelly's Directory (not much help!!!)
Selina J Joby came from Sheffield and in 1885 was back in Derbyshire where she married.
So we're trying to find out why she was in the "Pen" and what her "crime" was. Does anyone know why someone would be sent to the penitentiary and if any records would still exist for this.

Any help gratefully received

BourneGooner

[Katarzyna]

Hi BourneGooner,

This is all I can find on St Mary's Home in Stone. Why she would have been in Kent at the time I don't know. In the letter it says that some women were taken there on release from prison to train them as domestic servants.


Letter from Kent Church Penitentiary Society to Charles Darwin asking him for a donation.
[url=http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-5481f.html] for Summary and transcription, Click here

Extract
“St Mary's Home, or the Kent Penitentiary, moved from Tenterden, Kent, to Stone, Kent, in the first half of 1866” ................. appears to be a home for fallen women but not ncessarily...see link below, interesting reading.

female penitentiaries

If you google Kent Church Penitentiary Society there is quite a bit of info on what they did etc.

[london2000]

Hi BourneGooner,

I can't say why your wife's great grandmother was in the penitentiary at Stone but it wasn't a prison and the "inmates" were all there of their own free will and able to leave at any time. It was a charitable institution set up to look after women who were struggling with life and had fallen on hard times but who wanted to improve their lives.

The Stone penitentiary was run by Anglican nuns and my first cousin, 4 times removed, was the Lady Superior of the penitentiary at the time of the 1881 census. She was Harriet Nokes and is the Nokes referred to in footnote to the letter to Darwin pointed out by Katarzyna.

Harriet later wrote a book on her experiences which was called "Twenty-three years in a house of mercy", the house of mercy being the Stone penitentiary. The book is out of copyright so has been digitised and can be downloaded from here - Internet Archive: Details: Twenty-three years in a house of mercy.

It won't name your wife's great grandmother but it will provide you with some background information on what life was like.

A full copy of the Susan Mumm paper that Katarzyna linked to can be downloaded from here - http://oro.open.ac.uk/82/1/NOT_WORSE...THER_GIRLS.pdf

Cheers, Roger

[BourneGooner]

Hi Roger (london2000)
Thanks for the info and the links. Have downloaded the book and letter will have a read of them see what life was like in the penetentiary.
I thought I might have found a "skeleton" in my family tree closet, it justs goes to show that when you look through some of this family tree history you tend to forget just how hard life would have been in Victorian England and we think it's tough now with the credit crunch it must have been a hundred times worse back then.....
Thanks again

BourneGooner