Design History Society The Prison Uniforms Collection at the Galleries of Justice Museum, Nottingham, UK Author(s): Source: Journal of Design History, Vol. 24, No. 2, Uniforms in Design History Edited by Artemis Yagou (2011), pp. 187-193 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Design History Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23020371 Accessed: 23-01-2018 20:45 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Design History Society, Oxford University Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Design History
doi: 10.1093/jdh/epr002 Journal of Design History Vol. 24 No. 2 Archives, Collections and Curatorship The Prison Uniforms Collection at the Galleries of Justice Museum, Nottingham, UK Introduction Dress historians are often distanced from the experience of the history of clothing because they privilege sight over touch. In conventional dress archives issues of conservation and the hierarchy of knowledge favour the ways of visualizing of clothes adhered to by museums since the seventeenth century. In the last decade, the appearance of prisoners' clothing has been brought closer to us globally through controlled photographic and archival representations online. But the touch of the cloth as well as its visual materiality brings us closer to the experience of the denial of sensuality and identity construction embodied in prisoners' uniforms. Unusually, the uniforms in the Galleries of Justice Museum, Nottingham, can be handled and photographed at close quarters. Partly this is owing to the hardwearing and cheap quality of fabric used in the make of prisoners' uniforms and the mass-produced cloth of staff uniforms in the mid-twentieth century, which do not require sophisti cated conservation. Partly to date, there has been little interest in the history of prisoners' uniforms. It is as though dress history has bypassed the changes in in mates' clothing and secreted them away as the inmates themselves were historic ally hidden from the sight of the public. Additionally, the stains evident on the clothing, from constant use or lack of official conservation, contribute to our know ledge of the subjectivity embodied in the materiality of imprisonment. There are two collections in the Galleries of Justice Museum and each comprises pho tographs, documents, objects, prison uniforms and prison clothing. The larger of these collections, which subsequently became part of the national prison archive in the museum, is the HM Prison Service collection that from 1977 had previously been housed at the Prison Service Training College in Rugby. It consists of prison uniforms and objects from prisons in England, Wales and Ireland. In 2005, the College closed and the collection in its entirety was moved to the Galleries of Justice Museum in Nottingham, England. From 1995, individuals and organizations donated another collection of prison items to the Galleries of Justice Museum. This collection is divided into four sections that cover the Law, Prisons, the Police and the Probation Service. The Author [2011], Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Design History Society. All rights reserved. The HM Prison Service collection of uniforms presents us with evidence as to the make, construction and fabric of prisoners' uniforms between the 1960s and 1990s. They can be closely observed, touched and contrasted with the make and feel of prison staff uni forms of the same period. Between the early 1970s and early 1990s, a significant change occurred from British prison authorities' imposition of prison uniforms to their permitting
inmates to wear their own clothes. This change can be clearly traced through the exam ination of prisoners' garments in the museum collections. The reform took place in women's prisons in England in 1971 and in men's prisons in 1991. The rehabilitation of many prisoners still takes the form of training as cheap labour, as was the case in the nineteenth century, but there was also a marked move in the West in the mid- to late twentieth century towards the normalization or social inclusion of the prisoner as consumer after release. It is thus a historical shift that is embodied within this clothing collection. The Galleries of Justice Museum photographic collections also provide a substantial supplementary resource for the historical contextualization of the uniforms themselves. For any detailed examination of the historical shift from uniforms to the wearing of civilian clothing in prisons to be valid, photographs, the written testimonies of inmates and staff and official prison documentation are crucial. They provide supplementary evidence as to the wearer's experience of prison uniforms and prison authorities' attitudes to inmate dress. For the purposes of this review of the uniform collection, however, the focus will be on their materiality as a resource for research. The Archive Collections of prison uniforms outside the UK are located in the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Tasmania, the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney and the National Library of Australia. These galleries' collections include a variety of 'parti-coloured' convict uni Fig 1. 1960s female inmate forms from the nineteenth century, uniforms marked with the broad arrow and other prison uniform dress, Galleries of Justice Museum, Nottingham, prison uniforms. Broad arrow uniforms were first introduced in British prisons and con UK. Photograph: the author vict chain gangs in Australia in the early nineteenth century. Large arrow shapes were stamped in ink randomly over the outer surface of coarse prison garments.1 In America, exam ples of black-and-white striped inmate uniforms and prison staff uniforms can be found in the Albany Training Academy at The New York State Department of Correctional Services. According to my research, few prison museums internationally include whole collections of inmates' and prison staff uniforms. Most prison museums such as the French prison museum Le Musee National des Prisons at Fontainebleau provide research ers with access to historical photographs and official docu ments that refer to uniforms rather than the actual garments.2 The Galleries of Justice Museum collections are thus a rare re source for undergraduates, postgraduates, authors and researchers into the history of prisons in Britain. The HM Prison Service collection consists of 30,000 objects, photographs, uni forms and other items to do with everyday prison life from a number of British prisons including Holloway, Askham Grange and Styles women's prisons and Brixton, Pentonville, Gloucester, Dartmoor, Rochester, Wormwood Scrubs and other men's and youth offenders' prisons. The photography collection dates back to the 1880s and 1890s. Although there are reproductions of early twentieth-century prison uniforms, the prison clothing mostly ranges from the 1930s to the 1970s. Interestingly, many of the objects in the collection including prison punishment equipment such as a whipping block from Newgate prison, leg irons and religious items found in cells date back to the late The Prison Uniforms Collection
eighteenth century. Recently, the uniforms have been chronologically dated under the guidance of the main curator of the collections, Beverley Baker. They make up the only comprehensive collection of prison uniforms in Britain and a valuable source for histori ans of clothing and particularly uniforms of male and female prison staff and inmates. Amongst the items in the donated collection, there can also be found a number of pieces of clothing and prison uniforms. to the British prison system when uniforms were gradually abolished altogether. Fig 2. 2. 1960s female staff staff prison uniform dress, dress, Galleries Galleries of of Justice Museum, Nottingham, UK. Photograph: the the author author A brief historical context for prisoners' uniforms in Britain In approaching the Galleries of Justice Museum collections of clothing historically, the researcher needs to be aware of the way prisoners' uniforms changed in Britain prior to their abolition. Reforms took place between 1789 and 1820 as a result of the campaigns of religious reformers who saw redemption as the cure for crimin ality and the introduction of prisoners' uniforms as a civilizing mechanism. Between 1820 and 1860, the adoption of a variety of forms of Jeremy Bentham's Model Prison meant that the body of the inmate was labelled and stigmatized as criminal in extreme forms of uniform often marked with the broad arrow.3 Gradual reforms in prison clothing practices followed in the early twentieth century. It was during the reform period of the 1920s and 1930s in the West that the black and white striped uniforms in America and broad arrow uniforms in British prisons were even tually abolished.4 After the Second World War, there was international recognition of the necessity to legislate against the denial of the sartorial human rights of pris oners. It was not until the 1970s and 1990s that these reforms percolated through British prisoners' uniforms before 1970 The HM Prison collection contains a number of men's and women's uniforms as well as those of prison staff in this period. Women inmates' uniforms consisted of loose, unfitted blue dresses made of cheap cotton [1]. There are few seams and the dresses are made to fit all sizes. On close examin ation, we can see that the opening to the dress has a very small amount of fabric in the turning allowance, indicating extreme economy in the manufacture. It is neither a shift dress of the early 1960s, since the skirt is flared, nor a more shaped garment with the panels, wing seams or darts of the later 1960s. It is almost as if the top of the dress is inspired by an early 1960s shift and the skirt is a survival from the mid-to late 1950s. In its mixture of styles, there is a denial of current fashionability, a deliberate denial of contempora neity commensurate with the prisoners' identity as outsider. These out-of-date uniforms indicate the temporality of the embodiment of punishment as though time has literally passed by the inmate. Furthermore, the uniform provides us with an insight into penal authority thinking whereby it was assumed that if the wearer were aware of changes in dress styles such a garment would be a deserved part of the demeaning nature of the punishment process. If women were unaware of current clothing changes, then the punish ment lay in the lack of fit, the discomfort of the clothing and
the daily reminder of self-immolation due to and experienced by the inmate. The make of the dress is clumsy and the feel of the fabric is harsh. Trousers do not feature as part of women inmates' attire. This adds to our knowledge that prison authorities enforced a stereotype of gendered appearance on women inmates through, for example, the prohibition on wearing trousers. Yet the shabbiness of the make of the uniforms militates against prison authorities' overt concern with the feminization of women as a form of control over their re-entry into the world of gendered conformity. The dress conveys contradictions in the conventions of prison uniformity. Our overriding impression of this dress is that it is uncomfortable to wear that the denial of the sensuality of the bodily feel of clothing lies in its ungainly make and the use of cheap fabrics. Additionally, the uniforms of female inmates are clearly distinctive from the comparatively well-made uniforms of the prison staff. The official militaristic female prison staff uniforms were contracted out to uniform manufacturers [2]. In this case, the label in the garment shows that the manufacturer was Alexandra's, which was one of the largest corporate uniform producers in Britain in the 1960s. The staff uniform is fitted and made of non-creasable lightweight cotton/rayon mix fabric. It becomes clear from feeling and looking at these garments at close quarters that the fabric from which they were made and their design distin guished those in authority from the incarcerated. It is evident from looking at this prison staff dress of the 1960s that the panel seam that runs from the shoulder down the front of the dress provides the shape for the bust. The fabric is cut to a fitted style through the whole length of the dress, as a deliberate design feature. The turning of the fabric for the opening down the centre of the garment is substantial in com parison with the lack of allowance of fabric in the opening of the prisoner's dress. The fabric is lightweight, although strong, in comparison with the thickness of the cheap cotton used for the inmate clothing. Clearly the shaped shift, fashionable in the late 1960s and the more relaxed military and policewomen's uniforms5 of the period influenced the design of the garment. Nonetheless, despite the shaping of the uniform, its construction denotes asexuality and there is authority in the formality of the sombre grey framed by the crisp white of the collar that sartorially dif ferentiates staff from inmates. Fig 3. 1970s female inmate high street blouse, Galleries of Justice Museum, Nottingham, UK. Photograph: the author Prison institutions tend to have a different approach to men's and women's clothing. This is powerfully demonstrated by changes that occurred in British prisons between 1970 and 1990. Prison uniforms 1970-90 Prison uniform reforms between 1971 and 1991 trace a gen dered strategy of penal control.6 From 1971, women were permitted a limited choice in wearing their own clothes. In the collection, there is a pink floral blouse from the mid-1970s that reveals a degree of fashionability [3].The permission for inmates to wear their own more fitted clothes, such as this blouse, meant that the distinction between staff and prison ers was, to an extent, broken down. The blouse is cut to fit in the same way as the staff uniform. It is a mass-produced The Prison Uniforms Collection
Fig 4. 1970s male inmate blouse made of cheap cotton and yet the fit, the colour and pattern of the blouse indicate a desire for clothing that was contemporaneously available to women. It has also evidently been worn and used. There is a yellowish stain in the middle of the blouse under the button and also in the inside of the back at the neck. This might indicate the lack of laundering facilities available to prisoners as much as the lack of maintenance of clothing by the individual prisoner, since staff clothing does not appear to be soiled. Equally, the stain might have appeared owing to the lack of conservation. These issues remain hypothetical. But we do know from archival documentation7 that although the provision of laundering facilities for prisoners expanded from the 1950s to the 1970s, there were and still are complaints about their inadequacy. The collection provides us with material evidence that after the abolition of uniforms, new distinctions between staff and inmate clothing emerged not merely in the com parison between the militaristic uniform and the more fashionable inmate clothing but also between the cost of professionally tailored staff clothing and cheap high street fashions. There is a 'Derita' label in another inmate's blouse from this period. 'Derita' was a cheap 1970s high street outlet with a mail-order component. The garments in the collection demonstrate that there were similar distinctions between male prisoners' uniforms at this time and those of the staff. Blue and white striped shirts8 produced in prison workshops in the 1970s and 1980s were bulky and made of rough heavyweight, raised weave twill cotton. They reveal no wastage of prison uniform shirt, Galleries of fabric through their lack of shape, squared cuffs and hems [4]. The depth of the turn Justice Museum, Nottingham, ings and placket upon which the buttons are fixed and the opening of the shirts also UK. Photograph: the author contain reduced fabric. The collar of the 1980s inmate's shirt lacks an interfacing and lies flat on the shoulder and the fabric around the top button is buckled, causing the shirt to dig into the neck uncomfortably. The points of the collar lie square to the opening rather than delineating a sharp triangular shape. Grey staff shirts, in comparison, are inspired by military uniforms with epaulettes on the shoulders and pockets. They are fitted and professionally made as can be seen in the triangular points of the collar and shirt opening [5], Prison officers' uniforms are smart while the inmates' uniforms are bulky, uncomfortable and made of heavy, coarse fabric. Additionally, the HM Prison Service collection includes a number of men's escapee uniforms with yellow stripes down the sides of the trousers and yellow patches prominently stitched on the jackets. These 1970s to 1990s uniforms are reminiscent of nineteenth-century sartorial punishment practices when 'parti coloured' escapee prison uniforms were in circulation. Prison uniforms after 1990 The1991 reform allowing men to wear their own clothing set up new distinctions between those inmates who could afford fashionable clothing and those who could not. This becomes evident from a study of the Galleries of Justice Museum donated collection. One example is a Harrods' shirt
owned by the East End gangster Reggie Kray in the early 1990s when he was in Nottingham prison [6], The Harrods shirt is impeccably cut and the fabric is quality, lightweight, flat-weave chambray cotton. The cuffs and hem are rounded off instead of straight. In rounding off turnings, there is wastage of material that would not have been cost-effective for prisoners' uniforms. Also, the Harrods' shirt is interfaced in a more expensive material. Another sartorial detail is in the use of four-holed buttons in this shirt compared with the two-holed buttons of the prisoner's shirt. Less thread would have been used to attach the two-holed button to the material of the inmate's shirt. This shirt proclaims Kray's East End gangland status and taste for aspirational clothing. The shirt acts as a material indicator of Kray's sartorial distinction from other prisoners and the prison staff in their uniforms.9 Conclusions An examination of archival clothing makes visible the prison reforms in the 1970s and 1990s that envisaged the normal ization of the prisoner as consumer as much as the producer of clothing. As prison numbers increase globally and most significantly in Britain and America, prison reform questions Fig 5. 1970s male staff prison as to the provision and maintenance of inmates' clothing become negligible. Instead, issues of overcrowding and the building of large-scale prisons as enclosed Museum, Nottingham, UK. privatized industries in the combating of social problems replace everyday reforms. Photograph: the author In attempting to 'disappear problems', prisons merely 'disappear vast numbers of people from poor, immigrant and racially marginalized communities'.10 The garments in these collections make visible a process of prisonization that in the 1970s and 1990s was seen by governments and prison authorities as welfarist reform. The nor malization of the inmate as consumer is revealed, to a degree, in the materiality of the women's high street blouses and the Harrods' shirt. These garments indicate that in this Oral histories, diaries, prisoners' writing, paintings and autobiog raphies provide further intimations as to how inmates tactically uniform shirt, Galleries of Justice period some inmates were permitted limited personalized differentiation in the clothing Fig 6. 1990s Reggie Kray's they wore rather than merely being poorly clad in ill-fitting prison uniforms. The collections Harrods' shirt, Galleries of reveal a few examples of the way the abolition of prison uniforms did allow for some Justice Museum, Nottingham, inmates to reconstruct their identity in clothes to which they were able to gain access. UK. Photograph: the author Nonetheless, as with all archival research, the garments provide only part of the picture. Garments indicating personalized forms of customization on the part of the inmate do not appear. Prisonization is a class issue and revolves around distinctions made by inmates themselves as to their collective or individual iden tities dependent on notions of political affiliations, gender, 'de cency', 'sub-cultural chic', conventional or subversive smartness and sexual persuasions. The collection that had originally been controlled by the Prison Service reveals the materiality of the abo lition of uniforms and yet perpetuates the invisibility of the 'crim inal' as individual with a range of identities and backgrounds. The Prison Uniforms Collection
customized or were humiliated by prison uniform privations. Additionally photographs, official prison documentation and histories supplement our knowledge of the way uniforms were implemented or abolished. The collections of uniforms at the Galleries of Justice Museum provide an invaluable resource for charting the sensorial materiality of historical change in prison clothing provision in Britain in this period. Royal College of Art E-mail: juliet.ash@rca.ac.uk If you have any comments to make in relation to this article, please go to the journal website on http://jdh.oxfordjournals.org and access this article. There is a facility on the site for sending e-mail responses to the editorial board and other readers. Notes 1 See <http://www.gov.au/convicts> accessed 7 October 5 See J. Craik, Uniforms Exposed: From Conformity to 2006. For a more detailed account of the history of broadtransgression, Oxford, 2005, pp. 92-5. arrow prison uniform clothing, see M. Maynard, Fashioned 6 For an analysis of the reasons behind this gendered tim from Penury: Dress as Cultural Practice in Colonial lapse, see Ash, op. cit., pp. 107-37. Australia, Cambridge University Press, 1994, ch. 1, pp. 9-26, and J. Ash, Dress behind Bars: Prison Clothing as Criminality, 7 Prison Clothing Committee minutes, 1955-9, National I.B.Tauris, 2009, ch. 1, pp. 9-28. Archives, London, PCOM/1879. 2 It would be useful to know whether researchers have dis 8 For a more detailed analysis of the significance of stripes covered prison museums that house extensive collections as prison uniform, see M. Pastoureau, The Devil's Cloth: A of inmate and staff uniforms other than those I have History of Stripes and Striped Fabric, Columbia University mentioned. Press, 2001, pp. 55-69, and Ash, op. cit., pp. 23-7. 3 See B. Baker & L. Butler, The Prison Service in Britain, Tempus 9 For a detailed account of the significance of this shirt in Reggie Publishing Ltd., 2006, p. 40, for a detailed drawing of Kray's prison life, see Ash, op. cit., pp. 121-4. different categories of inmates' uniforms with the broad10 A. Davis, 'Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industria arrow. 4 See Ash, op. cit., pp. 57-86. Complex' <http:www.thirdworldtraveler.com/prison_system/ Masked_Racism_ADavis.html> p. 1.