Where Charles Dickens lived while his father was in debtor's prison.
UVU Victorian Literature (Fall 2019) Dashboard
Description
This group is a collaborative effort of the members of Utah Valley University's, Fall 2019 "Victorian Literature" class. As a class, we will be exploring the material culture of the Victorian Era. Each class member will be responsible for identifying an object of interest in one of our course texts. After identifying their chosen object, they will research its history, pursuing how this object was produced, advertised, traded, used, and discarded during the nineteenth century. Following their research, each member will contribute posts to the class gallery, timeline, and map (as appropriate per object). Once they've contributed to the class's digital archive, members will present their findings to the class and write a short reflection on how their findings enrich their reading of the text in which they discovered their object. By tracing the material history of an individual object, each member will gain a deeper appreciation for nineteenth-century material culture and its relationship to the Victorian literary imagination.
Galleries, Timelines, and Maps
Individual Entries
Newgate Prison was a long running prison in the city of London, operating in one fashion or another for over 700 years. It took on great cultural meaning in England (London in particular) to represent crime in general. An entire literary tradition was spawned by the infamous prison called “Newgate Novels”. Repeatedly demolished and rebuilt throughout the centuries it saw use, its final form was a large, imposing building of dark stonework with a few windows set high above street level. It was finally demolished for good in 1904. On the grounds of Newgate today is a central court named "The Old Bailey"
Newgate was also famous for its frequent executions, typically hangings, which fluxuated from a couple a month to over 30 in one day. Previously the most frequent executioners place was Tybern Village, where the gallows were kept, but this changed in 1783.
William Cubitt, the inventor of the treadmill, hails from Norwich.
Brixton Prison was one of the first major prisons to adopt the use of the tread mill as a form of punishment for inmates. The prison was opened in 1820, shortly after the tread mill was invented in 1818. It did not take long for opponents of the tread mill to publish pamphlets arguing that its usage could amount to a form of torture. As John Ivatt Briscoe writes, in his A Letter on the Nature and Effects of the Tread-Wheel, as an instrument of prison labour and punishment, addressed to the Right Hon. Robert Peel, "It is perfectly true, that the labour of the Tread-wheel, unless it be regulated with great care, may, to use the language of an able and experienced Govenor of a Prison (in recent communication with the Committee) become, in the hands of some, AN ENGINE OF TERRIBLE OPPRESSION. Fifth Report of the Committee of the Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline, pg. 36)" (British Library, "A Letter on the Nature and Effects of the Tread Wheel...
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