Poverty, gender and incarceration in sixteenth-century Paris

The experience of prison remains a relatively little-studied aspect of late-medieval and early-modern criminalization of the activities of the poor. This study examines how poverty and gender influenced incarceration practices, treatment and release in sixteenth-century Paris. A study of the archives of the ecclesiastical gaol at Saint-Germain-des-Prés from 1537 to 1579 suggests that both poverty and gender affected the crimes for which women and men were imprisoned, the length of time they remained in detention and the reasons for their release.