November 22, 2002
'"Whores and Thieves of the Worst Kind": A Study of Women, Crime, and Prisons, 1835-2000'
Sally Jefferson was the first. Before her conviction, in 1835, no woman had ever been sent to prison in Illinois. But the young arsonist's stay would be brief. A clerk at Alton prison noted her pardon by the governor just six weeks into a one-year sentence.
At the time, the penitentiary was still a radical new form of punishment, says L. Mara Dodge, a historian at Westfield State College and author of "Whores and Thieves of the Worst Kind": A Study of Women, Crime, and Prisons,
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