Abstract
The increasing recognition of the importance of women’s history has stimulated new work on state intervention in women’s lives. An historical period which has attracted attention is around the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Pertinent questions have been raised about state control of female sexuality. This is a period of moral panic about working-class women. State intervention was concerned to reclaim women as the future wives and mothers of a healthier imperial race. This chapter examines the response of the state to the question of ‘women and alcohol’. State reformatories were viewed as the best means of controlling, isolating and reforming ‘inebriate’ women. It relates explanations of the day for the predominance of women in reformatories despite their lower rate of drunkenness to wider debates about national efficiency and the imperial race. A case study is also provided of Farmfield certified reformatory, which was set up in 1900 by the London County Council (LCC) taking the discussion beyond the intentions of the reformers to the consequences of their measures.
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© 1990 British Sociological Association
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Hunt, G., Mellor, J., Turner, J. (1990). Women and the Inebriate Reformatories. In: Jamieson, L., Corr, H. (eds) State, Private Life and Political Change. Explorations in Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20707-7_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-20707-7_9
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