Controlling the ‘Hopeless’: Re-Visioning the History of Female Inebriate Institutions c. 1870–1920

Abstract

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the Inebriates Acts 1879 to 1898¹ created an alternative system of inebriate institutions in England. Collectively these Acts enabled judges to sentence recidivist drunkards, who had hitherto received short prison sentences, to compulsory treatment in a private, certified, or state inebriate reformatory for up to three years. Between 1879 and 1923 (when the last inebriate institution closed) over 3,500 people were confined within such institutions.²