Sheffield Convicts Of The 20th Century

[jamesh2o]

Dear Sheffield History Members,

I wonder if anyone could help me I'm trying to find out convict / prisoner information from the 1900s - 1970s, mainly information about which possible prisons they were sent to.

Then I hope to find out if their records were either stored at the prisons or some other location.

Any help from fellow members would be gratefully received!

Sincerely Jamesh2o

[Edmund]

Society was very different in 1900 and 1979, so no doubt the destinations and types of prisoners changed, policies also changed - intorduction.  The average prison population quadrupled between 1900 and 2019. Certainly early in the period Wakefield would have been the prime destination for Sheffielders.  The introduction of Borstals from 1908 would have changed its profile, then during the first world war civilian prisoners were removed and it was used for military offenders and conscientious objectors, and from 1966 the type of prisoner was restricted to category "A", so it can be seen that the geographical basis for allocaing prisoners to prisons reduced over the period.

Wakefield's records are (normally) available from the West Yorkshire Archives:

Wakefield Prison records