Vadias, homicidas, ladras, embriagadas, prostitutas, adúlteras, defloradas, desordeiras, obscenas, alienadas: mulheres na Casa de Detenção da Corte imperial (1860-1889)

Abstract

The thesis of this work was devoted to knowing who the women were imprisoned in the House of Detention of the Court in the time proposed here. Along with this, we analyze why, how and what kind of women were sent there. For such an assault, it became necessary to know what this prison was, what it was instituted for, and what educational practices were possible in order to maintain order in place. As for the prisoners, we had to know who they were (occupation, age, civil status, among others) and the crimes committed. For these problematizations, as far as the theoretical-methodological horizon is concerned, we anchor ourselves in the notion of discipline proposed by Michel Foucault (2005). Discipline that organizes, separates and classifies to better watch and punish. In the geopolitical spaces of the city or in prison, these women should follow modes of behavior that are said to be desirable to them. But for our characters, this was in the realm of theory, for in producing resistances-killing, stealing, adulterating, among others-they subverted these guidelines and, in one form or another, they ended up being arrested and sent home. Counting with the judicial documentation - criminal cases, reports from the Ministry of Justice, and House of Detention Enrollment Books -, as well as periodicals, helped us tell about the stories of these "infamous lives" that came to us because they ran into power: they committed crimes, were prosecuted, tried or acquitted. Documentation observed without the intention of discovering something new, but rather revealing the concreteness of the surface of sayings as utterances that can be pronounced and recorded. These investigations enabled us to have greater contact with imperial utopian penitentiary practices, which aimed at clean and safe prisons, but ran up against the bureaucracy, lack of interest and inconvenience that the prisons had become. Finally, the work is justified by unpublished. There are not works that contemplate the imprisoned ones of the House of Detention in the time proposed here