Casa di Correzione per le Donne Condannate.

[Legal] Prison reform. Casa di Correzione per le Donne Condannate in Pallanza. Ricavata dall’ antico carcere centrale portato colle opportune aggiunte alla capacità di 300 detenute. Secondo i disegni dell’ingegnere Pietro Spurgazzi…[Torino?: 1849].

Folio; 12 x 17 x inches; cloth.

First edition of this set of plans for the women’s prison in Pallanza on Lake Maggiore. With title page, three leaves of text, and five plates, all lithographed, by Giovanni Capretti after Angelo Gilodi. A presentation copy, inscribed on the cover: all’ottima Sig Biglio.

Pallanza boasted both a men’s prison and a women’s one, the latter opening in 1839, only 18 years after the first Italian women’s prison, in nearby Turin. The design of the buildings was the work of the engineer Pietro Spurgazzi (1815-1889), whose first major work this was. The prison was intended to house 300 inmates; the plates show the floorplans of the three floors, and cross-sections of the buildings, with explanatory text showing the locations of the cells, the washrooms, the chapel, the accommodation for the wardens, the garden, and the purposes of the other spaces shown.

By reputation, the prison at Pallanza was somewhat stricter than that in Turin, and there are cases of more violent and disruptive inmates being transferred from the older prison to the newer.

OCLC records one copy only, at Columbia University – and that copy is not inscribed.

(#4656324)

Item ID#: 4656324

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