Prison Personnel in the Colony of Natal from circa 1850 to the Prison Reform Commission of 1905-1906

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17159/1727-3781/2023/v26i0a15896

Keywords:

Colonial Natal, ; Gaol system, Prison personnel, Durban, Pietermaritzburg

Abstract

White colonial ideology was produced as a result of the fractured nature of the relations – social, political and economic – between black and white in the colony of Natal. Apart from the racial tensions between warders and prisoners of different races, tensions within the colonial edifice itself – particularly between police officers and gaol officials – reveal deep divisions within the colonial state. The article is primarily based on material housed in the Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository; some quotations from The Black Peril by an imprisoned journalist, George Webb Hardy, have also been included.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

  • Paul Swanepoel, University of KwaZulu-Natal

    ). Senior Lecturer, School of Law, University of KwaZulu-Natal (Howard College Campus), South Africa.

References

Bibliography

Literature

Anon "Police Board" The Natal Witness 2 February 1855 page unknown

Bjorvig AC The History of the Durban Town Council, 1854-1879 (MA-dissertation University of the Free State 1979)

Colony of Natal Blue Book for the Colony of Natal (Publisher unknown Pietermaritzburg 1863)

Cooper FW "The Police Force of South Africa" 1929 Police Journal 247-265 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X2900200207

Davenport R and Saunders C South Africa: A Modern History (Palgrave Macmillan London 2000) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230287549

Hardy GW The Black Peril (Holden & Hardingham London 1914)

Hattersley AF The British Settlement of Natal: A Study in Imperial Migration (Cambridge University Press Cambridge,1950)

Ivey JM The Making of Natal: Defensive Institutions and State Formation in Nineteenth Century Southern Africa (PhD-thesis West Virginia University 2015)

Kearney B Alas Poor Little Colony: An Illustrated History of Port Natal Vol I (Durban Heritage Trust Durban 2013)

Peté SA "Keeping the Natives in Their Place: The Ideology of White Supremacy and the Flogging of African Offenders in Colonial Natal – Part 2" 2021 Fundamina 67-100 DOI: https://doi.org/10.47348/FUND/v27/i1a3

Roberts R and Mann K "Introduction" in Mann K and Roberts R (eds) Law in Colonial Africa (James Currey London 1991) 3-25

Robinson J A Life Time in South Africa; Being the Recollections of the First Premier of Natal (Smith, Elder and Co London 1900)

Russell G The History of Old Durban (Davis and Sons Durban 1899)

Swanepoel P and Peté SA "The Development of Racially Defined Punishment in Colonial Natal: The Early History of Durban's Point Prison" 2019 Fundamina 169-198 DOI: https://doi.org/10.17159/2411-7870/2019/v25n2a7

Waits MR "Imperial Vision, Colonial Prisons" 2018 Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 146-167 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2018.77.2.146

Yang AA "The prison-Handicraft Complex: Convict Labour in Colonial India" 2023 Modern Asian Studies 1-27 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X22000324

Young C The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective (Yale University Press New Haven 1994)

Case law

Queen v Jantjes (1888-1889) 6 SC 20

Legislation

Law 3 of 1876

Archival sources

Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository: Colonial Secretary's Office, Natal (PAR: CSO)

Internet sources

Angloboerwar.com date unknown Lt Colonel GS Mardall https://www.angloboerwar.com/forum/2-introductions/9099-lt-colonel-g-s-mardall-natal-police accessed 28 January 2023

Published

23-11-2023

Issue

Section

Special Edition: Legal History

How to Cite

Swanepoel, P. (2023). Prison Personnel in the Colony of Natal from circa 1850 to the Prison Reform Commission of 1905-1906. Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal, 26, (Published on 23 November 2023) pp 1 - 36. https://doi.org/10.17159/1727-3781/2023/v26i0a15896

Similar Articles

1-10 of 1071

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.