In 1561, a little-known charter granted the University of Cambridge the power to arrest and imprison any woman “suspected of evil”. For nearly 350 years, the university used this law to incarcerate young working-class women found walking with undergraduates after dark in Cambridge.
The women were considered prostitutes and could be forcibly taken to the university’s private prison and sentenced to weeks of confinement by the vice-chancellor. More than 5,000 were arrested in the 19th century alone.
Now, a local historian is seeking to shine a light on what happened to these women – many of whom were teenagers – and is calling on Cambridge University to apologise or publicly acknowledge the injustices they suffered.
“None of the women ever got a fair trial, and none of them had actually even broken the law, according to the law of the land – there was no evidence of wrongdoing,” said Caroline Biggs, author of The Spinning House: How Cambridge University locked women in its private prison.
“The university didn’t really care how they were treated. They wanted the women to be removed from the streets so they couldn’t tempt the undergraduates.”
When women in Cambridge fell on hard times, it was easy to make money from sex work: Cambridge dons were not allowed to marry until the 1880s, and many young undergraduates had money to spend. “Parents became very concerned that their sons would come to Cambridge and be contaminated by the local women,” said Biggs.
In 1825, an act of parliament gave the university its own police force of special constables, nicknamed bulldogs, to patrol the town at night. They worked alongside university officials called proctors.
Biggs spent five years uncovering what happened to the women by researching the university’s committal books, along with court reports and national records. “Girls were arrested at night, taken to a cell in the prison, known as the Spinning House, and in the morning the vice-chancellor would come and ask: ‘Did she come quietly? Did she come meekly?’ And if she hadn’t, if she’d kicked off, chances are she’d get a longer sentence.”
Corporal punishments were also used, Biggs discovered. In 1748, the vice-chancellor paid the town crier 10 shillings to whip “10 unruly women”, Spinning House accounts show. Prison inspectors frequently condemned the jail, which the social historian Henry Mayhew called an “abomination” in 1851, noting the keeper pulled the girls’ hair if they didn’t keep quiet and threw them into solitary confinement.
“The prison was notoriously cold and damp, and the food was just bread and sometimes gruel,” Biggs said.
In December 1846, the 17-year-old Elizabeth Howe died after spending a night in a Spinning House cell with a broken window and a damp bed.
Her only crime had been walking in the vicinity of a brothel with a female friend. “I was so gobsmacked when I first read the inquest of her death, I couldn’t take notes. I wanted to cry,” said Biggs, who is giving a talk to the Mill Road History Society in Cambridge this week.
In another case, a councillor’s wife and daughter were stopped by proctors because they had walked ahead of the councillor, unchaperoned. “It was a massive insult.”
The university made more than 6,000 arrests, with many women held multiple times and detained for two to three weeks at a time.
Biggs said that the Spinning House was just one method the university used to exercise “complete power and control” over the people of Cambridge for centuries. The university also controlled the sale of wine and spirits, the licensing of pubs and how much credit students were allowed. “There was a power battle between town and gown in Cambridge which still exists today, I think, in some ways.”
In her book, she focuses on four women who challenged the university in court over their arrests.
In 1891, accused women were finally allowed legal representation after a national outcry about the university’s powers and treatment of women. When Daisy Hopkins, 17, was arrested on the charge of “walking with a member of the university”, she was illegally tried for a different offence – immoral conduct.
Her case established an important habeas corpus precedent still cited today. The ensuing scandal led parliament in 1894 to revoke the university’s Elizabethan charter and remove the vice-chancellor’s power to arrest and imprison suspected sex workers. The Spinning House was demolished soon afterwards.
Biggs would like the university to work with the city to erect a memorial plaque for the women, and hold a public exhibition about the Spinning House and its inhabitants. “I’d like the university to acknowledge that they did wrong,” she said.
The University of Cambridge did not respond to requests for comment.
• This article’s main image caption was amended on 8 December 2024 to correctly identify Clare College, Cambridge.
