One in twelve poor Philadelphia workingmen served time in the insurrectionary jail

Evidence

In the ten years from 1815 to 1824, 3,308 persons were committed there for felonies. Allowing one-fourth for repeaters gives a figure of almost 2,500 individuals who served time in the Walnut Street Jail during those years. Reducing that figure by one-half to allow for those who died or left the city suggests that there were 1,250 persons living in the city at any one time who had been in the prison. Of these people, more than four-fifths, or 1,000, were male. … The population of metropolitan Philadelphia in 1820, including the Northern Liberties, Southwark, and Moyamensing, was 117, 687.45 Drawing a line horizontally through it gives a figure of 40,000 in the bottom third, the layer from which the prison population was recruited. Since we are dealing only with males here, we may divide this figure by half, and reduce it further by the proportion of children under fourteen, who were excluded from prison. This leaves approximately 12,000 people who constituted what may be called the pool of eligibles for prison. Referring to our earlier figure of 1,000 leads to the conclusion that one out of twelve men in the bottom third of Philadelphia society in the decade of the 1820s had direct personal experience in the Walnut Street Jail, that is, with a regime of perpetual insurrection. — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 161

Categorization

• XREF: The dense carceral saturation of the poor working class echoes themes in Base Nation and mass-incarceration readings of class control; supports the reader’s frame that poor whites and Blacks shared carceral experience before the white/Black divide. — connects to: Irish immigrants were the largest immigrant group in Philadelphia’s prison population — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 164; Early Philadelphia’s prison population mixed free blacks and destitute European immigrants at the bottom — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 163
• SEED: Possible essay angle: how shared carceral exposure and ‘regime of perpetual insurrection’ among the bottom ranks complicates any simple story of early American ‘white’ solidarity — convict solidarity across race predated formal white/Black racial separation.

Broader Connections

• Early Philadelphia’s prison population mixed free blacks and destitute European immigrants at the bottom #expands (0.85) — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 163
• Irish immigrants were the largest immigrant group in Philadelphia’s prison population #qualifies (0.72) — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 164