The Toronto Star, Canada’s largest online news site, has chosen Bad Girls as one of five new books that ‘upend traditional views about women’. ‘The bad girls of the title are women who were jailed for drunkenness, prostitution, being suffragettes, murder, theft, performing abortions – indeed the full monty of activities that society frowns on…This […]

I joined the Portobello Book Blog to answer questions about Daisy Belle and the writing life and Laura Morningstar for a Meet the Author Q&A

Daisy Belle was inspired by two forgotten Victorian champions – Agnes Beckwith and Annie Luker. Here’s a guest post on Novel Deelights.  

‘Black women were disproportionately jailed and mistreated in London’s infamous Holloway Prison’ – openDemocracy, the independent global media platform, has run an extract from Bad Girls, taken from a chapter on racism within the prison service. The extract can be read here.  

‘A biography of a prison over its lifetime, adding to the few single study accounts that we have of British penal institutions. Davies…focuses unapologetically on the inmates’ stories, and gives us an insight into the processes of her research, recounting visits to the prison, crime scenes, and burial places. All this makes Bad Girls an […]

The new books magazine Strong Words has run an interview on the background to Daisy Belle: Swimming Champion of the World. Questions covered a passion for swimming and what inspired my other swimming books. ‘(She) has the uncanny knack of discovering fascinating stories that have often, up until she finds them, been somewhat overlooked.’   […]

  Islington Museum will be putting on an exhibition about Holloway Prison, with a focus on ‘the voices which remain unknown and unrecorded.’ This week I joined some of the volunteers to discuss the chronology of Holloway Prison and the themes that come up over and over again during its 164-year history. The museum has […]

June 12th Last night was press night at the Almeida Theatre in Islington, London, for a new production of Machinal, the 1928 play written by American journalist and playwright Sophie Treadwell. It was inspired by the case of Ruth Snyder, executed by electric chair that same year, after she’d been found guilty of killing her […]

‘A highly readable history…As the group Reclaim Holloway campaigns for the (prison) site to include a Women’s Building to help the community, Davies provides a sympathetic feminist reading of female incarceration by men who could not control them’ – Julie Peakman, Who Do You Think You Are Magazine

The Jewish Chronicle has run an extract from Bad Girls, from one of the chapters about Holloway Prison during World War Two. This was the time when 3600 Jewish refugees were jailed, on the way to internment on the Isle of Man. Their ‘crime’ was to be an ‘enemy alien’.  

‘What your favorite authors are reading this summer’ – The Washington Post asked 11 writers what books they will be reading this summer. Ruth Ware, the bestselling psychological crime thriller author, chose Bad Girls.  

  ‘Bad Girls offers many great tales of those who called the now-closed Holloway prison their home…and Caitlin Davies delves into every conceivable story.For those living in the shadow of Islington’s Holloway prison the imagination has run wild for years, concocting images of terrible conditions. Caitlin offers a comprehensive and much-needed answer. The study of […]

‘Women who broke the law throughout much of British history often also broke another taboo: what was expected of their gender. Caitlin Davies’ book explores HMP Holloway, the London lockup where many of these female felons were incarcerated. It’s fascinating both for its portrait of larger-than-life women and the ways in which they were regarded […]

  ‘Caitlin Davies’ revealing account of the jail’s 164-year history offers overwhelming evidence for her thesis, that ‘ever since Holloway opened, women have been held up to different standards: were they good wives and mothers, did they know their place?’..(She) makes a good case for the prison’s role as ‘a graduating university for militants’…(and) digs […]

  I’m thrilled to be a tutor on Arvon’s non-fiction tutored retreat – ‘Finding the heart of your non-fiction story’ – along with Colin Grant and guest speaker Helen Jukes. The retreat runs from November 18th to the 23rd, 2019, at the Hurst in Shropshire. Two types of grants are available to help cover course […]

  ‘Caitlin Davies meticulously records a much-needed and balanced history of this home to ‘royalty and socialites, spies and prostitutes, Nazis and aliens, terrorists and freedom fighters’ and thousands of very ordinary desperate women, many of whom had experienced violence at the hands of men…. Bad Girls is a chronicle (of) the ongoing fight to replace […]

  ‘A rich, superbly researched, definitive history of Holloway Prison, which closed in 2016, and of the many disobedient, defiant, dangerous women and girls incarcerated there. There are many heartbreaking stories within stories within stories.’

‘Prison to Parliament: the Suffragettes and Holloway. Caitlin Davies’ book Bad Girls delves into the history of Holloway, shedding new light on the extraordinary stories of the women imprisoned there, including the Suffragettes’ Read the full interview here

‘Davies’ absorbing study serves up just enough sensationalism – and eccentricity – along with its serious inquiry. (She) uses the prison as a prism through which to chart changing attitudes to women over the past 164 years – beginning with the Victorian notion of “double deviance”, which suggested that female criminals had broken not only […]

Interview with Emily Finch. ‘Suffragettes made the most of their prison experience – it was a powerfully run PR campaign. The now empty 10-acre Holloway Prison site was once the hub of the women’s suffrage movement.’  

  ‘Smashed windows, broken rules: the dark suffragette sites of London’. Jo Griffin explores the importance of suffragette sites in London, including the notorious Holloway Prison. More here

‘Readable, compelling and illuminating history of HM Prison Holloway and of the women from all walks for life who have been incarcerated there since it was first built as a House of Correction in 1852’, Caroline Sanderson, the Bookseller