Prisoners and beggars: quantitative data on imprisonment in Holland and Hamburg, 1597-1752

'This article discusses quantitative evidence on the inmates of prison-workhouses. It elaborates on the author's earlier work which showed that imprisonment, originally planned to solve problems of begging and vagrancy, played an increasingly important role in the penal system during the 17th and 18th centuries and that contemporaries viewed the ideal prison community as a kind of family or househ…