‘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 the law of the land, but that of nature by committing “unwomanly” acts,’ Helen Davies, the Sunday Times
