Artist gets the bigger picture on jailed servant
THE artist who created an exhibition about female criminals has said finding the family of one of the women she featured gives an important insight into the women’s lives beyond their time in jail.
Ruth Singer created the Criminal Quilts exhibition featuring the mugshots of 500 women who were inmates at Stafford Jail between the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
They included Harriet Raby, from Burton, who was jailed as a 15-yearold servant after she was caught setting fire to her employer’s Burton home, while a child was inside.
She was the grandmother of Graham Coxon, of Horninglow. But he knew nothing about her dark past until he saw her mugshot in an article in the Burton Mail about the display.
He has since visited the exhibition and made contact with Ms Singer. She told the Burton Mail: “I’m really excited to find family members of one of the women we have been researching and I am looking forward to finding out more about her. I appreciate that it’s a sensitive issue. Finding out a close relative has been in prison must be a shock. An important part of the research for me is to look at these women as real people with lives beyond their prison sentence, as more than a mere mugshot and criminal record. By meeting her family and adding her personal story alongside her criminal record allows us see the real person behind the mugshot – as an historian and an artist this is incredibly valuable and powerful.”
Mr Coxon, 79, said his family were stunned by Harriet’s secret past, adding that she had never breathed a word and must have thought she had taken her secret to the grave when she died in 1950.
The Criminal Quilts exhibition is touring the UK and is currently on display at the Brewhouse Arts Centre, off Union Street, Burton.
Mr Coxon is also attending a talk by the artist when it is expected she will talk about the Burton women in the exhibition, including Miss Raby.
The talk will be held from noon to 2pm on Tuesday, October 23, at the Brewhouse Arts Centre. Admission costs £3. The free exhibition is open until Saturday, October 27.