A “vida dissoluta que levam os calcetas”:

a presença dos apenados de galés na Casa de Detenção do Recife

Abstract

This article presents the results of research on the social history of prison institutions in the context of the monarchical regime in the province of Pernambuco. We try to emphasize the way in which the presence of those sentenced to the gallows penalty in the House of Detention concurred to put in contiguity the prison and the urban dynamics of the city of Recife. We bring to light an aspect less emphasized in prison historiography, while analyzing not the disjunctions between inside and outside, but the connections, the porosities, the fissures that were built in the prison order by several individuals that ended up putting the House of Detention in contiguity with the urban dynamics.  Such problematic will be examined during the administration of Rufino Augusto de Almeida (1861-1875), an administrator who spent a lot of strength to avoid the circulation of these individuals, thus, giving origin to part of the documental contribution in which this research is anchored: letters, requests, letters, petitions, regulations, and newspapers.