Holloway, House of Correction

By the author of the best seller, A Year in Holloway

Two women. One prison. A friendship that defies everything they were taught to believe.

In 1902, the soot-stained heart of North London beats with the quiet despair of Holloway Prison—recently transformed into a women-only institution. Inside its walls, and in the shadow it casts, two women live worlds apart.

Victoria Wood is elegant, educated, and newly married—but her perfect life has shattered in a way she cannot yet speak aloud. Margaret Bull scrapes by as a cleaner, her name forever tainted by the legacy of her infamous mother: Mary Ann Cotton, England’s most prolific female killer.

Both women carry chains—some visible, others buried deep—and when their paths cross within Holloway’s iron gates, an unlikely bond forms. As the century turns and the last gasp of the Victorian age gives way to the uncertain promise of modernity, their friendship becomes a quiet rebellion. Against grief. Against shame. Against everything society expects of them.

Rich with historical detail and drawn from real lives, Holloway, House of Correction is a powerful tale of forgiveness, survival, and the radical power of connection between women.
Written with details of the day to day running of the prison about 1902.