After the 1820s prison sentences became the usual form of punishment for soldiers. Military prisons enforced strict discipline and absolute silence and became a model for civilian penitentiaries. Here soldier-convicts are picking oakum, which was considered suitably hard and useful work and continued to be performed in military prisons throughout the nineteenth century. The task required them to pull apart bits of old rope to expose the loose hemp or jute fibre - oakum - that was used to caulk the seams of wooden ships.
Courtesy: Archives nationales du Quebec (N 1173-87)
