By charter of 1603 James I granted the University of Cambridge the right to have its own gaol. In 1628 a House of Correction or Bridewell was built for the joint use of the University and town in St Andrew’s parish, partly funded by local carrier Thomas Hobson (?1544-1630). After the building of a new town gaol in 1829, the Spinning House, as it had become known, maintained the Vice-Chancellor's prison. It was in practice used solely for one class of prisoner: women suspected of ‘walking with undergraduates’, that is, those accused of prostitution. The Proctors, in the exercise of their discipline over the manners and morals of members of the University, had anciently acquired the right of searching for and apprehending such women. The right was specifically confirmed to them in several royal grants but came under increasing criticism from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. It was abolished in 1894 following the notorious case of Daisy Hopkins who sued the University authorities for wrongful imprisonment. The Spinning House was dismantled in 1901 and replaced by a Police Station, now used as Council Offices.

The Committals Books are part of the University Archives. The books record the names of every woman confined in the Spinning House during the period 1823-94, as well as information under the following headings: age; parish; parents or friends; date of admission; present residence; by whom apprehended; charge; punishment; remarks. Each volume is indexed by prisoner name. The University Archives include other nineteenth century Spinning House records, among them minutes of the Spinning House Syndicate , plans, rules and dietaries and legal papers and newscuttings relating to the Daisy Hopkins case.

Bibliography: Caroline Biggs The Spinning House: how Cambridge University locked up women in its private prison (History Press, 2024); Philip Howell ‘A private Contagious Diseases Act: prostitution and the proctorial system in Cambridge’ in Geographies of Regulation (Cambridge, 2009) pp.113-151; Janet Oswald ‘The Spinning House girls: Cambridge University’s distinctive policing of prostitution 1823-1894' in Urban History Vol.39, No.3, August 2012, pp.453-470.

Digitisation of the Committals Books has been generously funded by the Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire Family History Society.