Up until 1836 the convict chain took prisoners manacled together and on foot to the prison hulks.As an instrument of justice and also as a way of showing that punishment had been duly carried out, the chain of prisoners seemed to be a world devoid of women. In the first half of the nineteenth-century, women were excluded from the process of justice and were less likely to be convicted or sentenced. Yet women were always cropping up along the way as the prisoners were forced to walk the length of France, particularly at the moment of the putting on of the irons. This female presence was at once desired and feared. If the woman who adopted masculine stances and attempted to assume power was rejected, the judiciary “spectacle” nevertheless needed feminine gentleness and charity. The efficiency of the sanction relied on a full range of spectators in which women played a vital role even though they may be held at a distance.