Field’s prison housed both male and female convicts, but labor was a key part of the prison regime, no matter the prisoners’ gender. As the Microcosm points out: "It has been a maxim of ethic writers in every age, that idleness is the root of all evil. To check the progress of vice by inducing habits of industry, to restore health by temperance and cleanliness, and to mend the morals of the profligate by restraining vicious intercourse, were among the objects which the projectors of this institution had in view."

---