In the city of Utrecht a new prison, on the Cellularian or separate plan, has been erected, and a Ladies’ Committee, formed, like the one in London; and the government of Holland has expressed a wish that near every prison such a Society be established, with full permission to visit the prisoners. In Stockholm, also, is a Ladies’ Committee. “There is not a female prisoner in Stockholm who is not visited once in the week, or who has not at least the opportunity of hearing the word of God explained to her in one of the departments of the large house for penal servitude, where their attendance on Sunday is voluntary.”
The readers of our Journal are aware that in Philadelphia and New York, and perhaps in other cities of the United States, similar organizations have existed for many years. Among them is the “Howard Institution,” under the care of an Association of Women-Friends of Philadelphia, the object of which is, “the care and reformation of female prisoners, who, after a term of imprisonment, manifest a disposition to reform; or others who, on account of their evil habits, need Christian counsel, moral restraint and domestic discipline. To accomplish this, a home is provided to shelter them from evil associations; to surround them with wholesome moral and religious influences; to inculcate good principles, and habits of neatness and industry; to instruct them in domestic duties, so as to qualify them for usefulness; and after a term of probation, to obtain for them respectable situations in town or country.”
The Fourth Annual Report of the Institution (whose house of reception is 1612 Poplar Street) shows, that during the year fifty women have been admitted, and remained under care from one week to several months. The necessity of some such provision for this class of our fellow-citizens is not exaggerated. “However trivial may have been the crime of which the prisoner was convicted, (and that many are convicted of very slight offences, there is no doubt); however well she may have conducted during her incarceration, the name and stigma of convict is upon her. Often she is without home or friends, with insufficient clothing, hungry and penniless. If she had friends, they are alienated from her; it may have been years that she has been separated from them—they have forgotten her. None will receive her into their houses. None will give her employment. What can she do? Perhaps the sparks of virtue are not yet extinguished. In the solitude of her prison cell she may have formed good resolutions; there may be an earnest struggle in her soul after a better life; but she is weak. The tempter comes in; cold and hunger and neglect, drive her to despair and crime. Her desires for reformation are lost among evil associations; and she sinks deeper into the gulf of depravity and wretchedness. Who will say that humanity is doing its duty to these poor outcasts?”
The report before us affords gratifying evidence that endeavors to rescue and restore to respectability and usefulness those unhappy women are not misplaced. “In a majority of cases the Institution has been a blessing to those who have been subject to its discipline.”
The Fourteenth Annual Report of the Women’s Prison Association of New York, concerns a charity hereafter to be known as “The Isaac T. Hopper Home,” and it brings to view some interesting facts, and presents strong claims to generous assistance. The institution has been for several years independent of the New York Prison Association. Its object is to ameliorate the condition of female prisoners, improve the discipline and government of prisons so far as females are concerned, and to give temporary support and encouragement to reformed female convicts. To give system and efficiency to their laudable efforts, they earnestly desired help in erecting a building adapted to that purpose, and at one time had flattering prospects of success. They had reasonable ground to believe, that with suitable accommodations, they might make the home a self-sustaining house of industry; but their expectations were not realized, and as the only alternative they purchased and put in repair the house they have long occupied.
We have often adverted to the lessons which a sound economy reads to us on the subject of caring for discharged prisoners. When it is considered what immeasurable injury a single evil-disposed person may do, and what expenses mere vagrants or petty thieves, to say nothing of forgers and counterfeiters, impose on the community, it cannot be regarded as a matter of trivial moment whether an enemy of society is transformed into a friend, and a burden into a help. Hence the managers of the Society repudiate the idea that they are beggars, and claim to be instruments of a true economy.
“The subjects of our care” (say they) “are costly dependents of the City’s Treasury. They not only are fed, clothed, and housed by the city, but their crimes waste the property of our citizens, and their misfortunes swell their taxes. Who are the inmates of our Home? A few young women may occasionally be found there—strangers in the country, wanderers from their natural homes, who, alone and friendless in this great city, have fallen, not from vicious propensities, but through sheer misfortune; and a few there are whom we have also found in your prisons, the victims of wrong suspicion and helplessness. All these, after a short novitiate, we have restored to decent life, and productive industry. But for our interposition, they must have remained, with hardly an exception, your costly pensioners. Some of our inmates are from Sing-Sing—convicts, who have been sent there for the lighter class of crimes so punishable; but by far the greater part are from the Tombs—Blackwell’s Island—persons committed for petty offences, or merely for vagrancy. These are the victims of intemperance. They are led astray at first by the social element of the Irish, by an inherited appetite, by bad company, by the thousand influences and temptations that beset the ignorant and neglected, by the brutal treatment and desertion of husbands, by wrong, disappointment, and despair. These offenders are tried in the Municipal Courts, and sent for weeks, or months, as the case may be, to Blackwell’s Island. At the end of their ‘term’ they return to the city homeless and friendless: a few hours, days, or weeks at farthest, find them again making the same circuit through commitment, trial, and ‘term’ on ‘the Island’—and all at the expense of the sober, hard-working citizen, who, if he takes time to look at the matter, will be somewhat startled to find how much he has to pay to the police, the justices, the prison officials of all degrees, from the head superintendent to the driver of the ‘Black Maria,’ and the expensive lodging houses of Blackwell’s Island.” And again, “all we do, is a clear saving to the city. We do not count merely the time that our inmates are sustained at the Home, for—though they are supported by the public, by their charities, instead of their taxes, yet two thirds of those received at the Home during the last year, have been sent to places: not only has the public been relieved from their support, but they have become productive laborers. We would make no erroneous impressions. These people do not all remain steadfast. They are, for the most part, adult children, liable to go astray at any strong temptation or impulse, or to fall back under the despotism of old habits. They require to be watched and trained, kindly guided and cared for; and they do not always find religious zeal, patience, skill, and tender forbearance in their employers. Still, under all their inevitable disadvantages, many of our inmates have persevered steadfastly in a good life, proving to the most sceptical, that with God’s blessing on the helping-hand, they can be saved.”
The facts are very stubborn. Here are one hundred and twenty-five women, addicted for the most part to degrading and infamous vices—living in vagrancy, dishonesty, drunkenness and prostitution; and a large proportion of them familiar with the corruption and degradation of prison life. Somebody must look after them, and none but practical, zealous, working women, who will give themselves to such a task—not for a visit or two, nor for a few days or weeks, but for months, and perhaps, for years—seeking out, watching over, encouraging and guiding those who are susceptible of improvement, if not of radical reform.
A few such are found, and the one hundred and twenty-five outcasts are gathered to “The Isaac T. Hopper Home.” There are some interesting cases among them, and they are all objects of interest; but, says one, “Do you really expect to do any permanent good to such people?” And another exclaims, “How disgusting it must be!” And a third, “How very disagreeable to go to such horrible places! How much better and wiser to drop a twenty or a fifty dollar bank note to the board of managers, or the matron, saying, You have hard materials to make up. Here is an expression of my sympathy. The friend of the friendless bless and prosper you.” But what has become of the one hundred and twenty-five inmates received during the year? Why, seventy of them were sent to service, and generally in the country. Of course they are not burdens to the public treasury while in this position, nor are they plundering houses and stores, nor provoking home brawls and street fights. This is no little saving all around. They not only cease to be burdens; they have been converted into producers; one has twenty, another fifty, and another seventy dollars reserved from earned wages. The cleansing, tidying, training, encouraging and aiding received at the Home, have fitted them for, and introduced them to, respectable and useful occupations. What sum shall we set against this as the probable amount of expense in arrests, prosecutions, sustenance, gaol fees, &c., had they been suffered to pursue their chosen way.
But some are discharged, and others leave, and ere long find their old lodgings in the Tombs or on the “Island.” Yes, that is so, but mark this! “They almost invariably appeal to us again for aid, and receive it, ☞ and each time the period of their perseverance in good is prolonged.” This is hopeful. It invites us to patience and faith. A single peach or pear on a favorite tree, or a single bunch of grapes on a choice vine, during the first bearing season, gives more pleasure than a peck of fruit in any subsequent year. The field which these benevolent ladies and their sisters of charity in our own city and the British metropolis, are called to cultivate, is covered with a luxurious growth of wild and poisonous plants, in every stage of growth and bearing. Their labor and skill, with the aid of the Divine husbandman, is devoted to an insertion here and there as opportunity offers, of a graft from a better stock. If it “takes,” they are encouraged to hope for fruit in due time; and though disappointments are not rare, success is frequent enough to animate and encourage them, and shall ensure them the hearty sympathy and generous aid of those whose taxes are lightened, whose property is saved from depredation, indirectly at least by their instrumentality.