We must also pass over, for want of space, the revolting case which occurred at the New York Juvenile Asylum in June last, in which one of the inmates of the asylum, a colored girl, instead of finding there an asylum from temptation and seduction, fell a victim to the lust of one of the officers of the institution, who fled precipitately on discovery of the fact.[13] We must pass over, for the same reason, the investigations recently conducted at St. Louis, which are far from showing a satisfactory result for the management and conduct of public reformatories. We must confine ourselves now to a single institution—a case in which the evidence is replete with horrible abuses, cruelties, improprieties, and wrongs. While we would be sorry to apply the maxim, ex uno disce omnes, we can but regard this case as a general warning to our people to beware of regarding as good everything in the moral order that goes under the much-abused name of reform.
The Providence School of Reform is an institution supported by funds received both from the state of Rhode Island and from the city of Providence. Its object seems to be the temporal, social, and moral reformation of juvenile delinquents of both sexes. Some time prior to 1869, it had been the subject of the gravest charges and investigation, which tended to show that, so far from having been in all its departments and workings a school of reform, it had in some instances become a school for vice and immorality. The whitewashing process, that facile and amiable way of avoiding disagreeable complications, prevented the accomplishment of any change for the better. But in 1869 the charges against the institution took a more definite form, and were signed and presented by thirty-one citizens of Providence to the corporate authorities—citizens of the first respectability and standing. The Board of Aldermen of the city of Providence, headed by the Mayor, undertook the investigation, and the evidence is contained in two large volumes in one, extending over eleven hundred and forty-two pages.[14]
The charges were the most serious ones that could be brought against an institution, especially against one professing reform, and had their origin with citizens without distinction of creed. Their true character and extent can only be understood by a perusal of them:
“First. That vices against chastity, decency, and good morals have prevailed in the school, and have been taught and practised by teachers as well as by pupils; that these vices have existed both in the male and female departments, and that the children usually leave the school more corrupt than when they entered it.
“Second. That teachers have used immodest and disgusting language in the presence of children, and have addressed females in an indecent manner by referring to their past character, and by calling them vile and unbecoming names.
“Third. That modes of punishment the most cruel and inhuman have been used in said school, such as knocking down and kicking the pupils, and whipping them when naked, and with a severity not deserved by their offences.
“Fourth. That young women are said to have been kicked, knocked down, dragged about by the hair of the head, and otherwise brutally treated, but more especially that all modesty and decency have been outraged by stripping them to the waist and lashing them on the naked back; taking them from their beds and whipping them in their night-dresses; tying their hands and feet and ducking them; and by other forms of punishment which no man should ever inflict upon a woman.
“Fifth. That names of children committed to said school have been changed and altered by the officers of the said institution.
“Sixth. That children have been apprenticed to persons living in remote sections of the country, and who have no interest in taking proper care of them, and that a needless disregard to the rights and feelings of their parents has often been evinced by the officers of the school.
“Seventh. That the goods of said school are reported to have been used dishonestly for purposes for which they were not intended, and that the state of Rhode Island is said to have been charged with the board of children who were living at service and were no expense to said school.