Cruelty in the Refomatory

I was fascinated by an old clipping from the New York Times that was posted across at the excellent “Behind the Barred Window”. It concerned a damning investigation in 1914 into conditions at the State Reformatory for Women at Bedford Hills. Conditions were described as “better suited to one’s idea of a mediaeval dungeon than to a disciplinary building in a modern reformatory for women in the great state of New York”.

The Superintendent dismissed the allegations of unreasonable punishments. The report’s author, she said, “seems to have made the great mistake of believing in full every story told him by the six or seven worst girls in the place. They might be expected to lie to him, and he should not have taken their unsupported word.”

She added, “Although we have many difficult cases in the reformatory, and at times have to employ stern measures, we have never resorted to cruelty of any kind.” Until, perhaps, the media attention had died down and the ‘six or seven’ girls in question could be dealt with – for the very soundest of birchings must surely have followed.