[Here is a fine human interest story about the Women’s Reformatory Prison in Massachusetts, and the
remarkable success the inmates achieved in “The Pirates of Penzance.” The story is from the New York
Times of June 21.]
“When a felon’s not engaged in his employment,
His Employment,
Or maturing his felonious little plans,
Little plans,
His capacity for innocent enjoyment,
’Cent enjoyment,
Is just as great as any honest man’s,
Honest man’s.”
This sums up pretty fairly an affair at
Sherborn a few days ago. Sung by the
ordinary policeman chorus of any ordinary
Gilbert and Sullivan revival, the sentiment
would seem trite enough. Sung
by the felonious themselves, by forgers,
by the “enterprising burglars,” it takes
on a keener significance. It comes home.
It was an amazed audience that sat in
the chapel of the Women’s Prison at
Sherborn, Mass., and listened to “The
Pirates of Penzance,” presented by fifty-five
of the two hundred women who are
“doing time.” It was an audience which
did not always get its cue as promptly
as an audience should, for in several
places where the Gilbert and Sullivan
Company intended it should laugh it
openly dabbed its eyes with handkerchief
or blew nose violently.
In the first place, it had gasped over
the grim humor of “The Pirates of Penzance”
as presented by a set of offenders
against property and public order anyway.
It gasped again when a lusty opening
chorus of attractive “pirates” demanded
that somebody pour, oh, pour,
the pirate sherry—for it was “sherry”
that landed on a lot of them in Sherborn.
And it could not for the life of it smile
when the jolly pirates explained to it
that,
Although our dark career
Sometimes involves the crime of stealing,
We rather think that we’re
Not altogether void of feeling.
And a few in the audience realized
that the pretty little Mabel, with her
long, dark curls and her clear soprano
voice, was an old offender, serving her
third term at Sherborn. A few remembered,
not without a shiver, that the pirate
at the end of the row, splendid in a
blue and white striped cape slung from
his—her—shoulder, a dagger stuck in
her belt, had assisted at having her husband
cut up in pieces, and, missing the
electric chair by a minute and a half, was
here in Sherborn for life.
It was hard to realize that one was
within prison walls. These girls, most
of them girls of the streets, supposedly
the “dregs” of society, looked and acted
like anything but dregs. Accustomed to
the cheapest sort of music, the cheapest
sort of amusement before they came
here, they had nevertheless entered into
the Gilbert and Sullivan spirit. They
managed the difficult choruses superbly;
they attacked their recitatives with understanding.
They had been branded, most of them,
as unmanageables, incorrigibles. Yet
they had been trained to a point of almost
complete co-operation. The mentally
defective were not only managing
difficult alto, but getting around the preposterous
vocabulary of the “Pirates,”
such as the square on the hypotenuse
and the crimes of Heliogabalus. And
more than one in that audience leaned
over to say to his neighbor: “If they
can be trained to do this, they can certainly
be trained to do something else.”
It was this realization that brought the
audience, made up for the most part of
prominent social workers and city officials
from Boston, to its feet at the closing
ensemble with all fifty-five on the
stage. Policemen and pirates took off
their hats and waved to the applauding
audience that crowded around the stage,
and the audience clapped and waved
back. It was a recognition of a fact that
both sides too often forget, the fact that
criminals are not, after all, so different
from non-criminals. It is largely because
the criminal does not realize his
relation to the rest of society that he
breaks with it, and as for society, it forgot
the human bond when it began clapping
its offenders into dungeons and
treating them as complete aberrations.
Mrs. Perle Wilkinson is the reason
why Gilbert and Sullivan have invaded
Sherborn. Mrs. Wilkinson’s official title
is “chaplain.” But no chaplain ever took
to himself such an amazing set of duties,
and Mrs. Wilkinson admits the name
must be changed.
Probably the girls themselves, as they
rehearsed for the past eight or nine
months under the “chaplain’s” direction,
have not realized that they were enjoying
an advantage which no other amateur
performers in the country could
command. For Saturday’s production
of “The Pirates of Penzance” contained
the original “business”—the “business”
witnessed by those of us who saw the
first presentation of the Gilbert and Sullivan
operas in this country.
Mrs. Wilkinson was one-time chorus
mistress for the D’Oyly Carte troupe,
her husband singing the principal baritone
roles. She has for many years had
experience in chorus and choir training,
and in addition had charge of the House
of Refuge at Randall’s Island at the time
when both boys and girls were admitted
to that institution. It is a curious combination,
and one which has brought results
of the most amazing nature.
The girls have been working since
September on the “Pirates.” It should
not by rights have taken so long, explained
Mrs. Wilkinson, but the voices
were in bad shape. Most of them were
hard and inflexible, patterned on the nasal
attainments of the cheap vaudeville
performer. An understanding of the
music had slowly to be created. Then,
just as everything was within a few
weeks of completion, the parole board
would descend and release the chief soloist
and five or six of the best voices in
the chorus, and work would have to be
begun all over again.
This might have happened a week or
so ago, for the prima donna’s time had
expired and she was free to go. Which
would have meant that “Pirates” would
again have been postponed, probably for
a much longer time, for Mabel’s part is
difficult and requires a real voice. Mabel
sent word to her family and stayed
another week.
It was not only the fifty-five who actually
took part in the opera who presented
the “Pirates.” The whole prison,
two hundred women, gave it. Long ago
khaki skirts and blue prison dresses were
piled up on one side of the machine
room, and the most amazing materials
took their place. Turkey reds and purples,
tinsel of silver and gold, gauzy
pinks and yellows surprised those machine
needles, which for thirty-six years
have been bobbing up and down through
sombre colors. A visitor, looking in to
see those who had been sentenced to
“hard labor,” would have been amazed
to see them putting gold braid on three-cornered
hats, sewing buttons on policemen’s
uniforms.
All the women attended rehearsals.
They brought their crocheting, their bits
of sewing, and sat quietly while the
picked fifty tackled long words and difficult
choruses. This in itself was a big
concession. The women were all supposed
to be in their rooms, and it was
argued that they would be restless and
unmanageable, given so much liberty.
But they weren’t. They looked forward
with the keenest enjoyment to the rehearsals,
and it was because the company
was accustomed to playing before an audience
that not a member showed the
slightest evidence of “stage fright,” or
even of self-consciousness, at the final
performance.
While the performance was going on
the rest of the women were working on
the prison grounds, in the kitchen, in
the laundry, in the machine rooms, but
they were as excited about the event as
though they were to be present. Whenever
a matron appeared, or Mrs. Hodder,
the head of the prison, stopped to
say a word to them, they asked eagerly
about the guests, were there many
of them, had the Governor arrived, did
they get a sword for the Major General?
Upstairs in the chapel a squad of girls
worked for several hours before the performance,
setting the stage. The scenery
had been painted by the girls themselves
and would have done credit to
Granville Barker. Towering rocks, a
rolling ocean in the back, a cave that
looked as though it might harbor any
number of murderous pirates, and real
trees. Little birches had been cut down,
and the girls worked long and earnestly
setting them in pails of water behind
“rocks.” In spite of a couple of savage
onslaughts, one from the pirates in full
force with daggers drawn, and one
from the energetic police, the trees
stayed upright with only a couple of
quiverings.
The team work displayed by these
outcast members of society, who do not
fit into our “organization,” was something
of a revelation.
“Get out of this dust, Julia,” cried the
stage hands dragging birch trees to their
places, as the pirate king appeared in the
chapel doorway. “Don’t you know dust
will ruin your voice?”
“Mis’ Wilki’son, don’t you touch them
trees, you’ll get your hands so rough you
can’t play this afternoon,” and, “Mabel,
I thought you was goin’ to lay down and
get rested—you’ll be all worn out.”
“Emma, don’t let Mis’ Wilki-son
sweep the floor—Mis’ Wilki-son, let us
have a matron up here and you go and
get some rest, we can fix everything
now.”
What this means will be realized fully
only by those who know the general temper
of the women confined in our penal
institutions, who have seen the sullenness,
the bitter vindictiveness, the complaining
spirit of the greater part of
them. The girls of the old-style reformatory
or prison have much time to themselves,
and they put in every minute of
it inspecting and piling up their grievances.
Even when they are occupied
they are thinking about themselves; naturally,
they take little interest in doing
kitchen or laundry work, or in running
machines.
Sullenness and distrust, a hardened
suspicion of everything that is done for
them, are the biggest difficulties in the
way of the woman who tries to “get at”
the girls. Mrs. Wilkinson has shifted
the emphasis. She does not think so
much about “getting at” the girls. She
tries rather to get them away from
themselves.
She does not bother with the girls’
little sordid histories. She sees in them
so many voices, so many dancers. Her
mind is intent on just one thing—the operetta,
the minstrel show, the Easter
chorus that is in progress. Her enthusiasm
is unlimited. The girls see her up
at 5 o’clock in the morning getting ready
for rehearsals, trying out voices, arranging
tableaux, planning costumes down
to the smallest detail, as if this were the
most important thing in the world, and
they gradually forget to sulk, and turn
in to work.
It was Mrs. Wilkinson and the “Pirates
of Penzance” that brought one of
the most refractory inmates of the whole
two hundred at Sherborn up out of the
punishment cell where she was confined
at regular intervals. There was no question
about it, the girl had a remarkable
voice, and the opera had to have her,
and she would simply have to keep out
of the punishment cell. Which she did,
and on Saturday sang the part of the
Pirate King with a dash and a finish
that brought forth a storm of applause.
She regards Mrs. Wilkinson as her
especial charge. And, indeed, many of
the girls have a maternal sort of attitude
toward this little chaplain, with her wide
blue eyes, her earnestness, her trick of
asking advice from everyone, her intentness
on her work, and her way of taking
it for granted that everyone else is just
as absorbed and just as enthusiastic as
she is.
Mrs. Wilkinson has been at Sherborn
a little more than a year. The “Pirates
of Penzance” is by no means the first
achievement. All the public holidays
are celebrated. Last year “The Sleeping
Beauty” was given by the lowest grade
in the prison, in which eleven nationalities
were represented, many of the cast
being unable to read and write. Fourth
of July is always a gala day, and the festivities
include a minstrel show. This
year the minstrel show, given out of
doors in a charming little amphitheatre
on the prison grounds, was a deviation
from the usual half-circle, end-men arrangement.
There was a little darky
cabin, choruses of cotton pickers, and a
substantial plot.
Every month there is a birthday party,
given in honor of all those whose birthdays
come in that month. An extra dish
is provided for supper, and instead of
regular chapel exercises there is an entertainment
of some sort by the girls
themselves. Folk dancing has been held
under the trees, the kitchen girls danced
“Pease porridge hot,” the sewing girls
“Reap the flax,” and the laundry girls a
Swedish clothes washing dance.
From all this it might be gathered that
we were stepping rather far across the
line and giving our offenders a better
time in prison than they have out of it.
The ultimate object of these entertainments,
of all this work which seems at
first glance rather irrelevant to correction
of criminal tendencies is something
quite different from the mere pleasure
to those who take part.
In the first place, concerted action has
been the slogan for every prison reformer.
In all too many instances, however,
it has been enforced concerted action,
and that is of little or no benefit.
In all the thirty-odd years that the women
of Sherborn have been working in
the shop, in the laundry, on the farm
there was probably no spontaneous co-operation
whatever. The best that could
be said was that they were not sitting
idle in their cells.
The most important contribution
which Sherborn’s chaplain, more or less
unconsciously, has brought to that curious
community is a new sort of inhibition.
Up to this time the correction of
the wayward has been through the medium
of morals. About the best thing
that could be done while a woman was
serving her term was to attempt to
awaken in her a sense of her own responsibility,
of her duty, of the standards by
which other people lived and which were
necessary for comfort and health and
ultimate goodness. It was an attempt
to get into working order that moral inhibition
that keeps the greater part of us
from forging checks when we need
money, or murdering our enemies when
we hate them.
Mrs. Wilkinson has a new inhibition—the
æsthetic. Fifty per cent. of the
women in Sherborn are there for acts
which to the normal person would be
unspeakably repulsive. The average woman
is held back from filthiness by her
æsthetic sense, even if she isn’t by her
moral sense. By giving the women who
for a year or two come under the State’s
care an understanding of any one art,
especially of music, which appeals most
directly, a standard is given from which
the individual never backslides. Moral
standards depreciate, but the person who
has been educated past ragtime and past
bad pictures never really enjoys them
again. And while the æsthetic inhibition
has less direct bearing on conduct than
the moral, while it does not always have
force enough to be effective, it is one
more chance for the girl who goes out
from under the State’s supervision to
stay out.
This is, of course, one of the greatest
problems of the penal institution—how
to hold the discharged prisoner to the
standards which she has but just grasped
during her term.
“If we could only keep them here until
we had set them squarely on their
feet,” said Mrs. Hodder, the head of the
prison. “The great difficulty is in dove-tailing
life here with the life that they
meet outside. People are so merciless,
so cruel—they force the girl straight
down again into the life she came from.
“The first practical step which our reform
institutions must take is the creating
of the indeterminate sentence, which
will allow the heads of institutions to
keep their charges until they are in some
degree capable of taking care of themselves.
For instance, in Massachusetts
a sixteen-year-old girl can be committed
to the State Industrial School for Girls
and be under its custody and its excellent
training until she is 21. For the
girl of 17, committing the same offense,
there is only this institution, strictly
penal in character and sentence, where
she may serve a minimum of eight
months and then be released.
“We have made some advance in this
State in that the Parole Board never releases
a girl if we oppose her release, so
that we are able to keep the girls much
longer than formerly, when they served
the exact sentence and then were discharged.
But it is very hard for us
when a girl knows that her sentence is
for one year and we keep her for two.
She is resentful and uneasy all through
the second year.”
Sweeping changes have been made in
Sherborn since Mrs. Hodder’s arrival
there three years ago. Sherborn is
called a reformatory, but it is a prison,
and, although Mrs. Hodder has removed
many of the obsolete features of it, remnants
of an old penology, she has not
gone to the other extreme and turned
punishment to pleasure and correction
to play.
“What I hope to do,” she explained,
“is to develop this reformatory as an
‘Industrial Training Institute for Women.’
We have had the handicap of
‘hard labor’ stamped on our commitments.
This has tended to make of
Sherborn a purely industrial plant.
“What I want to do before I get
through is to put in commercial factory
standards in speed and efficiency. Up
to this time work here, like work in many
of the prisons throughout the country,
is little more than a stop gap. The training
which the worker gets is practically
no training at all. Hours are long, inspection
is desultory. The worker who
would go out from our machines into a
white goods factory would not be able
to measure up in speed and efficiency to
any but the novice.
“The practical thing to do is to institute
the factory standard, introducing
some competitive basis. Then there
must be correlation with the educational
side of the institution. Before you can
get up any interest from the women who
sew on shirts they have to know something
about shirts. They must be taught
something about fabrics, how they are
made, how to buy them—the condition
of the industry—which they represent.
“Along with the shop course must go
other things—domestic training, cooking,
hand-sewing, millinery, and mending,
and all of them supplemented by
class-room training. In short, we must
offer industrial training of a sort which
would enable a girl to earn her living
when she leaves us.
“This is the greatest difference between
the policy which we are working
out at Sherborn and the policy pursued
by Dr. Davis at Bedford Hills in New
York State. The emphasis at Bedford
is, I believe, too much on the educational
side. The emphasis on Sherborn
has been, I know, too much on the industrial
side. The two must be properly
balanced.”
The reformatory at Bedford Hills can
hardly be compared to the prison at
Sherborn. The problem of the latter is
much more complicated by reason of the
fact that it is a prison for all mature
offenders, including women of forty and
over, while Bedford is nearer the Lancaster
Industrial School, which receives
girls under the age of seventeen. The
older women criminals of this State are
sent to Auburn.
Mrs. Hodder is energetically opposing
the age grouping which our penal institutions
have followed for many years.
“Segregation and classification,” she
says, “this is the next practical move in
our prison reform. What classification
has been done has been for the most part
according to chronological age, which is
absurd.
“An examination of 427 cases from
the reformatory showed that, should all
women under fifty be grouped in one
institution, the long-sentence women—almost
invariably first offenders, and of
a much higher type of intelligence than
short-sentence women—would be classed
with a large number of alcoholics and
some of the worst of the sex cases, together
with a number of definitely feeble-minded.
In fact, almost every type
of criminal would come into the under-thirty
class, and by no means are the
young offenders the least hardened and
the most reformable.
“Segregation, as we are fast coming
to realize, must be according to degree
of viciousness and according to intellectual
and not chronological age. And the
classification must be greater. The cottage
plan is the only one by which successful
reform work can be accomplished,
such a plan as Dr. Davis has worked
out at Bedford Hills, for example.
“Under such a system, which allows
for very small groups, the women can
be carefully graded, the downright vicious
woman kept from the one whose
weakness is nothing more than alcohol
or vagrancy. Under such a system we
can care for the extreme cases, which
are always the most perplexing problem—those
violent cases for which we now
have to employ the punishment cell. For
these women, who are often border-line
cases, should be prescribed steady out-of-door
work. My idea is to have a sort
of movable shack and a cage where a
violent case of this kind could have the
opportunity for solitary confinement,
which undoubtedly is the best treatment,
and for working in the ground, making
things grow.
“Of course the prison should not have
its progress clogged by these border-line
cases any more than it should be hampered
by care of the distinctly feeble-minded.
Out of 427 women 17 per cent.
of those below 30 years of age were
found to be definitely feeble-minded, 25
per cent. mentally subnormal, making
nearly half of the number with some
marked mental defect. These should,
obviously, be separated from those who
are mentally sound and given special instruction,
which would be the case were
we to classify according to intellectual
age.”
Sherborn Prison is, because of lack of
funds, a long way from the cottage system—it
is still a prison, built on the dormitory
plan. But its “cells” are fair
sized rooms, clean, and with a large window
to let in the sunshine. There are
colored pictures and postcards tacked
on the whitewashed walls of most of
them. The room of one of the “lifers”
was unusually attractive, potted plants
at the window, a rocking chair, and a
table covered with a spotless cloth, edged
with a border of the finest kind of crochet
made by the prisoner herself.
And just before lights-out time Saturday
evening it was curious to go down
the corridor and see outside of each
barred door a neatly folded policemen’s
suit and helmet, or a pirate’s gay colored
cape, with dagger and cocked hat on top.
And behind the barred doors could be
heard, in a subdued undertone:
His capacity for innocent enjoyment,
’Cent enjoyment,
Is just as great as any honest man’s,
Honest man’s.