USA > Rhode Island > Providence County > Providence > State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations at the end of the century : a history, Volume 3 > Part 52
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duties of officers and instructors were untried by them. There was little of experience elsewhere to guide them. On all hands such schools were regarded as somewhat doubtful experiments. All knowl- edge on the subject was merely theoretical. The building in which the school was located had been designed for a hotel, and having been re- modeled in haste was poorly adapted to its new use. The grounds were very limited in extent. Certainly the estate would not have been select- ed, but for the fact that it could be purchased at a low price, and the additional fact that it could be quickly made ready for occupancy. The institution labored under many disadvantages. It was the object of much unfriendly criticism. What advance movement ever escaped this ? And at the end of three years it was an achieved success. The result had been greater and better than the anticipations of its most sanguine friends.
Great improvement has since been made in the management of such schools and in the methods of instruction and discipline employed. That was a day of beginnings, of untried experiments, and much that now seems very plain and almost self-evident remained to be learned in long years of observation and of effort. It was thought to be of the first importance that such a school should be made to pay its own way; and the superintendent was expected to be always mindful of this necessity. He could not be regarded as a success in
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his position unless he should be able to present to the Board of Trustees a good financial return at the end of cach year.
Much was done by the boys and girls at shoe making, the manufac- ture of toys, the canc seating of chairs, and laundry work ; preference being given at all times to those branches of industry which were likely to yield most of profit to the institution. In some years as much as $5,000, and even a larger amount was realized. It would seem as if the real interests of the school must have suffered, and the design for which it was established have been in a measure thwarted by reason of a too great regard for pecuniary results. This appears in the order of the day as it was at one time arranged. The day was a long and busy onc, and the most unsuitable of its hours devoted to school room exercises. These began at five o'clock in the morning and continued until seven o'clock, the pupils having fasted since five o'clock the day before. How much profitable study was done by a company of hungry boys and girls just called from their beds an hour or two before sunrise may be a question. Between seven o'clock and eight o'clock was an hour for breakfast and recreation. At eight o'clock all repaired to the several workshops where they were busy till twelve o'clock. Then came an hour for dinner and recreation. Work in the shops was resumed at one o'clock and continued until four o'clock. An hour was now given to supper and recreation. The next two hours, from five to seven o'clock, were passed in the schoolrooms. Again how much real study was possible to be done by growing young people, of a not very studi- ous habit, at the close of a day which began at half-past four in the morning, and whose hours had been so filled with wearisome employ, may be a question. The best hours of the day for study had been given to earning a support for the school, it being thought that this last must have the precedence. From the close of evening school hours till eight o'clock was an hour for recreation. At eight o'clock all retired for the night.
At the close of its fifth year the superintendent reported that of all who had been honorably discharged from the school, whether at the expiration of their sentences or that they might live in homes which had been secured for them, one-fourth were fully mecting his highest expectations, one-fourth had certainly been much benefited by their stay in the school and were doing tolerably well, while the remaining one-half were none of them doing more than indifferently well. This seems a very conservative statement. It may not be an understate- ment of the results of reform school methods in the years and under the conditions considered; but he was far more modest in his claims for good done than were some of his successors in office. We should remember that up to this time it had been the custom to send to the school a large number of those who by reason of advanced age and a wide experience in evil ways
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could not be expected to derive much benefit from its methods, while many who were younger were permitted to remain only a short period-too brief for any lasting good to be done them. There was a feeling abroad that the school was a sort of jail or place for the punishment of youthful criminals, the length of whose sentences should be determined by the grade of their offenses, and not by the needs of the offenders; a feeling which un- fortunately is not yet wholly of the past. Most of good ap- peared in those who entered at an carly age, and who remained for a considerable period under the control of the school. Subsequent expe- rience confirmed this view. It came more and more to be recognized and to be acted upon. And as years passed the number of those who were permanently benefited and saved from lives of vice and crime was greatly increased.
Graduates of the Providence Reform School were numerous in the several regiments of Rhode Island Volunteers during the war for the preservation of the Union. At the close of the year 1862, the then superintendent reported that no less than two hundred and fifty young men, one-fourth of all who had been up to that date inmates of the school, had enlisted for the defense of their country ; and a year later he reported that the number of these had been increased to three hundred.
From first to last the Providence Reform School was a success. It achieved the end for which it was designed and established, and at once took high rank among the many institutions of its kind that were at about the same time and soon after founded in other cities and states throughout the country. Its record will ever remain an honorable chapter in the history of the city of Providence and the state of Rhode Island.
The school and its management did not, however, as has been already noted, escape criticism, more or less intelligent, during any year of its existence. There were those who would not have had it established, and who were never prepared to see any good thing come of it. While others being but poorly informed as to the facts and as to the needs of such a school, were prompt to find fault with the thing which they did not trouble themselves to understand; and in addition to these classes were those who discovered that mistakes really were being made and that methods really might be improved, and who spoke of all they saw from a strong desire that what they recog- nized to be a valuable work might be facilitated and enlarged in its in- fluence for good. Unquestionably there existed sufficient ground of wise criticism. It was a new order of enterprise in which the trustees and other officials were engaged, and it was but natural that mistakes should be made. There was a failure at some points to advance with the times. In some respects the school was not keeping step with simi-
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lar schools located in other states. Abuses had crept in which called
loud for suppression and removal. That so much was true had been for some time realized by not a few warm friends of the school. Con- plaints were made to the board of trustees, and something in the way of investigation was done by these ; but nothing came of it.
At last a formal bill of charges was presented to the City Council embracing eight counts, and making very serious accusations against the officers in charge. It was claimed that vices against chastity and good morals prevailed in the school, being taught and practiced by teach- ers and pupils, and that the latter would leave the school in many cases more corrupt than when they entered ; that teachers used immodest and disgusting language in the presence of children, addressed females in an immodest manner, calling them vile names and twitting them with their past conduct; that cruel and inhuman punishments, such as knocking down with the fist, kicking, and whipping naked boys and girls, were inflicted for slight offenses: that young women were knocked down, stripped to the waist and lashed, pulled out of bed in their night dresses and in this condition whipped, and dragged about the room by the hair, by male officers ; that the names of children were changed so as to make it difficult for their friends to find and identify them ; that they were apprenticed at long distances from their homes without regard to the wishes and feelings of their parents; that the goods of the school had been used dishonestly, and fraudulent charges made for the board of inmates ; that proselytism and religious intoler- ance were practiced. These charges were certainly grave enough to call for a most searching inquiry into the facts.
The City Council promptly resolved that a joint committee of investi- gation should be appointed, to consist of two Aldermen and five Coun- cilmen. This resolution was as promptly vetoed by the Mayor, with a suggestion that the City Council itself investigate or that it request the Board of Aldermen to do so. In response such a request was made. An exhaustive investigation followed, conducted on either side by emi- nent legal talent; and prolonged through twenty or more sessions. At its close a diversity of sentiment existed. The gravest charges which had been made were not clearly proved, except perhaps that of cruel and improper punishment and that of religious intolerance. Four re- ports were presented, neither of which was signed by a majority of the Aldermen ; or by the Mayor, who was chairman of the Board of Trus- tees, or by the Alderman who was a member of that Board, though the former of these gentlemen had presided and the latter had assisted at the investigation, being themselves at the same time among the defendants in the case. It can hardly be supposed that the result was uninfluenced by them. One report to which there were four signers deelared the charges not sustained and exonerated the school officials from all blame; each of the other reports, signed by a
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single individual, noted what were believed to be serious faults, and one censured the administration much more severely than did any other.
Although no radical change in officials followed this investigation, its effect upon the school certainly was beneficial. Changes for the bet- ter were at once made in the methods employed. Milder forms of punishment were substituted for those formerly in use; and better work was done than ever before in the history of the school. An im- proved order obtained while the institution continued to exist as the Providence Reform School.
In 1879 when the school had become in all but name a state institu- tion, and the trustees had decided largely in view of financial consider- ations that it would be impossible to continue longer upon the present basis, an offer was made to transfer.it to the state under whose control it properly should be. This proposition was accepted, and in the follow- ing April an act was passed by the general assembly changing the name to the State Reform School, vesting its management in the Board of State Charities and Corrections, authorizing this board to lease tempo- rarily the Tockwotton House property, directing that the school be removed at an early day to the town of Cranston, ordering the con- struction of all necessary buildings and appurtenances, providing that such buildings be erected upon what is known as the cottage plan, and appropriating the sum of $25,000 to meet the cost of the same. The real estate of the Providence Reform School was leased at a rental of $5,000 per annum, the furniture and other movable property being purchased for the sum of $7,500.
The official transfer of the school was made on the first day of July, 1880. The superintendent and other officers were immediately re- engaged by the Board of State Charities and Corrections, and things moved on without a break.
It had been decided that the boys and girls should be separated and each placed in a school by themselves. Attention was turned first to finding a suitable location for the girls' school. A site contain- ing 18 acres was selected at the corner of New London turnpike and the road leading to the village of Oaklawn, to which was added a strip of land about nine acres in extent that opened up an unobstructed view of the western hills across the valley. The distance from this point to the boys' school measured in a straight line would be a full mile, to the State Prison three-quarters of a mile, and to the House of Correction a half mile, while higher ground and a thick belt of woods concealed each of these institutions from view. Separation from all other institutions would be as complete as if they were in different towns.
It was decided to erect a single building, eighty-six feet long, forty- eight feet wide, and from the ground to the roof fifty-two feet in height; being the equivalent of three stories and a basement. As con-
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strueted there is in the basement a boiler-room, store-rooms, laundry, bath-room, and a large play-room, with four windows four feet above ground, for stormy weather. On the first floor is a sewing-room, girls' dining-room, kitchen, teachers' dining-room, reception-room, and matron's room, with store-rooms and elosets. On the second floor is the sehool room, with two recitation rooms, a room which in ease of need ean be used for a hospital, two teachers' rooms, and cight rooms each designed to be the sleeping-room of a single girl, with bath-room, wash-room, elosets, ete. On the third floor are fifteen single rooms and a dormitory which will accommodate twenty-four girls, each with a separate bed. Provision is thus made for between fifty and sixty girls.
The material used in this building is stone taken from the neighbor- ing fields, with granite trimmings. The whole effect is tasteful and pleasing. It is heated by steam, and supplied with water from a well one hundred and sixty feet in depth. The total cost of building, furniture and improvements previous to January first, 1883, was about $25,000.
The boys' school was located at the corner of the New London turn- pike and the Sockanosset eross road, being the extreme northern point of land owned by the state, and isolated from all other institutions as completely as is the site of the girls' sehool described above. It was decided to begin with the construction of a superintendent's residence, two cottages or homes for the boys large enough to accommodate about sixty each, a boiler house, a stable, and a large eentral building to eon- tain the chapel, school rooms and workshops ; the material and the style to be in a general way like those of the girls' sehool. These were fin- ished essentially as planned. Changes, however, were made at later dates, and other buildings were added, until sinee 1895 these have numbered not less than twelve separate and distinct structures. The growth of the sehool was rapid, and in 1884 it beeame necessary to build a third home for the boys, differing somewhat in plan from the older ones, and affording ampler accommodations. A fourth house was ereeted in 1887, and a fifth was added in 1895. A chapel and hospital were built in 1891 at a eost of about $20,000. Three years later a structure of brick and wood was erected, much of the work being done by the boys of the school ; the first story to be used for workshops and the second story for a drill room. All buildings here as at the girls school were without bars at the windows or fastenings on the doors other than such as are usually found in an ordinary dwelling, and the grounds were not enclosed by either high walls or fences.
On the fourth of March, 1881, a superintendent, Mr. Frank M. Howe, who had had much experience in the conduct of re- form schools organized upon the cottage and open plan, was appointed ; he entered upon the duties of his office on the first day of June next following. At once he began to pre-
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pare the boys and girls in his charge for the new order and for their new homes. Gradually, one by one, unnecessary restraints were removed. The doors of sleeping rooms which had until now been carefully locked at night, were thrown wide open or wholly removed. On Sundays the boys were taken in turn to one and another of the eity churches. Roger Williams' Park was visited at different times; and after a sail down the river a clam dinner was enjoyed by all the boys together at Field's Point. And to the surprise of the skeptical no attempt was made to eseape by any individual and no case of mis- conduct occurred on these occasions.
On the thirteenth of July, 1882, the girls, twenty in number, were removed by Mr. Howe without mishap of any sort to the new building at Oaklawn, and placed in the care of Mrs. R. S. Butterworth, who had been appointed in June superintendent of what was thereafter to be known as the Oaklawn Sehool for Girls. The record of this school, though uneventful, has been one of unbroken suecess.
On the twenty-eighth day of December, 1882, following the boys, one hundred and thirty-eight in number, were removed to the new Soek- anosset school buildings, going by rail to the Soekanosset station on the Pawtuxet Valley Railroad, and from this point walking a third of a mile to their destination. It was no small achievement to make these transfers. Over forty large wagon loads of furniture and other prop- erty must be transported ten miles or more and in the meantime provision must be made for eating, sleeping, and working as well as for the maintenance of discipline; and again the new home must be ready for the same exercises on the arrival of the boys, and all this was to be done without a double set of apparatus. It is praise enough to say that the whole was successfully accomplished.
With the exception of a few weeks when Mr. Howe was seriously ill and absent, and the boys were practically without a superintendent, the discipline and the success of the school in its new quarters and unaccustomed freedom from restraint was all that the most sanguine advocate of the new order had anticipated. In December of the follow- ing year, 1883, several members of a joint spceial committee of the legis- lature of Massachusetts visited the Rhode Island state institutions ; one duty assigned this committee being to ascertain and report "what changes if any shall be made either in the inmates or buildings of the State Primary and Reform Schools to the end that they may most fully do the work for which they were established." In their report this committee commended highly the system which they saw in operation at Sockanosset school, and strongly recommended that the same be adopted in Massachusetts.
At this time brass bands, now become so eommon in reform schools, were a very great novelty, being almost an untried experiment : but there was a determination that Sockanosset sehool should lack nothing
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calculated to increase its working efficiency. At the suggestion of Professor George I. Chace, chairman of the Board of State Charities, the sum of $500 was contributed in equal shares by twenty generous friends, for the purchase of instruments. These were procured and a company of boy musicians was organized which, under the leadership of competent instructors, soon acquired a good measure of skill in their use.
The resignation of Mr. Howe as superintendent, tendered August 1st, 1883, was accepted two weeks later, to take effect on September 1st, and, on the same day, Mr. James H. Eastman, who had been for many years at the head of the New Jersey Reform School, was selected to serve as his successor. On the day of Mr. Howe's retirement, Mr. Eastman assumed the management of the school. Having learned that his doing so might be attended by some unpleasant and regrettable experiences, he had come in haste from New Jersey, arriving just in time to see more than one-half of the boys rush in a body off the grounds. It was evidently a preconcerted and not unexpected event, occasioning no surprise in the outgoing management. The boys seemed to be moved by a fear of what the new management might bring them ; by whom they were inspired with this fear must be a matter of inference. At the same time, as if animated by the same spirit, nearly all the officers and matrons took an equally hurried departure, having previously placed their resignations in the hands of Mr. Howe, to take effect at the hour of his retirement. Such harmony of action was significant and not liable to be misinterpreted. How- ever, in a short time, most of the boys who ran away were back again in their old quarters, many of them returning of their own accord, and others being returned by those who had been sent after them.It need not be inferred that the absconding officers returned to their positions either sooner or later. But to restore the school to its normal condi- tion, undoing the mischief thus accomplished, was a task calling for tact and skill in the superintendent and his assistants. They proved equal to the emergency and, in a few weeks, matters were progressing smoothly as ever they had done. Eight ringleaders in the stampede, who were older and more vicious than the majority, and who had by their persistent misconduct always impaired the discipline and useful- ness of the school, it was found necessary to transfer to the State Workhouse and House of Correction.
At the May session of the legislature in 1884, an act was passed di- recting the Board of State Charities and Corrections to procure "such machinery, mechanical tools and apparatus and materials for the use of the State Reform School as in their judgment they may deem suit- able and necessary for the instruction of the inmates thereof in such of the ordinary and useful arts, crafts and trades as they may show a taste or capacity for." A special committee was appointed to consider
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this action, which recommended printing, shoc making, and carpentry, in the order named, as trades which could be made profitable to the boys and to the institution. The same committee was authorized to make the necessary arrangements for carrying into effect its recom- mendations. This was done by equipping first a small printing office at an expense of a little more than $1,400. A practical printer, who had also the qualifications of a teacher, was secured to instruct the boys, and ten were put in his care. Two of these proved but poor learners; at the end of the year, of the remaining eight the superin- tendent was able to report that six could set from six hundred to a thousand ems per hour. A newspaper called the Howard Times, printed by the boys and edited in the school, was issued fortnightly, having a paid subscription list which entitled it to be entered as sec- ond class matter at the postoffice. This subscription list soon after numbered five hundred and fifty actual mail sub- scribers. In the first year of its existence the office re- printed the first report of the Board, and the first report of the Trustees of the Providence Reform School; considerable printing besides was done in the way of blanks, etc., for the several institutions and for the office of the Board, and upon the report of the Secretary. Next year the office was earning enough to pay all its expenses, including the salary of the instructor. Some of those who had been instructed were now earning a support at the business in Providence and elsewhere. The equipment of the office was enlarged by the addition of another press and a further supply of type.
A contract covering five years from July, 1886, was entered into with the Herbert Brush Company of New York, for the employ of from fifty to one hundred boys, as the school might be able to furnish them at the rate of twenty cents each for six and one-half hours work. Other boys were employed upon the land at planting, grading, and other improvements.
It was in this year, 1886, that Mr. J. H. Eastman retired from the office of Superintendent to take another position under the Board, and Mr. F. H. Nibecker, who had been for some time in charge of Cottage No. 3, was appointed to fill the position thus vacated. During Mr. Nibecker's incumbency, at the May session of the general assembly, 1890, an appropriation of $25,000 was voted for the purpose of introducing additional branches of industrial teaching, "by constructing other chapel and hospital accommodations, so that the present main building, within which said accommodations now are, may be used more largely for workshops, and by making such changes in said main building, erecting such new buildings and providing such tools and apparatus as may be neces- sary."
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