St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1889-11-11


cell 4x7 feet and constantly asSOciating
with people who are worse than herself,
she is given comfortable room and her
associates are those whom she soon
learns to regard as friends. When she
has spent her time among such people
she seldom has any desire to return to
her old ways. When she leaves the
House of the Good Shepherd the same
kind of people who have been her
friends i'm the houses stand ever ready
to lend her helping hand, and in most
cases the object aimed at is accom-
pliShed.
The Minneapolis workouse is perhaps
model Institution of its kind. Supt.
West, Deputy Whalen and Matron Tay-
lOr deserve great credit for bringing it
up to its present high standard of eX-
cellence; but that it is no place for girls
who might be made better if subj cted
TO the proper influences, everybody adj
mitS.
II have two girls now under my
CHARGE" said Mrs. Taylor yesterday,
"who certainly should not be allowed TO
associate with the other inmates; but it
is simply impossible. with the facilities
at hand, to keep them separated. If the
judges were only allowed 10 send them
to the House of the Good Shepherd in
stead of here something might be done
to reform them"
There is one thing that is certain"
said Judge Emery, when his attention
was called to the matter; ''the work
house as a reformatOry for women is
not success. Some of the women who
have been sent 10 that institution and
who. after their release. have been ar
rested again for drunkenness, have told
the officers that they have no objection
to going back to the workhOuse. For
them the place is a refOrmatOry only in
name and not in fact. Since the system
of doubling the penalty when the
OtfenSe is repeated has been in practice
in the municipal court many
of the old habitues have disap-
peared. They have not reformed.
however. They do not like the long
sentence they know they will get when
brought before the court, and most of
them have gone to other cities. The
sisters who have charge of the House of
the Good Shepherd are dong noble
work. and if there is any spot in
woman's heart that can be reached they
will reach it. They labor with every
girl or woman who enters the home
and appeal to her better nature, and
some of the hardest cases known to the
police have come out of those inStitu-
tons with their minds fully made up to
lead a better life. and seldom it is that
one of them, after leaving that institu-
ton. returns to her old companions and
her old ways.
"At the present time the court has no
authority TO commit prisoner to that
Institution. The young maiden who
has made her first mistake must be sent
to the wOrkhouse in company with the
hardened. rum-besoaked wretch who
long ago lost all semblance of woman
hood, and whose only thought is to ca
ter to her unhOly passion for strong
drink. Thrown into this kind of soci
ETY., with but little influence surround
ing her that IS good, what is to he ex-
pected of the novice in crime? Is it ally
wonder that she continues in the path
she has chosen and appears in the Grim
inal court a few weeks after her dis
charge again prisoner? What chance
has such woman to reform? When the
court offers one of these women the priv
ilege of serving out her sentence in the
House of the Good Shepherds nine times
out of ten it is refused. What is needed
is an ordinance of the council making
the House of the Good Shepherd a re-
formatory and allowing the judges of
the municipal court to use their dis
erection in sending women to that place.
There they would have chance to re-
form far superior 10 any opportunity
afforded by the workhouse. 1t must he
borne in mind that the law is aimed,
first, at the prevention of crime, and the
punishment for the violation is only a
secondary matter intended to prevent
the act which is defined as unlawful. If
these women can be made respectable
the community in which they live will
be much better Off than it would in al
lowing them to keep on in their evil
ways and to spend their lives in the
br0thels, dram shops and the work.
house."