The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1926-03-09
Detention Home
Described as
Fme-Trap
Reporter Finds Conditions
Worse Than in Some
JaiIs.
BY Eldora Field

poor farmi If any Indianapolis
citizen wants to step into a scene
that might be taken from the pages
Of a Dickens novel, with unfor-
tunate children housed in a ram
shake, old-residence institution,
with broken plaster, bumpy, knarled
floors, dark rooms, with windows
flats against the brick of an ad-
Joining building, let him visit the De-
tention Home 1902 N. Capitol Ave.
County Commissioner Cassius l..
Hogle declared today that the Deten-
ton Home is a fire trap. He will
propose a new one to the county
council.
Juvenile authorities established
the Detention Home as a place
where wayward children, or those
guilty of nothing but being desert
ed by heartIess parents, might be
held until permanent disposition OF
their cases. The idea was to re-
lieve children Of the stigma Of be-
ing in jail.
Most jails are better, so far as
physical conditions are concerned.
than the Detention home.
Disgrace, Says HOgle
"That place is a disgrace" said
Hogle.
1 agree with him.
The north side of the house, only
eighteen inches fromthe high brick
wall Of the Lexington apartment
house has no one bright or livable
room init. The assembly room and
the dining room are on this side
and 1--WE have to eat every meal by
artificial light" the assistant super
intendent explained.
Outside, the sun was shining
brightly. In this dining room an
ancient two-bulb light fixture was on
at broad noon.
Gloom, Gloom, Gloom
The assembly room is as gloomy
as twenty by thirty feet of space
would be in which there is only a
single window.
But the rooms that really
clutches at your heart are the
"sitting roOms"-GOd pity the
moor unfOrtunates that have no
place else to sit-Of the boys and
girls on the second floor.
Going through hall, where the
floor has sunk perceptibly to one
side, up creaking bumpy ancient
wood stairs, the visitor reaches first
the girls sitting room. Here seven
or eight girls were sewing in a room
twelve by sixteen feet. Stained
brown paper patched broken, old
plaster. Water pipes were in plain
view. One plain kitchen table and
plain kitchen chairs were the fur
niture. Absolutely nothing Of in
terest on beauty, except some
scraggly looking valentines pinned
on the wall.
Worse Place Found
This was bad enough, but the dor
mitory was worse. Two connecting
rooms-small room with eighteen
cots very close together and a sum
total of three windows, two of them
against that inevitable brick WALL
One closet serves all the girls. The
bathroom off the girls sitting room
was without windows and was tiny.
The boys sitting room is the most
pitiful of all, for here the boys have
made an attempt at decoration. Two
horses heads cut from magazines, a
pencilled drawing of an automobile
and magazine cut Of President
Coolidge adorn the walls. In another
boys room, there is an attempt at
a dado decoration and black and
white pictures from newspaper sup
plement, go clear around the room.
mo, people wouldn't believe that
things were this poor and made
quate," remarked Miss Susanna
Pray, the superintendent. The
laundry, manned by six girls this
week, has two shallow basement
windows. There is no drying room
and 1--WE have to hang clothes around
over the registers upstairs this cold
weather." the superintendent said.