The Incorrigibles by Ry Marcattilio-McCracken

Author:Ry Marcattilio-McCracken [Marcattilio-McCracken, Ry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS036090 HISTORY / United States / State & Local / Midwest (IA, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MO, ND, NE, OH, SD, WI), SOC028000 SOCIAL SCIENCE / Women's Studies
Publisher: Nebraska

Despite what one might hope, this was not a new development. A Washburn University student survey more than a decade earlier noted the solitary confinement room’s presence and its regular use. Girls sent there were given only “a small stool . . . on which she may sit when standing becomes monotonous. Bread and water are the only articles of diet.”72 And five years after the PWTC report, in coverage of the sterilization scandal, newspapers relayed that “dungeon punishment” was still in use, including on one girl who had tuberculosis.73

Other sources confirm these and other mechanisms of control. J. W. Howe, a former employee of the GIS who went on to become chairman of the Lyon County Democratic Central Committee, wrote McCarthy at the end October to tell her that he “was steward there for about 18 months and my observation was that she [Coyner] along with Mrs Clarke the matron, seem to have but one idea, that was to find some new methods of punishment.”74 A second letter, perhaps in response to an inquiry by McCarthy, listed the results of that creative pursuit: “One girl was whipped with a radiator brush until the skin was broken and bleeding. Castor oil was given in cupfuls as punishment and after giving it they were made to get down on their knees and scrub. . . . One girl had fingernails filed to the quick as punishment. . . . Two or three girls committed suicide while I was there, and three or four others attempted to end their lives. The conduct of the school was beyond any idea of cruelty that I had ever heard.”75

Even the credit system by which residents reached eligibility for parole provided a method of control: “Each day with good behavior she earns three merits, and in a month she earns a credit. Twenty-four credits are required for parole but since extra credits are given for good behavior for three months she may earn her twenty-four credits in less than two years.”76

How, exactly, did this system work? The month of February 1935 provides a window into the merit system employed at the GIS in close proximity to the sterilization episode. It also reveals the confusing and inscrutable nature of the pathway by which the girls were supposed to have earned their parole via institutionally approved reform and control. Cottage 2, which anywhere from eleven to fourteen girls called home at a given time, operated under the watchful eye of house mother Mrs. Carbutt, who supervised the girls each day, controlled their schedules, and meted out punishment while rewarding positive behavior. More than anyone, the house mothers of the school’s five cottages were responsible for molding the girls from incorrigible children to responsible and productive adults. Unfortunately for those living in Cottage 2 that winter, during the course of the month Carbutt recorded just seven nonconsecutive days during which there were no infractions by any of the girls. The rest of the month she recorded a deluge of misbehaviors and their consequences.

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