The first women's prison run by women opens in Indiana - October 8th, 1873

On this day in 1873, in response to the horrific treatment of female inmates at unisex prisons, the state of Indiana established the country’s first prison exclusively for women.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of I
Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class,
a show that reveals a little bit more about history
every day. I'm Gay Blusier, and today we're looking at

(00:22):
the time when Quaker reformers tried to build a safer
and more rehabilitative prison for female inmates. The day was
October eight, eight seventy three. In response to the horrific

(00:44):
treatment of female inmates at unisex prisons, the state of
Indiana established the country's first prison just for women, known
as the Indiana Reformatory Institution for Women and Girls. The
facility was also operated by women, including the superintendent and
all lower ranking officers. The idea of a prison exclusively

(01:08):
for women began in the eighteen sixties when a Quaker
couple named Charles and Rhoda Coffin began a religious ministry
in prisons across the country. During their travels, the couple
was shocked by the loathsome conditions that prisoners were subjected to,
especially women. They began to speak out about what they saw,

(01:31):
and when the governor of Indiana caught wind of their reports,
he requested that the Coffins investigate the conditions at prisons
in Michigan City and Jeffersonville. Sadly, the coffins found the
female inmates at those institutions were treated just as shamefully.
Women were forced to undress in front of male guards

(01:52):
and prisoners, and sexual abuse and other forms of exploitation
were rampant. In light of the call Offen's findings, the
Indiana Legislature established a new all female prison and appointed
Sarah Smith, a former civil War nurse, as the founding superintendent.
The ten acre grounds of the prison included two departments.

(02:16):
The first was a juvenile reformatory, which housed girls under
the age of fifteen who had been found guilty of quote,
incorrigible or vicious conduct. The second department was the penal section,
which housed women and girls over the age of fifteen
who were convicted of all manner of criminal offenses. When

(02:39):
the facility opened on October eight, it received its first inmates,
seventeen women who had been transferred from the men's prison
in Jeffersonville. The first woman to be processed was a
mass murderer named Sally Hubbard, who had already served fifteen
years of her life sentence. Before being Transford. According to

(03:01):
the Indianapolis Star, Hubbard was welcomed by the superintendent with
a kiss on the forehead. She was then escorted to
a white room complete with curtains, a flowering plant, a Bible,
and a book of hymns. The newspaper went on to
say that, quote under this kindness, Sally became a new creature,

(03:24):
a trusted, devout and helpful prisoner. The more humane conditions
were certainly a welcome change from what the women had
endured at Jeffersonville, and the women's prison in Indiana soon
became a model for the country's growing prison reform movement. However,
there's more to this story than meets the eye. After

(03:47):
successfully lobbying for the all women facility, rode A Coffin
joined its first board of visitors and eventually its board
of managers. Together with Superintendent Sarah Smith, she helped develop
a program that sought to align prisoners with the gender
roles of the Victorian era. According to the prisons Annual

(04:09):
Report from eighteen seventy six, the goal was to train
inmates to quote occupy the position assigned to them by God,
namely as wives, mothers, and educators of children. To this end,
the women were assigned tasks like washing, sewing, and house

(04:31):
cleaning or prison cleaning. From a modern perspective, this approach
seems less focused on genuine reform than it was on
getting women to conform to constrictive gender roles. Still, this
new kind of prison was a market improvement over the
punishment driven facilities of old or at least that's been

(04:54):
the accepted narrative for the last century. But in recent years,
temporary inmates at that same women's prison in Indiana have
begun to question the feel good story of the institution's
benevolent founders. A few years back, a group of women
incarcerated there set out to write a history of the

(05:16):
prisons first ten years, and gradually a different picture came
into focus. They combed through hundreds of documents from that period,
including many that held up RhoD A Coffin and Sarah
Smith as paragons of virtue. Smith in particular was praised
for her patients and strong sense of right and wrong.

(05:39):
But the more digging they did, the more cracks began
to appear in that narrative. The first bombshell was the
published report of an eighteen eighty one investigation into the
mistreatment of prisoners under Sarah Smith's care, several former prison
employees testified to watching Smith assault inmates, with two claiming

(06:01):
they had seen her quote pull their hair and pound
their heads against the wall. The testimony went on to
accuse Smith of placing prisoners in solitary confinement, denying them
food and medication, and even torturing them with a practice
called dunking or water boarding. It's important to note that

(06:23):
Smith and the prison were later exonerated of these charges,
but that official ruling doesn't convince the women who rediscovered
this forgotten testimony. Having endured the systemic abuses of life
in prison firsthand, they believe the inmates, nurses, and staff
who reported this mistreatment all those years ago. It would

(06:47):
be easier and less upsetting to think that the story
of the first women's prison was one of clear cut progress,
that it was a milestone in history when correctional facilities
finally began to focus less on inflicting punishment and more
on preparing inmates for a second chance at life. But

(07:08):
with the call for prison reform still is loud and
vital today. As ever, even those outside of prison walls
should know that when something sounds too good to be true,
it probably is. I'm Gabe Louzier and hopefully you now
know a little more about history today than you did yesterday.

(07:31):
You can learn even more about history by following us
on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at t d i HC Show,
and if you have any comments or suggestions, you can
send them my way at this Day at I heart
media dot com. Thanks to Chandler Mays for producing the show,
and thank you for listening. I'll see you back here

(07:53):
again tomorrow for another day in History Class. Yeah. For
more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.