the penal institutions always report that "The accounts of the reformatory are kept so accurately that its financial status can always be understood at a glance."
This institution has two distinct departments, the penal and the reformatory, occupying two sides of one main building and joined under one management. Convicts above sixteen years of age are ranked as women and confined in the penal department; those under sixteen years are accounted girls (children) and lodged in the reformatory department.
The average number of girls in the institution from its opening has been 150; the number of women 45. There are now (July, 1885,) over 200 inmates.
All of the work of the institution is done by its inmates. A school is maintained in the building for the children; a few trades are taught the girls; all are taught housework, laundry work, plain sewing and mending; the greatest pains is taken to form in the inmates habits of industry and personal tidiness, and to prepare them to be good servants; and when their period of incarceration has expired, the ladies interest themselves in finding homes and employment for the discharged convicts whom they seek to restore to normal relations to society. The secretary estimates that of those who have been discharged from the institution during the last twelve years, fully seventy-five per cent. have been really restored and are leading honest and industrious lives.
[D.]
Gov. Porter's Biennial Message, 1883: "I recommend that in the department for women in this hospital it shall be required by law that at least one of the physicians shall be a woman. There are now in this State not a few women who bear diplomas from respectable medical colleges, and who are qualified by professional attainments and experience to fill places as physicians in public institutions with credit and usefulness, It would be peculiarly fit that their services should be sought in cases of insanity among members of their own sex."
[E.]
About the year 1867, Miss Lucinda B, Jenkins, formerly of Wayne county, Indiana, left her work among the "Freedmen" in the South, to accept the position of matron in "The Soldiers' Orphans' Home" at Knightstown, Indiana. She afterwards became the wife of Dr. Wishard, the superintendent; and when the office was vacated by his death, she was authorized to assume his responsibilities, and perform his duties, with the exception of receipting bills and drawing appropriations, which latter duties, not being then considered as within the province of a woman, were delegated to the steward until the doctor's successor could be legally appointed.
She was a lady of intelligence and true moral worth, possessing a dignified, pleasing manner, and other good qualities, which, with her long experience as co-manager of the institution, admirably fitted her for the position of superintendent; but she was a woman, without a vote or political influence, and it was necessary that "party debts" should be paid. She therefore continued her influence for the good of the institution without public recognition until 1882, when she left to take charge of a private orphan asylum under the management of ladies of Indianapolis.
[F]
