The Lancaster Industrial School for Girls, drawn above for a newspaper article about its opening, was the first state-sanctioned reformatory for girls in the United States. It represented the start of a widespread movement in the Northeast and Midwest in which young girls and women (up to ~25 years old) were recommended by courts for rehabilitation at these single-sex institutions that were thought to be better suited for the “fairer sex.” Reformatories like Lancaster were deliberately located in the countryside due to the growing association between cities, crime, and vice. As a result, the rural was romanticized as the ideological opposite of the city: pure, clean, and restful. Removal from the city also effectively isolated youth from people they knew –oftentimes thought of as the “corrupting” forces in their lives– and making it more difficult to potentially run away.

Questions

What story does this image tell?

Who is pictured here and what do you think their relationship to the school is?

Who isn’t pictured here and why do you think?