Ohio History Journal

MARIAN J. MORTON

"Go and Sin No More": Maternity

Homes in Cleveland, 1869-1936

In 1869 the Woman's Christian Association of Cleveland founded

the Retreat, the first of the city's maternity homes and refuges for

women who had "lost the glory of their womanhood."¹ Its founders

sought to emulate Christ's injunction to Mary Magdalen: "Woman,

sin no more; thy faith hath saved thee."² As its name suggests, the

Retreat was a shelter, a refuge, in which the fallen woman, both vic-

tim and sinner, could be saved and reclaimed through evangelical re-

ligion, the ministrations of pious women, and the learning of domestic

skills and virtues. In 1936 the Retreat closed, victim of the hard times

of the Depression, the rising costs of medical care, and lessened de-

mand for the kind of services it provided.

In the intervening years, five more facilities for unwed mothers,

similar to the Retreat in their initial goals and strategies, opened in

Cleveland: St. Ann's Maternity Home and Infant Asylum in 1873; the

Salvation Army Rescue Home in 1892; the Maternity Home in 1892;

the Florence Crittenton Home in 1912, and another Salvation Army

facility, the Mary B. Talbert Home, in 1925. All these institutions un-

derwent significant changes in the years 1869 to 1936. All joined the

Cleveland Federation for Charity and Philanthropy, becoming part

of a network of secular social welfare agencies and conforming to the

standards imposed by the Federation and by Ohio laws regulating

maternity homes and hospitals. Fees and admission policies were

standardized; their staffs became more professional. All officially

adopted the current explanations for unwed motherhood which at-

Marian J. Morton is Professor of History at John Carroll University. This article was

written, in part, with aid from a National Endowment for the Humanities summer

stipend.

1. Woman's Christian Association, Annual Report 1870, 15, MS 3516, Western Re-

serve Historical Society. Hereinafter this collection will be referred to as YWCA Cleve-

land, since the collection is titled after the group's later name.

2. Mary Ingham, Women of Cleveland and Their Work: Philanthropic, Educational,

Literary, Medical and Artistic (Cleveland, 1893), 151.

118                                                         OHIO HISTORY

tributed it to unwholesome environment or mental deficiency; all

gradually shifted much of their attention from the unwed mother to

her illegitimate child. Three homes became hospitals, specializing in

obstetrical care.

In short, maternity homes reflected the secularization and profes-

sionalization of benevolence and reform during the first decades of

this century. However, despite the shift from mission to medical fa-

cility, from pious volunteer to trained social worker, the homes re-

tained much of the emphasis on reformation which marked their

religious origins. Their objectives and tactics remained remarkably

constant through the 1930s: to rescue and save their erring inmates

by sheltering them from the vicious world, to reclaim them for and

by the morality of middle-class womanhood.³

The Retreat

The Retreat was a product of the evangelical benevolence of post-

Civil War Protestantism and remained true to this heritage through-

out its lifetime.⁴ The Woman's Christian Associations in Cleveland

and elsewhere were formed as adjuncts to the Young Men's Christian

3. On the professionalization and secularization of benevolence and reform, see

Robert H. Bremner, From the Depths: The Discovery of Poverty in the United States

(New York, 1956); Roy Lubove, The Professional Altruist: The Emergence of Social

Work as a Career, 1880-1930 (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), and for a discussion of those

trends in Cleveland, Clara Kaiser, "Organized Social Work in Cleveland, Its History

and Setting" (Ph.D. dissertation, The Ohio State University, 1936). On the impact

of Federations of Charity and Philanthropy, see Judith Ann Trolander, Settlements

Houses and the Great Depression (Detroit, 1975), which discusses Cleveland specifi-

cally. David J. Rothman in Conscience and Convenience: The Asylum and Its Alterna-

tives in Progressive America (Boston, Toronto, 1980) describes attempts at institutional

flexibility during the Progressive period, which I do not find in the maternity homes,

but concedes that the Progressives never abandoned their moralistic approach to re-

form, 5-6, 52-53. Katherine G. Aiken, "The National Florence Crittenton Mission,

1883-1925: A Case Study in Progressive Reform" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of

Washington, 1980) also finds greater change in the homes than I do. The penal institu-

tions described in Estelle B. Freedman, Their Sisters' Keepers: Women's Prison Re-

form in America, 1830-1930 (Ann Arbor, 1981), sadly-and surely unintentionally-

most closely resemble Cleveland's maternity homes during the period, 1869-1936;

these prisons, for example, encouraged inmates to keep their children in order to de-

velop their own maternal instincts and stressed moral, religious and domestic training,

89-96.

4. The founders of Cleveland's Retreat resemble the "benevolent ladies" of Chi-

cago in their interests and activities, as in Kathleen D. McCarthy, Noblesse Oblige:

Charity and Cultural Philanthropy in Chicago, 1849-1929 (Chicago and London, 1982).

On nineteenth century refuges, see Steven L. Schlossman, Love and the American De-

linquent: The Theory and Practice of "Progressive" Juvenile Justice, 1825-1920 (Chica-

go, 1977), 34-41.

"Go and Sin No More"                                        119

Associations. (The Cleveland WCA became the YWCA in 1893.) In

Cleveland, for example, the founding of the WCA was inspired by a

visiting YMCA speaker who urged those women present to do "prac-

tical work."⁵ The YMCA's promoted preaching and tract distribu-

tion but also built residential institutions for young men in the city,

attempting there and with uplifting classes to reach and teach up-

wardly mobile white-collar workers the values of middle-class

Protestantism.⁶

The WCA shared this interest in missionary work combined with

institution-building. The Retreat was, in fact, the second institution

built by the Cleveland WCA, the first being a home for young work-

ing women. The WCA's goals were broad and all-encompassing:

"The spiritual, moral, mental, social and physical welfare of the

women in our midst.^"7 Of particular concern were "young women

who are dependent on their own exertions for support,"⁸ who had

come to the city during the Civil War in search of job opportunities

created by the War and by the city's burgeoning economy. The

WCA founders were pillars of their several Protestant churches, and

their first annual meeting in 1869 drew 600 interested Cleveland wom-

en. This group would remain in the forefront of the city's female be-

nevolent and reform activities through the 1930s.

The rationale for the Retreat stated clearly its founders' percep-

tions of their less fortunate sisters' moral and physical frailty: "In the

bustle and activity of the age, the women are following hard after the

men. Not satisfied with their quiet country homes, many of them

press their way to the cities. What should be done to care for these

women? Be they never so pure, they are liable to fall into disgrace

and sin, and they must be tenderly watched over and cared for."⁹

Mary Ingham, participant in and historian of many women's activities

in Cleveland, described the Retreat as a "mission with the Scarlet

Letter,"¹⁰ revealing both the religious purpose and the Victorian

sexual morality which would characterize the home. The Retreat's

first nine inmates were described as "well-behaved, industrious,

5. Mildred Esgar, "Women Involved in the Real World: A History of the Young

Women's Christian Association of Cleveland, Ohio, 1868-1968," unpublished type-

script at the Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio, 35.

6. Charles H. Hopkins, A History of the YMCA in North America (New York, 1951),

192.

7. Esgar, "Women Involved," 41.

8. Ibid., 42.

9. YWCA, Cleveland, newspaper clipping, 1869, in scrapbook, Container 11.

10. Ingham, Women of Cleveland, 151.

120                                              OHIO HISTORY

and thankful for protection and sympathy. They are being taught to

sew, to sing, and we trust, to pray."11

Despite its religiosity, however, the YWCA was never willing to

leave the fate of its clients solely to God's will, nor to blame a wom-

an's loss of virtue solely upon her moral weakness; hence, the persis-

tent concern with training women to earn their own livings so that

they would not be seduced for money into prostitution or sexual mis-

conduct. Given the limited options in this period for women, espe-

cially working-class women, the YWCA's emphasis on domestic serv-

ice and skills such as sewing and millinery made sense. The

significance of the Retreat for the community is indicated by the do-

nation to it of $400 from the Cleveland city council although most of

its funding and donations always came from private sources.¹²

The Retreat at first sheltered not only unwed mothers but women

suspected or guilty of sexual misbehavior. Their conversion was to

be achieved through Bible classes, daily prayers, and the "Chris-

tian" atmosphere of the home. For example, in 1873, according to a

newspaper description of the new facility, its walls were hung with

"embroidered mottos: 'Through Christ we hope,' 'God is our refuge

and our strength,' 'Christ for all, all for Christ.' "13 Retreat founders,

however, did not claim to work miracles, noting sadly in 1872 that

some of the inmates had "returned to their former lives of sin, and

that is the experience of every institution, but a larger proportion than

heretofore have been saved."¹⁴

Retreat managers kept careful track of their clientele. The 1882 fig-

ures, for example, show that 99 girls were admitted during the year;

of these, 21 were "returned to friends"; 24 were "furnished with sit-

uations" (domestic service jobs); three were dismissed for bad con-

duct; one was sent to school; two were married. Of the 54 babies

born, 27 were adopted, nine were taken away with their mothers,

four died, and the remainder were still sheltered at the home.¹⁵

These numbers indicate a rapid turnover and a short stay for the girls

as well as the institution's role as an adoption agency, for at this time

there were few other child- or women-caring facilities in the city.

This situation would change dramatically in the next twenty years.

As late as 1891, however, the Retreat felt not only alone but embat-

tled in its mission to save fallen women; their annual report com-

11. YWCA, Cleveland, Annual Report, 1870, 15, Container 8.

12. Ibid., 17

13. Ibid., newspaper clipping, no date, in scrapbook, Container 11.

14. Ibid., Annual Report, 1872, 3, Container 8.

15. Ibid., "Minutes," November 7, 1882, Container 1.

"Go and Sin No More"                                      121

plained that philanthropists gave to other institutions but not to the

Retreat: "Frequently we are asked, 'Do you not feel that you are en-

couraging vice while harboring, sheltering, and protecting these

girls?' We are simply giving them a chance to do better .... What

shall we believe but that the Father mercifully pardons all our iniqui-

ties, transgressions, and sins?"16

By 1900 the Retreat described itself no longer as a mission or a ref-

uge, but as a "reformatory home for girls who are in absolute need of

shelter and friends."¹⁷ Applicants were required to stay six months,

which would become standard policy for all maternity homes. Refor-

mation presumably took longer than simple conversion although the

Retreat's strategies were similar for both. "We try to make our Home

the 'House Beautiful' of which we read in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Prog-

ress, a haven between the Hill of Difficulty and the Valley of Tempta-

tion. When the girls leave the home, they are better armed for life's

difficulties than when they came to us, having been taught, advised,

and shown the pathway to right living."¹⁸

The lessened overt religiosity may have been due to the establish-

ment of three competing maternity homes and other hospital facilities

for unwed mothers by the turn of the century. Equally significant,

the Retreat, like these other institutions, sought the approval of the

Committee on Benevolent Associations of the Cleveland Chamber of

Commerce. The Committee's approval guaranteed an institution's re-

spectability and access to funding. This Committee also set up the

Federation for Charity and Philanthropy in 1913, which raised and

distributed funds for those of the myriad of Cleveland charities

which met the Federation's standards. For example, Federation

members were required to raise funds from Clevelanders without re-

gard for "religious, denominational, or other special affiliation."¹⁹

The Federation (which became the Welfare Federation in 1917) in

turn formed the Conference on Illegitimacy, which the maternity

homes joined and which had counterparts in several other cities; its

purpose was to establish uniform and sound policies for the care of

unwed mothers and their children. The trend toward uniformity was

spurred also by the 1908 passage of an Ohio law regulating maternity

homes and hospitals.

16. Ibid., Annual Report, 1891, 19, Container 8.

17. Ibid., Annual Report, 1900, 87.

18. Ibid., Annual Report, 1909, 11, Container 9.

19. Cleveland Federation for Charity and Philanthropy, The Social Year Book: The

Human Problems and Resources of Cleveland (Cleveland, 1913), 26.

122                                              OHIO HISTORY

These pressures for conformity were illustrated in 1916 when the

Retreat's managers asked a panel to make recommendations for the

home, presumably at the urging of the Conference on Illegitimacy.

The panel commended the institution's "cleanliness, home-like life,

and efficient management," as well as its excellent infant mortality

record. However, if the home wished to ensure being licensed, the

panel suggested that the girls be required to undergo a Wasserman

test for venereal disease and that the home employ a social case

worker to investigate "the stories of the girls and their life after leav-

ing the place.^"20 The managers quickly took steps to implement these

suggestions. In addition, reflecting the prevalent view that "mentality

and morality were closely connected," they planned to administer

mental tests as well. The Federation agreed to help finance these ad-

ditional expenses.21

The Federation's Social Yearbook, published in in 1913, indicated

the Retreat's growing specialization in medical and child-care, two

further concerns of the Conference on Illegitimacy: The Retreat's pur-

pose was to provide "medical and surgical treatment of the unmar-

ried mother," and to help her to "make the best possible plan for

the future of the innocent babe, whether that be a life with the

mother, or in an adopted home deemed worthy after careful investi-

gation." Yet the reformatory goal remained, for the Retreat was also

to "bring [the unwed mother] to a right view of life and a proper self-

respect, to start her in some honorable way of self-support."²²

In 1921 the Retreat, after building a new facility, was incorporated

separately from the Cleveland YWCA, in keeping with the YWCA

policy of encouraging its institutions to become completely independ-

ent. The Retreat remained active in the Conference on Illegitimacy

and worked with other social welfare agencies such as the Cleveland

Humane Society, which was primarily a child-placing agency, and

did the case work for the maternity homes. The Retreat's regimen

broadened by the mid-1920s to include some recreation and outdoor

games and classes by a visiting public school teacher; there was still

instruction in house-keeping and child-care. Like the other homes,

the Retreat still insisted that a woman stay in the home with her

child for six months, partly because this was felt to be healthier for

the child since the mother could nurse it, but also because the care

of the child would aid in the reformation of the mother: "this love

20. YWCA, Cleveland, Board of Trustees Minutes, April 18, 1916, Container 2.

21. Ibid., October 17, 1916.

22. Cleveland Federation for Charity and Philanthropy, The Social Yearbook, 61.

"Go and Sin No More"                                            123

for her child is a big element in character-building-working for her

child gives the mother an aim in life which makes her stronger."²³

This belief in the redemptive quality of mothering was shared by the

other maternity homes.

The Retreat's policies changed little in the 1930s. Although "sec-

ond offenders" were no longer turned away, Retreat managers ex-

plained that this was because such girls could especially benefit from

the "care and training" which the home provided. Mental and psy-

chiatric tests were required during the six-month stay. The home

did not offer much vocational training since most inmates had not fin-

ished grade school, but "all [were] taught to sew.... During their

stay they [were] taught to darn, repair, and make their own baby's

clothes [and] their own hats. We feel that a girl gains much in self-

respect by being neatly dressed, and that self-respect is a great step

in reformation."²⁴

The Retreat had fewer and fewer inmates during the early 1930s.25

In February, 1936, the Retreat's representative to the Council on Ille-

gitimacy pled for additional financial assistance, reaffirming the ne-

cessity of maternity homes where a girl "would receive good care,

discipline, and training."²⁶ Three months later the Retreat closed its

doors forever.

St. Ann's Maternity Home and Infant Asylum

There are two versions of the first patient at St. Ann's Maternity

Home and Infant Asylum; one describes her as a "good respectable

widow," the other, perhaps more accurately, simply as "an unwed

mother."²⁷ Whatever the precipitating event or person, the more

general explanation for the founding in 1873 of the maternity home

which became St. Ann's Hospital was the growth of Cleveland's

Catholic population and the penchant for institution-building of the

city's first Catholic bishop, Amadeus Rappe. St. Ann's remained a

23. Federation for Community Planning, Cleveland, Ohio (hereinafter referred to as

FCP), MS 3788, Western Reserve Historical Society, Conference on Illegitimacy, De-

cember 14, 1925, Container 30, Folder 739.

24. Ibid., December 8, 1930, Container 30, Folder 720.

25. Ibid., Children's Council, Committee on Unmarried Mothers, August 14, 1936,

Container 33, Folder 829.

26. Ibid., February 5, 1936.

27. Sister Stanislaus Clifford, "History," unpublished typescript in Archives of the

Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine, Mt. Augustine Convent, Richfield, Ohio (hereinaf-

ter referred to as Mt. Augustine); "Important Events, St. Ann's Hospital," unpub-

lished typescript, Mt. Augustine. Both sources undated and unpaged.

124                                               OHIO HISTORY

Catholic service institution, administered and controlled by religious

personnel and Catholic doctrine during its century-long lifetime.

It was at Rappe's instigation that the first four Sisters of Charity of

St. Augustine were persuaded to come to the wilderness outpost of

Cleveland in 1851 from their native France, where they had estab-

lished a tradition of nursing and medical service. The small band of

nuns quickly established Cleveland's first public hospital and an or-

phanage for boys. This hospital was short-lived, but in 1865 in the

wake of the Civil War, the Order founded St. Vincent Charity Hospi-

tal, still a major medical facility.²⁸

The War had spurred the growth of Cleveland's commerce and in-

dustry, and the city's population doubled between 1860 and 1870.29

Many of these newcomers were Catholic, straining the capacities of

the existing Catholic welfare institutions. Cleveland's new bishop,

Richard Gilmour, saw the need for new facilities, including St. Ann's.

Gilmour was initially reluctant to endorse a home for unwed mothers,

feeling that this would suggest an endorsement of unwed mother-

hood,³⁰ but the city's long-standing rivalry between Catholics and

Protestants helped change his mind. According to one account, a

Catholic woman had been admitted to the Retreat in 1872 and fallen

victim to its vigorous proselytising. As she lay dying, a Catholic

priest, accompanied by her father, sought admission in order to ad-

minister the last sacraments. However, "both were denied admission

and were told at the door that 'the girl had confessed her sins to Je-

sus!'"31 Gilmour's response was to encourage the building of St.

Ann's behind Charity Hospital.

A Catholic maternity home could also be justified by the

Church's opposition to birth control and abortion, options more

available to non-Catholic women. Accordingly, St. Ann's was also a

foundling home and orphanage, which housed not only illegitimate

but abandoned and neglected children; child-care would always be

an important part of the work of the Sisters. From its founding to

1899, St. Ann's cared for 4000 children, either born or placed

there.³²

28. Donald P. Gavin, In All Things Charity: A History of the Sisters of Charity of St.

Augustine, Cleveland, Ohio, 1851-1954 (Milwaukee, 1955), 3-20.

29. William Ganson Rose, Cleveland, The Making of a City (Cleveland and New

York, 1950), 361.

30. Gavin, In All Things, 52.

31. Michael J. Hynes, History of the Diocese of Cleveland: Origin and Growth (Cleve-

land, 1953), 168.

32. Gavin, In All Things, 71.

126                                                OHIO HISTORY

saves many a poor victim from the scorn of a pitiless world and keeps

the escutcheon of family honor untarnished."³⁵

St. Ann's, however, was also a medical facility. In 1899 a school of

nursing was established with a specialty in obstetric nursing.³⁶ Al-

though closely connected with St. Vincent Charity Hospital, St.

Ann's also developed links with the Western Reserve University

Medical School by the early 1900s; students from Western Reserve

were permitted to observe confinements, and the hospital by-laws

stipulated that the resident physician had to be a graduate of the

Medical School.³⁷

St. Ann's had always taken a few married patients, and this num-

ber grew as Cleveland's Catholic population increased and as it be-

came more acceptable to give birth in a hospital. Since many of these

married patients could pay, the hospital encouraged their patronage,

but separated them from the unwed mothers: "There is no inter-

course except going back and forth through the yard." Neither did

the married women apparently need the spiritual direction still of-

fered to their unmarried counterparts, who once a month were urged

to go to confession and communion and every evening went to chapel.

Some even joined the Sisters of the Good Shepherd. Non-Catholics

were not required to attend religious services, but there were proba-

bly few of these women.³⁸ In 1918 a separate building, Loretta Hall,

was built for the unwed mothers, ensuring that the married women

would not come into contact with less virtuous womanhood.

Like the Retreat, St. Ann's joined the Federation of Charity and

Philanthropy and the Conference on Illegitimacy, which created

again the pressure to meet the Federation's standards for child-and

maternal-care. St. Ann's also joined Cleveland Catholic Charities

and sent representatives to the National Conference of Catholic Char-

ities established in 1910. In many respects, the Catholic Conference

adhered to secular social work standards, emphasizing the desira-

bility of keeping mother and child together for six months rather

than placing the child up for adoption.³⁹ On the other hand, the

35. George F. Houck, A History of Catholicity in Northern Ohio and in the Diocese of

Cleveland, Vol. 1 (Cleveland, 1903), 739-40.

36. Gavin, In All Things, 75.

37. "By-Laws Governing the Visiting Staff of St. Ann's Infant Asylum and Maternity

Home," undated, in the Archives of the Catholic Diocese, Cleveland, Ohio (herein-

after referred to as Diocesan Archives).

38. "Official Visitation of St. Ann's Infant Asylum and Maternity Hospital, October

26, 1910," in Diocesan Archives.

39. Proceedings of the National Conference on Catholic Charities (Washington,

D.C., 1910), 303.

"Go and Sin No More"                                         127

Catholic Church's stand on some issues influenced its thinking on

maternity home policy. The Church, like the Conference on Illegiti-

macy, supported the rights of the illegitimate child to financial sup-

port from the father and at the same time emphasized that it was

strongly opposed to pre-marital or extra-marital sex and to the use of

contraceptives and abortion.⁴⁰

Throughout the 1920s the medical focus of the hospital sharp-

ened, particularly on its pediatric care. St. Ann's specialized in the

care of premature infants, priding itself on the special diet developed

by the chief of pediatrics.⁴¹ In 1926 Bishop Joseph Schrembs deed-

ed the hospital property to the Sisters, who incorporated it separate-

ly from the diocese. The articles of incorporation made clear the

medical orientation: "Said corporation is formed for the purpose of

establishing, maintaining and conducting a hospital for medical and

surgical treatments of persons, conducting a training school for nurses

and granting diplomas to nurses graduated therefrom; engaging in re-

search work in medicine, surgery, and kindred subjects..., main-

taining a public dispensary and other departments for social serv-

ice." 42

The "Golden Jubilee Bulletin," celebrating the hospital's fiftieth

anniversary, also noted that "To the unmarried mother, who many

times spends from six to eight months in the institution before her

delivery, splendid prenatal care is given.... From the time of her

entrance she is under very careful medical supervision."⁴³ The intent

to reform and save, however, is evident in the long confinement prior

to the woman's delivery, especially since it was still considered desir-

able that she remain in the hospital for six months after her delivery

as well.

The religious thrust of the Catholic maternity homes in general and

St. Ann's in specific survived into the 1930s. A paper delivered be-

fore the National Conference of Catholic Charities in 1931 spoke of

the objectives of the care of unmarried mothers: "first, to safeguard

the faith and ensure the spiritual welfare of both mother and child;

secondly, to effect a social adjustment which will as nearly as possi-

ble restore normal conditions."⁴⁴ In the same year, the director of a

40. Ibid., 1918, 166-68.

41. Ibid., 1925, 122; "Important Events," n.p.

42. Letter to Reverend Mother M. Clementine from George F. Quinn, January 8,

1953, in Diocesan Archives.

43. "Golden Jubilee Bulletin, St. Ann's Infant Asylum and Hospital," 1923, n.p., at

Mt. Augustine.

44. Proceedings, 1931, 109.

"Go and Sin No More"                                         129

criptive of reality, other evidence also indicated the lingering

strength of this desire to rescue the fallen. The 1935 Report of the Di-

vision of Children of the Ohio Department of Public Welfare de-

scribed St. Ann's large medical staff, its case workers and resident

psychiatrist and an "institutional and impersonal atmosphere," sug-

gesting that the hospital had modernized its approach to its clien-

tele.⁴⁷

On the other hand, the Report advised that the term "asylum" no

longer be used to describe Loretta House. Further, the Report re-

vealed how important religion still was. For the overwhelmingly

Catholic inmates, the hospital provided "Sunday mass, religious in-

struction, as well as efforts to build up the religious life at home." Re-

ligion was "stressed as a means of helping the girls face their future

problems," and their "spiritual adjustment" was guided by the

chaplain and the Sisters, as well as by social workers.⁴⁸ Only the so-

cial worker would have been an unfamiliar face in 1873.

The Salvation Army Rescue Home

The Salvation Army opened its first maternity home in the United

States in New York City in 1886, advertising it as "The Rescue Home

for the fallen and falling . . . for young women who desire and are

earnestly seeking the salvation of their bodies and souls."⁴⁹ This

same philosophy guided the Army's Cleveland Rescue Home

opened in 1892. Although this home became Booth Memorial Hospi-

tal, a medical facility specializing in obstetrics, it retained through

the 1930s the original goal of reformation and conversion of its fallen

women.

The Salvation Army, founded in 1878 in England by William

Booth, was an effort to solve through religion the human problems

created by rapid urbanization. Its analysis of those problems was in-

dividual and moral rather than political or social; its solution was the

salvation of the urban dweller through conversion and "practical

holiness."⁵⁰ Like the YMCA which it resembled in its evangelical

thrust, the Army built institutions for the unfortunate. Unlike the

47. Report filed for Child Caring Agencies and Institutions by the Division on Chil-

dren, Department of Public Welfare, State of Ohio, 1935, in Diocesan Archives, 2-7.

48. Ibid., 2, 38-42.

49. Herbert A. Wisbey, Jr., Soldiers Without Swords: A History of the Salvation

Army in the United States (New York, 1955), 100.

50. Edward H. McKinley, Marching to Glory: The History of the Salvation Army in

the United States (New York, 1980), 58-59, 34.

130                                              OHIO HISTORY

YMCA, however, whose intended clientele tended to be middle-

class and "worthy" of benevolence, the Army wished to cast a wide

net, working "for the spiritual, moral and physical reformation of the

working classes; for the reclamation of the vicious, criminal, disso-

lute, and degraded; for visitation among the poor and the sick; for

the preaching of the Gospel and the dissemination of Christian truth

by means of open-air and indoor meetings.' "51

The Army's sense of fellowship, fostered by its striking uniforms

and a shared life of austere missionizing, appealed particularly to

newcomers to cities, cast adrift from family and community.⁵² Cleve-

land was a city of such newcomers in 1889 when the Army estab-

lished headquarters there. Cleveland's population increased forty

percent from 1880 to 1890; more than a third of this population was

foreign-born.⁵³ With this growth came ever more visible poverty;

Clevelanders responded with the establishment of the Charity Or-

ganization Society in 1881 and Associated Charities in 1884 for the

more efficient distribution of outdoor relief. The Army's response

was a relief department, shelters for homeless men, a fresh air camp

for children, and the Rescue Home of 1892.

According to the Home's founder, Colonel Mary Stillwell, its be-

ginnings were almost accidental. She and her husband, with their

three children, had been assigned to gospel work in Cleveland, and

at a meeting in 1892 at which the scheduled speaker did not appear

and the Army band had played long enough, Stillwell made an im-

promptu and impassioned request for funds to house the four home-

less women she had already taken under her wing. Like Army offi-

cials elsewhere, she was able to enlist the support of influential

members of the community, and within a few weeks the Rescue

Home was underway.⁵⁴ The Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote approving-

ly of its officers and their work: "Night after night the devoted wom-

en of the rescue home walk the streets of the 'red light' district

seeking to save their lost 'sisters.' Through the vilest slums they pass

unharmed, at any hour of the night. Their lives seem to be charmed,

as no one, not even the most vicious, has ever offered to do them

harm. They say they believe that 'God has given his angels charge

concerning them.' "⁵⁵ At its outset, then, the Home, like other Army

51. Ibid., 83.

52. Ibid., 47.

53. Rose, Cleveland, 427.

54. Colonel Mary Stillwell, "The Origin of Booth Memorial Home and Hospital in

Cleveland, Ohio," unpublished typescript, unpaged.

55. Cleveland Plain Dealer, clipping, no date, unpaged.

"Go and Sin No More"                                         131

institutions, sheltered all comers. This and the other rescue homes

"were not related primarily to health care or to unmarried mothers.

The doors were opened to the drug addict, the homeless, the prosti-

tute, and those referred by the courts."⁵⁶

The Rescue Home's first annual report displayed its primarily evan-

gelical purpose, as well as the conventional justification for its work:

"Hitherto it has been quite in order to work for the rescue of fallen

men, and redeemed manhood has been welcomed into society again

as though he had never been a drunkard or a debauchee. But very

little effort has been made to save fallen women, because of the pre-

vailing idea that women seldom if ever can be reclaimed, and if she is

lifted up, she cannot be trusted, etc., etc." The report boasted of

women the home had successfully rescued-a drunkard, a college

student, an opium addict-and asked rhetorically, " . . . what minis-

ter or missionary is there who would not be proud to say they could

lay their hands on as many truly converted souls as our Rescue offi-

cers can show?"⁵⁷ In 1904 Rescue administrators claimed that 90

percent of its 2294 inmates that year had been "reclaimed."⁵⁸ As in

the YWCA's Retreat, the women were taught sewing and other do-

mestic skills so that they could earn an honest living, usually in do-

mestic service, after their dismissal. A photograph from the Army's

national report of 1900 shows a "group of girls at work" in the Cleve-

land home, gathered around a table piled high with unfinished gar-

ments.⁵⁹

Gradually the rescue homes began to specialize in the care of

unwed mothers, which brought with it an emphasis on medical care

and facilities.⁶⁰ In Cleveland, for example, the first home became

cramped, and in 1906 a new home was built on Kinsman Street,

which accomodated 50 women. This facility included a Maternity

Department, "planned and furnished with every facility for taking

the very best care of our patients," as well as a nursery so that

mother and child could be kept together. The staff included a

56. Karl E. Nelson, "The Organization and Development of the Health Care System

of the Salvation Army in the United States of America" (unpublished thesis, 1973,

Brengle Memorial Library, School for Officers' Training, Suffern, New York), 22.

57. Salvation Army Rescue Home, Cleveland, Ohio, Annual Report, 1893, 3-10.

58. Salvation Army Rescue Home, Cleveland, Ohio. Links of Love, Annual Report,

Salvation Army Rescue Work in Cleveland, 1904, 8.

59. Frederick Booth-Tucker, The Salvation Army in America, Selected Reports,

1899-1903 (New York, 1972), n.p.

60. Robert Sandall, The History of the Salvation Army, Vol. III, 1883-1953 (London,

Edinburgh, Paris, Melbourne, Toronto and New York, 1947-1973), 211-12.

132                                                   OHIO HISTORY

"Christian" physician.⁶¹ In that same year a national directory of

Army institutions listed the facility as the "Cleveland Rescue and

Maternity Home,"⁶² and Army publications boasted of the Home's

medical success:

The Maternity Home, of which unfortunately there are only two in the East,

are most successful.... The one in Cleveland has a record that is the pride

of the philanthropist doctor who attends. During the whole nine years of its

being, they have never lost one case .... Oh, there should be more such

homes.⁶³

Accompanying the professional medical treatment, however, was

an analysis of illegitimate pregnancy which combined a secular inter-

pretation with the Army's traditional religious perspective. The ma-

tron of a Home, asked how the girls happened to be there, ex-

plained, "Many are betrayed when they are young and innocent and

then deserted when in trouble." Many do not have "proper supervi-

sion at home . . . Some fall through drink." But whatever the case,

they were not "so hard but that the love of Christ could not save

them.^"64

Contemporary photographs of the Home's late Victorian architec-

ture look grim and forbidding, but Army literature described the

house as "large, airy, and pleasant, with a lovely, big garden and

wide, roomy porches where the babies can play and sleep outdoors

all day" and specially designed furniture in the nursery.⁶⁵ This em-

phasis on childcare reflected the Home's membership in the Confer-

ence on Illegitimacy. Like the other maternity homes, the Rescue

conformed to some of the Conference's guidelines: for example, im-

plementation of the six-month policy and the use of a social case

worker. In some ways, however, the Rescue deviated, again within

the tradition of a broader scope for its work. Its fees were smaller

than the other homes; it sometimes took women wih a venereal dis-

ease, and routinely took black women, the only Cleveland home to

do so.⁶⁶

61. Salvation Army Rescue Home, Cleveland, Ohio, Diamonds in the Rough, Annual

Report, Salvation Army Rescue Work in Cleveland, 1905, 4-5.

62. Review of the Women's and Children's Rescue Work During 1906 (New York, no

date), n.p.

63. Where the Shadows Lengthen: A Sketch of the Salvation Army's Work in the Unit-

ed States of America (New York, 1907), 19.

64. Ibid., 20.

65. Neighbors: A Story briefly told of the labor of love and interesting events in the

lives of The Salvation Army Women Social Officers (New York, 1911), 25-26.

66. FCP, Conference on Illegitimacy, December 1, 1913, Container 30, Folder 738;

March 30, 1921; January 9, 1922, Container 30, Folder 739.

"Go and Sin No More"                                       133

The trend toward a dual rescue home and maternity hospital con-

tinued on a national scale; by 1920 the Army managed similar institu-

tions in New York, Detroit, Boston, and Greenville, South Carolina.

The rescue work continued, particularly during the social disloca-

tions caused by World War I, for women who were not pregnant, but

cast adrift in the cities as prostitutes or derelicts.⁶⁷ Throughout the

1920s, however, the term "Rescue Home" was replaced generally by

"Home and Hospital for Unmarried Mothers," and these became

known as "Booth Memorials" as in Cleveland, and specialized in the

medical care of unmarried mothers.⁶⁸

The reformatory goal was not lost, however, as the hospitals

stressed religion, discipline, and domestic skills, and an obligatory

confinement period.⁶⁹ Army work with unwed mothers continued to

be carried on with "deep religious earnestness."⁷⁰ The numbers of

these women dwindled at Booth during the 1930s, as at the other

maternity facilities, and in 1933 Booth began to take private, married

patients, who would eventually constitute most of its clientele.

The Mary B. Talbert Home

Booth Memorial's origins lie in the demographic upheaval caused

by the immigration into the city of whites from Europe and the

American countryside. The beginnings of the Army's second Cleve-

land home for unwed mothers, the Mary B. Talbert Home, lie in the

"great migration" of Southern blacks into Cleveland in the late 1910s

and the early 1920s. Growing numbers of the city's unwed mothers

were black, but only the Rescue Home accepted them, and then

only four or five.71 By 1924 the once-Jewish neighborhood on Kins-

man Street, site of the Rescue Home, was becoming black, and the

Army increased the numbers of black women it took.⁷² The Confer-

ence on Illegitimacy then suggested that the Army run a separate fa-

cility for black women, as the Army did in Cincinnati. The Confer-

ence's rationale revealed its thinking on both blacks and on unwed

67. War Service Herald and Social News, May, 1920, 4-5.

68. Handbook of Information, Homes and Hospitals for Unmarried Mothers (New

York, no date), 13-14.

69. McKinley, Marching, 139.

70. Ethel Verry, "Meeting the Challenge of Today's Needs in Working with Unmar-

ried Mothers," Paper given at the War Regional Meeting of the National Conference of

Social Workers, 1943, n.p.

71. FCP, Conference on Illegitimacy, January 9, 1922, Container 30, Folder 739.

72. Ibid., June 21, 1924.

"Go and Sin No More"                                      135

Cleveland's hospitals did not allow blacks to practice there.⁷⁵ Black

unwed mothers continued to receive special counseling and religious

guidance at the Mary B. Talbert until 1961 when it was merged with

Booth.

The Maternity Home

MacDonald House of University Hospitals is the only one of the

maternity facilities to have begun primarily as a medical institution for

the training of obstetric practitioners-nurses and doctors. However,

because of the necessity of treating poor and unwed mothers, the

Hospital acted also as a benevolent and social service institution in

some ways like the maternity homes.

Seventeenth and eighteenth century hospitals were designed pri-

marily for the indigent who had no homes where they could be

cared for. Hospitals, therefore, were associated with poverty and the

high mortality rates which accompanied the medical treatment of

the indigent in inadequate facilities by inadequate practitioners. Like

other institutions for the poor, hospitals became the focus of private

benevolence, funded by male philanthropists and managed by

boards of local women who saw to the daily needs of the hospital

and its patients.

Maternity or lying-in hospitals followed this pattern. Through the

nineteenth century, they were used almost exclusively by poor and

often unmarried mothers, and the hospitals sought to provide not

only for the physical health of these patients but for their "moral re-

habilitation," attempting to "treat the whole woman; body, behav-

ior, and belief."⁷⁶

Although these benevolent impulses lingered through the 1930s,

hospitals also provided training facilities for the medical profession.

Until the twentieth century most doctors received their training on

the job-that is, on the patients-rather than in the medical school

classroom. Obviously, it was more convenient to practice on patients

gathered together in one place such as a hospital than to search out

individuals. Further, since patients were generally poor, a profession-

al error made less difference.

By the nineteenth century, it was particularly difficult for a male

doctor to acquire training in obstetrics. The field had been monopo-

75. Letter from Commissioner Edward Carey to Miss Eleanor Custer, May 2, 1983.

76. Richard W. Wertz and Dorothy C. Wertz, Lying-In: A History of Childbirth in

America (New York, 1977), 186-89.

136                                               OHIO HISTORY

lized by midwives since the colonial period. Although male mid-

wives and general practitioners began to deliver babies by the sec-

ond half of the eighteenth century, developing notions about female

modesty made gynecological examinations and child deliveries med-

ically and culturally difficult for men to perform. As a result, many

doctors began their practices without ever having seen a delivery, let

alone having performed one.⁷⁷ As the medical profession became in-

creasingly self-conscious about its professional standards in the first

half of the nineteenth century, this ignorance became less accep-

table. Lying-in or maternity hospitals were a good way to provide

fledgling obstetricians with some actual practice.

MacDonald House owed its establishment to this need to provide

training for Cleveland's growing medical profession, as well as to the

secondary benevolent desire to reform unmarried mothers. In 1891 a

group of philanthropic Clevelanders founded the Maternity Home.

Its object was to "furnish a home for worthy women during confine-

ment and the lying-in period and to educate nurses in the specialty of

obstetrics . . . and to furnish maternity cases for the C.H.H. [Cleve-

land Homeopathic Hospital] College."⁷⁸ The affiliation with the

homeopathic rather than the "regular" or orthodox medical estab-

lishment is not surprising since many prominent and wealthy Cleve-

landers, including John D. Rockefeller, were followers of homeopa-

thy. Homeopathy, which relied on minute doses of drugs which

induced in the patient reactions like the symptoms of his disease,

was a well-respected therapy until the American Medical Association

drove homeopaths almost out of the profession in the early twentieth

century.⁷⁹

Rules for the Maternity Home appear stringent by today's

standards. A patient, apparently regardless of her health, could be

dismissed by the head matron for disobedience.⁸⁰ But rules for all

hospital patients were strict, perhaps because most patients were un-

familiar with hospitals and perhaps because patients were most often

poor and, therefore, considered naturally disorderly. The house

rules for the wards of Cleveland's Lakeside Hospital in 1898, for ex-

ample, forbade patients from using "profane or indecent language"

77. Frederick W. Waite, Western Reserve University Centennial History of the School

of Medicine (Cleveland, 1946), 77.

78. By-Laws of Maternity Home of Cleveland, 1891, 1, in Archives of University

Hospitals, Cleveland, Ohio.

79. James G. Burrow, Organized Medicine in the Progressive Era: The Move Toward

Monopoly (Baltimore and London, 1977), 71-82.

80. By-Laws of Maternity Home, 15-16.

"Go and Sin No More"                                         137

and making "immoral or infidel statements," playing cards, smoking

tobacco, or drinking alcoholic beverages.⁸¹ Yet despite the rigidity

of hospital rules in general and references to "worthy women" aside,

there are indications that the first patients at the Maternity Home

were indeed unwed mothers. The Matron, for example, was required

to "exert a religious influence over the inmates and hold some reli-

gious service each day,"⁸² suggesting the conventional belief that re-

ligious conversion would reclaim a woman's lost virtue. In addition,

funds for the Home were raised in 1893 by a series of public perform-

ances of "marriage dramas," which included an ancient Greek mar-

riage, a "Jewish ritual," and the wedding of Pocahantas and John

Rolfe.⁸³ The moral seems obvious. And in fact, the Home claimed to

have "received and cared for more than two hundred unfortunate

women and girls, mostly delivered of illegitimate children" by

1896.⁸⁴

Until the turn of the century, the institution retained its ties to the

Cleveland Homeopathic Medical College. The College's annual an-

nouncement for 1897-98 boasted that "The Maternity Home fur-

nishes a class of clinical cases of the greatest utility to those about to

enter the general practice of medicine. Each member of the senior

class will have an opportunity to witness a variety of demonstrations;

will be taught the manipulation of instruments and all kinds of obstet-

rical appliances and will be required personally to conduct at least

one case of labor under the supervision of a clinician."85

Shortly after this, however, the Maternity Home changed its affili-

ation and, to some extent, its focus as well. It is listed in the 1901 city

directory as "The Maternity Hospital" rather than "Home,"⁸⁶ em-

phasizing the medical over the benevolent orientation. By 1905 "reg-

ular" physicians, as well as homeopaths, appeared on its Board.⁸⁷

Of particular significance was the presence on the Board of Dr. Ar-

thur Bill, who in 1907 began his own out-patient obstetrical service.

On his staff were students from the Western Reserve University

81. Thirty-Second Annual Report of the Lakeside Hospital, Cleveland, Ohio, 1898,

85-86.

82. By-Laws of Maternity Home, 15.

83. Promotional materials in Vertical file, Maternity Home, Cleveland, Ohio, West-

ern Reserve Historical Society.

84. Cleveland, Ohio, Centennial Commission, The History of the Charities of Cleve-

land, 1796-1896 (Cleveland, 1896), 52.

85. The Cleveland Homeopathic Medical College, Annual Announcement, 1897-98,

25.

86. Cleveland Directory for 1901 (Cleveland, 1901), 1683.

87. The Maternity Hospital, Annual Report, 1905-1906, n.p.

138                                                 OHIO HISTORY

School of Medicine. In 1913 the Hospital became the headquarters

for this service. The Hospital enlarged its facilities to care for its

growing clientele, and in 1914 the staff included ten visiting doctors,

one resident physician, and 20 student nurses.⁸⁸

At the same time, there was growing dissatisfaction at the Medical

School with training provided almost exclusively by out-patient de-

liveries,⁸⁹ and therefore, the Hospital became formally affiliated

with the Western Reserve University Medical School in 1917,90 es-

tablishing itself solidly as a "regular" training institution and, in-

creasingly, as a place for respectable married women to have babies.

Plans to move the Maternity Hospital (and Babies and Children's

Dispensary, a separate institution) to the site of University Hospitals

was delayed by World War I, but effected in 1925.91 In 1936 the

Hospital was re-christened MacDonald House after Calvina Mac-

Donald, its head nurse from 1913 to 1933, who was particularly influ-

ential in shaping its training programs for obstetrical nurses.

The Hospital's medical focus was clearly stated: its object was "to

provide facilities for the hospital care and home care of maternity

cases and for the advancement of obstetrical education and to main-

tain dispensaries for prenatal and medical care for mothers."⁹² Yet

the Hospital could not disengage itself entirely from its initial reform-

ist goals. Although it proudly noted its paying patients, its annual re-

port of 1908 admitted that its clientele also included "more than one

deserted wife with a babe in her arms," for whom the hospital's re-

lief committee found a home, board, and a job.⁹³ This committee,

staffed by volunteers, soon became the Social Service Department

with a medical case worker.

The Hospital also was a member of the Federation for Charity and

Philanthropy and had a seat on the Conference on Illegitimacy, with

which it shared some, but not all, goals and techniques for the treat-

ment of unmarried mothers. For example, the Hospital had a policy

of not taking "second offenders" although, like other institutions, in

actual practice it sometimes did.⁹⁴ On the other hand, the Hospital

88. "Facts about 18 Cleveland Hospitals Represented in the Hospital Council,"

(Cleveland, 1914), n.p.

89. Forty-Seventh Annual Report of the Trustees of the Lakeside Hospital (Cleveland,

1913), 58.

90. Waite, Western Reserve, 253.

91. Ibid., 254.

92. Maternity Hospital and Dispensaries of Maternity Hospital and Western Reserve

University, Annual Report, 1924, 29.

93. Maternity Hospital, Cleveland, Ohio, Annual Report, 1909, 17.

94. FCP, Council on Illegitimacy, March 12, 1923, Container 30, Folder 739.

"Go and Sin No More"                                            139

did not provide "long-term care and training of unmarried mothers"

as did the other facilities. As a Hospital representative explained in

1924, "the suggestion of caring for unmarried mothers at the hospital

comes from the desire to teach nurses and doctors." Furthermore,

the Hospital was so much more expensive than the other maternity

facilities ($4.10 a day for mother and infant as opposed to $.85 in the

homes) that the Hospital could not afford to keep its patients long

enough to "train" them, nor could the patients have afforded to stay

if they had wanted to.⁹⁵ The Hospital did, however, refer its unwed

mothers to other welfare agencies such as the Humane Society.⁹⁶

The Hospital also worked closely with the maternity homes, some-

times supervising there the deliveries of women given prenatal care at

the Hospital out-patient clinics.⁹⁷ Annual reports through the 1920s

record the increasing number of unwed mothers treated at the Hos-

pital or its clinics; more and more of these were black.⁹⁸

The numbers of all women treated had swelled from 49 in 1893, to

368 after the Hospital's affiliation with Dr. Bill, to 1375 in 1923,⁹⁹ re-

vealing the growing acceptability of hospital care to middle-class

women. By 1936, however, the number of unmarried mothers at

MacDonald House was half what it had been in 1929.100 The ex-

pense of its specialized facilities had put it beyond the reach of those

women whom it had been founded to serve.

The Florence Crittenton Home

When the Florence Crittenton Home was founded in Cleveland in

1912, it was part of a chain of seventy Crittenton Homes across the

country and abroad.101 The chain was begun in 1883 by Charles

Crittenton, the "millionaire evangelist," a millionaire by virtue of his

flourishing pharmaceutical business and an evangelist by avocation.

In his work with a New York City mission, Crittenton visited dives

95. Ibid., June 21, 1924.

96. Ibid., March 31, 1921.

97. First Annual Report of the University Hospitals of Clevelandfor 1927 (Cleveland,

1928), 74.

98. Annual Report of the University Hospitals of Cleveland for 1928 (Cleveland,

1929), 234.

99. Maternity Hospitals and Dispensaries of Maternity Hospital and Western Reserve

University, Annual Report, 1923, 3.

100. FCP, Children's Council, Committee on Unmarried Mothers, August 14, 1936,

Container 33, Folder 829.

101. Katherine G. Aiken, "The National Florence Crittenton Mission, 1883-1925: A

Case Study in Progressive Reform" (Ph.D. dissertation, Washington State University,

1980), 85.

140                                               OHIO HISTORY

and brothels and, according to his own account, realized one night

when he had advised an unfortunate woman to "Go and sin no

more" that she had nowhere to go;¹⁰² hence, the founding of the

first Florence Night Mission, named after Crittenton's dead daugh-

ter. The Mission offered food, shelter, and gospel services to home-

less women and prostitutes, sought out by a rescue band of Christian

workers inspired by Crittenton's message of salvation.¹⁰³ Within fif-

teen years, the Mission had become the National Florence Crittenton

Mission, chartered by the federal government. By 1933 there were 65

Crittenton Homes with an annual budget of $700,000 to $800,000.104

Over these years also there were perceptible shifts in focus and em-

phasis, from the reformation of the prostitute through religious con-

version to homes for unwed mothers, from "the more fervidly emo-

tional spirit of the earlier evangelistic years to a thorough and careful

study of every phase of the problem of helping girls."¹⁰⁵ Yet despite

these changes, the Florence Crittenton Home, in Cleveland anyway,

retained through the 1930s much of the flavor of the original evangel-

ical rescue work.

Cleveland's Home was founded relatively late, perhaps because

the city already had three well-established homes as well as hospi-

tals which treated unwed mothers. Even so, neighbors twice

blocked the Home's attempt to buy property.1⁰⁶ Once underway,

the Home bore clearly the impress of the then-president of the Na-

tional Florence Crittenton Mission, Dr. Kate Waller Barrett, who suc-

ceeded Crittenton after his death and whose meeting in 1910 with a

Cleveland social worker inspired the Home's establishment.¹⁰⁷

Barrett was not only an administrator but a philosopher on the

treatment of unwed motherhood. In Some Practical Suggestions on

the Conduct of a Rescue Home, Barrett described the ideal home as

a "big, old-fashioned, roomy house in a quiet part of the city, with

large, sunny, bright rooms for sitting rooms and workrooms, with

books and magazines on hygiene, child study and self-culture" and

an especially pretty room for the nursery, "for no home is complete

without a baby."¹⁰⁸ Contemporary photographs of the first home on

102. Otto Wilson, Fifty Years' Work with Girls, 1883-1933 (Alexandria, Virginia,

1933), 30.

103. Aiken, "National Florence Crittenton," 15-24.

104. Wilson, Fifty Years, 4-5.

105. Ibid., 7-8.

106. Ibid., 254.

107. Ibid., 253.

108. Kate Waller Barrett, M.D., Some Practical Suggestions on the Conduct of a Res-

cue Home (New York, 1974), 7-9.

142                                               OHIO HISTORY

aroused to be one of the strongest incentives to right living,"¹¹³ Bar-

rett maintained. She shared this belief in the special virtue of moth-

erhood with other women reformers of the period, from settlement

house workers to suffragists.

The Cleveland Home almost immediately became a member of the

Federation for Charity and Philanthropy and the Conference on Ille-

gitimacy. The Federation was called upon several times in the

Home's early years to bail it out financially although it also received

funds from the National Florence Crittenton Mission.¹¹⁴ In return, of

course, the Federation imposed controls upon the Home, insisting

upon intelligence testing and screening for venereal disease of its cli-

entele and the use of a social worker.

Yet despite the inevitable standardization, the Cleveland Home

came close to capturing the letter, and perhaps the spirit, of Barrett's

injunctions, possibly because the Home was small, sheltering from

ten to fifteen girls most of the time. The girls received religious in-

struction and had Bibles in their rooms; prayers were part of the dai-

ly routines, just as they were of the Board of Managers' meetings.¹¹⁵

The Home received funds, as well as gifts in kind, from local Critten-

ton "Circles," usually affiliated with a Protestant church. Inmates at-

tended classes in arithmetic, English and domestic science in the

Home.¹¹⁶ To create a home-like atmosphere, its Board of Managers,

volunteers from the neighboring communities, planned birthday par-

ties and holiday festivities for the girls, which they attended them-

selves. Managers also taught some of the classes and acted as "big

sisters" for the inmates after they left the Home.117

Numbers of babies born and sheltered were always carefully and

proudly recorded every year, but the Home in its first decade shel-

tered more than unwed mothers. In 1916, for example, some girls

had been referred to the Home from the Human Society, some from

Juvenile and Municipal Courts, and some from Associated Charities;

these were women whose problems were probably delinquency or

poverty rather than illegitimate pregnancy. And the thrust, in the

spirit of Charles Crittenton, was broad and evangelical. "Rescue

work is peculiar-but not popular," explained the Home's annual re-

113. Ibid., 47.

114. FCH Papers, Board of Trustees minutes, December 15, 1913, Container 1, Fold-

er 2.

115. Ibid., Board of Managers minutes, May 5, 1914, Container 1, Folder 11.

116. Ibid., July, 1918, Container 1, Folder 12.

117. Ibid., April 1, 1913; September 3, 1913; September 14, 1915, Container 1, Folder

11.

"Go and Sin No More"                                     143

port. "No girl is turned from our door. We care for any woman in need

of help, regardless of race or creed." (In actual fact, the Home did

not take black women.) "While social service work and religious

work differ, yet religion is at the heart of life as well as the basis of so-

cial advancement, and without it our attempt at this work would

prove a failure. The more we trust in a Higher Power for supreme

help, and lean entirely upon Him for strength and guidance, the more

we will be able to accomplish. If we clothe and shelter and feed our

girls and do not give them Bread of Life, our work will be in

vain."¹¹⁸

The religious flavor is unmistakable, but the Crittenton Homes did

not rely entirely upon God. Each had a legal committee which

sought to establish and maintain the legal rights of the mother and

child, particularly its right to financial support from the father.119

Crittenton staff sometimes tried to track down the putative father

to bring him to justice or induce him to marry the mother of his

child. ¹²⁰

Not until the 1920s did the Home become primarily a maternity fa-

cility, although its focus was still not on medical care: "Ours is not a

commercialized maternity hospital, but a place where an unmarried

girl is welcome, who, unfortunately, is pregnant, and has nowhere

else to go for the care and privacy she otherwise could not afford." A

girl was urged to stay in the Home for prenatal care and medical at-

tention during childbirth, but more important, "with us she is sur-

rounded by influences which will help to strengthen her character,

the weakness of which resulted in her needing our help." Hence, the

Home retained the six-month policy although this began to weaken

during this decade.¹²¹ The frontispiece of the 1929 brochure bore

the motto which harked back to Crittenton's original impulse: "Go

and sin no more.' "122

The reformatory goal of the Home was reflected in its restrictive

policies, which prevented girls from leaving the premises unless ac-

companied by Board members, who did take the girls on summer

outings and held teas and parties for them.¹²³ Best known was the

annual June Day, a lawn party and bazaar attended by local friends

of the home and sometimes by former inmates. Board members seem

118. Florence Crittenton Home, Brochure, 1916-1917, 11-14.

119. Ibid., 14.

120. FCP Conference on Illegitimacy, January 27, 1916, Container 30, Folder 738.

121. Florence Crittenton Home, Brochure, 1926, n.p.

122. Ibid., 1929, n.p.

123. Wilson, Fifty Years, 256.

"Go and Sin No More"                                      145

could not pay, but a woman might have preferred to have a baby

inexpensively at the City Hospital than to become a charity patient at

a maternity home. Unmarried mothers also seemed less ashamed to

have their babies in their family homes,¹²⁷ thus reversing the trend

toward hospital deliveries. Last, the birthrate for both legitimate

and illegitimate children dropped.

With the Retreat and the Florence Crittenton Home in danger of

folding, therefore, Cleveland maternity homes used the Conference

on Illegitimacy meetings to do some needed soul-searching and re-

evaluation. At several meetings, Conference representatives suggested

that the homes did not offer enough options to their clientele. In

1934, for example, the Conference recommended more vocational ed-

ucation, more recreation facilities, and more emphasis on assimilating

the unmarried mother into the community.¹²⁸ The six-month con-

finement policy was also being modified in some of the homes, per-

haps out of economic necessity. 129 A committee on illegitimacy of the

Children's Council of the Welfare Federation, which had

overlapping membership with the Conference on Illegitimacy and

would soon subsume it, also had criticisms. While conceding that

the homes provided a girl with "a breathing space to allow her time

to solve her problems" and a way to shield herself and her family

from social disgrace, this committee urged "fewer rules" and "great-

er flexibility."¹³⁰

Yet as the histories of the individual homes have suggested and as

the Conference on Illegitimacy minutes substantiate, the homes clung

to their traditional views and postures. Unwed mothers were still iso-

lated, sheltered from the outside world. Homes still insisted on the

six-month stay whenever possible; inmates delivered their babies at

the homes rather than in a hospital unless the delivery was particu-

larly difficult. Inmates were not permitted to visit their families or re-

ceive visits from the fathers of their children unless marriage was in

the offing. The women were not encouraged to write or receive let-

ters, and all in-coming and out-going mail was censored "to correct

spelling." When "many seemed to feel the restraint of not going out

for amusement," they were told that "it is not the institution which

is limiting their freedom but the situation in which they found them-

selves." 131 Homes still trained inmates in domestic skills despite evi-

127. Ibid., February 5, 1936.

128. Ibid., Conference on Illegitimacy, May 13, 1934, Microfilm Reel 33.

129. Ibid., Committee on Unmarried Mothers, October 21, 1934, Container 33, Fold-

er 829.

130. Ibid., May 2, 1935.

131. Ibid., Conference on Illegitimacy, January 23, 1932, Microfilm Reel 33.

146                                              OHIO HISTORY

dence that housework, far from being a preventive to unwed mother-

hood, was the job at which most of the women were working when

they became pregnant.¹³²

With the exception of St. Ann's, the homes had lost whatever sec-

tarian identities they originally had, and most claimed not to try to

"foster a religious affiliation." Girls could attend a church of their

choice, but with a chaperone from the home. Priests and ministers

were encouraged to visit the homes to provide spiritual direction.¹³³

Guidance was also provided by the visiting social worker. A Con-

ference report in 1934 noted that the social worker's job was "not to

bring moral judgement . . . but to attempt to get [the unwed parents]

to face their own reality." The report went on, however, to identify

the unmarried mother as "sexually delinquent," 134 a term which

does not suggest moral neutrality. It is no wonder that inmates often

regarded the social workers as "'miserable people, who pry into

one's affairs.' "135

In 1935 The Social Year Book, a social work encyclopedia, made

this observation: "Among the maternity homes the earlier type of

mission home with its extreme religious influence is being replaced

by more modern institutions, operated on case work principles."¹³⁶

Possibly Cleveland's homes did not change as dramatically as did

homes elsewhere. More likely, however, the changes were simply not

as clearcut or significant as they appeared in 1935. The maternity

homes may have become technically secular with personnel trained

at schools of social work or medicine, but this transformation was not

accompanied by the loss of the original moral directives. The evan-

gelical impulse may have been partially disguised in the rhetoric of

social science; the missionary may have been dressed as a social

worker or a Welfare Federation official. Yet these homes, at least

through the 1930s, remained dedicated to their nineteenth century

mission of saving the souls and bodies of those who had "lost the

glory of their womanhood."

132. Ibid., Committee on Unmarried Mothers, November 30, 1936, Container 33,

Folder 829.

133. Ibid., Conference on Illegitimacy, January 23, 1932, Microfilm Reel 33.

134. Ibid., May 14, 1934.

135. Ibid., January 23, 1932.

136. Fred S. Hall, ed., Social Work Year Book (New York, 1935), 69.