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  • Writer's pictureRochelle Gridley

Bloomington Women Answer the Needs of Children


The May 15, 1889 issue of the Pantagraph reported the theft of some flowers by a thirteen year old girl. Her initial fine for this act was $25. A princely sum for the theft of a few flowers, surely more than the flowers would have brought in a flower shop. She was released however, after being given a sharp lecture. The Daily Leader had a much shorter, two sentence story on this incident. The Leader named the girl -- Annie Martin of Main Street -- and said that she was fined merely $7, which was still a sum outside what a young girl could have in 1889.

A reader of the Pantagraph had far more facts about the girl than had been printed in the paper and responded the next day, urging the citizens to begin an industrial or reformatory school. The girl had no mother and lived with her father and a younger sister. This girl was to provide all the work of the house. She was described as larger than her age and "showed when arrested a degree of hardened impudence that was appalling." She had not been attending school regularly and stood up to the police until ordered to wash her hands and arms, which were "black with filth." They noted only that she was the daughter of a "respectable" laborer.

Probably this girl lived in a home with no running water and faulty sanitation (as did many laboring people in Bloomington in 1889). Without the guidance of a mother, perhaps she had little knowledge of how to manage, and perhaps it was simply too difficult for her.

Of course this writer was most likely one of the women who were already planning the Women's Industrial Home (for fallen women), which would open just a few months later and would later provide a home for orphaned and abused children in the city (Girl's Industrial Home aka Lucy Orme Morgan Home). This girl was apparently able to hold her own with the police, who may have been bullying her. Punished for not fulfilling the idealized version of Victorian childhood and meekly accepting their scolding, she was sent back into the same environment without any aid or assistance. It would be twenty years before the ladies of Bloomington created the Settlement House, which did address the education of poor girls who were expected to manage a house while still children and alleviate the unhealthful conditions existing in the poorer parts of the city.

I applaud the women of Bloomington who created these institutions through their own ingenuity and perseverance!

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