Looking back a hundred years and more, we read about child and youth care philosophies and practice. An extract ...

Thanks to Dickens, modern readers tend to assume that all heads of orphanages or reform schools were punitive and severe. Note should be taken of some of those who seem almost modern in their approach. In his history of prisons and prison customs, Orlando Lewis notes the work of young Joseph Curtis, first superintendent of the New York House of Refuge, a man who tried to combine order, justice, and love. Curtis would romp and play with the youngsters, but then require them to sit in silent obedience at the table and give different signals with their fingers if they wanted bread, water, salt, etc. Curtis apparently made an attempt "to subordinate system to personality." He wanted "character rather than routine." According to Lewis, Curtis "made his board of managers nervous, just as all other executives of institutions who have adopted insurgent or novel methods have made board members very nervous."

E. M. P. Wells, first head of the Boston House of Reformation, was another young man who had ideas. Beaumont and de Tocqueville were fascinated by his institution, in which the boys worked less and played more than in the houses of refuge in New York and Philadelphia.

A lesser-known administrator was Joseph A. Allen, head of the Westborough (Massachusetts) Reform School from 1861 until 1867. From his reminiscences, written ten years after his resignation, one gets an interesting picture of what one administrator said he had done and why he did it. Although such accounts are usually not to be trusted, Allen gives so many details that one tends to believe him, and his account of his dealings with children is so sensitive and so refreshing that he could hardly have invented his story. In 1861 Allen went to an institution that had been such a "gloomy and painful disappointment" that its founders had almost abandoned it. Discipline had been cruel, religious bigotry had aroused strong feelings, escapes had been frequent, and finally two-thirds of the building had been burned.

Bylaws often required that the board select all members of the staff, but a superintendent with a good relationship with his board could probably have had a large voice in staff selection. At least some institutional heads were aware of the importance of staff qualifications and of staff morale. For example, when Joseph Allen went to Westborough, he was permitted to choose his own staff. Samuel J. May advised him that his success would depend on the character of the officers. He tried to convey to them his ideas about the ways to deal with inmates. He wrote:

Securing the best officers I could, I labored in season and out of season to instill into their minds correct ideas and principles and aided them in having these put into practice.

Allen was uncertain whether to retain officers from the former administration, which had been punitive and ineffcient. He wrote:

The officers found at the institution were persons of intelligence and experience, but more or less in sympathy with the previous order of things. I was advised to make an entire change as soon as possible; but a different course was considered more just, and at a meeting of the officers it was stated that all might feel secure in their places if they proved faithful and efficient, and would aid earnestly in carrying out such new measures as would be introduced. My experience, however, was that officers in sympathy with one method of discipline do not heartily work for another; and for new measures we require new men. Some were outwardly friendly, who were not so really. Anonymous letters were written, one to a member of the Governor’s Council, endeavoring to create sectarian prejudices against me. Upon an officer who was almost killed in an accident, we found a diary in which he had kept a note of every unpleasant circumstance that came under his notice, with comments, ready for reference in case it might be useful.

Allen apparently respected his officers and gave them public credit for their work. Of the assistant superintendent, whom he inherited from the old administration, he wrote: "He remained during my whole term of service; and without his assistance and advice my labors would have been much more difficult."

Of selection of officers he wrote:

The most difficult thing a superintendent has to do is select assistants adapted to the work required of them. Such as have more than a "dim idea of their duties and responsibilities" should be demanded in Massachusetts. If he is successful in this, all his other duties will be comparatively light. One inefficient officer will more than neutralize the labors of an excellent one.

Allen also kept a suggestion book in the officers’ parlor in which he would place general suggestions about dealing with boys. One excerpt from the book will serve to illustrate Allen’s ideas:

It should be remembered that the standard of right and wrong among our boys is in many cases necessarily low; and, while we endeavor by precept and example to bring it up to ours, in dealing with their delinquencies we should judge them by their own.

Staff conduct was also a continuing concern of the heads of the institutions. Allen gave illustrations that are familiar today:

It was interesting to notice the influence the institution exerts upon different officers. Some begin with great enthusiasm and confidence, but soon become discouraged, and grow unsympathetic and harsh. Others grow cunning and tricky, like the boys, and use discipline on the principle that "it takes a rogue to catch a rogue;" that "the end sanctifies the means." Such officers soon become unreliable themselves, and teach deception by precept and example. We once had a bright, active office-boy to run errands, very faithful and prompt. I noticed that he gradually grew sober and uneasy, so I concluded something was wrong. I took occasion to talk with him about his general appearance, and told him he must be doing wrong in some way. He was much troubled, and cried, which I had never seen him do before. He finally told me that one of the officers had been giving him tobacco, to keep order in the sleeping hall, for an hour after the boys retired, instead of doing it himself, as was his duty. The boy never fairly recovered his self-respect.

If staff qualifications and morale were matters for concern, so were the relationships of the superintendent and his staff with the children. At least staff members usually had clearly assigned roles. They were teachers or nurses or matrons (later housemothers), or farmers. On the other hand, the superintendent had some choice in how he would relate to the youngsters. What that relationship would be depended in large measure, of course, on the personality of the director. Although the word "charisma" does not appear in the nineteenth-century reports, one sees evidence of it everywhere. Perhaps the most dramatic illustration is found in Beaumont and de Tocqueville’s description of Mr. Wells, of the Boston House of Reformation, and Mr. Hart of the New York House of Refuge. They wrote:

Mr. Wells, the superintendent, takes part in all their games, and while their physical strength is developed by means of exercise, their moral character is formed under the influence of a superior man who, although visible to their eyes, is really hidden in the midst of them, and whose authority is never greater than in the moment when he does not make it felt ...
If one wanted the model of a superintendent for houses of refuge, perhaps one could not find a better one than Mr. Wells and Mr. Hart .... Endowed with profound sensitiveness, they obtain much more from the youngsters by touching their hearts than in addressing their intelligence. Finally, they consider each delinquent youth as their child; that is not a job they do, it is a duty that they are happy to fulfill.