Houses of Refuge

One of the ways in which middle and upper-class child savers, and in conjunction with the state, were able to get control over so-called wayward youth was to remove them from their homes and place them in houses of refuge. These were unique institutions established to re-train the child in how to behave like a good and civilized citizen. These institutions sought to instill in children the notions of hard work, delayed gratification, clean living, responsibility, and self-reliance. Beginning in the Northeast, these houses of refuge quickly spread across the U.S. and into both urban and rural areas.

Both young boys and girls came under the control of head masters and mistresses in these houses of refuge. As a new means of gaining control over troubled youth, these institutions are believed to be the beginning of a new system of justice for children. Nicole Rafter has defined this new method of social control as those mechanisms put into place to either covertly or overtly gain control over the less powerful, but nonetheless threatening, segment of society, namely, the lower classes. She argues further that in houses of refuge for young women, not only were inmates held for engaging in criminal activity, they were also held for not acting in “womanly” or “lady like” ways, including frequenting taverns or pool halls and for being sexually promiscuous.

She argues further that these young women were often placed in the homes of middle and upper-class women to serve as domestic help in the hopes that these young women would become “fit” for domestic life. The point being made here is that both young boys and young girls were being re-taught what was expected of them when it came to living the so-called civilized life in late 19th century America. For many of these youth, it worked. Years of re-tooling their thinking produced a major victory for the child savers and other reformers. For many others, however, the harsh conditions of the houses of refuge, corrupt leaders who more often than not allowed children to suffer severe corporal punishment and extremely poor living conditions.