In the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, thousands of minors with troublesome behaviour were sent to reform schools. Often, they spent months or even years inside the walls of disciplinary institutions. Did their young age influence how minors experienced their confinement, compared to adult detainees? This blog post discusses the different meanings of time for juvenile delinquents, using case files from Belgian state reform schools between 1900 and 1960.
Gabrielle: ‘waiting, always waiting’
‘Dear parents’, 19-year-old Gabrielle wrote in the summer of 1930:
I’m happy to tell you that I’ve held on so far. This week I received an honourable mention and Mr Director told me that if I continue like this, I will be with you in the New Year. Regardless, five months is still a long time; waiting, always waiting, I’m angry for waiting for four years and my patience is starting to run out. I’ve held on so far, this I tell you, but will I last much longer, another five month[s]? [1]
At the time of writing, Gabrielle was being detained in the State Reformatory of Bruges, a disciplinary institute for girls with unruly behaviour. Many juveniles in institutions such as that of Bruges had been arrested for minor offences such as petty theft, vagrancy, or – in the case of girls – sexual ‘misconduct’. Others were brought before the juvenile court after a parental complaint. Once minors were admitted to a reform school, they were only released after the staff considered their behaviour to have improved sufficiently. The date of release, then, was uncertain. Gabrielle had spent the past four years in various reform schools. While her letter testifies to her hope of being released soon, it also shows the gruelling wait until her moment of liberation. In this article, I discuss how juvenile detainees experienced their time in the reform schools and how their young age influenced their detention.
Sources: personal case files and personal correspondence
Gabrielle’s letter is preserved in her personal case file. Each pupil had a personal case file, which compiled all the documents that were relevant for the institution: administrative and judicial files, psycho-pedagogical observations, but also personal correspondence. There are various reasons why the files contain personal correspondence. Sometimes a young person did not have permission to write home, while at other times the letters were censored. Some files contain copies of sent letters, because the director thought the letter provided information on the pupil’s progress (or lack thereof). Containing a variety of documents, personal case files are a much-valued source for historians. I used the archives of four Belgian state reformatories for boys and girls, covering the time span of 1900 to 1960. Most of the pupils were aged between 16 and 21 years and, especially before the Second World War, came predominantly from working-class backgrounds. I discuss three different meanings of time in relation to the detention: the influence of age on the detention experience, the use of age as a leverage for negotiation, and the way young detainees tried to control their time in the absence of a certain date of release.
Personal case file, in: SAB, M35, 1321, File 202, ca. 1893
Time, youth and experiencing detention
Prisoners’ experience of time has been described as ‘doing time’ or ‘killing time’. Isolated and detached from society and their loved ones, detainees experience their detention time as ‘time wasted or destroyed or taken from one’s life’.[2] Indeed, it is precisely time’s irreversible nature that undergirds its use as a punishment, the time spent in prison being not only an instrument for reform, but also a ‘payment’ for crimes committed. For young people like Gabrielle, there was yet another element to it. ‘Can you imagine that a young girl of 20 years old could, without rebellion or murmuring, accept being in a cell three-quarters of the time?’ she wrote. This suggests that the meanings Gabrielle attributed to her youthful age influenced her experience of time in detention.
Historians have shown that childhood and youth have held different meanings throughout the ages. In the interwar period, the idea of youth as a phase between childhood and adulthood, for instance, became increasingly framed as a pleasurable golden age.[3] Unmarried young women from the working class gained access to the labour market. This gave them some financial leverage, and consequently, more autonomy regarding consumption, leisure time and amusement. In their letters, some girls and young women detained in the state reform school of Bruges expressed this idea of their youth as a golden age. This can be seen in Gabrielle’s letter. She lamented being deprived of her youth. For, in her eyes, her youth was over: ‘the fact of passing my entire youth between four walls has embittered me so much’, she wrote to the director. The association between working-class youth, enjoyment and financial autonomy is also expressed by Marie. Writing to her parents in 1928, she mentioned that her life so far had been ‘one long disappointment’, adding a remark about her age: ‘I’m not even 20 years old and yet, would you believe it, life weighs on me’.[4]
‘With age comes responsibility’
Interestingly, the awareness of youth as a fleeting life stage was expressed as well by a boy who was Gabrielle’s contemporary, institutionalised in the reformatory of Mol. Unlike Gabrielle, however, he attributed a positive meaning to the ending of his youth. Requesting to join the army, he asked the director to support his petition: ‘Because I am now starting to become a man and understand everything I have to do’.[5] In contrast with Gabrielle, he framed his youth in a positive way. His words should of course also be read in the context of his request. It is likely that showing a sense of responsibility and maturity would strengthen his case.
Similar views about ageing and gaining maturity were expressed by parents who wrote to the institution to petition for a release of their children. Appealing to the director to release his son, a father wrote that his son:
has not committed great crimes he was a child back then […] his intellect was not yet fully developed but he is 20 years old now and let’s hope everything is over now[6]
Age here becomes a leverage to negotiate a release from the reform school. Not only adults expressed this view – some children themselves did so as well. After arriving at the reform school of Mol in 1928, Isidoor wrote to his father: ‘Father, wisdom comes with age, doesn’t it?’[7] Remarkably, some minors also used their age to claim more rights within the reform school. In the 1950s, a pupil in the Mol reform school complained about the early bedtime in the summer season: ‘At 9:15 p.m. we go to bed and we have to remain silent. That is fine for boys of seven to eight years old, but not for boys of 17, 18, 19 years old’, one boy was quoted as saying by the director.[8] The juveniles, then, revealed an awareness of their age and the social meanings attached to it.
Structuring time
As explained earlier, when juvenile judges sent children to reform schools, they did not decide on the date of release. This date depended on the progress of the youngster, evaluated by the school staff. The uncertainty about the date of release influenced the way the youngsters experienced their detention time. Prisoners who know their date of release experience carceral time not unfolding ‘forwards’, but ‘backwards’: as a counting down towards the date of release.
Confronted with the uncertainty about their remaining time in the reform school, many pupils still tried to find a way to control their detention time by counting down towards their 21st birthday, when they would reach the legal age of majority. Once they were adults, the juvenile judge – in most cases – lost authority over the minors. The importance of this counting down can be seen in the youngsters’ letters, in which they divided time into small units to measure its progress. Some measured the progress or countdown of time in months, others expressed time in days. Marie, for instance, wrote to her parents that she had to remain in Bruges another ‘447 days’.[9]
Letter from Tobie, detained in the juvenile prison of Ghent, to his parents. At the end, he added the date of his release in enlarged letters: March 1910 LIBERATED. The letter “D” in the signature refers to his last name. State Archives Gent, M44, 1908, File 4074, letter s.d., between 1905 and 1910.
Tobie, detained in the juvenile prison of Ghent, wrote to his parents enlarging the letters of his date of release, illustrated above. He asserted:
But, courage, another life will begin on 22 March 1910: LIBERATED. And then it will be much better than now. After suffering comes joy, after rain comes sunshine.
[Your] son T.[10]
Clinging to their date of release, youngsters like Tobie endured their detention, longing for the better days to come.
Laura Nys is a postdoctoral scholar at Ghent University, Belgium. Her research interests include the history of emotions, reform schools, prisons, gender and autobiographical documents. You can read Laura’s full article for Social History here.
References
[1] State Archives Bruges (hereafter SAB), M24, 834, File 26, Letter to her parents, 11 August 1930
[2] E. Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates (London, 1991 [1961]), 11, 17.
[3] B. Søland, ‘Employment and enjoyment: female coming of age experiences in Denmark 1880s–1930s’ in M.J. Maynes, B. Søland and C. Benninghaus (eds), Secret Gardens, Satanic Mills: Placing girls in European history, 1750–1960 (Bloomington, 2005), 254–68.
[4] SAB, M24, 830, File 3, Letter to her parents, 13 February 1928.
[5] State Archives Antwerpen-Beveren (hereafter SAAB), M17 467, File 5177, Letter 01 May 1930
[6] SAAB, M17, 577, File 6954, Letter of the mother to the director, 1 February 1950
[7] SAAB, M65, 637, File 3653, Letter, 5 May 1927
[8] SAAB, M17, 324, Boy cited in a letter from the director to the Minister of Justice, 30 May 1959.
[9] SAB, M24, 830, File 3, Letter to her parents, 13 February 1928.
[10] State Archives Gent, M44, 1908, File 4074, letter s.d., between 1905 and 1910.