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In writing this in 1910, Hastings H. Hart, Superintendent of the Children's Home and Aid Society in Chicago, outlined some of the fundamental principles behind the juvenile court. For the Illinois Juvenile Court Law of 1899 represented a departure from earlier methods of dealing with dependent and delinquent children, not just in Chicago but in the whole United States. It not only marked the final recognition by the State of Illinois of its duty towards children, but symbolised a new attitude towards young people in the justice system, seeing them as children in need of help rather than as criminals to be punished. This quotation is important in another respect, for it demonstrates Hart's acknowledgement of the gendered nature of this reform. For women reformers prompted by female concerns played a central role in the juvenile court movement in Chicago.
The establishment of juvenile courts in cities across the United States was one of the earliest social welfare reforms of the Progressive Era, and represented a major change in the way in which the law dealt with wayward children. In examining the origins of the juvenile court in Chicago, this study focuses upon the role of women reformers in the movement and the importance of gender consciousness in influencing the particular shape the reform took. Clearly male reformers were also involved, but by placing this examination of the Chicago juvenile court movement within the context of recent scholarship by historians of women, it has become necessary to challenge previously held assumptions that men were the central and dominating force behind it. But this is not to say that all women reformers were identical either in their background or in their aims. This study goes beyond the simple task of writing women back into the history of the Chicago juvenile court movement and seeks to examine the interaction between gender consciousness and the shaping of social welfare reform. It suggests that although gender consciousness was a highly significant element in prompting women to pursue this reform, other factors were also important.
The last two decades of the nineteenth century saw the development of new ideas and attitudes about the nature of childhood and adolescence, which played a major part in causing reformers, particularly women, to seek new methods of dealing with dependent and delinquent children. These ideas had their most profound impact upon middle class women who, by the late nineteenth century, were recognised as the primary child-rearers. Economic changes caused many middle class couples to limit the size of their families, and as they did so much more was invested in the individual child. The middle class child thus remained economically dependent upon his parents until at least his late teens, and great emphasis was placed upon his guidance, nurture and education.[2]
Developments in child study, influenced by the kindergarten movement of Friedrich Froebel and the ideas of the psychologist, G. Stanley Hall, also affected middle class attitudes towards childhood. These suggested that childhood was not only a distinct stage in the life cycle, but one that should be extended and which required special attention because it affected the child's development as an adult. Child-rearing became a more complex exercise and dictated that the mother, as the primary child-rearer, should be fully educated in child development[3] The mother's role was therefore invested with the utmost significance because upon her rested the future of the nation. It is clear that these ideas about the nature of childhood were highly influential in shaping the ideas of the female juvenile court reformers in Chicago.
The first juvenile court law in the United States came into effect in Illinois on July 1, 1899, when the Chicago Juvenile Court first opened its doors to the public. It was not a sudden invention by a single reformer, but was the result of agitation by two groups of women reformers during the 1890s. The two groups - the Chicago Woman's Club and the Hull House Community - worked together and in co-operation with other agencies, but the concerns of the two groups of women reformers were not identical.
The leaders of the Chicago Woman's Club were prompted by their identification as mothers and the perceptions of family life and childhood which this produced. These women might be regarded as 'true maternalists'. For they were clearly committed to the ideals of motherhood and domesticity which late nineteenth century society dictated for middle class women, but at the same time they believed that these ideals required them to extend their maternal instincts beyond their own homes and to apply their domestic values to society at large. Their maternalism thus propelled them into the public sphere of reform to work for society's dependents, especially women and children.[4]
The Chicago Woman's Club was founded in February 1876, by Mrs. Caroline Brown, a Bostonian, and several of her friends. The objects of the Club were, as its historians stated:
...a desire to enlarge our vision, to enable us to share in the wider interests of the community, to do our share of the world's work; we wished to prevent wrong and harm to those unable to help themselves, to bind up wounds, to create that which was lovely, to take the place of the unsightly.[5]
It was not a political nor a suffrage organisation but sought to better the world and its members through charity, philanthropy and culture.[6]
To begin with, the Club did not have the fashionable character it was later to acquire, but as it grew in stature the Club began to attract not only those women who required occupation for their leisure hours, but also that increasing class of professional women who were making innovations in the accepted social patterns of their sex. By the late 1880s and 1890s the leaders of the Club were white, middle class and Protestant. The majority of them were married and had had several children who, by the time their mothers were heavily involved in the Club, were beyond the earliest years of childhood. There were exceptions: many of the professional women were unmarried and not all were Protestant. Many of the leaders, if not the rank and file, were either the wives of prominent Chicago men, or were prominent in their own right[7]. The Chicago Woman's Club was, therefore, an organisation for elite women and tended to reflect prevailing ideas about women's role.
Many of the Club members were fairly conservative in their social ideas and reflected the concerns of their class. As members of the social elite they were concerned to preserve the existing structures of society but were anxious that if they did not help to alleviate the poverty they found in the city through charitable work and later through various social reforms, there would be social unrest[8]. Involvement in the Chicago Woman's Club gave women emotional support and a sense of sisterhood which allowed them to play a greater part in the community outside their homes and eventually involved them in reform activity within a maternalist framework[9]. Thus these women pursued reform through a gender consciousness which emphasised their role as mothers and housewives who had responsibility for society's dependents. As the Club historians noted: "Not only those fortunately placed in life were its care, but the step-children of fortune, those who needed mothering and guidance."[10]
The Club always had a wide range of interests and activities, but from the outset matters affecting women and children, especially those of the poorer and criminal classes, were of particular concern to them. By the 1880s and 1890s members of the Club were devoting considerable time to projects aimed at preventing children from becoming hardened criminals. Club members began visiting the jail and were instrumental in securing an assistant matron in the jail to look after the women and children who were prisoners there. In 1892 the Reform Department took a further step to alleviate conditions in the jail. At the request of Mrs. Dennison Groves, the Club assumed the responsibility of the Jail School which she had begun[11]. They were also involved, with a number of other women's clubs, in the formation of the Protective Agency for Women and Children in 1886, "...an undertaking in the opinion of some the greatest we have yet attempted..."[12] The Club also endorsed legislation relating to the welfare of women and children, and took a great interest in working to establish institutions to prevent dependent children from becoming criminals.[13]
By the early 1890s the Club was coming to be recognised in the wider community as an agency which worked for the welfare of children. Club members clearly considered such work to be appropriate to their status, for they were beginning to move beyond purely fund-raising and supportive activities to request places on the governing bodies of institutions which dealt with children[14]. It is also apparent from the priority given to it in the Club's Annals, that child welfare was a matter of great importance to Club members, though they rarely articulated their reasons for this growing interest. However, it would appear that this concern with child welfare was a reflection of the increasing importance attached to childhood within the wider society and the emphasis placed upon women's role in child-rearing. Indeed, it was because these women saw themselves as mothers and the protectors of the family - what has been described as maternalism - that they became concerned about the nature of child-life in the slums of Chicago, rather than because they had more general anxieties about social breakdown. For it seemed to many of the women involved in the various charitable enterprises of the Chicago Woman's Club that the rapid industrialisation and urbanisation of American society, especially obvious in Chicago, was having a detrimental effect upon the family. Moreover, the vast influx of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe from the 1880s onwards, led to fears that traditional American ideals based on Protestantism would be eroded. Especially, as these, mainly Catholic, families seemed to produce large numbers of children who did not behave in the way in which middle class American children were expected to behave.
Prompted by maternalist ideas and the middle class emphasis on child nurture within the confines of a protected family environment, members of the Chicago Woman's Club sought a solution to the problem of dependent and delinquent children. They were shocked by the difference in family life in the poorer sections of the city which they had observed in their visits to Chicago's police stations and the city jail, as well as their charitable work in poor and immigrant neighbourhoods[15]. Quite apart from the apparently high rate of juvenile delinquency in these parts of the city, other factors seemed to suggest that families there were breaking down, for they clearly did not conform to middle class ideals of family life. Members of the Club were horrified to discover that in many families both parents went out to work so that children were left to roam the streets all day. Clearly their mothers were not fulfilling their child-rearing functions. Children were sent out to work in factories at an early age and many children were also seen on the streets selling newspapers and hawking various wares.
As a result several members of the Woman's Club were not slow to point out that many working class and immigrant families did not conform to the ideal of the American family and that if something was not done about it, the whole of society would ultimately suffer. For this reason the Club concentrated many of its efforts upon ways to educate working class mothers to their responsibilities in rearing children, and to ensure that their children conformed to middle class ideas about childhood. It also explains their growing interest in dealing with the problem of dependent and delinquent children,[16] - a problem which seemed to be all the more urgent as rates of crime among children in the poorer areas of Chicago appeared to be on the increase. This was not a situation which members of the Chicago Woman's Club were prepared to accept complacently. "Just think of it. Think what it means to us as well as to them, and then say, if you can, 'I cannot help it. I am not my brother's keeper,'" argued one of its members.[17]
During the early 1890s the Philanthropy and Reform Committees of the Club became increasingly involved in activities which sought a solution to the problem of dependent and delinquent children. Many of its efforts at this time were concentrated upon the reformation of children in the jails and upon the prevention of crime by educating these children in jails or in manual training schools or industrial schools, but by the middle 1890s they began to search for means of changing the actual machinery of justice. One newspaper noted in 1893 that the women who had succeeded in introducing night matrons in the jail and police stations were now agitating for the passage of a law which would compel the trial of juvenile delinquents within twenty-four hours of arrest[18]. It was possibly as a result of this agitation and a committee of the Chicago Woman's Club conferring with lawyers regarding the great delay which attends the trial of boys in jail, that one judge was prevailed upon to hold separate court sessions just for the trial of boys[19]. Thus in 1894, Miss Haythorne, the jail school teacher, "...reported that she had been encouraged by the assurance that cases of boys would be tried at once by Judge Tuthill, who would hold court for the purpose on Saturday mornings."[20]
Concern that children should be tried speedily and indeed at separate sessions of the court, had resulted from a realisation that children were associated with hardened criminals from the moment of their arrest until they were released either after the judge had decided they should be dismissed, or after they had served their sentence. By insisting that children should be tried in separate courts, it was hoped that the contamination of children by older criminals would be avoided. The separate hearing of children's cases was thus accomplished on an informal basis but was not sanctioned by legislation - it depended merely on the agreement of the State's Attorney and on the willingness of Judge Tuthill himself. In 1895 members of the Woman's Club tried to formalise this embryo juvenile court through legislation. They presented a draft law to some lawyer associates, which would have established a separate court for the trial of children's cases, but the lawyers judged that such a law would be unconstitutional. It was therefore abandoned, but informal methods continued.[21]
While attempts to secure legislation were temporarily abandoned, members of the Chicago Woman's Club continued to seek for ways to change the treatment of problem children. In January 1896 various members of the Club proposed that it should have monthly meetings for the study of laws regarding women and children. At a special meeting on January 15, 1896, Mrs Henrotin proposed that there should be a congress of city clubs to consider the condition of childhood in Chicago. She particularly noted that the existing laws were ineffectual and that Illinois was backward in the treatment of criminal children and that prevention rather than reformation was required. She urged that the Woman's Club should take the initiative in this matter and invite the city clubs to come together[22]. At further meetings it was agreed that other women's organisations in the city would be contacted and asked if they would unite with the Club in a symposium on the subject of the condition of child life in Illinois and the steps necessary to improve these conditions.[23]
The resulting meeting of over fifty representatives of the many women's organisations in Chicago and its suburbs was held on January 31, 1896 in the Woman's Club rooms. It was a clear example of how women's informal networks could be utilised to lobby for a matter of concern to women and a reflection of the amount of interest there was in the matter among women's associations[24]. The main aim of the meeting was to arouse public awareness of the conditions of children in Illinois and to arrange for a further mass meeting at which a series of papers would be presented showing what ought and could be done relative to the 'child problem'.[25]
To consolidate the message of the meeting an appeal was sent out signed by various members of the Club and addressed to "The Women and the Women's Clubs of Illinois." This is particularly significant in showing the concerns of these women about child life in the poorer sections of Illinois. It stated that among the duties of women were the care and protection of social dependents, and that the neglect of children was social suicide. Moreover, all women were interested in children and their condition was of the utmost moment to the State. "In all large cities one condition exists which is comparatively unknown in small communities," the appeal claimed,
namely, numbers of children who, through the death, neglect, poverty, weakness or criminality of parents or guardians, do not attend school, have practically no home training or control, and through such neglect drift into criminality. There are hundreds of such children in Chicago and elsewhere throughout the State, growing up to constitute an ignorant and criminal class, dangerous to the welfare of the whole country.
The appeal went on to describe the conditions of children and the connection between these conditions and the growth of crime and pauperism in the State. It concluded with an appeal to the mothers of the State:
Those who have children know that no child should be considered a criminal until his reasoning faculties are developed and until some opportunity has been given him of knowing good and evil. In the cities of the state thousands of children are, through the death, neglect, indifference or criminality of parents, left entirely to the education of the streets, with no training in right doing, but every inducement for wrong, and our laws recognize no difference between the untrained child of seven who throws a stone or steals an apple and the adult criminal who is drunk, disorderly or who commits petty theft...
It was the duty of the State to provide these children with a better start in life, since their parents failed to do so. The women of the State should investigate local conditions and use their influence with members of the Legislature to secure laws to protect children.[26]
A further meeting of the various women's clubs was held on May 9, 1896 at which papers were given which sought to describe the conditions of child life in Illinois and arouse public opinion to do something about it. The meeting ended with a call upon the members of the Legislature to enact laws to protect dependent and delinquent children and particularly to prohibit the retention of children in the poorhouses of the State, to forbid the confinement of children in the jail or bridewell in association with adult criminals[27]. It is perhaps significant that there was not a call for the establishment of separate courts for children or for a probation system at this time, possibly because there were still questions as to how such a court could be made constitutional.
Throughout the later 1890s the Chicago Woman's Club continued to lobby, more or less successfully, for various measures to reform the conditions of children in Illinois, and especially in Chicago. They were not alone in this, however. Indeed, if they had not received the help of other interested groups, especially that of certain influential male reformers, it is unlikely that their agitation would have had any substantial results. But, more importantly the Woman's Club was joined in its endeavours by another predominantly female organisation - the Hull House community.
In many respects the women of the Hull House community were prompted by the same concerns as their fellow reformers in the Chicago Woman's Club, but there were substantial differences between the two groups. The Hull House women were not 'true maternalists', although they often used maternalist rhetoric to justify their actions. Many of the Hull House reformers had college educations and backgrounds in the social sciences which, together with their experience of living in Chicago's Nineteenth Ward, influenced their pursuit of reform. Despite this difference in perspective, the women of Hull House were closely associated with the Chicago Woman's Club in many of its ventures. On a personal basis the connection between the two agencies was very close. Several members of the Hull House community were also members of the Chicago Woman's Club, and prominent members of the Club were benefactresses of Hull House and were involved in its various activities[28]. At times the two groups worked together so closely that it is difficult to distinguish between the initiatives of the two agencies.
Jane Addams and her friend, Ellen Gates Starr moved in to what became known as Hull House on 18 September 1889. They were soon the nucleus of a thriving social settlement in Chicago's Nineteenth Ward[29]. Hull House was not the first settlement house in the United States, but it became arguably its most famous, due in large part to the character of the women who lived there during the 1890s.
The settlement house idea itself was an English one. Its main purpose was that well-educated, middle class young people would set up residence in slum neighbourhoods, and thus place themselves in a position where they could help to ameliorate the lives of the poor, as their neighbours. The first settlement house, Toynbee Hall in London's East End, had a religious foundation and its residents were all men. By contrast, most American settlement houses were secular organisations and the majority of their residents were female. Nonetheless, the pioneer settlement workers in America were idealists who believed that they had a mission to solve the problems of the crowded city and that the best way to do this was to go and live in working class neighbourhoods[30]. Their motives were not purely altruistic however.
For college-educated women in particular, the settlements fulfilled a very obvious need. For many of these women found it very difficult to find a place in society after they had graduated, and settlement work provided an ideal outlet for their training and talents. The knowledge they had acquired at college, joined to the principles of educated motherhood and the growing emphasis on child study, encouraged college graduates to confront the problems that industrialisation, urbanisation and immigration had posed. Settlement work allowed them to apply what they had learnt at college to the practical problems of slum life and it enabled them to go beyond purely practical work to investigate the conditions in which their neighbours lived and worked, producing a very different approach from that of traditional female charity workers. This change in approach reflected changes in female higher education. For while women's colleges remained steeped in the traditions of educated motherhood, by the end of the nineteenth century many had begun to introduce a social science curriculum which influenced college graduates to use more 'scientific' methods in their charity work[31]. Consequently, settlement work quickly became an attractive occupation for single middle class women and it was soon widely accepted as a proper occupation for these women. To society it appeared as an extension into the slum of the traditional role of women as mother and housekeeper, and settlement workers did little to upset this assumption. [32]
The community life fostered by the settlements proved an important source of support for the women reformers who lived in them and provided a creative setting for them to pursue and develop a reform strategy. For, as Kathryn Kish Sklar has shown, Hull House gave women reformers an emotional and economic substitute for family life, and linked them with other women of their own class and educational background. It also enabled women reformers to co-operate with male reformers and their organisations, allowing them to draw on male support without submitting to their control[33]. As a result, in a period when women still did not have the vote, the settlement gave women reformers the mutual support and ability to reach beyond female institutions to enter the political realm dominated by men.
Thus the settlement movement allowed women reformers to move more fully into civic life, but they still did so as women. While they emphasised their professionalism and the scientific nature of their work, the social activism of the Hull House women reformers drew upon the traditions of women's sphere. The female social scientists at Hull House placed a great emphasis upon the 'scientific' collection of data about their neighbourhood, which they then used to provide a careful analysis of a social problem and to demand reform[34]. Thus they used social science methods to shed light on social problems and draw conclusions from their findings; but these conclusions were gendered in the sense that they often focused upon the needs of women and children and they demanded reform as an immediate moral necessity[35]. Moreover, the settlement emphasised women's qualities of compassion, nurture and sympathy as well as drawing upon maternalist ideology with its emphasis upon the role of women as mothers[36]. Their interpretation of this ideology was, however, quite different from that espoused by the Chicago Woman's Club. For, unlike the 'true maternalists' of the Club, the majority of Hull House women were not themselves mothers and they rejected a sentimental view of motherhood in favour of a more 'scientific' approach. Indeed, their use of maternalist rhetoric was often little more than a strategic posture.[37]
It is therefore unsurprising that some of the earliest efforts of the Hull House residents were directed towards helping the women and children of the neighbourhood, although they never concentrated all their activities on these groups. It soon became clear to Jane Addams and her colleagues that children in the slums did not conform to their preconceived ideas of childhood. Their experience among the children of the neighbourhood, and especially the apparent increase in the incidence of crime among these children, led them to believe that the immigrant and working class families were on the point of breakdown. In this they shared many of the same perceptions as the women of the Chicago Woman's Club, but their experience of living in the Chicago slums and their involvement in compiling social surveys of the area gave them a more realistic understanding of the problems these families faced. Jane Addams recognised the pressures the slum exerted upon family life and the problems which developed between immigrant parents and their Americanized children, but her sympathies were most often with the children and what she saw as the denial of their right to childhood. Like some of the other residents, Addams recognised that many of the problems of dependent and delinquent children were the result of a maladjustment to city life.[38]
Most prominently involved in the efforts to find a solution to the problem of dependent and delinquent children among the Hull House residents was Julia Lathrop. Her experience as a Hull House resident and as a member of the Illinois Board of Charities shaped her perceptions of the problem and the solutions which she sought. For the solutions that the Hull House residents sought to the problems of juvenile delinquency and dependency had a different emphasis from those of the Woman's Club. Whereas the Club women were, at first, mainly involved in helping children already involved with the courts and penal institutions, some of the residents of Hull House were actively involved in preventing children from ever appearing before the courts. Although Hull House residents were active in lobbying for a change in the law as regards dependent and delinquent children, their most significant contribution was arguably to develop an informal probation system around Hull House. This provided a body of probation officers who would form the nucleus of the probation system introduced in the Juvenile Court Law of 1899.
In October 1896 the Hull House Bulletin reported that "Dr. Moore who has been in co-operation with the police stations for some months, will be at home from 8 to 9 o'clock every evening and will be glad to consult with parents who may desire her services." A similar announcement appeared regularly in the Bulletin from December 1897, advising that a resident of Hull House visited neighbouring police stations and courts to aid in securing better conditions for wayward and incorrigible children[39]. In this informal way a form of probation for children grew up in the Nineteenth Ward centred upon Hull House. It seems to have begun simply as an extension of the work of the settlement, a means to help immigrant parents with delinquent children, who needed help in dealing with the police stations and courts. At first the Hull House residents acted as little more than a means of liaison between immigrant parents and the police, but this slowly developed into a system which not only helped children who had already got into trouble with the police, but tried to stop children from ever becoming involved with the courts.
As this informal probation service became more extensive, Hull House residents appeared in court when children's cases were to be heard, they investigated the home conditions of these children, and they advised the judge how best to look after the interests of the child. Some cases were even dismissed into the care of these women[40]. Involvement in this work gave these women an understanding of the problems of the justice system as it affected children and caused them to lobby for the legal sanctioning of their work. It also convinced them that probation should become the key element in the treatment of wayward children.
The creation of an informal probation system for juvenile offenders reflected some of the wider interests of the Hull House residents. For probation provided a non-custodial means of dealing with children in trouble and, by allowing probation officers to exercise supervision over the lives of children, it aimed to keep them out of further trouble. Here maternalist concerns were apparent in ensuring the 'proper' upbringing of children. Equally important though, was the investigation of the family and environmental background of children who were to come before the juvenile court. Here the influence of the social science training of the Hull House women was evident. For one of the key functions of research into living conditions as far as these women were concerned, was to collect data for the purpose of constructive work to ultimately improve the situation. By investigating the family and environmental backgrounds of these children, the women reformers aimed to provide the court with some insight into the life of the child, and, by so doing, give court officials an idea of how to help him.
While such informal methods of dealing with delinquent children gradually developed around Hull House, certain of the residents gradually became convinced of the need for legislation to deal with the problem. Their experience of these children showed them that existing laws were evidently not working, and existing institutions for the care of dependent and delinquent children were inadequate. Julia Lathrop expressed a further concern:
But often they were let off because justices could neither tolerate sending children to the Bridewell nor bear to be themselves guilty of the harsh folly of compelling poverty stricken parents to pay fines. No exchange of court records existed and the same children could be in and out of various police stations an indefinite number of times, more hardened and more skilful with each experience.[41]
Thus the understanding gained by the Hull House residents in acting as probation officers further persuaded them that the existing system as regards children was inadequate and inconsistent. It was also detrimental to the welfare of the children who became involved with it, and would consequently have a dangerous effect upon society[42]. For this reason a change in the law for dependent and delinquent children was necessary.
Increasingly from 1897 onwards the Hull House residents co-operated with the Chicago Woman's Club in their efforts for reform. Beginning in early 1898, Mrs. Henrotin and Mrs. Flower of the Club joined forces with Julia Lathrop and, in April 1898, Miss Lathrop became chairman of the Woman's Club Joint Committee on Probation Work for Children in Police Stations. She co-ordinated their efforts to establish a form of probation for children and to appoint Mr. Carl Kelsey as probation officer to work in the East Chicago Avenue Police Station.[43]
Julia Lathrop did not confine her campaigning only to the Chicago Woman's Club. As a member of the Illinois Board of Charities she was in a position to influence the agenda of the annual Illinois Conference of Charities. The conference of 1898 concentrated its entire programme upon the question "Who are the Children of the State?" Various papers on aspects of the state's duties towards children, were read by members of the Board of Charities and superintendents of state institutions, as well as leading attorneys and experts in child-saving. The conference concluded with a call by Frederick Wines, Secretary of the Board of Charities and a noted penal reformer, for reform of the Illinois justice system as regards children:
We make criminals out of children who are not criminals by treating them as if they were criminals. That ought to be stopped. What we should have, in our system of criminal jurisprudence, is an entirely separate system of courts for children, in large cities, who commit offences which would be criminal in adults. We ought to have a 'children's court' in Chicago, and we ought to have a 'children's Judge,' who should attend to no other business. We want some place of detention for those children other than a prison...[44]
As chairman of the Conference Business Committee, Julia Lathrop drew up a resolution to push for legislative change[45]. In the event, the Legislative Committee of the conference played little part in the agitation which led to the passing of the juvenile court law. However, the conference was significant in bringing the issues before a wider audience and focusing attention upon the need for new legislation[46]. It also served to increase the momentum towards reform. But, by the time the conference met in November 1898, other agencies had already seized the initiative and the conference itself was held back by more conservative members who were not in favour of non-institutional methods of dealing with dependent and delinquent children.[47]
Even before the conference met, the Chicago Woman's Club had made overtures to the Chicago Bar Association. At its annual meeting on October 22, 1898, Ephraim Banning, who was an associate of Julia Lathrop's on the State Board of Charities, offered a series of proposals to the Bar Association which pointed out the deficiencies in the proper care for delinquent children in Chicago. The resolutions clearly reflected the concerns of the Hull House and Club women. They pointed out the presence of children in the jail and bridewell in close association with older, vicious criminals; the fact that Illinois made no provision for dependent children other than public almshouses; and the fact that judges were so overburdened with other work that it was difficult for them to give due attention to children's cases. The resolutions were accepted by the Bar Association and a committee appointed to draw up the necessary legislation.[48]
The Hull House community and the Chicago Woman's Club provided the motivating force behind the campaign which produced the Illinois Juvenile Court Law and their concerns are clearly apparent in the law, but other agencies were also involved. Child saving agencies such as the Catholic Visitation and Aid Society and the Protestant Illinois Children's Home and Aid Society, led respectively by Timothy D. Hurley and Hastings H. Hart, were also involved in lobbying for the law, though apparently at a fairly late stage. Their concerns were rather different from those of the women reformers. Judging by an earlier bill proposed by Timothy Hurley in 1891, they were more anxious to gain the protection of the state for their own part in the juvenile justice system, than they were early advocates of juvenile courts or probation[49]. The Chicago Bureau of Associated Charities was also involved in agitating for the law, thus presenting a united front of reformers which gave demands for legislation more chance of success than if the measure had been strictly a women's bill. For although women might legitimately campaign for reforms which were closely connected with their interests, a measure too closely associated with women's concerns and without the endorsement of male reformers, was unlikely to succeed in the entirely male legislature[50].
Co-operation between the female and male reformers was important in securing the passage of the Juvenile Court bill. While the male reformers seem to have been happy to accept the initiatives of the women reformers and accepted their leadership, the women reformers needed the legal expertise and political clout of the male reformers to achieve their reform. Hull House seems to have played an important part in facilitating this co-operation, for it acted as a meeting place for reform-minded people in Chicago. It also seems to have acted as a centre of operations from which pressure was put on legislators at Springfield to pass the bill[51]. The Chicago Woman's Club too seems to have played an important part in lobbying for the passage of the bill.[52]
The Juvenile Court Law of 1899 thus marked the culmination of a decade of efforts by the women of Hull House and the Chicago Woman's Club to deal with the problem of dependent and delinquent children. The Act as it was passed clearly acknowledged the influence of its originators in its conclusion:
This act shall be liberally construed to the end that its purpose may be carried out, to-wit: That the care, custody and discipline of a child shall approximate as nearly as may be that which should be given by its parents, and in all cases where it can be properly done, the child to be placed in an approved family home and become a member of the family by legal adoption or otherwise.[53]
In seeking this legislation the two groups of women reformers worked closely together and used many of the same arguments. However, although the distinction between the two groups was not always very sharp, there were differences in approach. The Club women acted as 'true maternalists' emphasising their identification as women and mothers, whereas the Hull House women were more concerned to use their background in social sciences to inform their reaction to the 'child problem.' In many senses the Hull House women had a clearer idea of what lay behind juvenile delinquency than did the Club women, and for this reason their emphasis was more on preventing children from ever getting into trouble with the law, than on alleviating conditions once children had become involved in the justice system.
Both the Chicago Woman's Club and the Hull House community were, however, ultimately concerned to overcome the inadequacies of the existing system of treating problem children and to make sure that the state recognised its duty towards these children. Moreover, both were anxious to ensure that all children received the proper love and nurture that they regarded as the right of every child. Their campaign to secure legislation to embody these ideas, was prompted by a recognition that they needed legal sanction for informal practices and a desire that the state should take responsibility for protecting family life. In this sense, the women of the Chicago juvenile court movement reflected the concerns of many other women reformers in the Progressive Era, and the juvenile court movement is illustrative of many other areas of maternal and child welfare reform during this period in the United States.
This article was first given as a paper at the Centre for Urban History, University of Leicester, on 17 March 1995.
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