Ellen Cheney Johnson
Ellen Cheney Johnson was a prominent prison reformer born in Athol, Massachusetts, in 1830. She grew up in Weare, New Hampshire, where her early interests in social reform were cultivated through education and community involvement. After marrying Jesse Crane Johnson, she became deeply engaged in welfare work during the Civil War, including founding the Women's Auxiliary Association of the United States Sanitary Commission. Johnson's experiences led her to advocate for the establishment of separate women's prisons, as she was deeply troubled by the conditions faced by female offenders in male-run facilities.
She played a pivotal role in the women's prison reform movement in Massachusetts, which culminated in the opening of the Massachusetts Reformatory Prison for Women in 1877. Serving as the superintendent for fifteen years, Johnson championed rehabilitation over punishment, focusing on education and the development of self-control among inmates. Her progressive ideas on female criminality emphasized understanding individual circumstances rather than merely addressing the crimes themselves. Although her approach has faced criticism for reinforcing traditional gender roles, Johnson's efforts resulted in significant improvements in the treatment of women in prison. Her legacy is marked by the creation of a supportive and rehabilitative environment for female inmates, leaving an enduring impact on the correctional system.
Ellen Cheney Johnson
- Ellen Johnson
- Born: December 20, 1829
- Died: June 28, 1899
Prison reformer, was born in Athol, Massachusetts, the only child of Nathan Cheney, a mill agent, and Rhoda (Holbrook) Cheney. The family moved to Weare, New Hampshire, where she attended public schools. She later studied at Francistown Academy in New Hampshire and taught school in Weare for a brief period.
Her interest in reform began early. At eighteen she joined a temperance society, temperance reform being an interest she kept for most of her life. At twenty she married Jesse Crane Johnson, a New Hampshire businessman interested in civic affairs. The couple moved to Boston, where their home became a meeting place for welfare workers and reformers. The Johnsons were childless.
During the Civil War, Ellen Johnson was drawn into welfare work. She was a founder of the Women’s Auxiliary Association of the United States Sanitary Commission and served on its executive and financial committees. After the war she aided war widows and deserted wives and worked with vagrant and homeless women through the Dedham (Massachusetts) Asylum for Discharged Female Prisoners.
Johnson’s efforts brought her into contact with correctional facilities. At this time there were no separate women’s prisons, and Johnson was appalled at the conditions and treatment of women offenders in these male-run institutions. Her response was to become the leader of a group of women—former sanitary workers—who insisted that separate female prisons, under the control of women, must be set up. Their goal was the creation of a separate, nonrepressive prison system enabling female criminals to be rehabilitated by their more fortunate sisters through education, religion, and love.
This was the beginning of the women’s prison reform movement in Massachusetts, and it resulted in the opening of the Massachusetts Reformatory Prison for Women at Sherborn in 1877. Johnson was a member of the state prison commission from 1878 until 1884. She then became superintendent of the reformatory—succeeding Clara Barton—a post she held for fifteen years.
Johnson based her administration on her advanced ideas on the causes of female criminality and the possibility of rehabilitation. She insisted that prisoners “must be led into the habits of industry and self-control,” “so that they will live righteously and usefully in society.” It was her belief that women became criminals “through a weak will, an undeveloped intellect, a perverted conscience, untrained instincts, ungoverned passions, or a combination of these.” A prison official, she therefore urged, should study each individual to find out the cause of her criminality. Officials should not deal with a woman’s crime but rather “with the character which made it possible for her to commit the crime.”
Johnson tried to reshape prison life and create a homelike atmosphere in which inmates would receive training, mostly in domestic skills. Repressive punishments were replaced by a grading system, with privileges granted as prizes for progress toward rehabilitation. A prisoner received grades according to behavior. Johnson developed an indenture system whereby some prisoners spent part of their sentences outside the prison, working as domestics in middle-class homes. It was hoped that they would benefit from the examples of solid family life and good citizenship set by their employers.
Although Johnson and other women prison reformers have been criticized for stressing domesticity and submissiveness in female prisoners and training them to be little else but virtuous wives or domestic servants, the Sherborn reformatory represented a vast improvement in the treatment of women criminals. Under Johnson there were recreational activities, basic education for illiterates, and more advanced studies as a “privilege” for others.
Johnson increased the prison lands at Sherborn and added a dairy, a hennery, an orchard, and pigs and sheep. These provided decent food for the inmates, income for the reformatory through the sale of farm products, and the opportunity for prisoners to work out of doors. Indeed, under her supervision the institution became a model of prison administration, attracting visitors from all over the United States and Europe.
Johnson traveled to London in 1899 to attend a convention of the International Congress of Women. She collapsed there and died, at sixty-nine, of angina pectoris. Her body was cremated, and her ashes were returned to America and buried next to that of her husband, who had died in 1882, at the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Johnson’s ideas on the causes of crime and on prison discipline can be found in her article “Prison Discipline,” in S. Barrows, ed., The Reformatory System, (1900). See also Annual Reports of the Commissioners of Prisons of Massachusetts, 1884-99. A very useful evaluation of female prison reformers is found in E. B. Freedman, “Their Sisters’ Keepers,” Feminist Studies 2 (1974). For biographical information see Notable American Women (1971); and The Dictionary of American Biography (1933). An obituary appeared in The New York Times, June 29, 1899.