Jessie Donaldson Hodder
Jessie Donaldson Hodder was a prominent American prison reformer born in Cincinnati, Ohio. Orphaned at a young age, she was raised by her grandmother and later moved to New York, where she formed a long-term partnership with Alfred LeRoy Hodder, with whom she had two children. After facing personal tragedies, including the untimely death of her daughter, Jessie turned her focus to social work, becoming a matron at the Industrial School for Girls and later a counselor for unwed mothers. Her most notable role was as the superintendent of the Massachusetts Reformatory Prison for Women, where she served for twenty years. Hodder was passionate about transforming the prison into an educational facility, emphasizing rehabilitation over punishment, and advocating for better health and vocational training for inmates. She was a pioneer in applying scientific approaches to penology and worked tirelessly to improve conditions for women in the correctional system. Despite facing challenges, her efforts led to significant reforms in women’s prisons, establishing a legacy of compassion and support for offenders. Jessie Hodder passed away in 1931, leaving behind a lasting impact on the field of prison reform.
Subject Terms
Jessie Donaldson Hodder
- Jessie Hodder
- Born: March 30, 1867
- Died: November 19, 1931
Prison reformer, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her mother, Mary (Hall) Donaldson, died when she was two. Her father, William Donaldson, remarried and she was raised by her grandmother. Little is known about her early education.
She went to New York in 1890 where she met Alfred LeRoy Hodder, a doctoral student. She took his name, but they were never legally married. They lived in Europe and, after 1884, in Pennsylvania, while Alfred taught English at Bryn Mawr College. In 1898 Jessie Hodder and their two children—Olive, born in 1883, and J. Alan, born in 1887—went to Switzerland, expecting Alfred to follow shortly. Instead he remained in America and married another woman in 1904. In 1906 Olive died and Jessie Hodder, distraught and destitute, returned to Boston.
With the help of Elizabeth Glendower Evans, a trustee of the Massachusetts training schools, Hodder became a matron at the Industrial School for Girls in Lancaster. In 1908 she was hired as a counselor for unwed mothers in the social service department of the Massachusetts General Hospital and became a dedicated and effective social worker. In 1910 she was appointed superintendent of the Massachusetts Reformatory Prison for Women at Sherborn.
During her twenty years as superintendent Hodder tied to implement many of the theories and goals of her predecessors and her own conviction that women were sent to prison “to use their time, not to serve it.” She believed that the reformatory should be an educational facility, where women could learn to earn a living and lead upright lives. In 1911 she had the word “Prison” removed from the reformatory’s name.
Hodder improved education at all levels, opened a library and began music and drama programs. She had the prisoners’ work time reduced to a half-day and used the other half for education, vocational training, and recreation. Yet, under her administration, revenues from reformatory industries did not decrease—an important concern for the state legislature. She also struggled to improve the inmates’ health. She urged the legislature in 1913 to provide an oculist and a dentist and insisted on tests and treatment for venereal disease. After repeated requests, a gymnasium was opened in 1926.
Hodder was a leader in the scientific approach to penology. She believed that only a small percentage of criminals were normal, and that each case had to be studied and classified. Prisoners, she insisted, needed help, not condemnation, and she instituted psychiatric examinations.
Under Hodder the reformatory became a model institution, although she did not succeed in obtaining her most-hoped-for reform, a cottage system. Her tenacity, persistence, and dedication brought funding for her programs and recognition of the reformatory’s achievements in America and abroad. By following Hodder’s ideas and examples, prisons for women became more humane institutions, with rehabilitation replacing punishment as the primary goal.
Hodder was a member of the National Prison Association, a delegate to the International Prison Congress in London in 1925, and was appointed to the National Crime Commission in 1927. She died of chronic heart disease at her home at the reformatory in 1931, at the age of sixty-four. There was an Episcopal service and her body was cremated.
Jessie Hodder’s papers are at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College. Her goals, activities, and achievements as superintendent are chronicled in her annual reports, printed in Annual Reports of the Prison Board (1912-1915) and then as Annual Report of the Board of Prisons (1916-1930). Her published articles include “The Next Step in the Correctional Treatment of Girl and Women Offenders,” National Conference of Social Work, Proceedings, 1918. pp. 117-121; “Disciplinary Measures in the Management of Psychotic Delinquent Women,” ibid., 1920, pp. 389-96. High praise is given her work in Sheldon and E. T. Glueck, Five Hundred Delinquent Women (1934). A biography appears in Notable American Women (1971). An obituary appeared in The New York Times, November 20, 1931.