Johnson, Ellen Cheney (1829–1899)

American prison reformer . Born Ellen Cheney on December 20, 1829, in Athol, Massachusetts; died on June 28, 1899, in London, England; only child of Nathan Cheney (an agent of a cotton mill) and Rhoda (Holbrook) Cheney; attended public schools in Weare, New Hampshire; attended an academy in Frances-town, New Hampshire; married Jesse Crane Johnson (a businessman); no children.

Born in Athol, Massachusetts, and educated in Weare and Francestown, New Hampshire, reformer Ellen Cheney Johnson taught school before her marriage to Jesse Crane Johnson, a salesman 12 years her senior. Settling in Boston, where her husband later opened a wholesale clothing firm, Johnson became a leading figure in civic affairs and, during the Civil War, was active in the U.S. Sanitary Commission. As a founder of the New England Women's Auxiliary Association, and a member of its executive and financial committees, she traveled to cities and towns across Massachusetts, collecting money and supplies for the war effort. After the war, when it was decided to distribute the surplus funds to veterans' widows and children, Johnson was assigned to the most depressed area of the city, the North End. Her search for dependents often led her to correctional institutions in South Boston, East Cambridge, and Deer Island, in the Boston Harbor. It was during this time that her attention was drawn to the plight of women prisoners, who were often incarcerated under the most deplorable conditions. She began to gather together women within her community (some of whom were her co-workers in the Sanitary Commission), to address the need for a permanent, separate penal institution for women. In 1874, Johnson helped establish the Temporary Asylum for Discharged Female Prisoners in Dedham, Massachusetts, but her years of effort did not come to full fruition until 1877, when legislation was passed authorizing the establishment of the Massachusetts Reformatory Prison for Women in Sherborn, Massachusetts. In January 1884, Johnson, who had served as a member of the state prison commission since 1878, resigned her position to become superintendent of the reformatory.

Ellen Johnson strongly believed in the justness of punishment. She once declared before the National Prison Association that "no lesson is more important than that which teaches respect for law, and dread of its wrath." But she was benevolent in her approach, establishing an institution that incorporated some of the most enlightened practices of her day. Her rehabilitative program for women included work on the institution's independent vegetable and livestock farms, classes in domestic skills and child care, basic schooling for those who needed it, compulsory reading assignments, and both indoor and outdoor recreational activities. She also instituted a program which provided supervised outside domestic employment for women prisoners when feasible. There was even a temperance club for those women reaching the highest level of their rehabilitation. (Johnson had embraced the temperance movement as a girl, and it remained a major interest throughout her life.) In her personal relationships with the inmates, Johnson preferred not to know about a prisoner's history and treated each as an individual with no past, only a hopeful future. The prisoners responded with the utmost respect for her leadership. "No one outside can have more than the remotest conception of … her executive ability and her great influence," wrote one prisoner. "Her heart is just overflowing with kindness and charity. She unites mercy with unflinching justice as I believe very few could."

Although Johnson had originally accepted her post for only one year, her tenure stretched to 15 years, during which time the Sherborn facility became a model institution. Ellen Cheney Johnson died on June 28, 1899, while in London for a congress of the International Council of Women. Her replacement at the Massachusetts Reformatory Prison for Women was Frances A. Morton. In 1911, Morton's successor, Jessie Donaldson Hodder , had the word "Prison" deleted from the name of the institution.

sources:

James, Edward T., ed. Notable American Women, 1607–1950. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971.

McHenry, Robert, ed. Famous American Women. NY: Dover, 1983.

Barbara Morgan , Melrose, Massachusetts