Local // Bay Area & State

Corrupt, inhumane reform school was SF’s first form of juvenile justice

Today, George M. Rush Stadium on the San Francisco City College campus is the scene of nothing more violent than football games. But during the 19th century, one of the grimmest institutions in the city’s history stood near here — the Industrial School.

Children as young as 2 were warehoused at this brutal and corrupt reform school. It was an inauspicious start to California’s juvenile justice system.

After the Gold Rush, growing numbers of vagrant and destitute children began wandering the city’s streets. Officials decided to open a “House of Refuge,” similar to institutions that New York and Philadelphia had started in the 1820s. Their purpose was to provide humane and therapeutic care while providing youths with schooling and teaching them a trade.

The San Francisco Industrial School opened in May 1859, to great acclaim and high hopes. In its first year, it took in 60 boys and five girls. As Daniel Macallair notes in “The San Francisco Industrial School and the Origins of Juvenile Justice in California: A Glance at the Great Reformation,” only 12 of these children had been accused of crimes, mostly petty larceny. The others were committed on the grounds of “leading an idle and dissolute life.”

Unlike most other institutions at the time, the Industrial School did not segregate by race or ethnicity. For a time, Chinese American children made up the largest ethnic group, and many inmates were from other immigrant populations.

The school took youths up to 18. The average age of the children was 12, and two in that first year were younger than 5.

Despite its lofty ideals, the Industrial School proved to be little more than a harsh workhouse, whose real purpose was to keep troubled youths out of sight.

Because the privately chartered institution was expected to be self-supporting, it relied heavily on inmate labor for revenue. For the first few years, the children were put to work clearing and grading the school’s 100 acres and working on its farm. The school’s managers negotiated a deal with the San Francisco-San Jose Railroad to have a rail stop less than 100 yards from the school’s entrance, making it easy to ship child-picked produce to commercial markets.

The Industrial School was designed like a prison. It was a three-story, single-wing building, with every floor holding 16 cells that were 5½ feet by 7½ feet. Each cell had an iron bed that folded against the wall. Toilets at the end of the hall spread an “absolutely intolerable” stench through the building.

Early visitors to the Industrial School commented on the almost complete absence of educational facilities or vocational training. The sole teacher sat behind a desk made of a piece of plywood resting on a barrel. The children had to carry in their benches and tables from the dining room at the start of school day.

The children’s day began at 5:30 a.m. After breakfast, they were handed picks and shovels and marched off to work at the rear of the building moving earth. They worked until a food break at noon, then were marched back to dig some more until 2:30. From 3 to 5:30 they attended school. Supper was at 6, then more school from 7 to 8:30. Bedtime was at 9.

There was no workshop and no playground. The children were marched to and from each activity. At the dining hall, they all sat facing in one direction on long benches.

Children shipped off to the Industrial School immediately began trying to escape, tarnishing its reputation and threatening its funding. In response, school officials forbade the boys and girls from wearing shoes and socks except when they were sick. But the escapes continued.

In 1868, continuing reports of brutality led to an official investigation. A grand jury found that Superintendent Joseph Wood, a teacher and two other employees had meted out “barbarous” treatment to their young charges.

Children were flogged so severely, sometimes receiving more than 100 lashes, that their shirts were stuck to their backs with blood. One child committed suicide a few days after being beaten.

Offenders were placed in pitch-black isolation cells and forced to sleep on asphalt. Youths who protested were beaten or punished even more severely. In some cases they were “bound and gagged” — a barbaric practice in which a “stout, short stick” was thrust to the back of the child’s throat, and a stick placed under the arms and below the knees, forcing the victim to sit doubled up on his or her side.

After a short time, the pain became “indescribable.” Youths were often left like this for a night.

Wood was also found to have sexually abused the girls under his control. A number of girls testified that he would let them do anything they wanted as long as they did not tell “certain things.”

As Macallair notes, such sexual abuse was common in institutions at the time. When “respectable” members of the community were involved, attempts were typically made to blame the “sluttiness” of the victims.

The investigation led to public outrage. It was reported that 100 men from Sacramento were ready to come to San Francisco, tear down the building and hang the superintendent. Wood was forced to resign and immediately left the city.

In 1872, the city took control of the school. Sixty-three girls were transferred to the Magdelene Asylum, at 21st and Potrero, which a Catholic group had originally opened as a shelter for former prostitutes. But the new arrivals were so rebellious that the sisters had to house them in separate quarters, fearing they would corrupt the Magdelenes.

Disillusionment with the Industrial School led authorities to pursue more enlightened approaches to juvenile justice. In 1873, the San Francisco Boys and Girls Aid Society was created, which emphasized “placing out” — the practice of putting troubled children with families, usually in the country. California’s youth probation and foster care systems both originated in this practice.

Some youths were also sent to sea on a city-owned ship, the Jamestown. It made three voyages to Hawaii before the trips were discontinued.

In 1892, the Industrial School was closed. The children living there were sent to reform institutions elsewhere in the state, and it became a women’s prison. After 33 bleak years, San Francisco’s first failed attempt at institutional juvenile reform had come to a well-deserved end.


Trivia time

The previous trivia question: What valuable commodity does long-haul trucker Richard Conte drive to San Francisco’s produce market in the 1949 film “Thieves’ Highway”?

Answer: Apples.

This week’s trivia question: What dialect is most widely spoken in San Francisco’s Chinatown?

Editor’s note
