Deborah Manchester gave Wheeler Ball Field to the town for “the children of Adamsville” in honor of her nephew, Philip Manchester Wheeler, and great-nephew, Stafford Manchester Wheeler who was killed in World War II. Miss Debbie worked for many years in Manchester’s Store. She had no children of her own, but for six months of every year she and her sister Lizzie and her brother Abraham raised their orphaned niece and nephew. The field has been a gathering spot for local kids for decades, first for informal pick-up games and today for the local Little League. In the 1940s and 1950s, local organizations often held bake sales on its stone walls.
]]>Today, needlepoint samplers that were done by students – many of them age 10 and under – at Mary Balch’s School can fetch over $100,000 at Sotheby’s auctions; they fill Pinterest pages and have had starring roles on PBS’ Antiques Roadshow. At its heyday, the school – founded by Mary’s mother, Sarah, in the 1780s after the family left Newport when the city was under siege during the Revolution – had over 100 students, many of them boarders, and was one of New England’s best known and respected needlework schools through to its closing in the 1840s. One of the factors that distinguish the work done at Balch’s school, in addition to its technical sophistication, is its subject matter: Balch’s students were unique during this period in their depiction of architecture, including buildings designed by John Holden Greene.
What purpose did these needlepoint artworks serve? At the time, young girls would receive the most basic tutoring in reading and arithmetic before being placed (if they were from families with means) in schools that taught “female accomplishments”: music, watercolor painting, comportment and sewing. Sewing was an important skill as married women were expected to sew clothes and linens for her family. Needlepoint work laid the foundation for this work, but it also showed off the accomplishments of a young girl to prospective suitors – the best work was often framed and hung in the parlor.
]]>For sixty-one years, an imposing, three-story building on Tobey Street operated by the Providence Children's Friend Society provided shelter and refuge to the children of Providence. Hundreds of children without hope – orphaned, neglected, abandoned – entered through the doors. Within the safety of the brick walls, they dreamed of second chances, aspirations, and life with new foster families.
Constructed in 1863, the Tobey Street Home had been a model of modern construction. Now, in 1926, the building was a creaking relic of a bygone age. The worn stairs sagged from generations of pounding feet. The basement boiler gurgled and leaked, fitfully heating the drafty building. Finally, the doors of the Tobey Street Home closed for the last time.
The Providence Children’s Friend Society did not end with the closure of the Tobey Street Home in 1926 – today it remains the oldest social service organization in the state that addresses the needs of neglected, orphaned, or abandoned children. Founded in 1834 by Harriet Ware, a young, idealistic schoolteacher in Providence’s India Point neighborhood, the institution has continually reinvented itself over the decades.
Initially, Harriet Ware offered assistance and makeshift accommodations to children in need, soliciting donations from churches and community institutions all across Providence. Upon the official incorporation of the Providence Children’s Friend Society, the founders expressed their principles regarding the care of dependent children:
The design of the institution embraces all children who are in condition of orphanage and that this is the only institution in the State, where any provision is made for their support and education. More comprehensive, however, in operation than a restricted orphan asylum, it is intended, also, to extend its blessings to those who are equally destitute, and perhaps more afflicted, than the bereaved and fatherless.
Most importantly, the society welcomed all children in need, whether they were officially considered “orphans” or not, and dedicated itself to providing the children in its care with an education. With the support of many prominent citizens of Providence, a small orphanage was opened, where children might stay for a time before being placed out with a foster family.
The orphanage moved several times, necessitated by the growing number of children in the society’s care, until the spacious Tobey Street Home was constructed during the Civil War. By the 1920s, however, the expense of running the orphanage and the changing nature and philosophy of child welfare convinced the institution’s directors to reconsider their approach.
Children’s Friend Society began to focus on other work, including general casework, adoption, and foster care placement and supervision. In 1949, the society merged with the Rhode Island Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Now known as Children’s Friend and Service of Rhode Island, the merged organization honors its long history by operating offices in both Providence and Central Falls and by continuing to provide assistance and advice to families with children in need.
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]]>In nineteenth-century America, there were few laws and regulations regarding child welfare. Destitute parents neglected and abandoned their responsibilities. Unscrupulous guardians profited from child labor with little concern for their charges' well-being. Short-tempered or intemperate adults took out their anxieties and anger on helpless children. By the late 1800s, it was clear that an organization was needed to safeguard children’s interests, and in 1882, the Rhode Island Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (RISPCC) received a charter from the state legislature.
From its beginning, RISPCC was an early advocate of what we now call child welfare. It was a private organization that was quasi-governmental, with considerable powers to arrest and prosecute offenders. Over the course of its eighty years, before it merged to become part of Children’s Friend and Service in 1949, it evolved from acting as a guardian for children abused by the influences and actions of vicious parents to advocating for more economic support for parents so they might create a stable and healthy family life.
RISPCC’s legislative charter gave it considerable power to execute its mission. Agents could investigate complaints against parents or guardians for “wrongful neglect,” for using a child for “wanton, cruel or improper purposes,” for inducing a child to beg or steal, or for “gross and habitual cruelty.” RISPCC could enter homes and remove children, appear in court on behalf of children, and place children under indenture. The court could also award custody of state wards to RISPCC with the understanding that the organization would oversee the child’s transfer to either the Rhode Island State Home and School or a private orphanage.
As society’s attitudes toward child protection changed, so too did the philosophy of the RISPCC. Over time, RISPCC expanded its concerns to include child labor, curfew violations, truancy, child abuse, neglect, starvation, abandonment, sexual molestation, unwed mothers, incest, alcohol abuse and juvenile delinquency. Its respensibilities grew as well: service provider, policy developer, children’s advocate, social reformer, and – most importantly – significant spokesperson for child welfare.
In RISPCC’s early years, the few children actually removed from their homes were boarded with a matron on Sabin Street in Providence. By its third annual meeting, in 1885, it was voted to establish a temporary home for children. Donations allowed for the purchase of a shelter facility, which was located on the corner of Doyle Avenue and Camp Street. It operated there until 1953.
In 1946, RISPCC changed its name to Rhode Island Child Service, in hopes that the new name “might really give a picture of our work.” In 1949, recognizing that duplication of services by private agencies was ineffective, it merged with Children’s Friend Society to become Children’s Friend and Service. It was not until 1962, however, that the state of Rhode Island finally took responsibility for the investigation of child abuse and neglect complaints that RISPCC had overseen, making it one of the last states in the nation to do so.
]]>Heeding the words of Booker T. Washington, a young Providence minister and his wife decided to open their own institution of learning for Black Rhode Islanders. Reverend William S. Holland, the son of a Virginia slave, had come to Providence in 1902, to take the pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church. He quickly realized that the racial realities of the twentieth century – namely, the lack of educational and economic opportunity – threatened his congregation and the Black community at large. In 1908, the couple founded the Watchman Industrial School on Codding Street in Providence, naming the school after the Reverend’s favorite biblical passage:
“…Watchman, what of the night?
The Watchman said, ‘The morning cometh, and also the night…”
Isaiah 21:11-12 Young men at the institute were offered academic instruction as well as courses in carpentry, masonry, and machine repair. Such tremendous learning opportunities were intended to increase young Black men’s chances of gainful employment. Interestingly, Reverend Holland recruited many of his students from Providence’s juvenile court. He defended youth who committed acts motivated by poverty – such as food theft – by asking judges to place them in his care at the Watchman Industrial School rather than sending them to the Sockanosset School for Boys.The Watchman Industrial School became a beacon of hope for Rhode Island’s Black community. The variety of vocational and academic courses offered, in addition to the child care services that the school provided for working-class parents, made the Institute extremely popular – so popular, in fact, that by the early 1920s, it had outgrown its Codding Street location. Miraculously, by 1923, Reverend Holland had scraped together enough funds to purchase a spacious estate in North Scituate, Rhode Island.The four acres that came with the new property allowed for the addition of courses in agriculture, blacksmithing, shoe repair, cooking, and sewing. Additionally, Reverend Holland established a summer camp that utilized a nearby lake. Unfortunately, the Watchman Institute’s move to rural Rhode Island brought an entirely new set of problems.
Within a decade of moving to North Scituate, the Watchman Industrial School was plagued by a rash of unexplained fires – vicious attacks attributed to Rhode Island members of the KKK. The hate group terrorized the Institute and its young Black residents relentlessly, hoping to force them out, or burn them out. While the Watchman Industrial School was never physically destroyed, the repeated arson succeeded in financially draining Reverend Holland’s dream. After the Hurricane of ’38 further damaged the deteriorating buildings, the year-round school closed. Reverend Holland continued to operate the Institute’s summer camp until his death in 1958. His wife continued the program until a lack of funds finally ended it in 1974.
On January 3, 1791, Ann Arnold walked into the newly founded Slater Mill and onto the pages of history as one of the first nine employees hired by the mill. She was probably about ten years old.
As the industrial revolution swept across the western world, many factories, including Slater Mill, capitalized on child labor. Pliable young children could be easily taught the skills needed to operate the mill’s spinning frames, could be paid less than adults, and were less likely to incite trouble than adult workers. Some factories hired children as young as four years old. At Slater Mill, Ann Arnold joined a workforce made up of boys and girls between the ages of seven and twelve who worked six days a week – twelve hours a day in the winter, sixteen hours a day in the summer. They spent more than twice the amount of time that today’s kids spend in school working at the mill each day.
Ann Arnold and her fellow workers picked cotton clean and worked the mill’s carding and spinning machines. The roar of the Blackstone River and hum of the water-powered machinery filled the air. Fine cotton lint coated the floor, clung to the workers' clothes, and clogged their throats. If the mill supervisor thought the children were not working hard enough, the children were fined, further reducing the small paycheck that they took home each week. The children were expected to spend Sundays, their one day of rest, at a mill-sponsored Sunday school where Brown University students provided basic schooling.
For her hard work, Ann Arnold brought home a regular salary: a luxury compared to farm life. The rest of her family toiled all day on the family farm, working just as hard as Ann did in the factory, but without the assurance of a regular paycheck.
As Slater Mill expanded, more workers were needed to run the carding and spinning equipment. Mill operators adopted the “Rhode Island System” of labor where entire families were hired to work together in the factories. Nonetheless, children remained a key source of labor. In 1830, fifty-five percent of all millworkers in Rhode Island were still children.
Long after Slater Mill closed its doors in 1895, child labor continued to be a contested issue. In the early 1900s, organizations such as the Consumer's League of Rhode Island fought to limit child labor. Early legislation restricted the number of hours that children could work and set age requirements for factory work – unscrupulous mill owners seldom enforced these rules. In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act made it illegal to employ any child under the age of twelve in the United States. However, children like Ann still work in factories throughout the world today, enduring harsh conditions to support themselves and their family.
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]]>Within the granite and brownstone walls of Providence’s imposing Gothic courthouse, Manuel shifts nervously from foot to foot. For the second time this year, Manuel stands alone before a judge, awaiting his sentencing. The son of Portuguese immigrants, Manuel’s struggling family has no money to spend on an attorney; the right to free legal counsel is decades away. Earlier in 1925, Manuel had been arrested for violating property rights and committing theft. This time, he was picked up by the Providence Police Department because of truancy. After reviewing Manuel’s record and listening to the testimony of the arresting officer, the judge is finally ready to announce his sentencing – “Six weeks at Sockanosset.” As the judge slams down his gavel, a look of relief creeps across Manuel’s face.
From 1881 until 1985, the Sockanosset School for Boys served as a juvenile detention facility and reformatory. Rhode Island citizens had first determined the need for such a facility as early as 1847, when the Providence City Council approved the establishment of a school for the “confinement, instruction and reformation of juvenile offenders and young persons of idle, vicious or vagrant habits.” For three decades, children of both sexes were sent to the Providence Reform School in Tockwotton House in the city’s Fox Point neighborhood. By 1880, however, concerns over the school’s management and new approaches to “reforming” juvenile delinquents led to the creation of two new institutions: the Oaklawn School for Girls and the Sockanosset School for Boys.
In 1881, construction of the new boys’ school began on the Howard Reservation in Cranston – a site that already included the State Asylum for the Incurable Insane, the State Prison and Providence County Jail, and the state-run almshouse. Five stone cottages were built between 1881 and 1895, each with its own schoolroom and a dormitory intended to house up to fifty boys. The school complex also included a house for the Sockanosset Superintendent, an infirmary, a gym, and an elegant stone chapel. By locating the reformatory on pastoral land away from corrupting urban influences, the founders were following the prevailing doctrine of the nineteenth century: urban chaos and idleness engendered lawlessness. With that belief foremost in their minds, the school’s administrators kept the boys busy on the Howard Reservation’s 225 acres of farmland.
The early years of Sockanosset were highly regimented. The boys spent hours doing physically demanding activities like farm chores, building repair and construction, and coal shoveling. However, forward-thinking school administrators began to shift towards a program of education and rehabilitation. Social reformers insisted that the crimes of juveniles were typically motivated by social circumstance. Roy L. McLaughlin, the Superintendent of Sockanosset during the 1920s, noted that “most of the boys come from ‘broken’ or ‘badly bent’ homes.”
Sockanosset slowly shifted from a reformatory designed to contain and discipline the unruly to a school where classes and vocational training focused on preparing boys for life after Sockanosset. A key part of this training were the vocational classes offered by accomplished craftsmen. At one point, Sockanosset boasted a blacksmith shop, a carpenter shop, a farm school where they raised much of the food they ate, and a printing shop where they printed The Howard Times. Items created by boys at the school were the showpiece of the Rhode Island exhibit at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. During its height in the early twentieth century, Sockanosset was known as a respected vocational school. Some boys may have been truant or committed minor offenses in hopes of being sentenced to Sockanosset. As in Manuel's situation, boys being sent to Sockanosset knew they would receive regular meals and practical vocational training.
As the century progressed, however, a lack of funds and overcrowding at the school necessitated the termination of the very programs that had made Sockanosett so forward-thinking for its time. After over one hundred years of operation, the school finally closed in 1985.
]]>In the early 1900s, Rhode Island was in the grip of a deadly epidemic – the great white plague. Each year, thousands of Americans died from tuberculosis; for children under the age of five, the disease was one of the top ten causes of death. Highly contagious, tuberculosis spread rapidly through crowded urban tenements in cities like Providence. Early tuberculosis symptoms overlapped with many other diseases – fever, weight loss and lack of appetite, fatigue – but as the disease progressed, the most identifiable feature was a persistent cough. By the time a patient was coughing up blood and sputum they were highly infectious. In particular, children, living and interacting with infected adults, were at great risk of contracting the disease themselves.
Sanatoriums for tuberculosis patients sprang up across the country. In Rhode Island, adults with active tuberculosis were sent to a clinic at Wallum Lake in Burrillville. Initially, no provisions were made for children who had been exposed to the disease but were not actively infectious. A Providence Journal reporter noted: “We have no proper hospital accommodations for tubercular children under 14 years. They must, therefore, remain in their tenement homes regardless of the lack of good food, fresh air, and proper care. The need for an all-year-round home for crippled and debilitated children is great. Perhaps no one knows this better than the tuberculosis worker.” Without careful medical supervision and a healthy diet, exposed children’s chances of developing active tuberculosis dramatically increased.
In 1912, the Providence League for the Suppression of Tuberculosis finally addressed this issue, opening a “preventorium” at the Lakeside Home in Warwick. At this bucolic location, tubercular children were treated to a regime of fresh air and exercise. During the summer, children slept on open-air sleeping porches and spent their days playing outside. The children even received their schooling outside, using an open air shelter as their classroom for all but the bitterest days of winter. Only when the “rosy cheeks and cheery voices of the children denote[d] returning strength and vigor” were they sent back to their homes in the city.
A regiment of doctors and nurses supervised the children at the Preventorium. With neither an inoculation nor a cure for tuberculosis, doctors focused on improving the children’s overall physical well-being. Many of the children arrived at the Preventorium underweight for their age. After several months of care on the Preventorium’s simple, wholesome diet, children often found themselves sprouting up overnight, returning home several inches taller.
Two other groups of underprivileged children were also accommodated at the Lakeside Home, strictly isolated from the potentially infectious children of the Preventorium. Each week during the summer, a repurposed Red Cross ambulance stopped at the Quaker Meeting House in downtown Providence. Families gathered at the site hoping that their children might be approved for a vacation at the Lakeside Home. Children who passed the medical inspection piled into the ambulance with their luggage – by a dint of “scientific packing,” the ambulance could accommodate thirty-five children. At the Lakeside Home, these children from Providence’s urban core enjoyed several weeks of swimming, hiking, and playing games. Year round, the Lakeside Home also accommodated a small number of children who were convalescing from illnesses or operations.
Through the 1940s, The Lakeside Home continued to offer itself as a center for convalescents. However, children’s hospitals and better medical services slowly changed the face of medical care in Rhode Island. By the 1950s, modern antibiotics could now effectively treat and cure tuberculosis. The Preventorium grew obsolete.
On September 19, 1950, the Providence Tuberculosis League ended their operation of the Lakeside Home and Preventorium, transferring the property to Children’s Friend and Service for operation as a temporary shelter for homeless or neglected children.
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]]>On a frigid February in 1904, fifty riders and horses gathered at frozen Mashapaug Pond for an afternoon of racing on the ice. Beyond the pleasure of competition, the races gave local residents a chance to admire each other’s horses and to appreciate the conclusion of the ice harvesting season. When conditions made racing on the pond impossible, riders turned Reservoir Avenue into a speedway and spectators lined the street to watch, even when the weather turned bitterly cold.
Over the decades, Mashapaug Pond has remained a popular spot for recreational activities – though the pond isn’t without its share of risks. Reports of children falling through the ice in winter or drowning in the summer were common through the mid-twentieth century. Yet throughout the twentieth century, local youth continued to explore and play on Mashapaug Pond, ice skating in the winter when the pond froze, and exploring hidden clay caves on the pond’s coast. Today, with fewer children swimming in or skating on the pond, such incidents of danger are rare. But residents still worry about the health risks posed by pollutants in the pond water.The legacy of pollution has impacted the pond’s use as a recreational site. In the past, fishing on Mashapaug Pond was a source of food for some. However, contamination from the Gorham Manufacturing Company’s silver factory and pollution from stormwater runoff has made the pond’s fish poisonous to eat. Still, residents who fish for fun report catching large-mouth bass, yellow perch, carp, and even the occasional snapping turtle. A community boating center provided kayaks, canoes and lessons for people eager to get on the water before city officials grew alarmed at hazards caused by algae blooms and shuttered the site. Since 1999, though, a local dragon boat racing team has practiced on Mashapaug Pond between May and October.
Now, pass by J.T. Owens Fields on the western bank of Mashapaug Pond on any spring or summer day, and you’ll hear the sounds of baseball, softball and T-ball. Elmwood Little League, established in 1951, has brought hundreds of young ballplayers to the fields every season. The fields were dedicated to John T. Owens, a Providence native and famous amateur baseball player, nicknamed “Happy Owens” by local fans. Owens was killed as a serviceman in World War II, and the park created in his name now sports three baseball fields, two tennis courts, and a playground, all adjacent to an expansive view of Mashapaug Pond.
A large open space in a congested city, Mashapaug Pond and the three public parks along its shores call to children eager to explore and play. And although the horse races are unlikely to return, residents still hope that one day, Mashapaug Pond will be once again safe for swimming.
Questions
How have pollution and environmental changes affected the way people enjoy Mashapaug Pond and the activities they enjoy?What might the future look like for Mashapaug Pond? Does this future include swimming, fishing, baseball, or horse racing on ice? How could recreation change in the future?
What sorts of things do you like to do for fun? How do you think that’s different from what people did for fun a century ago? Why?
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]]>It was September 21, 1938. Strong winds ripped across the landscape of Starvegoat Island, tearing up bushes, destroying trees, and obliterating the summer cottages and dormitories perched precariously on the edge of Narragansett Bay. The hurricane-force winds tore the buildings, telephone and electric lines, water tower, and children’s sandboxes to pieces. A twelve-foot storm surge swept the debris away. Eighteen years of work turning barren Starvegoat Island into the Providence Floating Hospital Association’s “Sunshine Island” were erased in minutes by the Hurricane of ’38.
The Providence Floating Hospital Association began in 1915, the result of a collaboration between wealthy women from a local church and concerned doctors. Providence, in the early twentieth century, was a gritty industrial city, rife with urban slums and overcrowded tenements brimming with malnourished children. Starting small, the association chartered a steamer and arranged for a carefully screened group of mothers and infants to go on a day-long cruise of Narragansett Bay. Mothers received a simple lunch and a lecture on proper child-rearing techniques, while nurses fed their infants sterilized formula.
This experiment was deemed a success, and the Providence Floating Hospital Association was officially incorporated. The association initially funded their cruises through a city-wide junk drive, gathering automobile tires, hot water bottles, metal, rags, old feather beds, and false teeth, and announcing the presence of the collection truck with a bugler. By 1917, the association’s fundraising efforts focused on purchasing a large houseboat. They moored the new houseboat near Providence in Narragansett Bay, providing sunshine and medical attention throughout the summer for up to thirty infants at a time.
By 1920, the Providence Floating Hospital Association had completely outgrown their houseboat, so when the owner of Starvegoat Island offered its use to the association, they enthusiastically accepted. With the acquisition of “Sunshine Island,” the association decided to refocus its mission on children aged two through six since they required less nursing care than infants and might remain on the island for the entire summer. With the support of Providence citizens, the association constructed a new dormitory with more than one hundred beds on Sunshine Island. Later additions included running water and a telephone connection to the mainland. Both made life much easier for the island’s staff.
The association used idyllic imagery to promote and publicize the program, particularly to wealthy Providence citizens who might offer financial support: “Under the influence of the salt breezes from the harbor, the clean living and wholesome food, children who might wither in the deadly heat of tenement districts are given a new lease of life and health by a stay at Sunshine Island.” The association clearly saw itself as capable of raising and nurturing the children in a way that their poor, uneducated, working-class parents could not. Parents sending their children to Sunshine Island relinquished much of their authority to the association. Only one afternoon a month was reserved for parental visits; the island was also open to the general public one day each month, to showcase the association’s positive work to potential donors.
Following the devastation of the Hurricane of ’38, Sunshine Island stood desolate and bare. Rather than rebuild in the same location, the Providence Floating Hospital Association moved their base of operations to Warwick, where they continued to offer a summer retreat for children until the 1960s. Once filled with the noise and laughter of children at play, Sunshine Island was even used for a time as a landfill. Eventually, the narrow channel separating the island from Field’s Point on the mainland was completely filled, making it an island in name only.
]]>Willie Owens, a sturdy boy of 12 years, in cap, reefer and gray knickerbockers, stood in the Providence and Worcester Railroad station Friday afternoon. Tears glistened in his eyes, and he said he had no money. He wanted to find his way to the State Home, where he used to live, but knew not the way.
Willie Owens had arrived at the Rhode Island State Home and School for Dependent and Neglected Children two years earlier, sent to the orphanage after his parents were interred at the State Poor Farm, most likely for vagrancy or petty crimes. In the spring of 1888, Willie had been indentured out to a Mr. Hiram Tifft of Sharon, Massachusetts. Then, on a crisp November morning, after all the harvests were gathered and Tifft’s farm was snug for the winter, he abruptly told Willie that he no longer needed the boy and purchased him a one-way ticket back to Providence.
Willie Owens’ story was not unlike that of the thousands of other children who passed through the doors of the State Home and School throughout its tenure. Chartered by an act of the Rhode Island General Assembly in 1884, the State Home and School’s goal was to remove children from “degrading and disreputable circumstances” and enable them to grow up into productive citizens. About a quarter of the children sent to the State Home and School had lost one or more of their parents. The remainder of them had parents who were ill, destitute, incarcerated at the state prison or poor farm, or otherwise deemed incapable.
During its early years of operation, the State Home and School attempted to indenture, or “”put out,” most of the children entrusted to the institution. In theory, this practice both reduced overcrowding in the dormitories and facilitated the children’s eventual adoption. In practice, however, most of the children were utilized as a low-cost workforce, rather than candidates for adoption. Like Willie Owens, many of the children found themselves precipitously returned to the State Home and School when their labor was no longer needed.
Most children were indentured to commercial farmers who were seeking labor on their extensive estates. Many of the children, born and raised in Rhode Island’s urban industrial centers, arrived at their new homes with little agricultural experience. Sometimes, the consequences could be tragic: in 1900, a twelve-year-old boy’s placement with a farmer was deemed unsuccessful after the boy lost an eye and broke his nose after being kicked in the head by a horse. In 1916, after a report by the Social Welfare League revealed the problems in the putting-out system, the practice of indenturing children began to be curtailed.
A number of children responded to these pressures of life at the State Home and School with disobedience or truancy. Particularly unruly children might find themselves sentenced to spend the remainder of their childhood at one of the state’s two reform schools: either Oaklawn School for Girls or Sockanosset School for Boys. The State Home and School records also illustrate the disturbing regularity with which children from the State Home and School eventually ended up at poor farms, asylums, and prisons throughout the region.
The State Home and School continued to operate until 1979. Renamed the O'Rourke Children's Center in the 1940s, the institution slowly transformed itself from a nineteenth-century orphanage into a modern receiving center for managing wards of the state. The state’s orphanage suffered from a serious lack of leadership and support from the state’s leaders. A series of scandals, runaway children, and demands from neighbors and advocates to shut down the institution led to its closing in 1979. Soon after, the Rhode Island Department for Children, Youth, and Families removed the last of its offices from the former State Home and School property and transferred the site to Rhode Island College.
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