Joliet Prisons
Joliet Prisons
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This limestone edifice at Collins Street and Woodruff Road once served as a women's prison in Joliet. It now is a reception and diagnostic center for the Illinois Department of Corrections.
By John Whiteside, Herald-News City EditorOf the 66 women who walked across Collins Street one fall day in 1896, 19 of them were classified as killers. Myrtle Farman was one of them.
All were headed into the new women's prison at Joliet, which had been built with male convict labor at a total cost of $75,000. Until then, the women had been confined in the overcrowded attic quarters above the warden's home at the men's prison.
The women included thieves, robbers, prostitutes and even two convicted of bigamy. The majority came from poverty.
Probably many, like Myrtle, wouldn't even be sentenced to prison today in a modern criminal justice system. What records still exist about Myrtle note she was serving time for manslaughter.
She was an illiterate servant girl whose lover had killed a man in a fight over her.
"She was implicated but probably had little to do with the actual killing," a clerk wrote on her record. Sentenced to one year to life, Myrtle served 3 1/2 years at Joliet.
Life inside the new prison, although better than the old cramped attic quarters, was still harsh. The majority of the women convicts worked in a steam laundry that cleaned some 500,000 clothing items a month. They worked six days a week.
Others made cane chair seats, weaved rugs, assembled boxes, worked in gardens, sewed, darned, cooked and cleaned. No idleness was allowed.
But in the new prison, each woman had a private cell. Outside yard recreation became routine.
In 1920, a library was added to the prison. In 1923, a chicken coop was built to provide fresh eggs for breakfast. In 1927, a radio with speakers was installed.
A new emphasis was placed on educating the women convicts in 1929, as more reforms became part of the state prison philosophy.
But the women's prison at Joliet was closed in 1932, when the population was moved into a new women's prison at Dwight.
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