This is a photo of Nellie Lewis. The caption next to is: “Nellie Lewis – whom I helped hunt. Left before Bible Class.”

Through the caption, we are able to get another window into what girls’ experiences were like at reformatories. While the tone of letters like those from Sadie Rubin implies that the experience is largely positive, both in terms of the usefulness of what is being taught and its effect on her character, Nellie’s runaway attempt shows that not everyone was as seemingly enamoured with the experience.

As a social worker recording the experience, Glenn’s caption also explicitly marks how her archive has marked Nellie and the way that identification of “runaway” is meant to be negatively read as deviant/disobedient, affecting the way that Nellie is represented in the archive. Reading against her identification, however, leaves room for Nellie’s agency and highlights – outside of the utopian imaginations of social reformers – that reformatories were still places of incarceration and control where people were kept against their will.

 

Questions

What is your first impression of Nellie based on this image? Did it change after you read the caption? Why or why not?

How do details in the image help you imagine Nellie?

What do you imagine/wonder about Nellie?