The wayward and the feeble-minded : Euthenics, Eugenics, and the Provincial Industrial Home for Girls, 1914-1929
Date
1994
Authors
Vrooman, Tamara Rowanne
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Abstract
This thesis examines the relationship between British Columbia's first Industrial Home for Girls and the community it served. In particular, it examines the way in which young women were labelled as delinquents, segregated from their peers, and incarcerated in the Provincial Industrial Home for Girls (PIHG) during the early part of the twentieth century. Using records from the PIHG, the Vancouver Juvenile Court, and the provincial government, this thesis points to weaknesses inherent in a dichotomous social control model which focuses on aggressors and victims. In its place, this study attempts to deconstruct the discourses which co-contributed to the identification of young women as deviant using a multi-dimensional analysis based on gender, class, race, and age.
Proponents of the social control model have argued that during times of rapid moral, socio-economic, and political change, the dominant class was able to successfully protect its position of privilege by restricting and regulating the actions of the working classes. However, an analysis of the PIHG and the young women sent there shows that this explanation is incomplete. Although middle class reformers' attempts to restrict and regulate young working class women and their families were often successful, sometimes they were not.
In addition, parents or other family members frequently initiated contact with the Vancouver Juvenile Court in order to have their daughters committed to the PIHG. Also, some of the young women living at the PIHG seem to have initiated contact with the Home themselves. To suggest that families were victims or were only able to resist efforts at social control at the margin, overlooks the way in which gender and generational conflicts interacted with class conflicts to label young women as delinquents.
Furthermore, this thesis uses a multi-dimensional analysis to explain how two seemingly contradictory discourses, eugenics and euthenics, co-contributed to the identification and segregation of young women labelled as deviant. The inmates of the PIHG were identified as delinquents as part of a complex process in which their gender, age, race, and class were classified as dangerous using a combination of hereditarian (eugenic) and morality (euthenic) arguments. In turn, these arguments were used to justify prolonged incarceration periods and limited contact with the outside community for young women but not for young men.
Therefore, this thesis argues that a multi-dimensional analysis is necessary to explain the impact of control institutions upon the communities they served; the PIHG was only one part of the complex network of power relationships between young women, young men, feminists, middle class reformers, and working class families.