Emma Amelia Hall

Emma Amelia Hall (Emma A. Hall) was born February 28, 1837, in Raisin Township, Lenawee County, Michigan. She was one of seven children of a schoolteacher, Reuben Lord Hall and Abby Wells (Lee) Hall, a minister. Her family relocated to Ypsilanti, Michigan in the late 1850s, where Hall graduated from the Michigan State Normal School in 1861. Soon after, Hall moved to Detroit where she began her career in education and prison reform for women. Throughout her teaching journey, Hall assumed the responsibility of matron and educator for all types of students. Some of the students she taught had disabilities or suffered financial hardships. Her most notable roles in education and prison reform were serving as an advocate and a parental figure for women prisoners of Michigan.

Education career

In 1861, Emma Hall took a teaching position in Detroit's public schools. She joined the faculty of Professor John Sill’s Seminary for Young Ladies in Detroit in 1867. Hall’s gift for teaching gift brought her to the attention of Zebulon Reed Brockway, a prison administrator known for his innovative way of thinking about prison reform in the nineteenth century. Brockway initially hired Hall as a teacher at the House of Shelter, a women's workshop and rehabilitation facility in Detroit, Michigan, where she served as matron from 1871–74. Immediately after, Hall became matron at the school for handicapped and homeless children at Coldwater. Her next position was as matron in the state school for the deaf in Flint, from 1875-1881. Hall’s experience in education led her to establish a new, experimental reform school for girls in Adrian, Michigan; she became its first superintendent in 1881. In 1884, Hall served a missionary teacher to Native Americans in New Mexico.

Reformatory work

The House of Shelter was originally established as a means of reintegrating newly released women prisoners and to help them navigate the transition to life outside of prison. After her recruitment, Emma Hall became deeply involved in her work at the House of Shelter. She grounded her social work in being a woman of strong Christian faith and believing in her religious duty to help others. According to her colleague Zebulon Brockway, in his memoir titled "Fifty Years of Prison Service," Hall was so devoted to her job that she had no social life outside the institution. Despite that social isolation, Hall thrived in her mission to give the women of the House of Shelter a safe space to learn from her. Hall believed that the female offenders she worked with were victims of circumstances that were outside of their control. She soon enough became a mother figure, confidant, and overseer to the thirty inmates of the shelter, which later on were considered some of the better-behaved prisoners in the House.

In 1879, Emma Hall designed and established the state's first female reform school in Adrian, Michigan. Governor Charles Croswell appointed Hall to its board of directors, and then made her supervisor. Hall was later praised for her achievements in the school and the girls’ steady improvement under her management. The positive impact was noted by the love and respect the attendees had for her.

Controversy and challenges

The House of Shelter was a considered success to the reformation of criminalized girls, yet still, the home incited controversy in some quarters. The city administration’s resistance to the purpose of the house led to its founder Brockway’s resignation in 1873, followed by Hall’s resignation in 1874. Their departures left the House of Shelter in the hands of the city administration and the Detroit House of Correction, which voted for its immediate closure to turn it into a detention facility for prisoners. Hall was also forced to resign within a year of being matron at the state school for handicapped and homeless children of Coldwater, Michigan, due to disagreements with the governing board in 1874.

Criminal condition and reform

Overall, Emma Amelia Hall believed that the reformation of criminal girls was an educational objective that was still achievable despite the many obstacles to its realization. She noted how a lack of education and of industry skills, as well as insufficient means of support, predisposed young girls to take part in criminal activity.

In order for a successful rehabilitation of women prisoners, Hall concluded that one should tackle the systemic factors that contribute to the criminal condition of young people before it develops into criminal activity. In the paper read at the National Conference of Charities and Corrections held at Louisville Kentucky in 1883, Hall stated that the bad temperament that leads to the criminality of young people, although can be inherited, the major factors that contribute to this bad temperament are the lack of education and support of parents. The insufficiency of parental guidance and education, underlines the criminality of young girls and exhibits a criminal condition that indicates an unbalanced, abnormal, ill-developed nature, and disposition. In her Michigan Industrial Home for girls paper, Hall noted that some of the factors that contributed to the criminal condition of the inhabitants were that of mental illnesses, intemperance, lack of parental guidance, and criminality by the age of thirteen. Concluding that a criminal condition becomes a product of the environment that children are brought up in.

Legacy

Emma Amelia Hall spent most of her life devoted to her work in education and the reformation of criminal girls. Her major contribution to reform was the development and establishment of the female reform school in Adrian Michigan. Her innovative ideas included having inmates live in cottages instead of prison cells. Each cottage was organized as a small living group which allowed the inmates to practice domestic roles while they served time. In Hall’s reform school for girls, the inhabitants' ages ranged from eight to sixteen years old. Each of these girls were encouraged to learn and taught useful skills and attitudes that would allow them to smoothly integrate back into society.

Following her involvement in women’s prison reform through education and dedicating her life to the movement, Hall eventually died Dec 27, 1884, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

References

• HW, Wilson. "American Reformers", Second Edition Bentley University Library (2017) retrieved 2022.
• American Reformers | HW Wilson
• Bien, Laura. "Emma Hall: prison reform pioneer: a passionate social reformer, Emma Hall succeeded in engaging and educating her female charges in the midst of a hostile 19th-century prison system." Michigan History Magazine, January–February 2015, 55+. Gale General OneFile
• https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A394997481/ITOF?u=mlin_b_simmcol&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b6136362.
• Freedman, Estelle B. "Their Sisters' Keepers: Women's Prison Reform in America", 1830-1930. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981.
• Their sisters' keepers: women's prison reform in America, 1830-1930
• Girl Scout Museum at Cedar Hill, “Emma Hall”, Lighting The Way Historic Women of the Southcoast, n.d
• Emma Hall
• Hall, E.A. “The Reformation of Criminal Girls.” Madison Wis. & Midland Publishing co., (September 23–30, 1883).  
• The reformation of criminal girls. A paper read before the National Conference of Charities and Corrections, held at Louisville, Kentucky, September 23-30, 1883
• W.S George and Co., "Second Biennial Report of the Board of Control of the Michigan Reform School for Girls", State Printers and Binders, 1882.
• Biennial report.

Additional archival sources

• Hall, Emma Amelia. “Emma Amelia Hall Papers.” Mixed Material, 1866.
• U-M Library Search
• Michigan Reform School for Girls. “Michigan Reform School for Girls records, 1880-1884.”, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, (1880)  
• https://www.worldcat.org/title/77805386    
• Nenadic, Susan. “Crime and Punishment for 19th-Century Michigan Women.” Chronicle: The Quarterly Magazine of the Historical Society of Michigan 35, no. 4 (Winter 2013): 14–17.

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