Corpun file 22384

The New York Times, 8 December 1908

Upholds Girl-Whipping.

Jersey Home's Trustees Instruct Woman Superintendent to Keep Right On.

Special to The New York Times.

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TRENTON, Dec. 7. -- At the regular monthly meeting of the Board of Managers of the State Home for Girls held here last evening the board called in Mrs. Elizabeth V.H. Mansell, the Superintendent, who has been criticised for using a strap to the girls when they were refractory, and told her that the board had the utmost confidence in her, and were content to let her administer corporal punishment as she had done in the past, if she thought it necessary.

Mrs. Mansell volunteered the statement that there seemed to be public sentiment against having Mr. Kohler, the engineer of the home, hold the girls while she strapped them. She promised that she would do all the punishing herself in future.

The board also indorsed the "meditation rooms," where refractory girls are imprisoned to "think it over."

The board rejected the suggestion to President Thomas P. Fay of Red Bank, made by Dr. Charles Rosewasser of the Crimes and Dependence Commission, that drugs, hypodermically administered, might be used with good effect to control refractory girls.

The commission will make its report to Gov. Fort before Dec. 15.

Follow-up: 16 January 1910 - Jersey Home Board Upholds Whipping