Lowell, Josephine Shaw (1843–1905)

Of Charity, Penitentiaries, Eugenics, and Reform

Lowell's vision of social action was forged in this crucible. Charity was not supposed to ameliorate suffering, she argued, but fundamentally to transform the recipient, converting irresponsible paupers into hardworking and economically independent citizens. Her secular ideology thinly disguised a Protestant ethic that was rooted in a religious conception of human nature. In her book, Public Relief and Private Charity (1884), she argued that human nature is such that if individuals receive assistance without working for it, moral degradation inevitably results. Perhaps worse, when people see others receiving public relief, they cannot help but covet the same seemingly carefree life. On the basis of this, she emphasized work requirements as a prerequisite for charitable gifts, and, to make sure recipients were indeed working, surveillance of their habits.

Lowell's approach to social reform was labor intensive and paternalistic. She urged practitioners to enter homes to teach poor mothers how to rear their children. When the poor found their way into penal institutions, she demanded the development of educational and vocational programs behind prison walls.

In 1876, Lowell was appointed to the New York Board of Charities. This role brought her into contact with the harsh realities of the penitentiary. An adherent of the “new penology,” articulated by such figures as Zebulon Brockway and the American Prison Association, Lowell campaigned for separate women's prisons, reformatories to rehabilitate minor offenders, and the indeterminate sentence, a measure believed essential for keeping persons in custody while they received treatment. Impressed by Richard Dugdale's notorious study of degeneracy, The Jukes (1875), she joined the eugenics movement. Dugdale's findings (which were fraudulent) told the story of a promiscuous woman responsible for a generation of criminals, inebriates, and miscreants. To prevent proliferation of undesirables, Lowell advocated preventative incapacitation and viewed crime control as prophylactic. To achieve this end, she established the Newark Custodial Asylum for Feebleminded Women.

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