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Making Good: On Parole in Early Twentieth-Century Illinois

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2020

Morgan Shahan
Morgan Shahan*
Affiliation:
Johns Hopkins University
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Parole laws, passed by most state legislatures at the turn of the century, provide for the release of prisoners before the expiration of their maximum sentence and for their supervision during their transition to free society. This article explores the early years of the parole system in Illinois. While the Illinois parole law indicated that parole agents would watch over ex-prisoners and aid in their rehabilitation, the state instead relied on private individuals, businesses, and voluntary organizations to supervise parolees. Agreements forged between prison officials and these supervisors illustrate the extent to which the private sector took on the functions of the state during the Progressive Era. As a result, employers and voluntary organizations developed a range of surveillance practices to maintain control over former prisoners, using informal systems of assessment and notions of success to evaluate the parolees in their charge. Though the parole system represented innovation on the part of the Illinois state government—a nod to emergent rehabilitative frameworks in penology—the reliance on voluntary organizations and businesses wove older class and gender ideals into this newer, purportedly more scientific and objective institution. This essay illuminates the everyday challenges of life on parole, tracing the experiences of ex-prisoners during the process of reentry and exposing the constant negotiations between employers, voluntary organizations, prisons, and parolees.

Keywords

parolesurveillancepublic-private partnershipsprison
Type
SHGAPE Graduate Student Essay Prize
Information
The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , July 2020 , pp. 369 - 389
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (SHGAPE)

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References

Notes

1 “Convict Examination Sheet” for Charles S. Bain, alias C.W. Wilson, Oct. 20, 1896, Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, Illinois State Archives (hereinafter ISA).

2 “To the Proposed Employer” in the case of inmate no. 5162, Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

3 Reverend A.C. Dodds to Warden Robert W. McClaughry, June 1898, Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA. This mission statement appears on the Illinois Industrial Association's letterhead.

4 Ibid.

5 Parole laws, passed by most state legislatures around the turn of the century and by the federal government in 1910, provide for the supervised release of prisoners, usually before the completion of their maximum sentences on the promise of good behavior. An 1895 law provided for parole under an indeterminate sentence for certain criminal offenses in Illinois. An indeterminate sentence, as opposed to a definite sentence, consists of a range of years (such as “one to ten”) during which a person can be confined within a corrections facility. The exact length of the sentence depends upon the person's conduct while imprisoned, combined with additional variables. These include criminal history and perceived risk to society, among others. At any point following the completion of the minimum sentence, the body responsible for releasing inmates on parole considers these combined factors to decide whether the prisoner is fit to return to society.

6 Before the passage of the first parole law in 1895, Illinois prisons often partnered with private interests to generate profits or fund prison operating costs through inmate labor. In 1857, state officials signed a contract transferring control over its inmate population to the firm Casey and Hendricks, which used prisoner-workers to build Joliet Penitentiary. Illinois instituted a congregate contract labor system by 1871, in which the state retained physical control of prisoners (remaining responsible for feeding them, clothing them, guarding them, etc.), and hired out their labor to private businesses. These corporate interests then put their incarcerated labor force to work in shops housed on the grounds of the institution. Following the Panic of 1873, however, the political influence of manufacturers diminished and labor unions organized against the contract labor system. As prison reformers, socialists, and other radical interests joined the fight, manufacturers slowly backed away from contracting with state prisons. By 1886, the Prairie State amended its constitution to ban contract labor. For a detailed explanation of this trajectory, see Kammerling, Henry, Capital and Convict: Race, Region, and Punishment in Post-Civil War America (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Timothy Gilfoyle explores the day-to-day workings of a contract labor system at New York's Sing Sing prison in A Pickpocket's Tale: The Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2006), see especially pages 44-49Google Scholar. The southern practice of convict leasing is another example of post-bellum/Progressive Era partnerships between state prisons and private business interests. With the end of Radical Reconstruction, white southerners searched for a way to regain control over formerly enslaved black laborers. Almost immediately after African Americans set out to realize their post-emancipation dreams of landownership, voting rights, equality in the legal system, and economic independence, white politicians and business owners built up a host of legal and extralegal practices designed to keep former slaves dependent on whites. As the 13th Amendment prohibited slavery except as punishment for a crime, many southern businesses began to rely on convict leasing, which allowed private interests to pay the state a small fee to use prison labor. See LeFlouria, Talitha L., Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lichtenstein, Alex, Twice the Work of Free Labor: The Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South (London: Verso, 1996)Google Scholar; Blackmon, Douglas, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black People in American from the Civil War to World War II (New York: Doubleday, 2008)Google Scholar; and Curtin, Mary Ellen, Black Prisoners and Their World: Alabama, 1865–1900 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000)Google Scholar.

7 These institutions were the Southern Illinois Penitentiary at Chester (now known as Menard Correctional Center); Joliet Penitentiary (closed in 2002); and a facility for young offenders, the Pontiac State Reformatory (now a maximum-security unit for adult males).

8 Both Jessica Pliley and Jennifer Fronc detail similar criteria in their recent work. In Policing Sexuality: The Mann Act and the Making of the FBI, Pliley notes that the FBI often selected white slave officers based on their conformity to contemporary understandings of respectable masculinity. Moreover, the text of the Mann Act was vague and open to interpretation, leaving white slave officers to define its parameters for themselves based on their personal moral ideals. Like FBI officials’ evaluations of white slave officers, Warden McClaughry and other prison officials in Illinois often assessed employer suitability based on investigations of their living conditions, demeanor, and general reputation in their local community. Fronc explores a similar extension of political surveillance through social programs administered by voluntary associations in New York, arguing that the ways in which middle-class observers perceived working-class life created legal problems for working class people in the Progressive Era. See Pliley, Jessica R., Policing Sexuality: The Mann Act and the Making of the FBI (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Fronc, Jennifer, New York Undercover: Private Surveillance in the Progressive Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Pliley, Policing Sexuality, 3.

10 Fronc, New York Undercover.

11 Pliley, Policing Sexuality, 89.

12 Nackenoff, Carol and Sullivan, Kathleen S., “The House that Julia (and Friends) Built: Networking Chicago's Juvenile Court,” in Statebuilding from the Margins: Between Reconstruction and the New Deal (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 171–202CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Historians of criminal justice have acknowledged the importance of voluntary organizations and private citizens to the early operation of state parole systems. In Discretionary Justice, Carolyn Strange highlights the Prison Association of New York's critical role in the formation of the state's discretionary justice policies and references its efforts to aid discharged prisoners as they transitioned back to free society. PANY's Discharged Prisoners Committee boasted of finding jobs and housing for more than a thousand parolees from Elmira Reformatory released between 1877 and 1895. Like this essay, Strange's work reveals the gap between reform ideals and criminal justice practice as well as the incorporation of older class and gender-based ideologies into the modern justice system. Her interests, however, lie more with policy evolution and the process of paroling a prisoner from New York institutions in the Progressive Era rather than with the relationships between ex-prisoners, the state, businesses, and voluntary organizations necessary to realize the supervisory function of the early parole system. Scholars also demonstrate the opportunities for business and familial interests inherent in early state pardoning and parole practices. Historian Ethan Blue exposes the exploitation of pardoned offenders in Texas, arguing that white plantation owners often agreed to employ formerly incarcerated men and women in order to maintain their control over African American laborers. Cheryl D. Hicks explores a particularly disturbing function of the parole system in New York: the practice of sending African American women prisoners to live and work with relatives in the South. Using records from two New York State reformatories, Hicks also shows how working-class black families relied on the parole system to control the behavior and mannerisms of female ex-prisoners. See Strange, Carolyn, Discretionary Justice: Pardon and Parole in New York from the Revolution to the Depression (New York: New York University Press, 2016), especially chap. 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blue, Ethan, Doing Time in the Depression: Everyday Life in Texas and California Prisons (New York: New York University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hicks, Cheryl D., Talk With You Like a Woman: African American Women, Justice, and Reform in New York, 1890–1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), especially chaps. 8 and 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Board of Pardons, State of Illinois, “Parole Agreement: Rules Governing Prisoners on Parole,” Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

15 In 1919, the Illinois state legislature made an appropriation of $194,000 for the year to pay the salaries and travel costs for eleven additional agents. These twenty parole agents also would no longer be assigned to one of three prisons to supervise released men from that specific institution. They would instead supervise all parolees within ten districts in the state of Illinois, which cut down on travel time and expenses. Most of these districts encompassed eight to ten counties, though the geographic expanse of District No. 1 (which included Chicago) was much smaller.

16 Colvin, Will, “After Care” in Illinois Parole Law: Accomplishments, Statistical Data, Papers and Addresses on Its Provisions and Its Administration (Springfield: Department of Public Welfare, 1921), 31Google Scholar. Joliet soon had five parole agents; Chester and Pontiac each had two agents.

17 Ibid.

18 Men and women were often paroled to urban areas, partly because farm work was seasonal. In a Sept. 1900 letter to Warden E.J. Murphy, the father of a parolee complained about the difficulty of finding a year round position for his son near the family: “… they will only have about two months of work for a man this fall and then they will not need help untill [sic] next Spring, and as farming is the only kind of employment there is here for a laboring man, I think it will be impossible for me to find employment for him.” Ben Olson to Warden E.J. Murphy, Sept. 10, 1900, Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

19 Reverend A.C. Dodds founded the Illinois Industrial Association to help ex-convicts secure employment years before the state legislature passed indeterminate sentencing and parole laws. Officers of the Association included a bank executive, an ex-judge, and several religious leaders, all of whom routinely signed parole documents assuring prison officials that they would secure employment for paroled prisoners. The association also operated a broom factory where each released man began his parole period. Once other employment could be found, the paroled man would leave a place vacant for “a brother prisoner who wishe[d] a chance at release and reform.” See “Aid Ticket-o’-Leave Men: Chicago's Unpretentious Charity for Paroled Prisoners,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Dec. 6, 1896, 25. F. Emory Lyon established the Central Howard Association (CHA) in 1900. The CHA's mission was to “awaken public sentiment in behalf of worthy ex-prisoners … to secure employment for them; to facilitate the organization of local and state prisoners’ aid societies,” and to keep tabs on the conditions in state corrections facilities. Though the organization's supervision of parolees is not mentioned in its initial mission statement, the CHA quickly stepped into this role. As early as 1901, prison officials and chaplains from Illinois and neighboring states looked to CHA founder F. Emory Lyon to monitor and find jobs for paroled offenders. See “Original Constitution, Amendments, and Minutes of the Central Howard Association, Organized January 5th, 1900,” box 2, ledger, John Howard Association Records, 1898–1976, The Chicago History Museum Research Center (hereinafter CHMRC); A.H. Jessup to F. Emory Lyon, Dec. 28, 1901, box 17, folder 1, John Howard Association Records, CHMRC; and “Gives Aid to Ex-Convicts: Central Howard Association Furnishes Employment to 250 in Year Just Ended,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Jan. 9, 1904, 13.

20 The Illinois state legislature abolished the original Board of Pardons and created the Department of Public Welfare under the auspices of a new Civil Administrative Code in July of 1917. Under this code, the legislature charged the Department of Welfare with overseeing the Board of Pardons and Paroles. Parole prediction schemas in Illinois used an actuarial method developed by University of Chicago sociologist Ernest W. Burgess to estimate the risk of releasing a given individual.

21 This intake sheet allowed prison authorities to record many self-reported details about an inmate, including the following: (1) date the inmate was received; (2) sentence length; (3) crime committed; (4) the county in which the crime was committed; (5) “color,” nationality, and nativity; (6) age, height, and weight; (7) whether the inmate used profanity, smoked, chewed tobacco, or drank; (8) condition of the inmate's heart; (9) occupation and employment status when arrested; (10) religious affiliation; (11) marital status and number of children; (12) education level; (13) whether the inmate's associates were “good” or “bad”; (14) names and addresses of correspondents; and (15) nativity of father and mother. These categories are duplicated on each intake sheet from the 1890s to the early 1910s: “Examination of Convict for Harry McNanna No. 5594,” July 2, 1897, Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

22 McClaughry, R.W., “The Parole System, As Applied to the State Prisons” in Proceedings of the Annual Congress of the National Prison Association of the United States, 1898 (Pittsburg: Shaw Brothers, 1899), 93-94Google Scholar.

23 M.W. McClaughry was the son of Joliet's warden, Robert W. McClaughry. He served as a special officer at Joliet after working for the Chicago Police Department. Joliet employed McClaughry Jr. before the allocation of funding for parole agents, but he served much the same function and bore the same title as later parole officers. See “Discharged from the Police Force,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Aug. 15, 1897, 1.

24 M.W. McClaughry, “Report of Special Officer,” Oct. 11, 1898, Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

25 Ibid.

26 While only the McClaughry family background is detailed here, the two wardens appointed after R.W. McClaughry left Joliet in 1899 touted similar middle-class upbringings, educational backgrounds, and professional experience. Born in Nashville, Illinois, in 1852 to county Judge William Murphy, Everett Jerome Murphy was warden of Joliet from 1899 to 1913 and 1917–1922. After graduating from high school, Murphy enjoyed a moderately successful political career. He served in the Illinois House of Representatives and was elected as a Republican to the 54th U.S. Congress (1895–1897). After Murphy's unsuccessful run for reelection, Governor Tanner appointed him to the state Board of Pardons where he served before accepting his position at Joliet in 1899. Murphy's successor, Edmund M. Allen, possessed “a comfortable fortune inherited from his father,” which probably helped to finance his mayoral run in Joliet in 1912. He won, but a month before his term expired, Governor Dunne appointed him warden of the penitentiary. Allen resigned after his wife was murdered in her bed at the warden's residence at Joliet. See “Everett J. Murphy, Warden of the Illinois State Penitentiary for Twenty Years, Dies,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 15 (1922–1923): 558–59Google Scholar; and “Allen Father of Many Reforms in State Prison,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 21, 1915, 2.

27 Later in life, McClaughry traced his family history back to the American Revolution, providing the required documentation to join the Sons of the American Revolution in 1893.

28 “Practical Prison Reform,” The Daily Inter-Ocean, Mar. 18, 1891, 4.

29 President Hayes commended McClaughry senior for his tireless labor at Joliet “which [had] done so much to elevate the science and progress of prison reform.” Franz Amberg and Omar H. Wright, Commissioners, “Prison Reformers,” Daily Inter-Ocean, Nov. 24, 1888.

30 “Chicago's Chief of Police,” The Milwaukee Journal, May 18, 1891, 2. As warden, McClaughry introduced the good-time allowance at Joliet, a popular prison management technique soon adopted by penitentiaries across the United States.

31 Rubin, Ashley T., “Professionalizing Prison: Primitive Professionalization and the Administrative Defense of Eastern State Penitentiary, 1829–1879,” Law and Social Inquiry 43:1 (Winter 2018): 184CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Rubin's article challenges the theory that professionalization “requires large-scale, field-wide organization” and argues that Eastern State Penitentiary administrators professionalized prior to the 1890s despite the fact that they did not exhibit traditional markers of professionalization. These markers include college education, specialized training, and national affiliations—all identifying characteristics that apply to Warden McClaughry, Matthew W. McClaughry, and Warden Everett J. Murphy.

32 Charles Chase McClaughry worked for his father in 1887 as master mechanic and chief engineer at Joliet before moving to the Chicago House of Correction as deputy superintendent. In 1899 he became warden of the Wisconsin State Penitentiary in Madison. When McClaughry senior returned to Joliet in 1897, he employed his sons Arthur Cooper and Matthew Wilson, as private secretary to the warden and special officer to the penitentiary, respectively. See “Charles Chase McClaughry,” The Annals of Iowa 16 (1927): 76Google Scholar; and Report of the Commissioners of the Illinois State Penitentiary at Joliet for the Two Years Ending September 30, 1898 (Springfield, IL: State Printers, 1899)Google Scholar.

33 McMichael, T.H., “Robert Wilson McClaughry, 1839–1920,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 13:4 (Jan. 1921): 605Google Scholar.

34 R.W. McClaughry, “The Parole System,” 92.

35 R.W. McClaughry to Unknown, Dec. 3, 1898, Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

36 Dr. John H. Kellogg and his brother Will Keith Kellogg are best known today as the inventors of breakfast cereal. Dr. Kellogg as quoted in “The Workingmen's Home,” Medical Missionary VI (Oct. 1896): 299, excerpted in Schwarz, Richard W., “Dr. John Harvey Kellogg as a Social Gospel Practitioner,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 57:1 (Spring 1964): 6Google Scholar.

37 J.H. Kellogg to R.W. McClaughry, July 21, 1898, Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

38 Thomas Donovan to Illinois State Board of Pardons, Aug. 14, 1898, Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

39 Ibid.

40 Thomas Donohue to Warden E.J. Murphy, Jan. 29, 1900, in Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

41 Slayton, Robert A., Back of the Yards: The Making of a Local Democracy (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986), 89–90Google Scholar.

42 “To the Proposed Employer” (in this case, W.H. Wright), Apr. 19, 1905, in Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

43 Frank Morris to Warden E.J. Murphy, May 21, 1905, in Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA. Morris's real name was Frank Mara.

44 W.H. Wright to Frank Morris, Feb. 23, 1905, in Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

45 “To the Proposed Employer,” Apr. 19, 1905, Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

46 Warden E.J. Murphy to Frank Morris, May 22, 1905, in Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

47 Frank Morris to Warden E.J. Murphy, July 11, 1905, in Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

48 Frank Morris to Warden E.J. Murphy, July 11, 1905, in Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

49 Ibid.

50 W.H. Wright to Warden E.J. Murphy, May 21, 1905, in Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA. Wright wrote that he paid Morris $10 for over one month of work but that he did not want to give him all of his wages until he ascertained if Morris would stay and work for him. Wright further stated that in the past when he employed a parolee from Chester, the man stole money from him and fled to Canada after only a month of work. The practice of withholding wages from parolees was relatively common, and can also be seen in the case of Myrtle Farman, paroled in 1899, and Henry Greenwood, paroled in April of 1898.

51 Under Rodgers, Morris made 30 cents per hour—or about $15.00 per week.

52 Harrison et al., Report of the Commissioners of the Illinois State Penitentiary at Joliet For the Two Years Ending Sept. 30, 1910, 67.

53 Margo, Robert A., “Table Ba4320-4334- Annual Earnings in Selected Industries and Occupations: 1890–1926” in Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Edition Online, eds. Carter, Susan B. et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 2-271Google Scholar.

54 Edwin R. Holt to Warden McClaughry, Feb. 16, 1898, Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

55 “To the Proposed Employer” (L.C. Krueger), June 7, 1900, Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

56 Margo, “Annual Earnings in Selected Industries,” 2–271.

57 Gus Jordan to The Board of Commissioners of the Illinois State Penitentiary, Dec. 22, 1897, Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

58 Using these numbers, women made up about 0.4 percent of Joliet's population in the year 1910. This percentage is close to the number of women accounted for in the 1914 report. See Harrison, John H., Silva, Joseph De, and Hampton, Van L., Report of the Commissioners of the Illinois State Penitentiary at Joliet For the Two Years Ending Sept. 30, 1910 (Springfield: Illinois State Journal Co., State Printers, 1912), 64Google Scholar; McGrath, James J., Tilton, Ralph R., Faltz, C.W., Report of the Commissioners of the Illinois State Penitentiary at Joliet for the Two Years Ending September 30, 1914 (Springfield, IL: Schnepp and Barnes, State Printers, 1915), 63Google Scholar.

59 For information on women's parole from Illinois institutions in the 1920s and 1930s, see Dodge, L. Mara, “Whores and Thieves of the Worst Kind”: A Study of Women, Crime, and Prisons, 1835–2000 (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2002), chap. 11Google Scholar. Dodge's study is especially rich due to the inclusion of research from Joliet and Dwight's institutional jackets. These are now restricted under the Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities Confidentiality Act (740 ICLS 110), a law designed to protect records and communications created during the provision of mental health services.

60 Edward S. Fuller to the Board of Commissioners of the Illinois State Penitentiary, June 28, 1897, in Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

61 A.R. Clark to the Board of Commissioners of the Illinois State Penitentiary, June 14, 1897, in Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

62 Arthur R. Clark to Warden E.J. Murphy, Jan. 20, 1903, in Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

63 Ibid.

64 See Gemmill and Foell to W.S. Green, Parole Agent, Illinois State Penitentiary, Nov. 23, 1900, in Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA. Illegible to “The Agent of Paroled Prisoners of the State of Illinois,” Aug. 25, 1901, in Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

65 Dodge, “Whores and Thieves of the Worst Kind,” 121.

66 Cameron, Ardis, “Landscapes of Subterfuge: Working-Class Neighborhoods and Immigrant Women” in Gender, Class, Race, and Reform in the Progressive Era, eds. Frankel, Noralee and Dye, Nancy S. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2015), 62Google Scholar, Project MUSE. Cameron cites Robert Darnton's The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic Books, 1984)Google Scholar; and Foucault's, MichelThe Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Random House, 1970)Google Scholar. To these, I would add Geertz, Clifford, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973)Google Scholar.

67 Fronc, Undercover, 64. For instance, Fronc shows that behaviors anti-vice organizations considered scandalous, such as women visiting saloons without male chaperones, were widely accepted in many immigrant and working-class neighborhoods.

68 Moving from one marriage to another without divorce was fairly common in nineteenth-century America even as the licensing and regulation of nuptials increased. The federal government became especially concerned with bigamy after the Civil War. Former soldiers and their widows applied for pensions and Pension Bureau examiners found themselves faced with sorting through tangled family histories. Some bigamists went to great lengths to hide their marriage histories, creating new identities for themselves as they moved from spouse to spouse. Some simply moved to faraway cities and towns, posed as single widows or widowers, and married new partners. Others relied on simplicity, telling new love interests that they were free from former spouses without elaboration. Many men and women believed that lengthy separations from spouses automatically counted as divorce. See Schwartzberg, Beverly, “‘Lots of Them Did That’: Desertion, Bigamy, and Marital Fluidity in Late Nineteenth-Century America,” Journal of Social History 37:3 (Spring 2004): 573–600CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 Warden R.W. McClaughry to Oliver T. Achison, Dec. 21, 1897, in Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA. Control over marriages through legal regulation and other more informal processes (like McClaughry's implicit warning to Soots) gave Progressive reformers an opportunity to shape the boundaries of membership and participation in civic society. These limits included the “norms and practices of American citizenship as well as what was understood to be the genetic capacity for citizenship.” Marriage laws developed during the period signify an effort to protect stable marital unions and promote eugenically desirable families—that is, control biological reproduction to produce a citizenry capable of fulfilling the civic duties demanded by the nation. The basis for these “fit” families was the union of monogamous white American or assimilated immigrant couples. See Yamin, Priscilla, “The Search for Marital Order: Civic Membership and the Politics of Marriage in the Progressive Era,” Polity 41:1 (Jan. 2009): 87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 Warden R.W. McClaughry to the Chief of Police at Decatur, Aug. 26, 1898, in Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

71 Board of Pardons, “Parole Agreement,” Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

72 W.W. Mason, Chief of Police, to Warden R.W. McClaughry, Aug. 27, 1898, in Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

73 Ibid.

74 Ibid.

75 Many examples of orders for the arrest of paroled prisoners can be found in the Illinois State Archives. One such example is the order for the arrest of John Enerlick: Illinois State Penitentiary, Joliet, “Order for Arrest of Paroled Prisoner,” Apr. 27, 1904, in Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

76 Charles S. Bain to Warden [Murphy or McClaughry], Aug. 8, 1898, in Penitentiary Mittimus Files, 1857–1916, ISA.

77 Ibid.

78 Ibid.