Maternal Justice: Miriam Van Waters and the Female Reform Tradition

A biography of Miriam Van Waters, a Massachusetts prison reformer who believed in individual and cultural transformation through good works. The daughter of an Episcopal minister, Van Waters received her doctorate in 1913. Despite the absence of women in politics, and especially in prison administration, her intelligence and work ethic, and a bevy of outside champions, buoyed her to the position of superintendent of the Massachusetts Reformatory for Women. Freedman recounts the hardships Van Waters encountered upon entering the good old boy network and the difficult decisions she had to make without support. Her unconventional methods finally lost her job, but her unyielding conviction led to vindication.