The Delinquent (Vol. IV, No. 2), February, 1914

It is significant of the liberalizing sentiment which is the outgrowth of the sixty years or more of campaigning which the suffragists have carried on in New York State and all over the country, not for the vote alone, but for the recognition of women as co-workers with men in the affairs of the world, that a woman is for the first time in history a member of the cabinet of the Mayor of New York City, and is at the head of one of the most important departments of municipal administration.

Dr. Katherine Bement Davis, the new Commissioner of Correction, is a good suffragist--her family for some generations have been supporters of the cause of women--and she is a firm believer in her sex as well as a splendid monument herself of feminine achievement. The New Year opens most promisingly with such a woman to inspire hope and courage and higher ideals in the wayward of this great city.

Buffalo claims the honor of being the birth place of Dr. Davis, who was the oldest of five children. She was graduated from the Rochester High School, however. Being naturally a student and a thinker, she felt that she must have a broader education. Funds were rather scarce at home and needs many, so the ambitious young girl set to work and taught school until she had earned enough to go to college. She is now one of Vassar’s most honored alumnae. Her career there was brief for she completed her course in two years, graduating with flying colors and winning Phi Beta Kappa honors.

The following year Dr. Davis--she was Miss Davis then--spent at Columbia University, studying the chemistry of foods, and the knowledge that she acquired was promptly put into practice in a most telling manner.

John Boyd Thatcher, one of the prime movers in the Committee of Arrangements for the World’s Fair in Chicago, was eager to have a woman establish and manage a workingman’s model home. He appealed to Miss Davis, who agreed to take charge of the matter. She built the house and settled a workingman and his family in it. She looked after every detail of the house-keeping herself, did the cooking and fed the family on what she believed to be an ideal diet for their needs, the most healthful and strength-building. They were pledged to eat nothing away from home. Each day the diet was posted for the benefit of visitors. That family was taught scientific house-keeping in such an approved fashion that the model home proved a most instructive and valuable feature of the fair.

Next Miss Davis became the head of the College Settlement in Philadelphia, and was one of the charter members of the Civic Club. It was not long before she was running for membership in the School Board, but at that time Philadelphia had not accepted school suffrage. She was beaten by an Italian saloon-keeper. An amusing fact which gives some idea of how much a woman of her calibre was really needed in that City of Brotherly Love, was that when the vote was counted, it was found that her precinct had polled seven more votes than it was entitled to.

Somewhat later Miss Davis held the first woman’s fellowship in the University of Chicago, and there she took her Doctor’s degree in political economy. She then went abroad, as European fellow of the New England Association for the Higher Education of Women, and took advanced work in Political Economy and Sociology, in Berlin and Vienna.

Then in January, 1900, Dr. Davis took up her duties as Superintendent of the Bedford Reformatory. Even before the buildings were completed she moved in, started the machinery going and by May, 1901, was ready to welcome and care for wayward girls and women entrusted to her charge to open up to them a new existence of hope and efficiency.

After eight busy years at Bedford, Dr. Davis took a five months’ leave of absence, and went to Europe. She spent some time in Sicily and was at Syracuse at the time of the Messina earthquake. Here just as in her own country, she found a real need for her fine broad sympathies and splendid executive ability. The people were overcome by the terrible disaster. They did not know what to do, and there seemed to be nothing to do with. Four thousand refugees had been brought to Syracuse and Dr. Davis promptly took the situation in hand. A woman was found who could speak English, and with her for an interpreter, Dr. Davis, in what seemed an almost miraculous way, succeeded in getting money, materials for clothing--many of the survivors were literally naked--also other necessities, and meeting the situation most valiantly.

Buildings as well as people she commandeered into service. A little chapel was turned into a dressmaker’s establishment and here the women were set to work making clothes. Somewhere else shoe-makers were gathered together, busily making shoes for the bare-footed fugitives. Other men were set to work at road making; one of their constructions is still known as the Davis Road. Red Cross aid arrived and Dr. Davis was made chief dispenser of it. In the first six weeks, she spent $15,000, but she did not pauperize the people; instead she encouraged them to help themselves, set them to work and paid them off regularly every week. It was that wisely directed, properly compensated work, that saved those poor people and gave them a new grip on life.

All sorts of people needed assistance. The Archbishop of Syracuse gave up his palace for a hospital and a convalescent home was established for those of the upper classes. The men, many of them, were so shaken by the calamity that they would frequently give way to fits of hysterics, and more than once on such an occasion, Dr. Davis took a man by the shoulders and shook him into self-control. At one time a basket, full of rescued babies, was brought in to her--twelve in all--but the bottom one was dead.

For her splendid work at this time, Dr. Davis was much honored. The King of Italy gave her a medal. The Pope of his own accord summoned her to an interview, and gave her his blessing. The Italian Red Cross Society bestowed a medal upon her, as did the American Red Cross, through President Taft.

When the Sicilian earthquake victims were in a position to help themselves, Dr. Davis returned home, and quietly resumed her duties as mother, confidant and friend of the inmates of the Bedford reformatory. She has proved herself to be an all-around friend to those in her charge and has entered heartily into all sorts of activities, in pleasures as well as in work; she has been known to get up plays, drill the actors, paint the scenery, train the orchestra, then go out and receive the guests and make a speech. During the thirteen years of her service there, she has lost but two days by illness, and that was a sore throat.

The International Prison Congress at its meeting in 1910 elected Dr. Davis the chief of a section. In a space of twenty years, she was the only woman appointed to such a position; she was also the first woman to preside over the public meeting. She was also appointed a member of the Committee which showed the Congress over this country.

Vassar, too, has been delighted to honor this graduate who has lived up so wonderfully to the ideals of her alma mater, and the four thousand alumnae have chosen her as one of the twelve members of the Provisional Alumnae Council.

New York City is indeed fortunate in having at the head of its Department of Correction a woman who has proved herself to be a modern penologist, of the most humanitarian order, and has shown such splendid knowledge of how best to make her sympathy and understanding help the inmates of our prisons; how to individualize the cases and make the punishment fit the criminal rather than the crime; to substitute hope and courage for despair, and to help the unfortunate to amount to something worth while after all.

Surely it is a step forward in civilization, when a woman is chosen to an important position like this commissionership, not because she is a woman, but because it is felt that she is the right person for the place.