The Delinquent, Vol. IV, No. 7, July, 1914

[Here is a fine human interest story about the Women’s Reformatory Prison in Massachusetts, and the remarkable success the inmates achieved in “The Pirates of Penzance.” The story is from the New York Times of June 21.]

“When a felon’s not engaged in his employment, His Employment, Or maturing his felonious little plans, Little plans, His capacity for innocent enjoyment, ’Cent enjoyment, Is just as great as any honest man’s, Honest man’s.”

This sums up pretty fairly an affair at Sherborn a few days ago. Sung by the ordinary policeman chorus of any ordinary Gilbert and Sullivan revival, the sentiment would seem trite enough. Sung by the felonious themselves, by forgers, by the “enterprising burglars,” it takes on a keener significance. It comes home.

It was an amazed audience that sat in the chapel of the Women’s Prison at Sherborn, Mass., and listened to “The Pirates of Penzance,” presented by fifty-five of the two hundred women who are “doing time.” It was an audience which did not always get its cue as promptly as an audience should, for in several places where the Gilbert and Sullivan Company intended it should laugh it openly dabbed its eyes with handkerchief or blew nose violently.

In the first place, it had gasped over the grim humor of “The Pirates of Penzance” as presented by a set of offenders against property and public order anyway. It gasped again when a lusty opening chorus of attractive “pirates” demanded that somebody pour, oh, pour, the pirate sherry--for it was “sherry” that landed on a lot of them in Sherborn. And it could not for the life of it smile when the jolly pirates explained to it that,

Although our dark career Sometimes involves the crime of stealing, We rather think that we’re Not altogether void of feeling.

And a few in the audience realized that the pretty little Mabel, with her long, dark curls and her clear soprano voice, was an old offender, serving her third term at Sherborn. A few remembered, not without a shiver, that the pirate at the end of the row, splendid in a blue and white striped cape slung from his--her--shoulder, a dagger stuck in her belt, had assisted at having her husband cut up in pieces, and, missing the electric chair by a minute and a half, was here in Sherborn for life.

It was hard to realize that one was within prison walls. These girls, most of them girls of the streets, supposedly the “dregs” of society, looked and acted like anything but dregs. Accustomed to the cheapest sort of music, the cheapest sort of amusement before they came here, they had nevertheless entered into the Gilbert and Sullivan spirit. They managed the difficult choruses superbly; they attacked their recitatives with understanding.

They had been branded, most of them, as unmanageables, incorrigibles. Yet they had been trained to a point of almost complete co-operation. The mentally defective were not only managing difficult alto, but getting around the preposterous vocabulary of the “Pirates,” such as the square on the hypotenuse and the crimes of Heliogabalus. And more than one in that audience leaned over to say to his neighbor: “If they can be trained to do this, they can certainly be trained to do something else.”

It was this realization that brought the audience, made up for the most part of prominent social workers and city officials from Boston, to its feet at the closing ensemble with all fifty-five on the stage. Policemen and pirates took off their hats and waved to the applauding audience that crowded around the stage, and the audience clapped and waved back. It was a recognition of a fact that both sides too often forget, the fact that criminals are not, after all, so different from non-criminals. It is largely because the criminal does not realize his relation to the rest of society that he breaks with it, and as for society, it forgot the human bond when it began clapping its offenders into dungeons and treating them as complete aberrations.

Mrs. Perle Wilkinson is the reason why Gilbert and Sullivan have invaded Sherborn. Mrs. Wilkinson’s official title is “chaplain.” But no chaplain ever took to himself such an amazing set of duties, and Mrs. Wilkinson admits the name must be changed.

Probably the girls themselves, as they rehearsed for the past eight or nine months under the “chaplain’s” direction, have not realized that they were enjoying an advantage which no other amateur performers in the country could command. For Saturday’s production of “The Pirates of Penzance” contained the original “business”--the “business” witnessed by those of us who saw the first presentation of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas in this country.

Mrs. Wilkinson was one-time chorus mistress for the D’Oyly Carte troupe, her husband singing the principal baritone roles. She has for many years had experience in chorus and choir training, and in addition had charge of the House of Refuge at Randall’s Island at the time when both boys and girls were admitted to that institution. It is a curious combination, and one which has brought results of the most amazing nature.

The girls have been working since September on the “Pirates.” It should not by rights have taken so long, explained Mrs. Wilkinson, but the voices were in bad shape. Most of them were hard and inflexible, patterned on the nasal attainments of the cheap vaudeville performer. An understanding of the music had slowly to be created. Then, just as everything was within a few weeks of completion, the parole board would descend and release the chief soloist and five or six of the best voices in the chorus, and work would have to be begun all over again.

This might have happened a week or so ago, for the prima donna’s time had expired and she was free to go. Which would have meant that “Pirates” would again have been postponed, probably for a much longer time, for Mabel’s part is difficult and requires a real voice. Mabel sent word to her family and stayed another week.

It was not only the fifty-five who actually took part in the opera who presented the “Pirates.” The whole prison, two hundred women, gave it. Long ago khaki skirts and blue prison dresses were piled up on one side of the machine room, and the most amazing materials took their place. Turkey reds and purples, tinsel of silver and gold, gauzy pinks and yellows surprised those machine needles, which for thirty-six years have been bobbing up and down through sombre colors. A visitor, looking in to see those who had been sentenced to “hard labor,” would have been amazed to see them putting gold braid on three-cornered hats, sewing buttons on policemen’s uniforms.

All the women attended rehearsals. They brought their crocheting, their bits of sewing, and sat quietly while the picked fifty tackled long words and difficult choruses. This in itself was a big concession. The women were all supposed to be in their rooms, and it was argued that they would be restless and unmanageable, given so much liberty. But they weren’t. They looked forward with the keenest enjoyment to the rehearsals, and it was because the company was accustomed to playing before an audience that not a member showed the slightest evidence of “stage fright,” or even of self-consciousness, at the final performance.

While the performance was going on the rest of the women were working on the prison grounds, in the kitchen, in the laundry, in the machine rooms, but they were as excited about the event as though they were to be present. Whenever a matron appeared, or Mrs. Hodder, the head of the prison, stopped to say a word to them, they asked eagerly about the guests, were there many of them, had the Governor arrived, did they get a sword for the Major General?

Upstairs in the chapel a squad of girls worked for several hours before the performance, setting the stage. The scenery had been painted by the girls themselves and would have done credit to Granville Barker. Towering rocks, a rolling ocean in the back, a cave that looked as though it might harbor any number of murderous pirates, and real trees. Little birches had been cut down, and the girls worked long and earnestly setting them in pails of water behind “rocks.” In spite of a couple of savage onslaughts, one from the pirates in full force with daggers drawn, and one from the energetic police, the trees stayed upright with only a couple of quiverings.

The team work displayed by these outcast members of society, who do not fit into our “organization,” was something of a revelation.

“Get out of this dust, Julia,” cried the stage hands dragging birch trees to their places, as the pirate king appeared in the chapel doorway. “Don’t you know dust will ruin your voice?”

“Mis’ Wilki’son, don’t you touch them trees, you’ll get your hands so rough you can’t play this afternoon,” and, “Mabel, I thought you was goin’ to lay down and get rested--you’ll be all worn out.”

“Emma, don’t let Mis’ Wilki-son sweep the floor--Mis’ Wilki-son, let us have a matron up here and you go and get some rest, we can fix everything now.”

What this means will be realized fully only by those who know the general temper of the women confined in our penal institutions, who have seen the sullenness, the bitter vindictiveness, the complaining spirit of the greater part of them. The girls of the old-style reformatory or prison have much time to themselves, and they put in every minute of it inspecting and piling up their grievances. Even when they are occupied they are thinking about themselves; naturally, they take little interest in doing kitchen or laundry work, or in running machines.

Sullenness and distrust, a hardened suspicion of everything that is done for them, are the biggest difficulties in the way of the woman who tries to “get at” the girls. Mrs. Wilkinson has shifted the emphasis. She does not think so much about “getting at” the girls. She tries rather to get them away from themselves.

She does not bother with the girls’ little sordid histories. She sees in them so many voices, so many dancers. Her mind is intent on just one thing--the operetta, the minstrel show, the Easter chorus that is in progress. Her enthusiasm is unlimited. The girls see her up at 5 o’clock in the morning getting ready for rehearsals, trying out voices, arranging tableaux, planning costumes down to the smallest detail, as if this were the most important thing in the world, and they gradually forget to sulk, and turn in to work.

It was Mrs. Wilkinson and the “Pirates of Penzance” that brought one of the most refractory inmates of the whole two hundred at Sherborn up out of the punishment cell where she was confined at regular intervals. There was no question about it, the girl had a remarkable voice, and the opera had to have her, and she would simply have to keep out of the punishment cell. Which she did, and on Saturday sang the part of the Pirate King with a dash and a finish that brought forth a storm of applause.

She regards Mrs. Wilkinson as her especial charge. And, indeed, many of the girls have a maternal sort of attitude toward this little chaplain, with her wide blue eyes, her earnestness, her trick of asking advice from everyone, her intentness on her work, and her way of taking it for granted that everyone else is just as absorbed and just as enthusiastic as she is.