UpDate - Vol. 15, No. 31, Page 6
May 9, 1996
Book recounts Magdalen Society reform efforts

     The Franklin Institute Science Museum Futures Center now stands
on the site of an old Philadelphia landmark, the Magdalen Society
Asylum. Unlike other historic buildings associated with the founding
of the country, this building had a quite different purpose and
history-the salvation and redemption of prostitutes and other "fallen"
women.
     Lu Ann De Cunzo, anthropology, has written about this historical
institution in her book, Reform, Respite, Ritual: An Archaeology of
Institutions; The Magdalen Society of Philadelphia, 1800-1850,
published in Historical Archeology, the journal of the Society for
Historical Archaeology.
     In 1988, De Cunzo, then a director of an archeological consulting
firm in Philadelphia, became involved in the Magdalen project when an
archeological survey was proposed before the addition to the science
museum could be built.
     Using the tools of an archeologist to study the material objects
and plans of the buildings and grounds, De Cunzo combined the research
and documentation of an historical anthropologist to reconstruct a
segment of history, involving women, religion, institutions and the
stratified society of an American city during the first half of the
19th century.
     This dual approach of archaeologist and historical anthropologist
is important, De Cunzo points out. Although there are volumes of
records and minutes of trustees meetings, De Cunzo wrote, "In its
Asylum the Society expressed a much more complex, nuanced and
culturally embedded conception of the institution, its philosophy,
goals and methods than any words the Society's management ever wrote."
     There is a tendency to underrate the important role of religion
in the 19th century in our more secular age, De Cunzo said. Religion
was the force behind many of the country's early institutions, such as
orphanages, workhouses and insane asylums, as well as the Magdalen
Society. In a world of disease, epidemics, crime and warfare,
religious control was a way of trying to bring order through such
institutions.
     The persons involved with the Magdalen Society ranged from the
society's founders and trustees, including William White-the senior
and presiding Episcopal bishop in the United States, who was a
"religious, intellectual and social leader of the city"-to the matrons
and married couples who managed the asylum. There also were the women
themselves, who were called Magdalens and were assigned a number in
the order they entered the asylum.
     For the founders, the Magdalen Society's goal was to save women
who had "been seduced from the paths of virtue and are desirous of
returning to a life of rectitude."
     However, the women themselves did not share the society's image
of their "guilt and wretchedness," De Cunzo wrote. Instead they
"sought a refuge and a respite from disease, the prison or almshouse,
unhappy family situations, abusive men and dire economic
circumstances."
      To achieve the society's goals, the Magdalens lived in a
strictly controlled environment, having little contact with the
outside world, receiving religious instruction and learning skills and
trades.
     The goals and functions of the Magdalen Society were reflected in
the building and grounds. Comparing the asylum to a medieval British
nunnery, De Cunzo writes that it was established beyond the city
outskirts, far from the women's neighborhoods, separating the women
from their former lives and identities. Fences, and eventually a 13-
foot wall were built around the property. Changes in the structure of
the building and the new building erected in the 1840s increasingly
separated the Magdalens from the staff, and the recalcitrant members
and new arrivals from the other women.
     The entry into the society itself was symbolic, the women being
led through different entries and passageways, De Cunzo said. The new
Magadalen "symbolically closed five doors on her life and identity"
ultimately arriving at her chamber in the depths of the building where
her clothing and possessions were exchanged for a uniform and her name
for a number.
     Items recovered in the excavation of the site bear silent witness
to the lives of the Magdalens. Pottery shards there reveal that the
women were treated like servants of a middle-class family. Buttons and
other objects are reminders of the laundry they ran and the sewing
they were taught.
     De Cunzo contrasts the Magdalen Society building with the
comparative luxury of Bishop White's home, which is still standing and
furnished as it was during his lifetime.
     By 1850, 925 women had passed through the asylum, most staying
for a relatively short time, but as the trustees themselves conceded,
few were converted to lives of piety.
     The Magdalen Society building was sold in the early 20th century
and became a domestic relations court. The Philadelphia Magdalen
Society became the White-Williams Foundation, whose goal is to
encourage high school students to remain in school and to achieve
educational success. A Magdalen Society, however, still exists in
California, and De Cunzo said she hopes to accept an invitation to
visit it in the future.
     De Cunzo is now writing a shorter history of the last years of
the Magdalen Society. She also is involved in archaeological research
project for the Historical Society of Delaware's George Read House and
grounds in New Castle.
     A graduate of the College of William and Mary, De Cunzo received
her master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Pennsylvania.
                                                   -Sue Swyers Moncure