There's More to New Jersey than the Sopranos

24 Scandal at the Girls’ Reform School

116 There’s More to New Jersey . . . feats, she would shoot an apple off the head of her pet dog. Even after a 1922 automobile accident left her permanently crippled, she was able to shoot coins tossed in the air. She died at age sixty-six in 1926; Frank died eighteen days after his beloved wife. All of this is not exactly like the story of Annie Oakley presented by Broadway and Hollywood, but the real story of her life is about as colorful and satisfying as it gets in our world. 24 Scandal at the Girls’ Reform School Back in the 1890s, a New York newspaper discovered a way to add a splash of color to the comics pages by using yellow ink, and so the “yellow press” was born. But the term came to stand for more than just a printing gimmick; it was used to describe a sensationalistic journalistic style of screaming headlines and slashing articles, in which the press took on the role of defender of the public against evil. You could say this for yellow journalism—it sure sold newspapers. The circulation of some big-city papers soared into the hundreds of thousands. So it was inevitable that local papers outside the big cities adopted the same crusading tone of voice, although not the yellow ink. All of which sets the stage for a noisy turn-of-the century struggle that pitted the newspapers against Mrs. Myrtle B. Eyler, the matron of the New Jersey State Industrial School for Girls. Located outside Trenton, the Girls’ School was a reformatory for females age seven to twenty-one who were guilty of a crime or who, in the words of the law, were found to be “habitually disorderly, incorrigible, or vagrant.” A staff of twenty under the supervision of Matron Eyler instructed the 130 inmates in cooking, baking, sewing, and farm work in order to turn them into useful citizens. In the summer of 1899, rumors of abuses at the school began to appear in the press. One inmate who had been admitted to a Trenton hospital suffering from exhaustion told a shocking story: she said that as punishment for breaking the rules she had been forced to run repeatedly up and down a forty-foot flight of stairs and was then locked up in a basement room and fed on bread and water. The newspapers put pressure on Governor Foster M. Voorhees to investigate the matter. Trailed by reporters, the governor made the twomile carriage ride from the state capitol building to the school. He got an earful. Unhappy staff members testified that Matron Eyler used harsh discipline on the inmates. Witnesses told the governor it was common for Mrs. Eyler to have rebellious girls locked into an unventilated room in the basement known as the “dungeon.” Sometimes the girls were shackled and placed in straitjackets. Cooking Class This uplifting photo of inmates at the New Jersey State Industrial School for Girls learning a useful skill dates from the year 1900; it was at about this time that the press was ablaze with allegations of brutal beatings and starvation at the institution. How much of this did the women in the picture know? What were they thinking as they posed for the camera? New Jersey State Archives, Department of State. Scandal at the Girls’ Reform School 117 118 There’s More to New Jersey . . . But that was not the worst. Staff members said that Matron Eyler frequently administered beatings and whippings. The janitor and the coachman described how on one occasion they held a screaming girl to a chair while Mrs. Eyler pulled the victim’s head backward by the hair and repeatedly slapped her face. The girl’s crime, according to the janitor, had been to refuse to answer a question put to her by the matron. When one inmate refused to plant potatoes because she was sick, Mrs. Eyler reportedly beat her with a strap as the girl was dragged to the field by a farmhand. Witnesses said that as she struck the girls, Mrs. Eyler would yell: “You got the devil in you, and I’m going to get it out of you.” It was alleged that Mrs. Eyler had fired staff members who opposed her and filled their places with relatives and friends. Her husband, Clarence, was the school clerk. The press reported all this in lurid detail. “Inmates...