Appendix No. 15: Conversation with the Director of the Philadelphia House of Refuge

Tocqueville and Beaumont include their transcript of a brief interview with the Director of the Philadelphia House of Refuge, Edwin Young, performed in November 1831. Young notes that he can expect moral reform from juvenile delinquents until the age of fifteen or sixteen, it is hardest to correct thieving and prostitution, and that almost two-thirds of the children who left the house have behaved well. The children in the house of refuge enjoy reading and are fast learners; they are subject to punishments of whipping, solitary confinement, and reduction of food to bread and water. Young concludes by giving statistics on the initial costs to establish the house, annual maintenance expenses, profits from the children’s labor, and number of library books.