Miriam Van Waters

Miriam Van Waters (1887–1974) was an early American feminist social worker and Episcopalian leader of the Social Gospel movement. She served as superintendent of the Massachusetts Reformatory for Women at Framingham (1932–1957). Estelle Freedman wrote a biography of Van Waters in the mid-nineties, and provided historical and social context for her professional work as social worker and prison superintendent in her earlier social history of women's prisons.

Miriam Van Waters was a liberal mainline Protestant Christian, daughter to a member of the clergy, Rev. George Browne Van Waters, an Episcopalian priest. She was a practitioner of the "Social Gospel" associated with that current of Christian faith, and believed in prisoner rehabilitation as an important element within a broader context of social reform. She earned a doctorate in anthropology from Clark University, then went on to work as a probation officer at the Boston Children's Aid Society. With other female social reformers, she developed a number of specialist juvenile rehabilitation and reform facilities in California, such as the Frazer Detention Home (Portland, Oregon) and El Retiro School for Girls (Los Angeles), which sought to assist girls to develop self-esteem and embark on the road to rehabilitated social behavior. She also served as a referee at the Los Angeles Juvenile Court (1920-1930).

In 1932, Van Waters began a long-term appointment as superintendent at the Massachusetts Reformatory for Women at Framingham, succeeding Jessie Donaldson Hodder. She served as superintendent of that institution for the next quarter-century. Most of the inmates were serving time for prostitution, extramarital sex, or alcoholism. Her feminist principles led to an emphasis on rehabilitation during her period as superintendent, and are reflected in her active staff recruitment programmes. She developed a donor base amongst female philanthropists, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Jane Addams, Margaret Mead, Ethel Sturges Dummer, and Frances Perkins.

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