Massachusetts Reformatory for Women

The Reformatory for Women (presently known as MCI-Framingham) was established in 1877 to house female offenders. Around 1913, the institution began generating in-depth case files on each inmate, documenting information such as mittimus, official correspondence regarding inmates, arrest warrants, inmate case summaries and histories, employment and medical information, psychological analysis, parole records, and Bertillon cards. The Bertillon system was a means of identifying criminal offenders using descriptive photography, fingerprints, specific measurements, and identifying characteristics. This information is laid out on each card displayed below, along with details regarding the inmate’s crime, residence, place of birth, occupation, aliases, and place of disposition. These cards omit the typical Bertillon measurements.
Due to Massachusetts privacy laws, staff at the Archives must redact information related to medical or mental health in order to share this collection with patrons. In scanning these files for redaction, our staff encountered unique photographs and items which offer glimpses into the lives of inmates during their time at the Reformatory. Some items were discovered with accompanying notes providing context, while others bore no explanation. This exhibit highlights some of these discovered items, dated 1918–1921, along with the Bertillon cards from the case files in which they were found.