The urge to see inside and cure: letter‐writing as an educational tool in Finnish reform school education, 1915–1928¹

¹ The author has been awarded the ISCHE prize 2007 for this article.

Abstract

By focusing on letter‐writing the article provides an example of how a technology of the word could be used as a panoptic technology of observation and reformation. The article discusses the practice of using letters in monitoring children’s development in early twentieth‐century reform school education. It is based on the author’s study of Finnish reform school education and draws on a collection of children’s letters and educational writings in the archives of the Vuorela State Reform School, which was established for delinquent girls in 1893. The article focuses on one of the most effective devices for using letters in educational purposes that was introduced in reform school education: the notebook on correspondence between girls and their families. The notes were compiled by the personnel, who carefully examined all in‐coming and outgoing mail and who also supervised inmates’ letter‐writing. How was letter‐writing connected to wider pedagogical aims and what kind of encounters between reformatory pupils and their teachers can be found in the surviving material? The article argues that the systematic examination of inmates’ letters was not only about control, but more importantly about education and observation. Notes on inmates’ letters include short commentaries concerning girls’ behaviour and their character. As is shown in the article, the letters were archived and annotated in order to gain a deeper comprehension of the author’s personality and her progress in the institution. The practice of monitoring letter‐writing at Vuorela will be contextualised in the wider history of reform school education. In the case of Vuorela state reform school letter‐writing appears as a social practice defined by the institutional context. The pedagogical aims of reforming the pupils produced a specific reformatory culture of routines, rituals and restrictions. Letters had a specific role in the reformatory culture due to the all‐embracing aim of surveillance and cure. Letters and education in letter‐writing were taken on as a technique of not only observing but also reforming.

¹ The author has been awarded the ISCHE prize 2007 for this article.

Keywords:

• history of letter‐writing
• reform schools
• girls' education
• Finland
• early‐twentieth century

Notes

¹ The author has been awarded the ISCHE prize 2007 for this article.

² Refers to the pocket money that was paid weekly to well‐behaved inmates.

³ Notes on inmates’ letters I: 23 October 1919.

⁴ All names used for pupils are pseudonyms.

⁵ Similar letters discussing the inmate’s inability to correspond because of her misbehaviour or institutional restrictions: Notes on inmates’ letters II: 19 November 1921; 22 December 1922; 2 March 1926.

⁶ Before receiving their own regulations in 1902, regulations set for boys’ state reform schools in 1890 were followed in Vuorela. Compare: Suomen Suuriruhtinaanmaan Asetuskokoelma (Statutes of the Grand Duchy of Finland) 23/1890, 43 § and 34/1902, 41 §.

⁷ The archival sources quoted in this article are preserved in the Hämeenlinna Provincial Archive (Archives of the Vuorela State Reform School including: Case files 1894–1923; Notes on inmates’ letters I, 1915–1920; Notes on inmates’ letters II, 1921–1928) and partially in the private archives in the Vuorela State Reform School, located in Nummela (Pupils magazine “Urpuja”, 1923–1925).

⁸ Notes on inmates’ letters I: 109 letters, composed by 57 inmates and 6 other persons (sent from parents and other schools). Notes on inmates’ letters II: 126 letters, composed by 68 inmates and four other persons (parents); 10 inmates appear in both of the collections.

⁹ Recipients of the 225 letters: Mothers 68; parental home 48; sisters 32; aunts, grandmothers and other female relatives and care takers 23; brothers 13; former inmates 10; other female friends 10; fathers 3; other recipients 18.

¹⁰ Notes on inmates’ letters II.

¹¹ Notes on inmates’ letters I: 23 October 1919.

¹² Statutes of the Grand Duchy of Finland 34/1902, 5: 52 § 8.

¹³ Notes on inmates’ letters I: 23 October 1919. The commentator has left some space (marked *) to fill in the number of years that Saara had spent in Vuorela, but she never returned to add the information.

¹⁴ Notes on inmates’ letters II: undated, November–December 1920.

¹⁵ Notes on inmates’ letters II: 5 April 1922.

¹⁶ Notes on inmates’ letters II: 3 July 1925.

¹⁷ Notes on inmates’ letters II: undated, February 1923; 3 April 1923.

¹⁸ Notes on inmates’ letters I: 8 October 1917.

¹⁹ Notes on inmates’ letters I: 3 November 1916 (partially); 8 October 1917; 11 November 1917; 11 November 1917; undated November–December 1917; undated February 1918; 10 February 1918; 10 February 1918; undated February–May 1918; 8 December 1918; undated May–September 1919; 14 September 1919; undated September–October 1919; 30 December 1919; undated January 1920; 20 September 1920; 14 March 1920.

²⁰ Notes on inmates’ letters II: 17 January 1926; undated April–May 1926.

²¹ Notes on inmates’ letters I: 109 letters, composed by 57 inmates and six other persons (parents and other schools). Notes on inmates’ letters II: 126 letters, composed by 68 inmates and four other persons (parents); 10 inmates appear in both of the collections.

²² Compulsory education was introduced in Finland in 1921. It has been estimated that 60% of school‐aged children attended primary education by then. Geographical differences played an important role: practically all school‐aged children in southern Finnish towns attended primary schools already before it was made compulsory, but in the northern and eastern parts of the country schools were few. Saara Tuomaala, Työtätekevistä käsistä puhtaiksi ja kirjoittaviksi. Suomalaisen oppivelvollisuuskoulun ja maalaislasten kohtaaminen 1921–1939 (From working hands to clean and writing hands. Encounters between Finnish compulsory education and rural children, 1921–1939) (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2004).

²³ A total of 119 letters were filed in the case files between 1893 and 1923.

²⁴ Case file no 269: a letter dated 1 January 1925.

²⁶ Case file no 302: a letter dated 28 March 1925.

²⁵ Case file no 302: two letters dated 28 March 1925.

²⁷ See: Kaisa Vehkalahti, “Portraits of Delinquency and Penitence. Telling Life‐Stories in a Reform School Context,” History of Education Researcher 71 (2003): 14–27.

²⁸ For other confiscated letters: Case files no 144; 171; 243; 293; 303.

²⁹ Notes on inmates’ letters I, 9 October 1916; 15 October 1916; 3 November 1916.

³⁰ Likewise, correspondence between a former inmate and her mates was saved in her case file as a “document on her character”. All three girls were placed on parole as domestic servants in private families. The letters were sent to Vuorela by one of the matrons, who had already read and reported on her servant’s correspondence earlier. Case file no 238: letters dated May–June 1922.

³¹ Statutes of the Grand Duchy of Finland 39/1889, 3: 1 §. See also: Timo Harrikari, Alaikäisyys ja rikollisuuden muuttuvat tulkinnat suomalaisessa lainsäätämiskäytännössä (The Status of Minors and Changing Interpretations of Crime in Finnish Legislation) (Helsinki: Nuorisotutkimusseura, 2004), 71–109.

³² S.G. Dahlström, Siveellisesti hairahtuneiden lasten ja nuorten lainrikkojain hoito sekä keinot heidän parantamiseensa. Kertomus, jonka valtionvaroilla vuosina 1885 ja 1886 Ruotsissa, Norjassa, Tanskassa, Saksassa ja Schweitsissä toimitetusta opintomatkasta teki S.G. Dahlström [The Care and Means for the Cure of Morally Fallen and Delinquent Children and Young Law‐Breakers. A Travel Report of a Study Trip Made with Public Funds in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland in 1885 and 1886 made by S.G. Dahlström] (Helsinki: Keisarillisen Senaatin kirjapaino, 1890), 62.

³³ Pirjo Markkola, Synti ja siveys. Naiset, uskonto ja sosiaalinen työ Suomessa 1860–1920 (Sin and Morality. Women, Religion and Social Work in Finland, 1860–1920) (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2003), 230.

³⁴ Ruth M. Alexander, The “Girl Problem”. Female Sexual Delinquency in New York 1900–1930 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press: 1998), 104, 108–13.

³⁵ See Eva Helen Ulvros, Fruar och mamseller. Kvinnor inom sydsvensk borgerlighet 1790–1870 (Bourgeois Women in Southern Sweden, 1790–1870) (Lund: Historiska Media, 1996); R. Chartier, A. Boureau and C. Dauphin, Correspondence. Models of Letter‐Writing from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1997); David Barton and Nigel Hall, Introduction to Letter Writing as a Social Practice, ed. D. Barton and N. Hall (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1999); Rebecca Earle, Introduction to Epistolary Selves: Letters and letter‐writers, 1600–1945, ed. R. Earle (Aldershot and Brookfield: Ashgate, 1999); Liz Stanley, “The Epistolarium: On theorizing letters and correspondences,” Auto/Biography 12 (2004): 201–35; Willemijn Ruberg, “Children’s Correspondence as a Pedagogical Tool in the Netherlands (1770–1850),” Paedagogica Historica 41 (2005): 295–312.

³⁶ Eva Lis Bjurman, Catrines intressanta blekhet. Unga kvinnors möten med de nya kärlekskraven 1750–1830 (The Fascinating Paleness of Catrine. Young Women Facing the New Criterion for Romantic Love 1750–1830) (Stockholm: Brutus Östlings Bokförlag Symposion, 1998).

³⁷ Ruberg, “Children’s Correspondence as a Pedagogical Tool,” 302–5.

³⁸ Petrus De Raadt: Noortheij, huis van opvoeding en onderwijs. Amsterdam, 1849, 121–3, after Ruberg, “Children’s Correspondence as a Pedagogical Tool,” 309.

³⁹ For the practice of letter‐writing in eighteenth‐century Finnish upper and middle‐class families: Anne Ollila, Jalo velvollisuus. Virkanaisia 1800–luvun lopun Suomessa (The Noble Obligation. Professional Women in late 19th Century Finland) (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1998); Päivi Granö, “Melkein kotonaan: Koti paikkana Wecksellin sisarusten kirjeissä 1900–luvun alussa” [Almost at Home. Home as a Place in the Early 20th‐century Correspondence of the Wecksell Siblings], in Koti: Kaiho, paikka, muutos, ed. P. Granö, J. Suominen and O. Tuomi‐Nikula (Pori: Kulttuurintuotannon ja maisemantutkimuksen laitos, 2004), 103–50; Maarit Leskelä‐Kärki, “Constructing Sisterly Relations in Epistolary Practices: The Writing Krohn Sisters (1890–1950),” NORA – Nordic Journal of Women’s Studies 15, no. 1 (2007).

⁴⁰ Jeroen Dekker, The Will to Change the Child. Re‐education Homes for Children at Risk in Nineteenth Century Western Europe (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2001), 59, 176.

⁴¹ The essays were published in a handwritten pupils’ magazine Urpuja in Vuorela (January 1923; May 1925; Christmas 1925).

⁴² Dahlström, Siveellisesti hairahtuneiden, 1890.

⁴³ Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. A. Sheridan (New York: Vintage books 1979); id., Power/Knowledge. Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972–1977, ed. C. Gordon, trans. C. Gordon, L. Marshall, J. Mepham and K. Soper (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 124–5.