Background
Johnson, Ellen Cheney was born on December 20, 1829 in Athol, Massachusetts, United States. Daughter of Nathan and Rhoda (Holbrook) Cheney.
Johnson, Ellen Cheney was born on December 20, 1829 in Athol, Massachusetts, United States. Daughter of Nathan and Rhoda (Holbrook) Cheney.
Ellen attended the Academy at Francestown, New Hampshire.
She later became a teacher at Weare, New Hampshire, where she was also an alumna. When she was eighteen she joined a temperance organization. Her home near the State House in Boston became a meeting place for welfare workers.
Ellen founded the New England Women's Auxiliary Association which in turn led her to an important position in the United States. Sanitary Commission.
She was involved with the executive and finance committees of the New England branch of the commission. During this time Ellen would visit numerous correctional facilities and helped poor women around Boston so they could better fend for themselves.
Throughout all this, Johnson witnessed the abuse which female prisoners had to endure. At this time, female prisoners were not separated from their male counterparts.
Neither were the children they brought in with them, or the ones that were born in jail.
Ellen began a crusade for the reform of female treatment in correctional facilities. She and other women gathered at her home and began writing letters to newspapers requesting a separate facility for females. Their letters brought the subject to legislature.
They gathered over 7000 signatures which helped pass the bill for an all-female prison in 1874.
In the meantime, Ellen became the leading advocate for the Temporary Asylum of Discharged Female Prisoners in Dedham, Master of Arts. The Reformatory Prison for women was finally opened in 1877 in Sherborn, near Framingham, Master of Arts. Ellen, being one of the five commissioners for the prison, became the superintendent of the prison. Ellen Cheney Johnson, while running the Massachusetts Reformatory Prison for Women at the turn of the nineteenth century, tried to bridge the approaches of rehabilitation and punishment.
As she put it in her own writings, "Number lesson is more important than that which teaches respect for the law and dread of its wrath. Johnson developed a system of indenture for house service in houses outside the prison walls.
This was all done under sympathetic supervision. for evidence of a model management in every detail.
Ellen’s reformatory system has been studied thoroughly and received the highest praise from prison experts. She died suddenly while in London, England after addressing the International Congress of Women on June 28, 1899.
Member finance committees New England branch of the United States Sanitary Commission. Member Massachusetts Prison Commission, 1879-1884.
Married Jesse Cram Johnson, 1849.