that a Place of Punishment may be Provided for Minor Colored Children" (House Documents, X, February
5,1867). The Governor appointed two of sixteen managers; buildings and grounds were tax-free; a report
to the General Assembly was required; and, contingent on $30,000 from private subscriptions, an
appropriation of $5,000 was allotted annually for two years. In 1882, the Industrial Home for Colored
Girls was established and given tax-exempt status (Chapter 291, Acts of 1882). The Governor appointed
two of its eleven managers.

These private reformatories served a public role as caretakers for the State's youthful offenders. Two of
them, indeed, became public agencies of the State in 1918. The former House of Refuge, then known as
the Maryland School for Boys, became the Maryland Training School for Boys, the State reformatory for
white boys (Chapter 300, Acts of 1918). Its counterpart for white girls, the former Maryland Industrial
School for Girls, then the Female House of Refuge was designated the Maryland Industrial Training School
for Girls (Chapter 303, Acts of 1918).

In an executive reorganization of 1922, both training schools together with the Maryland School for
the Deaf were placed under the Department of Education (Chapter 29, Acts of 1922). When Maryland,
in 1931, established the Maryland Training School for Colored Girls as a reformatory, superseding the
Industrial Home for Colored Girls, it too came under the oversight of the State Superintendent of Schools
(Chapter 367, Acts of 1931). The State completed its acquisition of private reform schools in 1937 by
taking over the House of Reformation at Cheltenham as the State reformatory for black boys and renaming
it Cheltenham School for Boys (Chapter 70, Acts of 1937).

State Department of Public Welfare. By the 1940s, though the State paid for institutional care for children
in public and private institutions, services were not coordinated nor standards set for care. Each institution
controlled its own admissions and parole. Yet, staff and funding for parole were so limited that children often
failed to readjust to the community and were reinstitutionalized. The State Board of Public Welfare had more
authority over private institutions than over the State training schools which were full of untrainable, mentally
handicapped delinquents and nondelinquent children who would have benefitted from in-home or foster care
had such programs been available. Maryland's child welfare services were desperately in need of coordination
to ensure that each child received appropriate care. In 1943, the Maryland Commission on Juvenile Delinquency
recommended creation of a Bureau of Child Welfare under the State Department of Public Welfare; placement
of the State's four institutions for delinquent children under a division for children's institutions within the
Bureau of Child Welfare; and establishment of an institution (somewhere between a training school and prison)
for incorrigible offenders between ages 16 to 20. The legislature responded the same year by requiring the State
Department of Public Welfare to supervise both public and private institutions "having the care, custody or
control of dependent, delinquent, abandoned or neglected children;" creating a Bureau of Child Welfare with
a Division of Institutions within the Department; placing the State training schools under the Department's
supervision; and requiring the Department to establish standards for care, admission, discharge, and after-care
(Chapter 797, Acts of 1943). The Division of Institutions oversaw the State's training schools for delinquent
children: Maryland Training School for Boys, the Montrose School for Girls (formerly Maryland Industrial
Training School for Girls), the Cheltenham School for Boys, and the Maryland Training School for Colored
Girls. The State Department of Public Welfare also later administered the forestry camps first established in
1955 for delinquent boys in Western Maryland. Under the Department of Juvenile Services, these camps were
reorganized in 1977 as youth centers.

Juvenile Courts. In the nineteenth century, institutions were seen as the solution to many social ills. But
for juvenile offenders, the existence of reformatories did not preclude the possibility of a jail or prison
sentence. Minors who committed a crime still could be tried, convicted, and punished like adults. In 1849,
approximately 8 percent of Maryland Penitentiary prisoners were between the ages of 13 to 18. In 1897,
some 42 years after the founding of the House of Refuge for juveniles, roughly 15 percent of prisoners in
the Penitentiary were between 12 and 20 years of age just prior to conviction, and 21 percent in the
Maryland House of Correction were aged 10 to 20 years when first imprisoned.

Progressives, at the turn of the century, were concerned about youth in prisons. They believed that
children were not criminals and that they needed treatment, not punishment. Reformers helped establish
the first juvenile court in the country in Chicago in 1899. Baltimore did not lag far behind. The Charity
Organization Society lobbied for a Magistrate for Juvenile Causes to hear cases of minors under age 16 in
Baltimore City. The law, passed in 1902, allowed the magistrate, who was a justice of the peace, to commit
children awaiting trial to a reformatory instead of jail, and authorized the Supreme Bench to appoint
unpaid probation officers to investigate the circumstances of each child brought to trial, represent the
interests of the child, and have control and custody of the child before and after the trial. Court proceedings
could be suspended and a child placed on conditional probation under supervision of a probation officer
(Chapter 611, Acts of 1902).