The Lyman School for Boys was established by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts about 1886 and was closed in 1971. It was the first reform school

Reform school

A reform school in the United States was a term used to define, often somewhat euphemistically, what was often essentially a penal institution for boys, generally teenagers.-History:...

, or training school in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, replacing the State Reform School near the same site, which was opened in 1846. The school was named for its principal benefactor, Theodore Lyman

Theodore Lyman (militiaman)

Theodore Lyman II was an American philanthropist, politician, and author, born in Boston, the son of Theodore Lyman and Lydia Pickering Williams. He graduated at Harvard in 1810, visited Europe , studied law, and with Edward Everett, revisited Europe in 1817-19...

, who had been a mayor of Boston, Massachusetts in 1834 and a philanthropist

Philanthropist

A philanthropist is someone who engages in philanthropy; that is, someone who donates his or her time, money, and/or reputation to charitable causes...

. Lyman School is not used for its original purpose today but remains a nationally registered historic place

National Register of Historic Places

The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...

.

Location and changing economy

Lyman School was situated near Lake Chauncy in the town of Westborough, on Powder Hill, off State Route 9

Route 9 (Massachusetts)

Route 9 is a major east–west state highway in Massachusetts. Along with U.S. Route 20, Route 2 and the Massachusetts Turnpike, Route 9 is one of the major east-west routes of Massachusetts, and like the others its eastern terminus is in Boston...

. It comprised about one thousand acres (4 km²) of which about five hundred acres (2 km²) were prime farmland, maintained by its students. The farm remained a principal means of support for the school until about 1955 when the economy of the region became predominantly industrial rather than agricultural due to the placement of major companies along State Routes 9. At that time training of the students was changed to adapt to the new economy.

Population established by courts

Students were sent to the Lyman School when the courts had determined that it would be in the public interest

Public interest

The public interest refers to the "common well-being" or "general welfare." The public interest is central to policy debates, politics, democracy and the nature of government itself...

. Until about 1970, juveniles in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts were afforded none of the (now) commonly accepted Constitutional rights. Therefore, many boys were sent to this reform school for “crimes” such as truancy

Truancy

Truancy is any intentional unauthorized absence from compulsory schooling. The term typically describes absences caused by students of their own free will, and usually does not refer to legitimate "excused" absences, such as ones related to medical conditions...

 and being a stubborn child. In fact, an ancient law in the Commonwealth allowed stubborn children to be put to death. It remained on the books even though it was never ostensibly invoked. Several famous criminals attended the Lyman School, one of them being the Boston strangler

Boston Strangler

The Boston Strangler is a name attributed to the murderer of several women in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, in the early 1960s. Though the crimes were attributed to Albert DeSalvo, investigators of the case have since suggested the murders were not committed by one person.-First Stage...

, Albert DeSalvo

Albert DeSalvo

Albert Henry DeSalvo was a criminal in Boston, Massachusetts who confessed to being the "Boston Strangler", the murderer of 13 women in the Boston area. DeSalvo was not imprisoned for these murders, however, but for a series of rapes...

.

Cottage system of administration

Students at the school were subject to strict discipline. They were required to conform at all times to rules that were enforced with corporal punishment

Corporal punishment

Corporal punishment is a form of physical punishment that involves the deliberate infliction of pain as retribution for an offence, or for the purpose of disciplining or reforming a wrongdoer, or to deter attitudes or behaviour deemed unacceptable...

. Students lived in so-called cottages. These were large brick buildings providing shelter for about one-hundred boys in each. The top floor comprised a dormitory and the lower floors, the living space. Each cottage was ruled by a cottage master and usually a cottage matron. This husband and wife team lived in a cottage apartment and was on duty twenty-four hours a day. In the late nineteen-fifties, it became difficult to find cottage parents willing to work such long hours, so several changes were made.

The cottages were named for towns or places of geographical importance. In the 1950 to 1960 era, the cottages were Lyman Hall, Chauncey, Overlook, Sunset, Hillside, Wachusett, Worcester, Elms, and Oak. Lyman Hall was the induction center. All new students started there. Oak Cottage was the discipline cottage. Runaways, troublemakers, and returnees were put there for attitude adjustment. Cottage residents were usually graded according to age. The youngest boys lived in Chauncey Cottage and the oldest in Elms Cottage. The photograph of this subsection shows a typical cottage. This large building comprised two, Worcester and Westview.

Religious education

Religious education was required. Each boy was supplied a suit of clothes that he wore to religious services on Sunday. Any boy who was not Catholic was assumed Protestant. The auditorium used for church services was also used for the showing of movies on Saturday afternoon. Watching movies was one of the privileges that could be revoked for maintaining order and discipline.

Society at the school

Pictures and information about this school are currently being maintained by historian Dick Bolt. Two authors are known to have attended the Lyman School and lived to write about it. They are Mark D. Devlin

Mark D. Devlin

Mark Dennis Devlin was the author of Stubborn Child , a critically acclaimed memoir published in 1985. He died on March 10, 2005. The cause of death was not released but he had battled mental illness, alcoholism, and physical problems for many years...

, the author of Stubborn Child, who died in 2005, and Richard B. Johnson

Richard B. Johnson

Richard Brian Johnson is the author of the book Abominable Firebug which presents his account of daily life at the Lyman School for Boys. Johnson invented the Rubber Ducky antenna while attending the Lyman School for Boys. Johnson went on to a career as an engineer and inventor. He also created...

, author of Abominable Firebug

Abominable Firebug

-Synopsis and style:This book is a chronology of the early life of the author, Richard B. Johnson, starting in the town of North Brookfield, Massachusetts. It begins at about the age of two and continues until Johnson is 21 years of age...

, who writes considerable details about students’ daily activities at the school.

The Lyman School was a nearly complete town in itself. It looked like a college campus. All of the maintenance, construction, and repair of the facilities were performed by its students. They were supervised by trade masters. A student attending Lyman School would learn a trade whether he wanted to or not. It was not optional. The trades taught were grounds-keeping, laundry, cooking and other cafeteria skills, carpentry, painting, masonry, janitor work, electrical work, plumbing and steam-fitting, boiler maintenance, and printing. The entire official corpus of printed documents of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and all the government stationery, were printed in the Lyman School print shop.

The Lyman School for Boys has a less than pacific social history ranging from its nearly complete destruction by arson in its early years to runaways who were never caught nor heard from again. Institutional folklore had it that missing runaways were not runaways at all, but children killed by the cottage or trade masters, with their bodies buried in the swamps behind the hill.

New visibility

Approximately three hundred boys “graduated” from the Lyman School for Boys every year. Based on this figure, approximately forty-five-thousand boys have attended this institution. At least ten percent or about forty-five hundred should still be living in 2006. The public usually hears only about its failures, as in the case of the Boston strangler. This publicity bias makes it difficult to determine the correctness or effectiveness of such institutions.

Sherrie Connelly project

During the 1960s, college students from Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...

, including Ted Todd, regularly visited boys at Lyman School. In the fall of 1964, Sherrie Connelly, then a student at Smith College

Smith College

Smith College is a private, independent women's liberal arts college located in Northampton, Massachusetts. It is the largest member of the Seven Sisters...

 in Northampton, Massachusetts

Northampton, Massachusetts

The city of Northampton is the county seat of Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2010 census, the population of Northampton's central neighborhoods, was 28,549...

, visited the school with Todd and developed a Christmas project involving about 100 college students who sent Christmas cards and gifts to boys at Lyman School. One of the boys Sherrie got to know was a sweet and appreciative boy, who had L*O*V*E tattooed on his fingers. Many boys were very appreciative of visits, gifts and cards, and some correspondences developed. Connelly later conducted a project for a college organization behavior class studying the school from the perspectives of people in different roles at the school. Not surprisingly, in retrospect, people in different roles had very different ideas about the success of the school depending on their responsibilities as dorm parents, cafeteria workers, teachers or administrators.

Closure

During the administration of Governor Endicott Peabody

Endicott Peabody

Endicott "Chub" Peabody was the 62nd Governor of Massachusetts from January 3, 1963 to January 7, 1965.-Early life:...

 (1962–1965), various trade unions complained that maintenance of state-owned buildings at the Lyman School was being performed by non-union labor. If the trade unions were to have their way, the cost to the Commonwealth to maintain each student at the institution would increase from about five thousand to fifty thousand dollars per year. Therefore, when Jerome Miller, the new Director of the Youth Service Board, closed this institution in 1971, there was little opposition. See Jerome G. Miller's Last One Over the Wall which describes his involvement with this institution's closing.

Other sources