Mansfield Reformatory - Church

Hey Gang,
This segment is about religion and the churches in the reformatory, yes churches, it had two.
The reformatory was grandly and elegantly built in the belief it would help sway the incarcerated back to the straight and narrow. In the early years it was mostly Protestant so it had only one church. As the years went by and the beliefs of the incoming inmates changed another church was added, a Catholic church.
The Protestant church is ONE HUGE ROOM! In fact, it could stand alone as church. It has a HIGH ceiling and at one time had a balcony. If I heard correctly for the choir. Time as taken its toll on it. Very little is left. A few pews and a few panels of stained glass windows showing the way of the cross. It must of been a sight to see in the early years. Later on it was converted for other purposes, one was a game room. Its amazing how religion played a part in trying to reform the prisoners and then years later as the prisoners became more hardened church was abandoned in favor of games.
The Catholic church is much smaller and not much remains of when it was a church so its hard to tell what it was like.
A Chaplain was also always on duty for counseling, not sure though if this continued up until the prison's closing.
Even though church and religion was not as promoted as in the beginning you can still find in many of the cells religious reading material, bibles, booklets and books that were left behind.
The other thing you find a lot of in the cells is cigarette packs.
And if you put them together you know what you get, don't you? Well you get a Holy Smoke!
Enjoy the photos.

Gotta GoGo!!
Carey