7. Housing the “Incorrigible” at The Good Shepherd Home in Seattle
The Sisters of the Good Shepherd opened a home for “incorrigible” girls in 1907 in Seattle. When the order arrived in Seattle in 1890, young women and girls caught out on the street were arrested by police. Many of these females ran away from neglect, abuse, and hunger. There were some that seemed to find trouble wherever they went. These “wayward” girls, once arrested, spent the night in jail and then were handed over to the Sisters of the Good Shepherd.
For 106 years, the Sisters operated a convent, school, orphanage, commercial laundry, and wing for unwed mothers and wayward girls. The Sisters did not communicate with their neighbors on the other side of the high wall that enclosed the 11 acre site. This led to rumors that pregnant teens entered into the convent and never left. These girls remained on the “bad side” of the convent and labored in the laundry with the heart-wrenching pain that their illegitimate children were taken from them and adopted to respectable couples. The Good Shepherd closed the home and the laundry in June 1973.