The Magdalen Society Asylum offered them a temporary home, seeking in the process to redeem and reform them. The society sought to help women who had strayed from the paths of virtue, and who , in the opinion of the founders , were desirous of returning to a moral life.
Since the women in question, however, often did not see themselves as morally degraded, very few came and many stayed only a short time, using the asylum as a temporary, sometimes seasonal, refuge. In line with the temper of the time , pregnant women and African Americans were barred from its services. The original Philadelphia asylum was located at Race and Twenty-First Streets, a relatively isolated location designed to effectively separate the women from their former lives and identities.
Eventually, the society built a high wall around the property. After a storm destroyed the original asylum in , a new building replaced it several years later. The reform program of the asylum had two components: moral guidance and skills for economic security.
The daily routine thus was meant both to reform and to train. The reform came by way of daily Bible readings, worship, and time spent with visiting clergy. Asylum staff directed training to existing social structures, involving tasks like laundering, sewing, and cooking. The reformed prostitute would then be prepared to rejoin society as a domestic worker, as a laundress, as a worker in the textile trade , or as a wife and mother.
In the beginning, there were seldom more than a handful of residents at a time. Eventually, the board of managers hired a man specifically to bring women into the home. The board also suggested to city officials that certain offenders might be sent to the asylum rather than to prison. By , women had passed through the asylum but, as the trustees themselves conceded, few were converted to lives of piety. Like the changing attitudes of society itself, the Magdalen Society evolved over the years.
