MANSFIELD — The unnamed woman looked glamorous — her dark hair pinned up in old Hollywood curls, with dainty hoop earrings and a cross necklace.
But the woman in the black-and-white photo wasn’t on old movie poster or in a retro fashion magazine.
She was part of a museum exhibit on Ohio’s first women’s prison.
The Ohio State Reformatory unveiled its newest museum exhibit Friday, focusing on the early years of the Ohio Reformatory for Women (ORW) in Marysville. Opened in 1916, it remains the oldest operating prison in the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction system (ODRC).
“This is an amazing exhibit that speaks to the particular difficulties that women who are incarcerated may experience,” said Ashleigh Ramey, OSR’s program director.
Employees at the Reformatory said the ORW exhibit has no specific end date, but will be at the Reformatory “indefinitely.”
It’s one of several educational opportunities inside the historic prison, which technically houses three museums — the Ohio Corrections Museum on the first floor, the Shawshank Museum on the second floor, and the North Central Ohio Industrial Museum in the back of the building.
The ORW exhibit contains educational materials put together by historian Becky McKinnell, along with artifacts on loan from the state of Ohio, ODRC and the ORW.
Lori Tibbals, an administrative employee at the ORW, helped collect the artifacts.
‘There’s so many stories here’
One of the most interesting aspects of the exhibit is a board listing some of the reasons inmates landed there in the first place.
Many are the same types of crimes that lead to incarceration today — arson, manslaughter and receiving stolen property.
Others are more vague and in some cases a reflection of the time — fornication, horse stealing, using obscene language and keeping a disorderly house.
Then there was Velma West, who beat her husband to death with a hammer for refusing to take her to a bridge game. She and another inmate escaped the Reformatory in 1939, but were captured and returned to the prison.
McKinnell said the prison was in many ways less restrictive than a typical men’s prison — women were allowed to decorate their quarters, which were referred to as “rooms” rather than “cells.”
For decades, there wasn’t even a fence around the prison — the first one was erected in 1979.
“There’s a wonderful book about the women at Marysville, and several of the ladies told the nurse they actually felt safer at Marysville than they did on the streets,” McKinnell said.
Warden calls Ohio Reformatory for Women ‘progressive for its time’
Erin Maldonado, warden of the ORW since 2023, described the prison as very progressive for its time. She credited that to Marguerite Reilley, ORW’s warden from 1936 to 1957.
According to Maldonado, Reilley was a lawyer with a background in social work. She instituted the “human being” program, which provided recreation, entertainment, jobs and vocational training for the inmates.
“She implemented the first library, she opened the first school, she opened the first hospital there. She really was groundbreaking in her time,” Maldonado said.
“She talked with the media. Even back then, she was trying to break the stigma of what we do within the walls.”
Maldonado said her predecessor would have lunch with inmates before they left.
“(She’d) make sure that they were going home to a job, to a family, to something so that they could be successful and not come back,” Maldonado said. “She really treated people with humanity and provided hope so that they could go back into the community and do well.”
Reilley’s daughter later succeeded her as warden. Under Martha Wheeler’s leadership, the prison ended racial segregation, established a GED program and began offering college classes.
“There’s a lot of history for ORW, and there’s a lot of progress in what we’ve done over the years, and so just to see it showcased here is very powerful,” Maldonado said.
McKinnell said she enjoyed diving into the prison’s history.
“There’s so much to tell, so many stories here,” McKinnell said.
She hopes to be able to tell more of those stories in the future.
“Eventually the third floor is going to be restored, and we’re going to have rooms designated for different aspects of prison life, and the women’s reformatory will be involved in that too.”