As you know, this BlogSpot is not owned, operated, or related to the ANCESTRY.COM databases, and though I do use those databases, I also use others, as well as microfilms, books, and much else.
I do check to see what is new or updated on ANCESTRY.COM every few months, even if I'm not working on a genealogy research project in which I would use those databases. I feel that I should always be current with knowledge of resources, just in case.
I recently discovered one called PENNSYLVANIA PRISON, REFORMATORY, and WORKHOUSE RECORDS 1829-1971. To me the 1971 is MUCH TOO RECENT TO BE PUBLISHED as it might OUT PEOPLE WHO ARE ALIVE.
I'm concerned about the lack of discrimination and the use of these databases by both Ancestry and the State of Pennsylvania... but I'll have to check and see if such records have always been, like marriage and divorce records, open to the public in Pennsylvania. In California arrest records are, but I'm not aware of the public easily learning about sentences, and other details.
At this point I'm very concerned about the use of genealogy databases by criminals, in this era in which other countries are hacking our e-mails, web sites, even voters registrations in order to ID THEFT. Identity theft is not just about ruining a person's credit and financial reputation, but in ASSUMING IDENTITIES.
Criminals doing this targeted a senior citizen couple in my neighborhood, calling them with knowledge of their children's names and even a grandchild's name. They had their address and phone number - easy enough. They claimed that they were calling from Mexico, with a made up story about how their beloved grandson had gone there for a wedding, drank too much, acted crazy, and was in a Mexican prison. For a sum of $40,000 (their life savings) he could be bailed out of jail and returned to the United States and no one need to know. His young life would not need to be ruined with an arrest record. So much did the criminals know about this family that the seniors wired the money to Mexico, only to learn their grandson had never left the United States and was alive and well (and not at all criminal) at his college...
Never the less I did look at the database, which names people, the reason why they were arrested, the time or fine they were sentenced to, their prison job, and any amount of money they had earned while in the prison, reformatory (reform school - indicative of a juvenile delinquent), or workhouse (place a person works off their debts), from a historical point of view.
These places were frightening to the people who were put into them, and the offences are quite telling.
For instance, I came across men who were put into prison for sodomy and women who were called Com Prost (Common Prostitute). The Com Prost must have not been an Uncommon Prostitute, but maybe this was to indicated that the woman walked the street, or had a pimp, rather than that they worked in a Bordello with a Madam, or perhaps were the Mistress of a Rich man! I saw one that, I think - because the handwriting was so bad - was in the institution for "dice and cards." (Could it be that this was considered minor gambling?) Vagrancy, in other words homelessness, was punishable by being put into one of these places. Selling liquor became a crime during prohibition.
I ran a number of family names from Pennsylvania and was relieved not to discover that anyone I'm familiar with through my research was put into any of these places.
However, let's face the facts that some people have not and do not live privileged or charmed lives and that poverty or mental illness could condemn them to activities that might have meant their survival, that is if the conditions they found themselves in didn't hurt their health or even kill them in the mean time.
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