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Note: H00309
Note: According to "Mounted Police Life in Canada" A record of 3l years service 1883-1914, published in 1916 and by Captain Burton Deane, Sarah Stuttaford looked after women prisoners and was also at Macleod where John Moorhouse Stuttaford died.
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Entry in Mounted Police Life in Canada. - Page 117 - 118
' I have more than once mentioned prisoners in connection with Calgary. The guard-room there contained more prisoners than any other guard-room of the Mounted Police except at Dawson City in the Yukon.
The only gaol for females in the Province of Alberta was situated in our grounds, and was in our charge.
I found it necessary to make a change after I had a few weeks' experience of Calgary, and imported a matron of my own selection from Maple Creek, and a great help and comfort she was to me. Sarah Stuttaford was the widow of a staff sergeant of Royal Engineers, who had served with his regiment in India and South Africa, and had ridden in a baggage wagon over many a weary mile.
When I first met her in 1902 at Maple Creek she had lost her husband, was over sixty years old, and had then been nursing maternity and other cases for twenty years.
Some of the cases that we had to deal with were heart-breaking. That is where old Sarah Stuttaford shone. Without any apparent desire to do more than pass the time of day if her patient were sufficiently affable for that much civility, she would unobtrusively get to the bottom of the trouble, and was thus better enabled to deal with the sufferer, who never failed to meet sympathy with confidence.'
Page 120 - 121
'To return to Mrs. Stuttaford, the manner in which she controlled her various ward women of all nationalities, and lunatics, amply justified my selection of a matron. As time went on, we had to get a night matron, and then an assistant. With all the help which I did not stint to give her, it was difficult to keep the old woman from working herself to death. The number of prisoners that she looked after frequently ran from twenty to twenty-four, in accommodation that was supposed to provide for ten or twelve at the outside.'
Page 130
(1914)
'..........could not be moved, so that it was not until the last day of the month of April that we sent away to Macleod, in a special train, forty male and nineteen female prisoners, with two matrons and a suitable escort. I saw Mrs. Stuttaford then for the last time, as she was going to inaugurate the women's prison in Macleod. Quarters in the city had been provided for our men and horses, and we moved into them within a day or two after the departure of the prisoners.'
Her name is on the back of GHM Stuttaford's headstone.
Western Land Grants 1870-1930
Part NE Section 10 Township 11 Range 26 Meridian W3
Liber 91
Folio 371
Reel No: C-6008
Sarah Louisa Stuttaford
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Commissioner Perry's third complaint in 1912 was that prison duties diverted the energies of his men from their "proper" function as police officers. Before considering the essence of this complaint, however, it is important to consider the roles performed by others in running the jails. In particular, the most onerous of duties frequently fell not to the male officers but to the jails' female employees. Unfortunately, they are all too often hidden in the historical record, but when they do appear their significance to the jails' operation is evident. The case of Mrs. S.L. Stuttaford, matron at the jail in Calgary, illustrates this.
Stuttaford came to Calgary with a "long and varied experience," having previously worked as a nurse in India, South Africa <http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/South+Africa> South Africa, Afrikaans Suid-Afrika, officially Republic of South Africa, republic (2005 est. pop. 44,344,000), 471,442 sq mi (1,221,037 sq km), S Africa. , and North-West Canada for more than thirty-five years. In Calgary, she was in charge of the female jail, which also housed the hospital and lunatic wards for which she was also responsible. She treated prisoners and officers alike, for ailments such as rheumatism <http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/rheumatism> rheumatism (r `m?tiz?m), general term for a number of disorders that cause inflammation and pain in muscles, bones, joints, or nerves. or measles, and assisted the prison surgeon in more serious cases. But she also performed many non-medical duties few others were willing to tackle.
In 1907, for example, a seventy-five-year-old German woman, Margaret Schlerper, was admitted to the guard-room for a three-month stay. "Her person on arrival and her habits while here were indescribably filthy," recalls the report for that year. "[T]he other female prisoners could not enter her cell without vomiting, nor could they wash her clothes for the same reason, and the matron conceived it to be her duty to do it. She did it until at length her own stomach gave out, her rest at night was broken by the noises of this lunatic, extra work devolved upon her by day by reason of a sick constable with measles in the hospital, and she succumbed for a time."
On another occasion, Stuttaford had to be assisted by "three strong women" in the forcible bathing of one Christiana Bostonstrom, whose "hair was found not to have been combed nor her person washed since the dark ages." It was similarly left to Stuttaford to administer a series of cold baths to a violent female prisoner, one so dangerous that she was otherwise confined to a strait jacket <http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Strait+jacket> Strait jacket can refer to:
Straitjacket, a device used for restraining an individual
Strait-Jacket, a 1964 Columbia Pictures horror/thriller/mystery motion picture starring Joan Crawford
. In short, without the efforts of women like Mrs. Stuttaford, it is difficult to imagine how Alberta's under-resourced and overcrowded <http://www.thefreedictionary.com/overcrowded> o·ver·crowd
v. o·ver·crowd·ed, o·ver·crowd·ing, o·ver·crowds
v.tr.
To cause to be excessively crowded: a system of consolidation that only overcrowded the classrooms. jails could have performed as well as they did under the circumstances.(16)
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http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Life+in+Alberta's+Mounted+Police+jails%2c+1905-1914.-a030422587
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