Other People's Daughters

Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. Near Fine in Very Good dj. 1926. First Edition. Hardcover. [a nice clean copy, light shelfwear, slight age-toning to top of text block; jacket lightly toned at spine, small chip at bottom right corner of rear panel, a couple of tiny chips along top edge "Seventeen Studies from Life," the stories of "those drifting girls of the big cities who pass by day from one temporary job to another, by night from movie to dance hall, seeking joy and the fulfillment of their youth." The author (1882-1944), who received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Radcliffe College (Ph.D. 1905), taught psychology at Mr. Holyoke College and Reed College, and served with the American Red Cross in New York during World War I. After the war, she worked for a time supervising military aides in the U.S. Surgeon General's office in Washington, D.C., before moving to Cleveland in 1922 to take a position as a psychologist at the Bedford Reformatory for Women. It was the latter position, which she apparently still held when this book was published, that brought her into contact with the various wayward young ladies whose lives and problems she depicts herein "with the most consummate skill and delicate art." (And she's not a bad storyteller -- in fact, quite a few of these "Studies from Life" read like grim little short stories of stunted and difficult lives, of girls who either "went bad" or never had much of a chance in life to begin with due to their social or economic circumstances.) Mrs. Wembridge also served for many years as referee of the Juvenile Court of Cuyahoga County (Ohio), and in addition to a number of other books in the same field (some with charming titles such as "Life Among the Lowbrows" and "Social Adjustment of Moron Girls"), she also wrote plays and published numerous articles in both popular magazines and scientific journals. .