![]() ![]() ![]() That same month, May Hurley and Maggie Harrington were arrested by San Francisco police and sent to the asylum for living in an Eddy Street apartment with “five hoodlums,” the San Francisco Call reported.įor most of its residents, the Mag was nothing more than a prison, where inmates were forced to work long hours, essentially serving as slave labor for the asylum and the nuns who ran it.Īs San Francisco’s population skyrocketed after the Gold Rush, from 850 in 1848 to 300,000 in 1890, it struggled to quickly shed its lawless, Wild West reputation and become a respectable and civilized city. In June, 1890, 17-year-old Mission resident Arabella Allen was arrested and sent to the asylum by her parents because she’d fallen in love with a local gang leader, Patrick Shea, and planned to marry him, according to a San Francisco Examiner article written at the time. Teen girls were routinely sent to “The Mag,” as it was often called, for a wide range of reasons, not all of them criminal. As with many Magdalen Asylums around the world, it was largely an appalling place to live. Inside, hundreds of local teen girls were imprisoned while women struggling with mental illness and addiction sought refuge. Potrero Avenue at 21st Street, where Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital’s Behavioral Health Center stands today, was once the site of a Magdalen Asylum run by the Sisters of Mercy. ![]()
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