Meet Ollie Parrish (Carnahan)

I have been fascinated by the Women's Industrial Home and Clinic that opened in September 1920 and closed in March 1921. It was located in Medical Lake near the Eastern State Hospital. Governor Lister listened to the women who wrote in requesting a State Industrial Home for Women. The women thought it to be new, as no other state had this provision, more need since the war, didn't want the wasteful methods of arresting, detaining, releasing, and re-arresting, and to provide women a place they could be kept long enough to be given a new idea about life and teach them other ways to earn a living. The Washington State Federation of Women's Clubs lead the charge. They wrote letters recommending women who could run the clinic, ideas about what could be offered, and reminders of the need for moral purity in these times.

I am working on a series of vignettes about the women who stayed at the Industrial Home and Clinic for its short lived existence. I have also started researching their lives before and after their short stay in the clinic. I started with the two women who were transferred from the Industrial Home and Clinic to the State Penitentiary according to a letter I found while researching the history of the Washington State Archives.  Ollie Parrish and Naomi Johnson were given the order in the records of the State Department of Business Control. In this same group of documents, Miss S Margaret Gillam was to continue to be in charge of the institution until it could be closed and it included some of the spending.

Ollie Carnahan married Mark Parrish on August 29, 1918 in Wenatchee, Washington. She was 16 years old and he was 19 years old at the time of their marriage. By July 20, 1920 Ollie Parrish is filing with the Superior Court of Chelan County for divorce. She asked for $40 per month alimony to care for their 10 month old son, George Robert Irving Parrish and $100 to pay for the attorney fees. Her son was living with her father, Andrew H. Carnahan because she did not have gainful employment. She said that Mark abandoned her in March 1919 or there about. She is sentenced for perjury according to the Leavenworth Echo March 11, 1921 for the testimony of her suit for divorce and "Mrs. Parrish was sentenced to serve an indeterminate sentence not exceeding 15 years at the Women's Industrial Home and Clinic at Medical Lake."

The Women's Industrial Home and Clinic was created to provide women a place to go for treatment - including "fresh air, hard work, good plain food, discipline, self government, test of responsibility, industrial and religious training." (from the Biennial Report of the Board of Control 1920)