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Josiah P. Marvel papers
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Held at: Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College [Contact Us]500 College Avenue, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania 19081
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
Josiah P. Marvel (1896-1959) was a Quaker, born in Indiana and a graduate of Earlham College. He moved to New York City in 1929 and married Elinore Jacobs Strettenheim in 1941. He worked with the AFSC in France in 1940-41 and in 1942 became the chairman of Quaker Emergency Services in New York City. The Quaker Emergency Service was founded in January 1942 by members of the combined Peace and Service Committees of the two New York Monthly Meetings. Offering alternative service for conscientious objectors, it was authorized by the New York Office of Civilian Defense. Among its domestic programs in New York, QES provided volunteers for nurseries and hospitals; offered pragmatic training courses in topics such as first aid, and therapeutic courses in recreation and papercrafts for underpriviliged and "war-shocked" children and adults; and organized a series of discussion groups on post-war problems. QES also operated programs abroad, notably the Spears Mobile Clinics in Syria, operated with the help of the Friends Ambulance Unit.
After the war, the group formed the Civilian Readjustment Committee in order to provide an alternative to sentencing people to prison for for "degenerate disorderly conduct." The Committee opened a clinic in the 15th Street Quaker Meetinghouse in New York City which offered psychiatric services, particularly to men arrested for soliciting sex with other men in public spaces, as well as other people designated as sex offenders. Historian Brian Blackmore describes this effort as the "the first social service organization for gay people" (PhD diss., 2023, p. 53). After a couple of years, the clinic was renamed the Civilian Readjustment Committee and was relocated to the magistrate's court.
In 1951, Josiah Marvel was himself arrested for soliciting sex from a male plainclothes police officer, and in the aftermath of that scandal the Civilian Readjustment Center quietly wound down. Quaker Emergency Service continued to operate other programs. In 1959, Marvel was found dead by suicide, and shortly afterwards, in 1961, the Quaker Emergency Service began the process of liquidation, allocating its remaining funds to other charitable causes.
Collection contains primarily Marvel's files on the wartime projects of the Quaker Emergency Service, 1942-1945, and its postwar Civilian Readjustment Committee, including typed minutes, 1947-1961. Also includes papers concerning the Spears Mobile Clinic in Syria, including a typescript describing the mission; the dispersal of French funds, 1954-1958, raised by Mme. de la Noue for her Centre Guynemer and deposited with the Quaker Emergency Service in 1948; and the file of Katherine Cook, secretary, concerning the distribution of Service funds in 1961 and 1966. This collection also includes a typescript of Marvel's unpublished memoir, "Peace in our time," and photographs of him.
Gift of New York Yearly Meeting, 1997.
In 2024, Marvel's memoir (formerly cataloged as MSS 003/155) and photographs (not previously processed) were added to this collection. At that time, the finding aid was heavily revised.
People
Organization
- Quaker Emergency Service Readjustment Center (New York, N.Y.)
- New York Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Hicksite : 1828-1957 : New York, N.Y.). Peace and Service Committee
- Monthly Meeting of New York (Society of Friends : Orthodox : New York, N.Y.). Peace and Service Committee
- Spears Mobile Clinics
- Friends Ambulance Unit
Subject
- Quakers -- New York (State) -- New York
- Quakers -- New York (State)
- Church work with gays -- Society of Friends
- World War, 1939-1945 -- War work -- Society of Friends
- Homosexuality -- Religious aspects -- Society of Friends
- Conscientious Objectors -- United States
- Prison reformers -- United States
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Civilian relief
- Conscientious objection -- Religious aspects -- Society of Friends
- Quaker prison reformers -- United States
- Publisher
- Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College
- Finding Aid Author
- FHL Staff
- Finding Aid Date
- 2024
- Access Restrictions
-
This collection is available for research use.
Collection Inventory
Typescript memoir of Josiah P. Marvel of his service in France with the American Friends Service Committee from July 1940 to June 1941. He spent most of his time in Paris and was involved in feeding refugees and visiting internment camps and prisons
The photographs are mostly pictures of Josiah Marvel himself, but there are a few photographs of his friends and associates.