Call Number:

SC.221

Repository:

Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College

Extent:

.2 linear ft.

Language:

English

Date:

1942-1966 (bulk)

Creator:

Quaker Emergency Service Readjustment Center (New York, N.Y.) and Marvel, Josiah P. (Josiah Philip), 1896-1959

Abstract:

Josiah P. Marvel (1896-1959) was a Quaker, who worked with the American Friends Service Committee in France in 1940-41 and in 1942 became the chairman of the Quaker Emergency Service in New York City. This collection contains primarily Marvel's files on the Quaker Emergency Service, including its Civilian Readjustment Committee (a clinic that offered men arrested for soliciting sex with other men the option of psychiatric care in lieu of a prison sentence). The collection also includes a typescript of Marvel's unpublished memoir, "Peace in our time," and photographs of him.

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.