Part 1

VOLUME IV, No. 8. AUGUST, 1914

THE DELINQUENT

A MONTHLY PERIODICAL, PUBLISHED BY THE NATIONAL PRISONERS’ AID ASSOCIATION AT 135 EAST 15th STREET, NEW YORK CITY.

THIS COPY TEN CENTS. ONE DOLLAR A YEAR

T. F. Garver, President. O. F. Lewis, Secretary, Treasurer and Editor The Delinquent. Edward Fielding, Chairman Ex. Committee. F. Emory Lyon, Member Ex. Committee. W. G. McLaren, Member Ex. Committee. A. H. Votaw, Member Ex. Committee. E. A. Fredenhagen, Member Ex. Committee. Joseph P. Byers, Member Ex. Committee. R. B. McCord, Member Ex. Committee.

Entered as second-class mail matter at New York.

TOM BROWN AT AUBURN

By Hastings H Hart.

Director Child Caring Work, Russell Sage Foundation.

[This very illuminating book review of “Within Prison Walls,” a book by Thomas Mott Osborne, has, by agreement, been published jointly in _The Delinquent_ and The Survey. The editor of _The Delinquent_ had at first planned to give to several persons the pleasant task of reviewing Mr. Osborne’s important book. But Dr. Hart has written so graphic a review that we shall be content with this. The second article in this month’s magazine follows logically this review.]

In his book, “Within Prison Walls,” “Tom Brown,” (Hon. Thomas Mott Osborne) has given a remarkable study of the mind of the convict. This book should be read in connection with Donald Lowrie’s book, “My Life In Prison,” which portrays the prisoner from the vantage point of actual and prolonged experience but without the advantage of Mr. Osborne’s wider knowledge of human life and human philosophy.

Mr. Osborne’s study is an astonishing achievement for a single week. To break the crust of officialism and without legal authority to command the co-operation of unwilling prison officials; to overcome the suspicions and the reticence of the prisoners, to secure their general co-operation in his plan, and to gain admission to the inner circles of convict life; and then to really put himself in the place of a prisoner and to realize how he feels, how he thinks and to catch his viewpoint--to do all this in a week was an astonishing piece of work.

Of course, his work was fragmentary and incomplete, but the writer has known prison officers who have associated with prisoners for years without obtaining such a knowledge of their mental processes as Mr. Osborne gained in a week.

It is much to be regretted that Mr. Julian Hawthorne did not seize the opportunity of his experience at Atlanta and apply his literary genius to record and analyze the effects of prison life upon himself and his associates. He might have written a classic equal to De Quincey’s “Confessions of an Opium Eater,” but he choose instead to retell the gossip and scandals of the State prisons, true and false, as given him by second and third-term convicts.

Mr. Osborne, having been appointed by Governor Sulzer as chairman of a commission to recommend improvements in the prison system of the State of New York, resolved to become a voluntary prisoner at Auburn and to put himself, as nearly as possible, in the place of the actual convict. He frankly declared his purpose in the prison chapel, asking the co-operation of the officers and prisoners to make his experience as realistic as possible; and they took him at his word.

He entered the prison gates in citizen’s clothes and was registered by the receiving officer as “Thomas Brown, 33,333x.” He was conducted by an officer to the tailor shop, where in a corner of the shop without any screens and in full view of all passers in and out, are three porcelain lined iron bath tubs side by side. He stripped, bathed and dressed in the conventional prison suit and was supplied with a “cake of soap, one towel and a bible.” He was admonished by the Principal Keeper (“P. K.”), was given a copy of the prison rules and was assigned to work in the basket shop. During the first two days he was catechized as to his past life, occupations, habits, etc., by the principal keeper, the chaplain, the doctor, and the clerk of the Bertillon identification system, with much repetition.

It had been agreed with the warden that Tom Brown should be placed, at first, with the “Idle Company,” a group of prisoners who were characterized by one of the officers as “the toughest bunch of fellows in the prison.” He was disappointed therefore when he found himself in the basket shop where the men were courteous, communicative and helpful, and was astonished after two days to discover that this was the identical “worst bunch in the prison” of which he had been told. Tom Brown was assigned to a cell 4 by 7½ feet and 7½ feet high. (Many of the cells are only 3½ feet wide). Many cells of this kind contain two men each. The cell contained a stool, a folding shelf, a folding bed, a wash basin, a tin cup, a broom, a small wooden locker, and an electric bulb.

Tom Brown swung open his cell door at a signal, marched in line, carried out and emptied his own cell bucket, ate prison fare in the prison dining-room (including prison hash), did his stint in the basket shop with refractory material which made his fingers sore, and served on a detail moving railroad cars with block and tackle. He received from his fellow prisoners donations of sugar, of doubtful origin, for his oatmeal. He received communications and newspapers from numerous sources by underground communication. He learned to talk without moving his lips and he found himself instinctively joining with his associates “agin the government.” He details most interestingly the petty items that make up the life of the prisoner and revealed how much unhappiness may be caused by things which appear insignificant in themselves, such as the collapsing of the folding cot, under inexperienced hands, after the extinguishment of the lights.

Tom Brown reveals startlingly the horrors of prison life to the man of refined sensibilities--the shock of the first night of cell life when the lights went out.

“The bars are so black that they seem to close in upon you,--to come nearer and nearer, until they press upon your forehead.... You can feel the blackness of those iron bars across your closed eyelids; they seem to sear themselves into your very soul. It is the most terrible sensation I ever experienced. I understand now the prison pallor; I understand the sensitiveness of this prison audience; I understand the high nervous tension which makes anything possible. How does any man remain sane, I wonder, caged in this stone grave, day after day, night after night?”

He tells the ghastly story of the collapse of a poor old prisoner in a shop:

“In due time a litter is brought; the pitiful fragment of humanity is placed gently upon it and is carried out of the shop into which he will probably never return. The look on his face was one not easy to forget in its white stare of patient suffering. It seemed to typify long years of stolid endurance until the worn-out old frame had simply crumpled under the accumulated load.”

He experienced the humiliation of being the object of pursuit by pertinacious curiosity-hunters and camera-fiends; yet the change in his appearance was so great that he escaped recognition by personal friends who were watching carefully for him. The crowning horror he describes as follows:

“The cell house has settled down for the night. Only a few muffled sounds make the stillness more distinctly felt. Then, suddenly, the unearthly quiet is shattered by a terrifying uproar. It is too far away to hear at first anything with distinctness; it is all a confused and hideous mass of shouting--a shouting first of a few, then of more, then of many voices. I have never heard anything more dreadful--in the full meaning of the word--full of dread. My heart is thumping like a trip hammer and the cold shivers run up and down my back.

“I jump to the door of the cell, pressing my ear close to the cold iron bars. Then I can distinguish a few words sounding against the background of the confused outcry: ‘Stop that!’ ‘Leave them alone!’ ‘Damn you, stop that!’ Then some dull thuds; I even fancy that I hear something like a groan, along with the continued confused and violent shouting. What can it be!

“While I am perfectly aware that I am not in the least likely to be harmed, I am shivering close akin to a chill of actual terror. If anyone near at hand were to give vent to a sudden yell I feel that I might easily lose my self control and shout and bang my door with the rest of them.

“The cries continue, accompanied with other noises that I cannot make out. Then my attention is attracted by whispering at one of the lower windows.... It is so dark outside that I can see nothing, not even the dim shapes of the whisperers....

“The shouts die down. There are a few more vague and uncertain sounds--all the more dreadful for being uncertain; somewhere an iron door clangs! Then stillness follows, like that of the grave.”

Tom Brown reported this mysterious occurrence to the warden who promised to investigate. Next day the warden “has inquired into it, he says, and found it was only a case of a troublesome fellow sent up from Sing Sing, who was making some little disturbance in the gallery. After they had admonished him he wouldn’t stop, so they had to take him down to the jail. When the officer entered his cell, he threw his bucket at the officer and there was a little row. ‘I’m inclined to think,’ adds the warden, ‘that he may be a little bit crazy, and I’m ed further investigation, telling the warden that, from information which has come to him, he thinks that the officers are “trying to slip one over” on him.’

From his fellow prisoners Tom Brown obtained what he believes to be the correct version of the incident, as follows: “There had lately been sent up from Sing Sing a young prisoner ... pale, thin and undersized; weight about 120 pounds; age 21.” On charge of impertinence to an officer he had been kept in a dark punishment cell five days, on bread and water. (The allowance of water was 3 gills per day). He was sent back to work but was unfit and next day remained in his cell ill, but “in spite of his repeated requests, the doctor was not summoned. The reason probably was that he was in the state known in prison as bughouse--that is to say at least flighty, if not temporarily out of his mind”.... “In the evening, he created some disturbance by calling out remarks which violated the quiet of the cell-block.” “I understand,” Tom Brown says, “something of this sort: ‘If you want to kill me, why don’t you do it at once and not torture me to death?’ He seemed to be possessed with the idea that his life was in danger.”

“Now here was a young man, hardly more than a lad, in a sick and nervous condition that had produced temporary derangement of mind. What course did the system take in dealing with that suffering being! Two keepers opened his cell, made a rush for him and knocked him down.... During the brief scuffle in the cell the iron pail and the bucket were overturned. Then, after being handcuffed, the unresisting if not unconscious youth was flung out of his cell with such violence that, if it had not been for a convict trusty who stood by, he would have slipped under the rail of the gallery and fallen to the stone floor of the corridor four stories below, and been either killed or crippled for life.

“Then the two keepers, being reinforced by a third, dragged their victim roughly down stairs, partly on his back, kicked and beat him on the way, and carried him before the Principal Keeper, who promptly sent him down to the jail again.” (i.e., the punishment cells).

“This scene of violence could not pass unnoticed; and the loud protests and outcries of the prisoners whose cells were near by, ... were the sounds I heard far away in my cell.” A trusty who saw most of the occurrence “so far forget his position as to venture the opinion that it was ‘a pretty raw deal’. This remark was overheard by an officer; and the trusty at once received the warning that he had better keep his mouth shut and not talk about what didn’t concern him.

“If it is realized that these officers have what almost amounts to the power of life and death over the convicts it can be understood that such a warning was not one to be lightly disregarded.”

After three days further detention in the “jail” the prisoner was transferred to the hospital, where he received proper care, but “he had at first no clear recollection of the brutal treatment of which he had been the victim.”

An interesting side light is thrown upon the official side of prison life by an episode connected with this case of punishment. Immediately after the episode, Tom Brown questioned one of the officers who refused to answer the questions. On the following morning the same officer came to Tom Brown, who writes:

“This morning he is exceedingly bland.... He enters upon a long rigmarole, the gist of which is how necessary it is for a man to do his duty.... Then he casually turns the conversation around to show how closely connected he is to various admirers of my father and myself, and gracefully insinuates that he also shares these feelings.... It is borne in upon me that he not only knows all about last night’s disturbance, but that he was probably concerned in it, and is now deliberately trying to switch me off the track.”

Another side light upon the official side of prison life is that Tom Brown discovered that prisoners under punishment were never released from the jail on Sunday. When he made an appeal to the Principal Keeper to transfer the sick boy from the dark cell to the hospital, the Principal Keeper objected strenuously, but when the prison physician joined in the appeal, “finally the P. K. with an air of triumph brings out his last and conclusive argument. ‘There is a great deal in what you say, gentlemen, and I should like to oblige you, Mr. Osborne, but you see this is Sunday; and you know we never let ’em out of jail on Sunday.’ ... ‘Sunday!’ I exclaimed. ‘In Heaven’s name, P. K., what is Sunday? Isn’t it the Lord’s Day? Very well, then. Do you mean to tell me you actually think if you take a poor sick boy, with an open wound in his ear, out of a close, dirty, vermin-filled, dark cell, where he isn’t allowed to wash, and has but three gills of water a day ... and put him back into the hospital, where the Doctor says he belongs--do you really think that such an act of mercy would be displeasing to God?’ ‘Why,’ he gasps, ‘that’s true. I think you’re right. We put ’em in on Sunday; why shouldn’t we take ’em out?’”

Mr. Osborne certified that this story is fully corroborated by careful inquiry from different men and comments as follows:

“Doubtless some will say that the statements of convicts are not to be believed. That touches upon one of the very worst features of the situation. No discrimination is ever made. It is not admitted, that while one convict may be a liar, another may be entirely truthful; that men differ in prison exactly as in the world outside. It is held, quite as a matter of course, that they are all liars, and an officer’s word will be taken against that of a convict or any number of convicts. The result is that the officers feel themselves practically immune from any evil consequences to them from their own acts of injustice or violence. What follows this is inevitable. Our prisons have often been the scenes of intolerable brutality, for which it has been useless for the victims to seek redress. They can only cower and endure in silence; or be driven into insanity by a hopeless revolt against the System....

“The point is this: that no convict has any rights--not even the right to be believed; not even the right to reasonable considerate treatment. He is exposed without safeguard of any sort to whatever outrage and inconsiderate and brutal keeper may choose to inflict upon him; and you cannot under the present system guard against such inconsiderate and brutal treatment.

“I should not like to be understood as asserting that all keepers are brutal or even a majority of them.” ... But, “we must recognize, in dealing with our Prison System, that many really well-meaning men will operate a system, in which the brutality of an officer goes unpunished, in a brutal manner.

“The reason of this is not far to seek--a reason which also obtained in the slave system. The most common and powerful impulse that drives an ordinary, well-meaning man to brutality is fear.... In prison, where each officer believes that his life is in constant danger, the keeper tends to become callous; the sense of that danger blunts his higher qualities.... Undoubtedly there is basis for his fear, for some of those men are dangerous, rendered more so by the nerve-racking System. I can conceive no more terribly disintegrating moral experience than that of being a keeper over convicts.

“I am not now in any way disputing the necessity of a keeper being constantly on his guard; I am not saying whether this view of things is right or wrong; and when I use the word fear I do not mean cowardice--a very different thing, for a brave man can feel fear. I am simply trying to point out that in prison, as elsewhere, when men are dominated by fear, brutality is the evitable result.”

In view of this episode, Tom Brown determined to undergo the horrors of the “Jail.” To this the prison warden very reluctantly consented. It was agreed that he should be treated exactly like a convict under punishment except that a “jail suit” should be cleansed for his use, whereas the ordinary prisoners use them interchangeably, without cleaning. Accordingly, Tom Brown suddenly knocked off work, declaring that the material furnished was unfit and he wasn’t going to work any more anyhow. His shop captain, finding him obdurate, had no option and was obliged to send him to the Principal Keeper who, finding him still obdurate, reluctantly ordered him to the “jail,” which Tom Brown describes as follows:

“A vaulted stone dungeon, about 50 by 20 feet, having on one side the death chamber for electrocuting murderers, and on the other side the prison dynamo with its ceaseless grinding, night and day. It is absolutely bare, except for one wooden bench along the north end, a locker where the jail clothes are kept, and eight cells, of solid sheet iron; floor, sides, back and roof. They are studded with rivets, projecting about a quarter of an inch. At the time that Warden Rattigan came into office there was no other floor; the inmates slept on the bare iron and the rivets! The cells are about 4½ by 8 feet and 9 feet high. There is a feeble attempt at ventilation--a small hole in the roof of the cell, which does not ventilate. Practically there is no air in the cell except what percolates in through the extra heavily grated door.” Two windows in the vaulted room outside admit some light but, except on a bright sunny day, an electric light is necessary in order to see the inside of the cell. “Up to the time of Supt. Riley’s and Warden Rattigan’s coming into office the supply of water for each prisoner was limited to one gill for 24 hours.”

There is a sink in the outer room but “the sink was not used for the prisoners to wash for the simple reason that the prisoners in the jail were not allowed to wash.”

On entrance, Tom Brown was instructed to take off his clothes and put on the jail suit which had been cleansed in anticipation of his coming. He says: “If these are the clothes which have been carefully washed and cleaned for me, I should like to examine--at a safe distance--the ordinary ones. They must be filthy beyond words.” He was carefully searched by the captain to discover whether he had any weapon or instrument upon his person. His handkerchief was taken from him, presumably to avoid danger of suicide, because a prisoner once strangled himself with his handkerchief. He was given a small tin water can.

The cell contained no seat, bed, mattress or bedding--nothing except a papier-mache bucket. A convict trusty handed in through a slot in the door a slice of bread and inserted the spout of a tin funnel through which he poured into the prisoner’s can exactly a gill of water to last through the night. The officers and the trusty departed and very soon five other prisoners in adjacent cells made themselves known. Then followed an animated discussion on prison fare; ethics of the jail; comparative merits of transatlantic liners, politics, prison reform, etc. Tom Brown says: “On the whole, more intelligent, instructive and entertaining conversation it has seldom been my lot to enjoy.” To his surprise he finds that these men, presumably the worst in the prison, are human and even sympathetic. One has been sent down “because he had talked back to one of the citizen instructors;” two others for a little scrap which involved no special bitterness; a fourth for hitting a convict with a crow bar because he had called him a bad name; the fifth was a sick boy whose ear was still discharging after an operation. He had been sent down for making trouble in the hospital and was not allowed a handkerchief to take care of the discharge from his ear. All prisoners punished, whatever the character of the offense, received the same treatment and in addition to confinement on bread and water were fined 50 cents for each day of confinement; the fine to be worked out at the rate of 1½ cents per day, allowed each prisoner as “earnings.” The prisoner also has to wear a mark upon his sleeve from that day forward indicating that he has been punished and, if he has previously earned a good-conduct bar by a year’s perfect record, that bar is taken from him and, finally, some portion, if not all, of the commutation time which he may have gained by previous good conduct is forfeited. Manifestly a prison punishment is a serious matter to the convict.

After four hours confinement Tom Brown was visited by two prison officers, it having been understood that he would not stay longer, but to their astonishment he refused to go, having determined to experience the full limit of jail life. They left him very reluctantly. As the night wore on he says:

“Now that all chance of escape is gone I begin to feel more than before the pressure of the horror of this place; the close confinement; the bad air; the terrible darkness, the bodily discomforts, the uncleanness, the lack of water. My throat is parched, but I dare not drink more than a sip at a time, for my one gill--what is left of it--must last until morning. And then there is the constant whir-whir-whirring of the dynamo next door and the death chamber at our backs.”