Carlo de Fornaro

“ I look in wonder and amaze at the people in the streets. Everything is so interesting; the most commonplace and sordid sights are delightful and picturesque. The men; the women, [Pg 178] with their wonderful clothes; the sky, the houses, the cars, the signs, everything, seem so novel, so friendly; every minute so precious, so full of surprises and possibilities.
I have grown fat and pale in prison, but my spirit is as light and quick as the spirit of a humming bird. ”

“ And some day, when she is grown to womanhood, or motherhood, she will remember it all, she will know that she lived with her mother in a prison. She will recall the infamy, the degradation—and the shame of it will be branded on her soul as long as she lives. ”

“ Another trusty who sleeps in a cell downstairs, and eats in the keeper's kitchen, is a famous pickpocket.
Like all or nearly all the old timers, Ed, as he is called, never gossips about his private affairs; he may joke and talk about other prisoners, but never does he say a word about his life outside. He is an old offender, but obedient, useful and energetic; and he is always welcomed back as a trusty or a tier man. ”

“ In measured step, each gang followed by its keeper, more than a thousand men march past the head keeper's desk.
All the varieties of ages, figures, physiognomies, expressions, are illustrated to my astonished eyes. Young men with red cheeks and simple faces; strong men with [Pg 34] bullet heads, broad shouldered, surly or impassive; fat men with wabbling bellies and cheerful faces; old men bent and hoary with age; slow and listless young men with effeminate gestures; a few cripples on sticks or crutches, and wobbling along behind the lines, a paralytic led by a companion. ”

“ They are mostly old sneak thieves and pickpockets, the wrecks and failures of their profession. They sit like graven images, silently, patiently, hour after hour, year in and year out, until some fine day one of them will be found rigid in his cell, and then four striped convicts and a keeper acting as a pallbearer will carry him away in a large black coffin to the morgue. ”

“ One night we were kept awake by heart-rending, piercing howls, which came from the apartment occupied by the doctor on the top floor. He had, as we found out later, taken an overdose of morphine.
Next day he appeared in the hospital, staggering sideways, breathing heavily and with a hollow sound, like a damaged bellows. His body shook as if with the palsy, [Pg 152] his hands trembled as they groped for support; and all the while he was moaning, whining, grunting. He fell into a sitting posture on the floor, and began catching imaginary flies on his sleeves. ”

“ For a few minutes, while filling a pail with water from the river to wash out the empty garbage can, we watch the tug boats, the canal boats, passenger boats or yachts pass by, and the people on board always greet us with a wave of the hand or a merry shout. But never have the passengers of the aristocratic yachts even condescended to look at us.
No matter if it rains or snows, or if fog hangs over the whole landscape, the few minutes alone, untrammelled by the [Pg 109] presence of a keeper or the crisscross pattern of the bars, make us feel as if we were really free men ”

“ But in the last week all the thoughts, the plans, the ambitions, the discoveries of a new future, seem to be concentrated. The minutes drag by with a laborious and torpid slowness, and there is an intensity of time which seems to crowd sixty hours into one single hour by the clock. ”

“ A complete lack of imagination prevents them from foreseeing the futility and the inevitable result of their lonesome battle against the united forces of society.
An almost unanimous characteristic is their cheap sentimentality, but at bottom they are nearly always kind hearted. They have, too, a keen sense of justice, and often they are willing to admit that they deserve their punishment; but they rebel savagely against the injustices, the inhuman treatment, the tortures, inflicted by prison authorities. ”

“ I have reached some interesting conclusions as a result of my observations of the ways of the convicts and their attitudes towards one another.
Life in a prison, under ignorant and often vicious wardens and keepers, although seemingly leveling the men's standard to the most degrading and contemptible measure allowed by law, does not eradicate the convict's idea of class. A class, or perhaps it [Pg 94] would be better to say a caste system, exists here, as in all the jails all over the world, as well and as subtly graded as social life in Manhattan, London, or Benares. ”

“ In a supreme physical effort of my will I grip the bars and grit my teeth to stop the impending and foolish disintegration of my mind. The waves of despair, the racking pain, the insane delirium are slowly beaten back into submission, like a defeated army. The imagination is disciplined, the will has thrown the switch and illuminated the real inward self, as I stand watching, through the steel bars, the windows on the opposite wall. ”

“ The cleanliness of the two hospitals, the distribution of bedding, laundry and food, is in the hands of a convict, usually a patient; all the unpleasant tasks and irksome duties which the orderly is too proud or too lazy to perform the trusty is obliged to do.
Servant and boss, scullion and diplomat, doctor's help and sick man, waiter and majordomo, the convict orderly is the last buffer in the line of authority, the expiatory goat of the penitentiary hospital, a suffering soul in a modern purgatory. ”

“ In summer time the excursion boats, returning home with crowded decks, with all the lights lit, and the band playing and the passengers singing, "The Island of Blackwell," make us home-sick and pensive with longing for life and the world we are shut away from. ”

“ But all the convicts who show signs of insanity are not brought up to the hospital.
Confinement in the cells without work or [Pg 130] exercise from Saturday afternoon to Monday morning, and the punishment in the "cooler," are responsible for most of the cases of insanity.
When the supposedly insane convicts do not try to commit suicide, or do not keep the prison section awake at night by their yells, they are usually kept in solitary confinement in a cell, sometimes for weeks at a time, until at last they are visited by doctors and declared insane. ”

“ The Sisters never argue, discuss or theorize about religion, but they help the convicts in the only practical, useful and efficient ways; they visit and appeal to judges and District Attorneys; they call on the families of the convicts and their friends; they furnish money to needy relatives and to the men themselves when they come penniless out of prison.
The Protestant clergymen, the Catholic priests, the Rabbis, the missionaries, as a rule talk only to the men of their own faith. But the Sisters of Mercy speak to everybody, no matter to what race or faith they may belong. ”

“ The convicts believe that few of the keepers are virtuous or honest men, and the constant revelations of prison graft only arouse their envy, and the galling thought that they are the helpless victims of a higher type of crooks. In seeming self-defense, therefore, they assume their attitude of revenge toward society, of stubbornness and pride and defiance toward the keepers. They soon discover, if they have not already learned, that humanity, charity, and justice are not to be expected from their oppressors ”

“ Those individuals who live on white slavery, professional degenerates, and their like, are ridiculed and nagged by the upper castes; the effeminate "sissies" are also a constant butt for the jests and abuse not only of convicts, but of keepers as well.
On the lowest rung of the social ladder stand the stool pigeons and the detectives who are so unlucky as to be sent to prison. ”

“ About a dozen women convicts come twice a week to scrub the hardwood floor of the hospital. The majority of them are colored; the white women are either old and faded, or young and dissipated-looking. Very few of them are either refined or good-looking. Petty larceny is the crime for which most of them are sent to the prison.
Two negro women, young and rather tough-looking, are scrubbing the floor. They are in prison for having held up and robbed a man in the streets of New York. The man never recovered his $800. ”

“ The warden, unlike the deputy warden, is very much disliked by the convicts. Among themselves they call him the "old hyena." Convicts as well as visitors all seem to be united in accusing him of brutality, coarseness, and intemperance of speech. Visitors who have to support themselves with their daily work find that all kinds of difficulties are put in their way. They have to get a card at the commissioner's office at 20th Street, then they must take a special boat, and when they arrive at the prison they are forced to wait an hour before they are searched. ”

“ An unjust and exceedingly brutal keeper was waylaid one night on his way home by some released convicts, who "beat him up" in such a manner that he was sent to a hospital for almost a month.
The Jewish and Italian convicts are often victims of the persecutions of some keepers, who heap ridicule and injustice and punishment upon them. The "guineas," the "wops," the "sheenies" and "kikes," find no mercy at the hands of these keepers, who consider men of these races as inferior, fit only to be brutalized, slowly but surely, into superior races. ”

“ This is what the "cooler" is: The convict is divested of all clothes except his underwear, and he is then taken to a cell which contains only a bucket and a wooden plank [Pg 104] on the floor as a place of rest and sleep. The cell is hermetically closed by a door which keeps out all light and air. A little ventilation, just enough to keep him from suffocation, comes through a small hole in the wall. The darkness is like a solid mass; it is so intense that the prisoner cannot see his hand near his face. ”

“ The trusty in charge of the hospital is getting nervous as the day of his release approaches. A week before the release, no matter how disciplined and peaceful the prisoner may have been, he starts getting cranky and impertinent to the keepers. He acts like a man under great stress, and when he is disturbed he turns savagely round like an angry dog. ”