Thomas Mott Osborne

“ With my hands on the back of the bench in front, I pull myself up onto my feet; and when the men see me rise their frantic hand-clapping begins again. As I leave my seat and gain the central aisle, the whole room seems to rock back and forth. I walk to the front and mount the platform. As I do so, the Chaplain, the singers and others sitting there rise and join in the applause. I am absurdly, but momentarily, conscious of my prison clothes—the rough cotton shirt, gray trousers and heavy shoes, as I bow to the people on the stage and then face the audience. ”

“ He mounts the steps to the hospital and the young negro takes his turn with the Doctor as the coffin, heavy now with its mournful load, is brought out from the room on the left. At the same moment the officer returns to my rescue; and I follow him downstairs and out into the fresh air and the sunlight.
Comedy and tragedy seem to jostle each other in prison even as in the world outside. But the comedy itself is tragic; while the tragedy lies beyond the realm of tears—in the gray twilight region of a suffering too deep for speech, where sympathy seems helpless. ”

“ Then I remember having heard at the front office, as I came in this morning, of the sudden death of a young prisoner last night from pneumonia. Four convicts come up the stairs, bringing a large, ominous looking, oblong receptacle, which they take to a door on my left. It does not look quite like a coffin, but there is little doubt as to its purpose. As the door is opened, I glance in; and there, covered with a white sheet, is all that remains of the poor lad—the disgraced and discarded human tenement of one divine spark of life.
A death in prison. ”

“ By no human possibility, by no act of my own, can I throw open the iron grating which shuts me from the world into this small stone vault. I am a voluntary prisoner, it is true; nevertheless even a voluntary prisoner can’t unlock the door of his cell—that must be done by someone from outside. I am perfectly conscious of a horrible feeling of constraint—of confinement. ”

“ We wonder what there is in us that impels men to take up our cause. I have given considerable thought to this in my solitary moments at night, and have come to the conclusion that there must be some good still left in even the most wretched and degenerate, that there must be some seed of righteousness, some spirit of manhood still left which only needs the proper nourishment to bring it into life. Punishment has been tried for centuries, and has failed. ”

“ I am again double locked in my cell, this time for the night—fourteen mortal hours.
For me there is plenty to do—to write, to read, to think about; but how about those who do not care for reading, who write with difficulty, or who can neither read nor write? Then again, I look forward to only six nights in this stone vault; but how about those who must look forward to an endless series of nights, month after month, year after year, five, ten, fifteen, twenty years, life? ”

“ 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?
And always there come the sound of keys turning and the grating of iron hinges and bolts and bars. And as if the double-locked levers were not enough, I noticed for the first time last night a triple lock. A long iron bar drops down in front of all the cells on the tier ”

“ No one could have understood better than I did at the outset, that it is impossible to place yourself exactly in the shoes of a man who has been sentenced to prison for an actual crime; I did not expect to do so. No one, so far as I know, has ever yet succeeded in putting himself precisely in the place of another in any given set of circumstances; yet that does not keep us from constantly studying and analyzing the human problem. It still remains true that “The proper study of mankind is man.” ”

“ But I want to say that prison life did not reform me, nor will it reform any man, for no man learns good in prison. My opinion is that the only way that a man can be reformed is get to his conscience, wake up the man in him. You are aware of the fact that the police make many criminals. I don’t believe there is such a thing as a hardened criminal. If the police were not so anxious to send men to prison there would be no so-called hardened criminals. ”

“ If I am really to gain these men’s confidence, I must be on the convicts’ side and act the part completely. I must look at matters from the convicts’ point of view; and scorn of all forms of hypocrisy and double dealing on the part of those in authority as well as good faith with your pals seems to be the platform upon which all the best men stand. And these are mighty fine qualities outside prison; why then are they not equally fine inside? Are not truth and courage and devotion to be welcomed wherever found? And are not falsehood and hypocrisy always hateful? ”

“ Why should not a man like this, guilty of only a lesser crime, guiltless of criminal intent, be allowed to go on parole under suspended sentence, and not have to come to prison at all? Why should not he and his wife and children have been spared these long years of separation, this bitter degrading experience, this almost irreparable stain upon his name? ”

“ There are some noises; but they are the noises of tramping feet above, below, of clanging bars and grating locks, then of stealthy footfalls and distant doors. Of the many companions who are living all about me I can see no sight—hear no sound. If my cell were big enough, I should walk round and round as I have seen the caged animals do in menageries. As it is, if I get up from writing, I can only hang at my grated door, looking aimlessly out. It grows dark and ever darker in the corridor outside; there are few sounds now. Inside my cell the electric bulb gives barely light enough to read by. ”

“ These men are not seeing me, they are looking at Tom Brown—the embodied spirit of the world’s sympathy. They have felt the sternness of society—the rigor of its law, the iron hand of its discipline. But now at this moment many of these men are realizing for the first time that outside the walls are those who care. ”

“ Riley and Warden Rattigan in Auburn Prison. But in truth there is nothing really extraordinary about it—it is no miracle; unless it be a miracle to discard error and to replace it by truth. The results of a practical application of faith and hope and love often seem miraculous, but as a matter of fact such results are as logical as any geometrical demonstration.
When a man, treated like a beast, snarls and bites you say, “This is the conduct of an abnormal creature—a criminal.” When a prisoner, treated like a man, nobly responds you cry, “A miracle!” ”

“ Whatever may come out of my prison experiment, I have made at least one warm friend in Jack Murphy. The barriers are down between us two at least. Death, for all its cruelty, is after all the one great unifying force; it forges the one great bond of human brotherhood. ”

“ And just as it was perfectly fair to judge of the right and wrong of slavery not by any question of the fair treatment of the majority of slaves, but by the hideous possibilities which frequently became no less hideous facts, so 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, often in a brutal manner. ”

“ The following is his draft of the proposed letter to the New York paper.
I am one of those whom society calls a confirmed criminal. I have had the misfortune to be unable to resist temptation on several occasions, with the result that I carry upon my left sleeve the red disc of shame. But I want to say to you, and to the rest of the world, that although society looks upon me as a creature unworthy of sympathy, as one whose life has been a waste, as one not fit to associate with the people at large, yet I still have left within me a little spark of gratitude. ”

“ I am curious to find out, therefore, whether I am right; whether our Prison System is as unintelligent as I think it is; whether it flies in the face of all common sense and all human nature, as I think it does; whether, guided by sympathy and experience, we cannot find something far better to take its place, as I believe we can. ”

“ The thought that I am locked into the very cell which was the scene of the tragedy of that poor human soul, whom a little decent treatment and kindly sympathy might perhaps have saved, only adds fuel to the flame of my wrath. ”

“ Do you mean to tell us that 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—do you mean to say that to take that sick boy out of such a detestable hole 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? Do you think God approves of your infernal jail? ”

“ When I think of you I am reminded of a postal that I received from my brother not long ago, after him not knowing that I was in prison. When he found it out he sent me a postal and on it were these few words: “A friend is one who knows all about you and likes you just the same.” Well, Mr. Osborne, I leave here on the 20th of this month and believe me—never again for me. I have played the crooked game in every way it can be played, most every kind of crooked game there is. ”

“ Here is an interesting psychological fact: that much as a man dislikes being treated as a slave, yet if he is to be so treated he wants his master to be the most efficient and best-looking master of the lot. I find myself comparing our Captain with this untidy-looking person in the flannel shirt, and having a distinct feeling of pride in the good looks and clean-cut appearance of our master. I know that if I were serving under that flannel-shirted and collarless officer I should have very little respect for myself and none for him. ”

“ Perhaps it is as well that I am under lock and key, for I should like to commit murder. To think that any man [Pg 240] can grow so callous to human suffering as to forget the very first duty of humanity. Even soldiers on the battlefield will give a drink of water to a dying enemy. And here we have an organized System which in cold blood forbids the giving of a few drops to the parched lips of a sick lad, to save him from misery and madness! And if I am almost stifling with anger at the outrage, what must those men feel who are really suffering? ”

“ I can well imagine that Jack Murphy enjoys the novel sensation of having as his partner a man who is for the moment an object of peculiar interest to this community, that is simply human nature. No doubt Harley Stuhlmiller enjoys giving directions to the member of a state commission, that again is human nature. But that these men could assume virtues which they have not, and carry out a wholesale system of deceit—that is not possible. ”

“ Not at the man, for I certainly have no personal grievance against Captain Patterson, but at the official representative of this hideous, imbecile, soul-destroying System. I am seized by a mild fit of that lunatic obstinacy which I have once or twice seen glaring out of the eyes of men interviewed by the Warden down here; the obstinacy that has often in the course of history caused men to die of hunger and thirst in their cages of stone or iron, rather than gain freedom by submission to injustice or tyranny.
It is all very well to talk of breaking a man’s spirit. It can be done ”

“ The Captain counts us with care while we stand rigidly before him. Then the cripples, invalids and poor old broken-down men start ahead of the main body to hobble wearily back to their cells. Meanwhile we able-bodied men of the company march over to the stands where the buckets are drying, pause for an instant, then swing up through the yard, with a tramp, tramp, tramp, that is quite exhilarating after an afternoon’s work in the shop.
We march straight up the yard and into the basement door of the main building where, just within the entrance, are placed some tables laden with slices of bread. ”

“ So wrote the poet of Reading Gaol, whose bitter expiation has left an enduring mark in literature. But the lines do not express the whole truth. The Prison System does its best to crush all that is strong and good, but you can not always destroy “that capability and god-like reason” in man. Out of the prison which man has made for his fellow-man, this human cesspool and breeding place of physical, mental and moral disease, emerge a few noble souls, reborn and purified. ”

“ Osborne has seen with his own eyes, heard with his own ears and felt with his own feelings just what it is to be an outcast, even for so short a time as a week—just what it is to be deprived of your liberty for even so short a period, and your editorial writers and no one else that has not gone through the actual experience are qualified to criticise his efforts. ”

“ Men will err, men will fall, and men will continue to commit crime, and society must be protected. We must have prisons; but I claim that the better way to treat a criminal in order to try and reform him is to use a little more kindness in our prisons and a little less punishment and cruelty.
I don’t want to be misunderstood in this matter. I have no favor to ask of anyone. I expect to do my time—all of it. But I want to take exception to the insinuation that Mr. Osborne’s stay was made any softer by the fact that the editor of his paper is Warden of Auburn Prison. ”

“ Each man grasps with his left hand the handle of his heavy iron bucket filled with the slops and sewage of the night. I do the same; and steady my steps by running my right hand along the iron rail as I hurry down the gallery after the others. It is a long journey to the farther stairs, but it is made cheerful by the smiles on the upturned faces of the prisoners in the corridor below. ”

“ I say to the P. K., “that these punishment cells are the severest form of discipline that you have. Then why, in Heaven’s name, do you exhaust your severest punishment on trivial offences? If you use the jail with its dark cells and bread and water [Pg 271] for whispering in the shop, what have you left when a man tries to murder his keeper?”
In reply the P. K. makes the best showing he can, but in truth there is no reply. One of the things that is most irritating about prison is the number of questions that admit of no sensible explanation. ”