Auburn Prison

“ When I had been at Auburn prison about six months I grew again exceedingly desperate, and made several wild and ill-thought-out attempts to escape. I would take no back talk from the keepers, and began to be feared by them. One day I had a fight with another convict. He struck me with an iron weapon, and I sent him to the hospital with knife thrusts through several parts of his body. Although I had been a thief all my life, and had done some strong arm work, by nature I was not quarrelsome, and I have never been so quick to fight as on my third term. ”

“ I do not like the principle of the Auburn prison: and I am confident that very little effectual reformation can take place under it. The disadvantages of the prisoners being waylaid and dogged on their [Pg 286] discharge are very great; but there are some within the prison quite as serious. The spy system is abominable, in whatever light it is viewed. It is the deepest of insults; and if there be a case rather than another in which insult is to be avoided, it is where a reformation is desired. The great point to be gained with the criminal is to regenerate self-respect. ”

“ Certainly in this case I believe that more people have been thinking about the Prison System in New York State within the last week than any week since Auburn Prison was built; and while much of that interest will of course evaporate, for we need not expect the millennium yet awhile, nevertheless the ground has been tilled for the work that is to come. ”

“ The use of the screen cells at Auburn was ordered discontinued by Superintendent Riley immediately after he had seen and condemned those at Dannemora.
The jail at Auburn is at present the place where all offenders against prison discipline are sent for punishment.
Whether the offense is whispering in the shop or a [Pg 205] murderous assault upon an inmate or a keeper, the punishment is exactly the same—varying only in length. So far as I can learn, there is no specific term for any offense; so that when a man goes to the jail, he never knows how long he may be kept there. ”

“ Kindness reaches the convict in his prison.
And Education, the thrice blessed AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOL, does steadily the work that makes useful plants of growing youth, diminishing year by year the crop of weeds.
Kindness and EDUCATION—go to Auburn prison and you will realize how much work they have still to do in our country.
CRIME IS DYING OUT Many of us feel that crime is the striking feature of modern life, that this century sits among the skulls of crime's victims, and that Father Time, after all his ages of travel, sees no improvement. ”

“ He was able to preserve almost absolute silence in the workshops, using corporal punishment if necessary. His success while preserving at the same time the general good will of his charges is another striking illustration of the fact that a good man can make any system work.
Though the system was not original with Auburn, the plan of organisation has passed into prison history by that name, and violent controversies have raged between the partisans of the opposing ideas. ”

“ The vain fellow carried only a derringer, and how was one little bullet to stop our race for liberty.”
“Yet you returned here! That was madness.”
“I heard of you and the longing to see you once more overcame every other feeling.”
“Do not fear, I knew that they would come. What was that to pay for the chance of seeing you again. They can but put me in Auburn jail, and no locks can hold me except the shining ones on this dear head. No prison can keep me till I am laid in that last one beneath the grass, and there I will wait for you dear love. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I have shown in my account of Society in America that, after visiting several prisons in the United States, I was convinced that the system of solitary confinement at Philadelphia is the best that has yet been adopted. [10] So much has been heard in England of the Auburn prison, its details look so complete and satisfactory on paper, and it is so much a better system than the English have been accustomed to see followed at home, that it has a high reputation among us. But I think a careful survey of the institution on the spot must lessen the admiration entertained for this mode of punishment. ”

“ At the turpentine camp at Atmore, Alabama, thirty-five convicts whose contract had been annulled by Governor O'Neal, were brought to Mobile October 10th, 1913, and placed in the county jail. All but fourteen had been whipped with heavy straps loaded with lead, and affidavits were offered showing that two of them had been whipped to death. But Superintendent of Prisons Riley of New York, in a letter to Warden Rattigan of Auburn prison, writes: "I do not believe that any one was ever reformed by physical torture." ”

“ Canandaigua, Oct. 2, 1839 I visited the jail in this place, in company with my aged and venerable friend from the Auburn prison; who is a wonderful monument of redeeming love. His Christian character and example are much admired by all who know him. The testimony of the pious lady with whom he lives, and has lived for seven years, is most decidedly in favour of his faithfulness and piety. My interview, a record of which will be found below, will speak for itself. ”

“ The folly of the child becomes the vice of the youth, and then the crime of the man.
In 1880 one hundred and forty-seven of the eight hundred and ninety-seven inmates of Auburn State Prison were there on a second visit. What brings the prisoner back the second, third, or fourth time? It is habit which drives him on to commit the deed which his heart abhors and which his very soul loathes. It is the momentum made up from a thousand deviations from the truth and right, for there is a great difference between going just right and a little wrong. ”

“ Influences of the Systems Compared.—There is nothing, as we believe, in the working of our system, which can make the prisoners worse than when they enter; but on the contrary there is much, the direct tendency of which is to make them better. We are well aware that all are not reformed by it, though we thankfully trust that such is the result with regard to many. Under the discipline of the “Auburn System,” we can hardly see how reform amongst the prisoners can be promoted. ”

“ The vote of which I have spoken will cause, I do not fear to say, a painful surprise to almost all those in Europe who are devoted to the Prison question. They will interpret it as a solemn determination taken by the Society to make itself the champion of the Auburn System, and the systematic adversary of the Separate System. Instead of a judge, it will seem to become a party. ”

“ The prison for the State at Sing Sing is, on the other hand, a model jail. That, and Auburn, are, I believe, the largest and best examples of the silent system.
In another part of the city, is the Refuge for the Destitute: an Institution whose object is to reclaim youthful offenders, male and female, black and white, without distinction; to teach them useful trades, apprentice them to respectable masters, and make them worthy members of society. Its design, it will be seen, is similar to that at Boston; and it is a no less meritorious and admirable establishment. ”

“ A slow death may be defended indeed on moral grounds if regeneration has been compassed, but it is only another form of capital punishment. Still the measures introduced in the United States and the action taken upon them fill a large page in prison history and must be recorded here.
Several states in the Union followed the lead of Pennsylvania. That of New York built the great Auburn penitentiary in 1816 to carry out the new principles. There every prisoner was kept continuously in complete isolation. He saw no one, spoke to no one, and did no work. ”

“ The State will receive 60 cents a day for each man employed by the tool company under the new agreement. In addition the company will pay each man 10 cents a day for himself. The working day will be cut from ten to nine hours.
Auburn Inmates Celebrate Under Their Own Captains.—Fourteen hundred convicts in Auburn prison, observing Lincoln’s Birthday, marched from cells to chapel and mess hall solely in charge of convict captains elected by the inmates several weeks ago as their representatives in the Mutual Welfare League. ”

“ At Auburn penitentiary, whither I was drafted after nine months at Sing Sing, a few of the convicts peddled opium and whiskey, with, of course, the connivance of the keepers. There are always some persons in prison as well as out who want to make capital out of the misfortunes of others. These peddlars, were despised by the rest of the convicts, for they were invariably stool-pigeons ”

“ Not so very long ago one of the prisoners at Auburn, on a hot night in summer, as an officer was shutting the windows in the corridor outside, called out from his cell, “Oh, Captain, can’t you let us have a little more air?”
The officer promptly went to the tier of cells whence the voice came and made a chalk-mark around the keyhole of one of the locks. When a man is “round-chalked” he is not released when the rest of the prisoners are let out of their cells, but reserved for punishment. ”

“ Resolved, That our Society is not, and ought not to be considered, the pledged advocate of the Auburn System of Prison Discipline, or of any other system now in existence,—and that its Reports should set forth, with strict impartiality, the merits and demerits of any and all systems. ”

“ Apparatus would not be needed, and the only supervision required would be police supervision.
SHOULD JUDGES GO TO JAIL?
[The idea is not so revolutionary as it might be. Recently Mr. T. M. Osborne tried a week’s self-incarceration at Auburn Prison, New York. As a result the general public, reading of his experiences, has a knowledge to-day of the more common methods of prison administration than it would have learned, or have been willing to learn in any other way. Now the Boston (Mass.) Globe comes along with a more radical suggestion, which we herewith summarize.] ”

“ The outside merchants squealed because they could [142] not compete with unpaid convict labor; and so the prison authorities had to shut down many of their shops, running only enough to supply the inside demand, which was slight. For eighteen months at Auburn I did not work a day. I think it was a very bad thing for the health of convicts when this law was passed; for certainly idleness is a very bad thing for most of them; and to be shut up nearly all the time in damp, unhealthy cells like those at Sing Sing, is a terrible strain on the human system. ”

“ Any kind person who can introduce a new innocent pursuit into a prison as a solace to its inmates cannot fail to be doing an important good.
This reminds me that a service may be rendered, not so much to the convicts as to society, by any persons who can [Pg 138] supply the prisons where stonecutting is going on with a good set of epitaphs. At Auburn they are wanted, and much more at Nashville (Tennessee) , where the stonecutting department is superintended by an honest Englishman, whose stock of epitaphs is small and of miserable quality. ”

“ The jail stands in close proximity to the penitentiary, and comprises a centre building, and north and south wings.
There is a block of cells in each of the two wings, 15 cells in length, 2 in width, and 5 stories in height, making 300 cells in the two wings, for the confinement of prisoners.
These two wings are on what is known as the “Auburn plan,” being a prison within a prison. The cells are surrounded by corridors formed between the block of cells and the exterior walls. ”

“ They leave the prison with the recompense of their extra labour in their pockets, and without the fear of being waylaid by vicious old companions, or hunted from employment to employment by those whose interest it is to deprive them of a chance of establishing a character. There is no evidence, at present, that solitary imprisonment, with labour, is more injurious to health than any other condition which [Pg 284] is attended with anxiety of mind. The Philadelphia prisoners certainly appeared to me to be more healthy-looking than those at Auburn, or at any other prison I visited. ”

“ There is nothing interesting in scenery until you come to the entrance of the river, on the opposite sides of which stand Lewistown and Queenstown, and above the latter the ruthlessly mutilated remains of the monument to the gallant Brock. The miscreant who perpetrated the vile act in 1841, has since fallen into the clutches of the law, and has done—and, for aught I know, is now doing—penance in the New York State Prison at Auburn. ”

“ I left at four, East for Rochester—population, 23,000: 75 miles; and Auburn, 78 farther—population, 7000. Visited the New York State Prison, the largest in the world: they make here, as at Kingston, every description of article: about 800 convicts at work daily. Lett, who blew up Brock's monument, is here: I saw him daily. I was really more pleased here than at any previous sight. The discipline, cleanliness, and behaviour were astonishing. At twelve they marched to dinner in Indian files, with a simultaneous lock-step, eyes to their overseer, head erect. ”