Locker room

“ The return trip in the cab was performed in gloomy silence. Reuben was sunk in the depths of despondency; Charles the waiter was sulky with disappointment, while the epithet “accomplice” rankled in his bosom. As soon as the cab arrived at the hotel, he took Reuben tightly by the arm, and led him into Mr. Clucking’s private room. ”

“ At break of day I rose and hastened to the gymnasium, to which I obtained admittance by a key similar to that provided every member of the football team. At the gymnasium I made a close inspection of the pilfered lockers, being there to obtain a clew of some sort, a desire which was amply rewarded. Within the locker of the plaintiff, Bernard Hayden, I discovered, attached to the end of a protruding nail, a shred of cloth apparently torn from the coat-sleeve of some person who had reached into that locker. ”

“ Rows of locked office doors with their gold-leaf names and numbers. A single dim light to illumine the silent emptiness....
I retreated into the staircase shaft and mounted higher. My dirk was in my hand. Charlie Wilson, the Wall Street brokerage clerk, prowling here! And upon what a strange adventure!
I came to what I thought was the proper floor. In the hall I selected a room. The door was securely locked. I had no way of breaking the lock, but the panel was of opaque glass. I would have to chance the noise. I rushed the length of the hall, to where a red fire-ax hung in a bracket. ”

“ At present the building is used for all the housekeeping departments of the prison, including bathroom, laundry, tailor shop, shoe shop, kitchen, dining room, storeroom, hospital, chapel, library, warden’s office, principal keeper’s office, guards’ quarters and a small dormitory for the kitchen gang. It is a beehive of activity, with its sixty-odd inmate workers, and a poor place for the night guards to do their day-sleeping. The halls and rooms are daily mopped and scrubbed and every nook and corner is kept scrupulously clean by a gang of porters. ”

“ Anthony, my compliments to Monsieur Crêvecœur, and if he’s in the billiard room, I shall be happy to speak to him.”
In a few minutes Anthony returned, ushering in a little gentleman with a closely-cut beard and moustache, attired in a pea jacket and straw hat, à l’Anglaise.
“Why, Crêvecœur, my dear friend,” said Clucking, “I did not recognise you in that rig.”
“Ah, my friend,” replied Crêvecœur, with a shrug, “what better shall I vear? I reserve my white cap and apron for the kitchen; I array myself in my paletôt and varnished boots for the Boulevards ”

“ On the next floor were the dormitories—a great hall divided by board partitions into little sleeping cells about eight feet square, each containing a neat bed, chair, and stand. The partition does not extend quite up to the wall, and by this means while each inmate enjoys the privacy of a small room, he has all the comfort of breathing the air of the whole hall.
A working man returning from his daily toil to this place, can first enjoy the comfort of a bath ”

“ I opened it, and peered out into the lighted hall. As I did so, a man's figure, disreputably dressed, as it seemed to me, ran stealthily out of the passage into the hall and slipped, with a furtive air and a frightened look behind, into a room on the other side. Evidently this was a real burglar. Neither the old gentleman nor Mrs. Cranley was to be seen.
Now, since I had been taken for a burglar, I was resolved at least to show my bona fides by spirited action; and so I crossed the hall, opened the door of the room which had been so carefully closed, and discovered everything in darkness. ”

“ It was this fact that brought it home to me that, incredible as it might appear, this room, with a comfortable armchair by the window, with books on a shelf, and pictures on the prettily papered walls, was my prison cell, and not the narrow lobby into which I had first come.
The third door in the lobby led into a well-appointed bathroom, and leading out of the parlour was a little bedroom, with the sheets turned down on the bed, and a su [Pg 19] it of pink pyjamas laid out all ready for its occupant. ”

“ The inner door just alluded to was kept constantly shut, save when admittance was demanded by any one who had the right of entry into the habitation. But even that admittance was never granted without precaution. In the ceiling of the little hall or lobby described, there was a small trap-door, let into the floor of the room above; and by these means the sentinel on duty up-stairs was enabled to reconnoitre every one who knocked at the inner door. ”

“ We are going to try to give that large class of boys and young men that come to prison for the first 50 time, one more opportunity of going through life without being immured in a prison cell. In the construction of our buildings our domicile accommodations will be largely of the dormitory type—small dormitories, accommodating fourteen beds, with a large, semicircular bay window on one side which will serve as a sitting room, attached to which dormitory will be a completely equipped bedroom and dressing room. ”

“ In the prison I had to mingle with thieves and murderers. I was assigned a little room in the attic with a tiny window in the east, and a hard bed hanging by hinges on the wall so that it might be dropped down when it was to be used and lifted again when not in use, so that there would be some room for me in which to move about. A tiny table and a tiny bench constituted the furniture. I had a small piece of sour, coarse bread, and all the water I desired, every twenty-four hours. ”

“ I must go directly down town. I had the misfortune to be boarding, so every drawer, closet, and cupboard must be locked before starting; for locking one’s room door is a mere farce while there are duplicate keys in the house. Yes, I locked them, and unlocked them, too, twenty times or more, as I recollected some handkerchief, collar or purse, which I had forgotten to take out.
All right now, said I, dolorously, as I put the rattling keys in my pocket, descended the interminable hotel stairs, and gained the street. ”

“ It is generally a brick building from four to six stories high on the street, frequently with a store on the first floor which, when used for the sale of liquor, has a side opening for the benefit of the inmates and to evade the Sunday law; four families occupy each floor, and a set of rooms consists of one or two dark closets, used as bedrooms, with a living room twelve feet by ten. ”

“ It is an oblong room, with a low wagon-roof ceiling, under which it is barely possible to stand upright. A single narrow window admits the light, and the stone casing of this window has a hollow in a certain place, which might well have been worn there by the friction of the hand that for seven years passed the prisoner his food through the small opening. The young custodian pointed to this memento of suffering, without effusion, and he drew my attention to other remarkable things in the cell, without troubling himself to palliate their improbability in the least. ”

“ After breakfast we cleared the table, the gate of the ward was unlocked and we carried the crockery to baskets on the floor in the passage. From there the 3rd Division prisoners took them and washed them out in the bath room cell next door. The hospital wardress had to stand at the gate all the time that we were doing this. Some wardresses allowed us sometimes to come and go freely; others, or the same wardresses on different days, would allow only one of us out of the ward at a time. ”

“ Tradition asserts that the unfortunate Lollards, confined in the chamber above, were tied to this pillar and scourged. The Post Room is lighted by three low pointed windows looking towards the Thames, and its flat-panelled ceiling is ornamented at the intersections with grotesque carvings.
Ascending by a narrow spiral stone staircase, we reach the prison-chamber just referred to, which is guarded by an inner and outer door of stout oak, studded with broad-headed nails. A strange, strong room, that cannot fail powerfully to impress the visitor. ”

“ These fifteen, and the two before mentioned, in the hall gallery, the Tapster lets to Prisoners for four to eight shillings a week.
"On the first Gallery (that next above the hall-gallery) are twenty-five rooms for Prisoners. On the second Gallery, twenty seven rooms. One of them, fronting the staircase, is their Committee room. A room at one end is an Infirmary. At the other end, in a large room over the Chapel, is a dirty Billiard-table, kept by the Prisoner who sleeps in that room. On the highest story there are twenty seven rooms. ”

“ The outside of the building gives no valuable clew. Brass and brownstone go well sometimes with dense crowds and dark and dingy rooms; but the first attempt to enter helps draw the line with tolerable distinctness. A locked door is a strong point in favor of the flat. It argues that the first step has been taken to secure privacy, the absence of which is the chief curse of the tenement. Behind a locked door the hoodlum is not at home, unless there be a jailor in place of a janitor to guard it. Not that the janitor and the door-bell are infallible. There may be a tenement behind a closed door ”

“ A bed to compare with those in the worst furnished apartments of the Quartier Latin, straw chairs with the bottoms out, a table and a few utensils, compose the furniture of such a room, in which two accused prisoners are not unfrequently placed together when they are quiet in their ways, and their misdeeds are not crimes of violence, but such as forgery or bankruptcy. ”

“ With that the doctor made good his threat, and the attendant escorted me to the violent ward—a willing, in fact, eager prisoner.
The ward in which I was now placed (September 13th, 1902) was furnished in the plainest manner. The floors were of hard wood and the walls were bare. Except when at meals or out of doors taking their accustomed exercise, the patients usually lounged about in one large room, in which heavy benches were used, it being thought that in the hands of violent patients, chairs might become a menace to others. ”

“ Thursday, March 19.—An officer came up to-day with a paper and called over the names of seven in our room (Room 16) —Holbrook, Barnes, Littlepage, Keleher, Hoyle, Simmons and myself, and at night we were removed to Room 10. With the three prisoners already in the room there are ten of us now in a small room with two bunks and three small beds. Room 10 is on the north side of the building, third story, first window from the corner on First Street. ”

“ It is twenty inches long by half an inch square, and is fastened to the left side of the cell door.
“I forgot to say that, after the lever, which lowers the long iron bar, is pulled down, it is also treated to the lock-up system. A Yale lock is used for this purpose; so you see the poor dumb iron is even a victim to the Prison System.
“In case of illness, after the prison is closed for the night, an officer has to go to the trouble of running up to the front hall for the key of the gallery on which the convict is ill. ”

“ The Reception Room is octagon shape, with benches arranged over the entire floor; on these we were directed to sit down, about a yard apart. In front was a large desk and a high stool, on which a turnkey was perched, whose sole duty was to prevent the least intercourse between the prisoners; in fact, the entire room and its fittings conveyed the impression of being connected with a charity school for mutes. The Reception Room is the first and last place a prisoner passes through ”

“ The commercial importance of locks—though of course never seriously questioned when once fairly brought before one's attention—has been recently rendered so apparent as to have risen to the position of a public topic. If a strong room, containing gold and silver, notes and bills, books and papers—if such a room be necessarily shielded from intrusion, it becomes no less necessary that the shield should be really worthy of its name, trusty and reliable: a good lock is here nearly as indispensable as a faithful cashier. ”

“ Every room is furnished with a box which has a drawer in it. This box serves for table and pantry. It contains a spoon, knife and fork, salt and pepper boxes.
"Can't they jump over that?"
"They don't try; but run along to another room. There hasn't been one in here since I put it up."
I sat down and busied myself reading till the nine o'clock locking came. When that was accomplished, I went up, up, up the stone stairs to my cell in the roof of the prison. ”

“ But I soon recovered some remnants of self-possession, and began feeling for the knob I could no longer see. Finding it after a few futile attempts, I was relieved to discover that this door at least was not locked; and, opening it with a careful hand, I listened intently, but could hear nothing save the smothered sound of men talking in the room below.
Should I signal for my companions? No, for the secret was not yet mine as to how men passed from this room into the watery grave which was the evident goal for all wearers of the blue ribbon. ”

“ MARIE ANTOINETTE IN THE CONCIERGERIE.
The world-renowned prison of the Conciergerie consists of a series of subterranean dungeons beneath the floor of the Palais de Justice. More gloomy tombs the imagination can hardly conceive. Down the dripping and slimy steps the queen was led, by the light of a tallow candle, until, through a labyrinth of corridors, she approached the iron door of her dungeon. ”