Prison bar

“ The prison barber was ordered to shave the culprit’s head, leaving one lock only upon the crown. He was then dressed as an old woman, and made to sit upon a barrel at the entrance to the prison, where he was exposed to the jeers of his comrades on their return from labor. The same measure was meted out to the capitaine’s assistants, for the big men always employed a number of agents or canvassers in extending their business. ”

“ George L. Herr is bringing out a book on prison life which is abundantly capable of two effects, namely: Enlisting the attention of readers, like a romance, and benefitting the class of whom he writes. It is a two-hundred page book, illustrated with pictures of prisons, and scenes behind the bars.
[Pg xvi]
Dear Friend:
We know you will rejoice with us in the work being accomplished behind prison bars. Many thousands we are preaching the gospel to every year. There are converts all over the United States that we hear from. The outlook of the work was never more encouraging. ”

“ The prisoner’s quarters are in the wings, which extend from either side of the keeper’s quarters. In the gloomy office, men with that indescribable prison air all such officials bear, lounge about, and come and go on business. There is iron everywhere, from the huge bolts on the outer doors, and the door inside of them, to the barred windows and other doors beyond number, that open and shut with a sullen clangor that goes echoing through the stone passages as if it would never die away. The smell of the jail is as powerful in its way as these evidences of its actual strength. ”

“ It is small, of course; and the door being not solid, but grated, and without blind or curtain, the prisoner within is at all times exposed to the observation and inspection of any guard who may pass along that tier at any hour or minute of the night. Every day, the prisoners receive their dinner, singly, through a trap in the kitchen wall; and each man carries his to his sleeping cell to eat it, where he is locked up, alone, for that purpose, one hour. The whole of this arrangement struck me as being admirable; and I hope that the next new prison we erect in England may be built on this plan. ”

“ In the darkness the lofty walls looked grimly frowning, and I imagined what feelings must possess the ordinary criminal who passes under their black shadow to his first night's taste of imprisonment. Another massive door was opened in the wall of Newgate, and we were ushered into what at first sight appeared a large hall. It was really the interior of the prison. Glancing up, I saw dimly-lighted corridors, running round tier on tier of cell-doors, and connected by light, graceful staircases; a clear view of every door being commanded from the office at the west end of the ground-floor. ”

“ The narrow lane in which the common jail is situated is thronged with knots of men and women, wearing gloomy, awe-struck faces, conversing in under-tones. Before the jail door are musketeers of the train-band, armed and watchful. The crowd gives way on the approach of a cart that stops in front of the prison door, which is now wide opened. On one side stands the jailer, with ponderous keys hanging at his girdle; on the other is the sheriff, grasping his staff of office. The guard clears a passage, and then the sheriff's voice is heard calling upon the condemned to come forth. ”

“ Sitting tonight in our lonesome cell, bounded on three sides by blank and barren walls of steel, through our two-by-six door, constructed of massive bars of iron, there comes to us the conversation of our fellow prisoners, as with head pressed close against the bars to catch the other fellow's words, we listen to the talk of the men "committed for crime"—men strong and healthy, who should be engaged in some honest labor, but, instead, are "doing time" for a broken law. ”

“ The furniture of each consists of a wooden bench, to serve as a bed—​though it is a hard one—​and a night utensil; and the flooring is of stone.
There are two doors on each cell. When shut, they not only exclude a single beam of light, but do not admit the slightest sound.
The deputy-governor remarked—
“There are very few punishments inflicted in this prison. Sometimes the prisoners infringe the prison rules by insolence to their officers or making away with their oakum instead of picking it. We have only had two persons in the dark cells for the past two years.” ”

“ She had the ability, and she exercised it, to come or send down when her parlor, which was directly over the prisoners' kitchen, was too cold, to have the furnace door shut, or if it was too warm, to have it opened.
About a week after I went there she came in, probably my repeated inquiries had been reported to her, and gave me an order to have a room cleaned in the attic of the prison. It was one morning when we were in the midst of house-cleaning with a gang of men whitewashing in the prison. ”

“ It is not far from the Court House to the prison, a wholesomely situated building on a hill, made of concrete, with an attap roof. The whole building is one hundred feet long by thirty feet broad. There are six cells for solitary confinement. A jailer, turnkey, and eight warders constitute the prison staff. The able-bodied prisoners are employed on the roads and other public works, and attend upon the scavengers' cart, which outcome of civilization goes round every morning! ”

“ One hundred and thirty convicts with terms ranging from 2 to 15 years, too busy with their day’s labor or their evening’s sports to think of evil, are building the new penitentiary or tilling the soil. Only nine hours a day, that time allotted for sleep, are the prisoners under lock and key. They go about their various duties under the direction of a guard or overseer, but the shotgun or rifle, usually accompanying such officer, is conspicuous by its absence.
The prison gives promise of being the ideal penal institution of the world.
The site is ideal for the work to be accomplished. ”

“ Our allowance of food was small and coarse, but our room was the best in the jail—neat and spacious, and with nothing about it necessarily reminding us of being in prison, but its heavy locks and bolts and the black, iron lattice-work at the windows. We were prisoners of state, compared with most slaves who are put into that Easton jail. But the place was not one of contentment. Bolts, bars and grated windows are not acceptable to freedom-loving people of any color. ”

“ And not only the Prisoners; I saw among them several butchers and others from the Market; who are admitted here, as at another public house. The same may be seen in many other Prisons where the Gaoler keeps or lets the tap. Besides the inconvenience of this to Prisoners; the frequenting a Prison lessens the dread of being confined in one.
"On Monday night there is a Wine Club: on Thursday night a Beer Club; each lasting usually till one or two in the morning. I need not say how much riot these occasion; and how the sober Prisoners are annoyed by them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is perched, like a bird of ill omen, on a rocky ledge, where all might see it in passing over the high-road. Thus, in the early day, the traveler on entering the county town encountered, first, the stocks and whipping-post; continuing his route, he in due time came to the gallows, at the town's end. The exterior of the jail is not especially repulsive, now that it is no longer a prison; but the inside is a relic of barbarism—just such a place as I have often imagined the miserable witchcraft prisoners might have been confined in. The back wall is of stone. ”

“ A prison under ground is something awful to contemplate. Whose hair does not stand on end at the thought of possible confinement in a dark, damp, cold stone prison-house, with rusty-hinged or even sealed doors, where no window opens to the light of day ”

“ Through the thick drizzle of the early morning the convicts were marched in gangs to their daily tasks, some to build new walls within the prison precincts, some to break stone in the round yard, encircled by enormous iron railings fifteen feet high, some to the great kitchen of the prison and to the different workshops. ”

“ The prisoner on entering this dreary abode must leave behind him his hat, coat and shoes, and in this condition he is required often to spend days and weeks in solitary confinement. The dungeon contains no furniture of any description save a night bucket. Prisoners do not remain in these dark holes very long until they promise obedience. It is one of the most successful modes of prison punishment. In case of a second or third offense, and sometimes for the first, in case it is a bad one, the offender is liable to receive a flogging. ”

“ In addition to the work at the Eastern Penitentiary the general agent has a large field of work at Moyamensing and Holmesburg.
I believe the lesson of temperance that has been taught to the younger generation is commencing to bear fruit, and I look for fewer commitments for drunkenness in the future than in the past. More than 500 discharged prisoners from the County Prison were assisted with railroad tickets, board, lodging, room rent, tools, etc. ”

“ There is nothing to prevent spirits being smuggled in after dark through the prison windows. And the men do get rum, and drunkenness is a common offence. Prisoners may work outside prison walls; but I remember no other prison that is not within walls—that looks from open windows on to open roads, as is here the case. ”

“ The prison was not closed and lights put out till a late hour, when gambling was in progress and riots frequent; when drunken persons resisted the turnkeys and fought with the coffee-house and tap-room keepers, who sought to put them out of the rooms at eleven o’clock at night. If finally expelled, they resorted to secret gin shops kept in the prisoners’ rooms, where they gambled and played at cards half through the night. Clubs still existed as when reported by Howard, and met regularly to sing and carouse at social evenings. ”

“ By the standard of freedom, a day in prison is a year, and it is only those who mingle daily in our midst can talk to the "man behind the bars," who can have a fair idea of what the prisoner suffers daily in "doing time." The world that lies beneath the bars is a strange world to the average citizen, the citizen blessed with average good fortune. Prison life is a queer and twisted one, and a law to itself. ”

“ Whipping is expressly forbidden in the prison. The most severe punishment which the governor is allowed to inflict, is three days solitary confinement. Should it become necessary to exercise a greater punishment, application must be made to a committee of magistrates, who meet weekly in the prison, and the punishment is left to their option. A court-house, built of sandstone, adjoins the prison. The grand entry is ornamented with a portico of six Ionic columns: it communicates with the prison by a small back-door, through which the prisoners are conducted unperceived into court. ”

“ 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. ”

“ After considerable unlocking of big padlocks and removing ponderous bars, we entered the portion of the prison occupied by men undergoing long sentences for felony and other offences. It was a big sort of vaulted hall, dimly lighted by a few heavily grated windows on one side. Under the windows the whole length of the room was a very wide sort of sloping shelf, which serves as a sleeping-place; and ranged against this shelf, shoulder to shoulder, stood a long line of prisoners in the usual prison garb of Siberia. ”

“ Poor creatures are confined in them for weeks—for months together.” In another of the Paris Prisons he states “that there are eight dungeons which open into dark passages. In four of these, 10 feet 8 inches by 6 feet 8 inches, I saw sixteen prisoners, two in irons, and all lying upon straw.” In the course of his account of the condition of things at Liege, in Belgium, he says: “The dungeons in the new Prison are abodes of misery still more shocking; and confinement in them so overpowers human nature, as sometimes irrecoverably to take away their senses. ”

“ The prison is an incubator for those who are young in crime, a place of torture for those who possess the finer feelings of humanity, that is precisely the class of people, usually, who ought not to be sent to prison; but to habitual offenders, the confirmed recidivists, precisely the class of people on whom the prison ought to work as at once a reforming and deterring influence, it is simply a welcome and comfortable home. It is a well-known fact that the prison is preferred to the workhouse. ”