Prison cell

“ 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 cell house, the dominating structure within the prison close, must look to-day very much as it looked along toward the end of the third decade of last century. Straight-walled, angular, homely beyond conception, it rises high above the stone stockade that surrounds it. ”

“ The [pg 270] cell was somehow suggestive of a prison, and yet I am not sure that there was as much comfort to be found in it as a prison cell affords in these humanitarian times. Everything about the Grande Chartreuse is of Spartan-like simplicity. There the body is mortified for the soul's sake, and nothing that could pander in the least degree to luxurious tastes is allowed. As I was to learn afterwards, even such barren comfort as is afforded by this "Visitor's Cell" is unknown in the cells occupied by the monks. ”

“ It is obvious to what extravagance such a system can be pushed, but the underlying principle is sound, and a perfect prison system, based on science, would adapt its treatment to a far greater degree than at present to the varying categories of offenders, who, under the old classical system, which recognized only the uniform and abstract type of crime and criminal, would be consigned equally to the one abstract and uniform type of penalty—the prison cell. ”

“ The inside cell of the American prison is a type peculiar to this country, and its design is based on the principle that the prisoner is to be retained above every other consideration. Consequently our jails have been designed with what has come to be known as “interior cells,” that is, the cells are placed not against the outside walls, but in the center of the building, back to back, separated by a passageway from three to four feet in width, referred to as a utility corridor, in which all the plumbing and ventilating pipes are placed. ”

“ In theory the prisoner is confined in this cell without intercourse with any other prisoners, from his entrance until the sentence has expired. He sees and speaks only with prison officers or instructors, including the chaplain. He lives, works, eats, and sleeps in his cell. No machinery or at least none that can not be introduced into the cells is allowed in the prison. ”

“ I will first describe the room, and then take one typical day in the prison routine, which will clearly show [Pg 61] the kind of life that Mr Wilde is compelled to live.
"Now to the cell. The room is situated at the far end of the east wing of the prison, and is entered from the long passage which runs from the head warder's rooms past the convict cells, and terminates at the door which protects Oscar from the common herd, and helps to make him secure. The door is an ordinary prison cell door, possessing spyholes and flaptrap, and large iron bars and locks. The cell itself is about 10 ft. ”

“ Every prisoner now finds exactly the same treatment, according to his class and sentence, from Land's End to the Orkney Isles. Whether only an accused person, a debtor, misdemeanant, or condemned felon, he is kept strictly apart, occupying a cell to himself, the dimensions of which assure him a minimum air-content of 800 cubic feet, and which has been duly certified by one of the government prison inspectors as fit for his occupation, being lighted, heated, ventilated, and provided with bell communications, which are electric in some of the new prisons. ”

“ Every man is given a complete new outfit, when he enters the prison, and this is renewed from time to time as it wears out. No used clothing is given to an inmate. When a man is discharged, what clothing he had is sent to the incinerating plant, and destroyed.
The cells vary in size and average 8 × 12 by 12 feet high, with a sky-light let into the roof and controlled by the inmate. There are double doors, but the outer one is never entirely closed, day or night. A steam radiator with individual control and portable electric light is in every cell. ”

“ They abuse him constantly. If he reports them to the officer the three stoutly deny all accusations, often bringing upon the innocent one punishment which should have been meted out to the three guilty ones.
It requires but little stretch of the imagination to enable one to see how miserable a prisoner may be rendered in one of these cells when three occupants of the same cell combine against him. The large cells are a source of great annoyance to prison officials, and are now, after trial, universally condemned. The small cells are about four feet wide, seven feet long, and seven feet high. ”

“ The cell in which he eats and sleeps and works is a little larger than the average prison cell, and more completely furnished—as it must hold his bed, his lavatory, his dishes and a place for eating, his work, his every possession, and such books as he may secure from the prison library. ”

“ The convict was merely a human machine to be worked a certain number of hours with no incentive to good work beyond the fear of punishment. No thought was given to fitting him for future citizenship. Every prison had its punishment cells, some of them underground, most of them dark, where men were confined for days on bread and water, usually shackled standing to the iron door of the cell during working hours, and at night sleeping on the stone floor unless a board was provided—the food a scant allowance of bread and water. ”

“ The men here do not work in their separate cells, like the others, but go out to work in gangs, guarded by armed warders. The door of each cell throughout the prison has a small hole in it, through which the warders, who move about the galleries in list shoes, can peep in, and, unknown to the prisoner, see what he is about. ”

“ Sometimes the little prison was empty, and then again every cell would be occupied, but in a week I generally saw from thirty to fifty inmates. Mature men predominated, but women and boys were also to be found. The women were invariably separated from the men by at least a cell wall, but the boys, and I saw some not over ten years old, were thrown in with the most hardened criminals. They were allowed to pass about among the men in the lock-up corridor, and at night were shut up with them in the cells. ”

“ Beyond these pages the prison has no record of his existence: and though he live to be in the same cell ten weary years, he has no means of knowing, down to the very last hour, in which part of the building it is situated; what kind of men there are about him; whether in the long winter nights there are living people near, or he is in some lonely corner of the great jail, with walls, and passages, and iron doors between him and the nearest sharer in its solitary horrors. ”

“ Finally, additional economy was secured by the use of the multiple man cell. Our multiple man cells accommodate six prisoners, while three single man cells of the same cubic contents containing two partitions, two extra prison doors and locks, two extra lavatories, two extra water-closets, two extra radiators, with all of the necessary connections to these utilities, will only accommodate half as many prisoners. It will, therefore, cost more than twice as much in cell-house construction to incarcerate a given number of prisoners in the single man cells than in the six man cells. ”

“ All the arrangements of the prison were based upon this idea—the private boxes of the parloir, or visiting cell; the separate compartments in the exercising yards, where each prisoner ranges like a beast in a menagerie up and down a narrow 166 cage, in shape like a wedge cut out of a plum cake; all are meant to secure the great end. Even the method of conducting divine service was such that every prisoner could attend mass without seeing or being seen by his neighbors or leaving his own cell. ”

“ Work in solitude means that the prisoner is shut up in an apartment by himself which is called his cell. Each cell is provided with an adequate supply of air and light, and is heated in the winter up to a sufficiently high temperature for health and comfort. The cell contains a bed and other personal requisites; it also contains a copy of the prison rules. Before the prisoner is finally allocated to a certain cell he is seen by all the superior officers of the prison. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ It is now necessary to inquire what form the perpetual or indefinite segregation of the criminal should assume.
Two great innovations in regard to prisons, as M. Tarde observes, have been made or developed within the past century, which are not yet adopted in every country: penal colonies, whereof transportation is only a factor, and the prison cell. The cell has assumed a leading position since it was brought over from America to Europe, where, however, the cellular prisons of St. ”

“ Two men are constantly employed in whitewashing the cells and the interior of the cell house, and another's time is wholly occupied in exterminating bedbugs, which are quite plentiful and possess large appetites.
The captain makes a tour of the galleries each morning and inspects each cell to see that everything is in order. If a cell floor or other articles are in a slovenly condition the inmate is reported to the deputy warden, whose duty it is to administer a reprimand for negligence. ”

“ I asked a boy two weeks ago, a young man, and he said, “Warden, to get away from that cell; for,” he said, “to sit there on Sunday, every evening and on holidays and have that 49 cell gate staring you in the face, it is hell;” and he didn’t say it to be irreverent or disrespectful, but it was his pent-up emotions. I believe there is something debasing—debasing to a man’s personal manhood—about life in a cell that no one can describe. Our men plow, they harrow, they sow the grain, they reap it; there is no guard with them at all. ”

“ These are for the use of criminals of the wealthier class, who can afford to pay for such comforts. Forgers, fraudulent merchants, and the like, pass the hours of their detention in these rooms, while their humbler, but no more guilty brothers in crime are shut up in the close, narrow cells we have described. These rooms command a view of the street, so that their occupants are not entirely cut off from the outer world.
THE BUMMER'S CELL. The main cell in the prison is a large room, with a capacity for holding about two hundred persons. ”

“ The cells are supplied with tin chambers fitted with a lid which can be used in an emergency, but the close atmosphere of the cells makes this extremely undesirable to people trained in any sense of cleanliness. Every cell has an electric bell for summoning a wardress, but frequently no notice is taken of such a summons, and the bells are often out of order and do not work. Many of our Suffrage prisoners have had their health permanently impaired, some have had to undergo operations, as a result of the prison life in these respects. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A wardress told one of us that the woman had killed her child and been put into the condemned cell after being sentenced to be hanged. After my release it was officially stated that the woman who had been sentenced to death for baby-murder had been [142] perfectly quiet and that the “condemned cell” was in a part of the prison far removed from the remand hospital. The shrieks we had heard were those of a mad woman, under remand for larceny, who had since been removed to a workhouse infirmary. ”

“ Then The Thinking Machine fell to remembering how he had come to the cell. First, there was the outside guard's booth, a part of the wall. There were two heavily barred gates there, both of steel. At this gate was one man always on guard. He admitted persons to the prison after much clanking of keys and locks, and let them out when ordered to do so. The warden's office was in the prison building, and in order to reach that official from the prison yard one had to pass a gate of solid steel with only a peep-hole in it. ”

“ The prisoners were handcuffed together in pairs and marched off through the deserted streets, and as night fell Maximilian IV., King of Franconia, found himself the inmate of a cell in his own State prison.
So large was the number of arrests made at the meeting that even the ample accommodation at the disposal of the governor of the prison seemed likely to prove insufficient. Each man, as he passed in through the gates, had his name taken down in a book, and was assigned to a separate cell. ”

“ On the prison galleries too, there are the trams to carry the day’s rations and necessaries from cell to cell. There are lifts everywhere, and many staircases in the most convenient places. The cells are all very spacious, their decoration and fittings artistic, and in the best modern style, with varnished walls, washing arrangements in porcelain, and a plentiful supply of water. The warming and ventilation are on the best principles. ”