_"As long as a nation harbors a body of men authorized to inflict
punishment, as long as there are prisons in which such a body can carry
out these punishments, that nation cannot call itself civilized."_
_Message written on his prison wall, by Francisco Ferrer._
It was a clear December morning when, from the little boat which carried
me across the river, I spied the outline of the penitentiary squatting
on the lower end of Blackwell's Island. It was my first view of it and
the impression made on my mind was so ominous and sinister that my heart
almost sank within me as I entered the fateful gates.
"Hey, there! Where do you t'ink you are? Take dem gloves off!" shouted a
tough, strong voice as I stood waiting in front of the office window,
recounting my pedigree and giving up my private belongings for safe
keeping. In the old prison, I found six new prisoners waiting in line.
Our hair was clipped by a convict barber, and we were ordered to divest
ourselves of our civilian clothes and take a shower bath. While we were
trying to dry ourselves with two small hand towels, prison underwear and
striped suits were thrown at our feet.
The trousers were decidedly too long, the coat, and the rag--unjustly
named a vest--both too short; a cap which came down to my eyebrows made
up this uniform of degradation and infamy. Harlequin's costume never
looked more ridiculous than our own, which was mended, patched and
repatched from long use by generations of long-suffering convicts.
The prison authorities, I suppose, are to be commended for their thrift;
but I cannot help feeling that by putting on those frayed and wornout
caricatures of uniforms we are endangering our health.
In the photographer's house behind the shower baths we are "mugged"; our
Bertillon measurements are taken, even to "beauty spots" and pimples, by
a red-haired, freckled-faced young man. A sign twelve inches long,
black, with white numerals, is hung round my neck over a black cotton
coat, and I am told to look pleasant until the camera has focussed my
profile and full face.
Sitting on benches, waiting for their turn, are a dozen prisoners. They
are all old, white-haired, naked and shivering; old offenders,
recidivists, tramps, bums, drunken louts; lean, pale, bruised, with
anemic, unhealthy skins, red noses, fishy eyes, bloated faces, large
hands, knotty, ungainly feet, purple with the cold.
A very old man attracts my attention by his immobility, his general
paleness, and his extraordinary gauntness, which shows the perfect
outline of his muscles, and reminds me of the statue representing San
Bartolommeo in the cathedral of Milan, holding his whole skin over his
arm like a bath robe.
Squint-eyed and almost blind, this old man, of more than the allotted
span of seventy years, seems unable to recollect his name, occupation or
social status.
"A bum, I guess," remarks the keeper.
It appears that he is deaf, and his neighbour nudges him with an elbow
and shouts in his ear:
"Say yes!"
"Yes, sir!" hastily answers the old man.
These derelicts of society are going to the workhouse on Monday.
Later we are ordered to clean and wash the small glass panes in the
windows of the main prison. Trusties in smart, new, striped clothes,
with creased pants and caps, rushed by eyeing us with curiosity.
"Whatcheh in fer?" "What did the judge hand yeh?" are the leading
whispered queries.
A pungent, musty, sickening smell pervades the old prison, which is
barely lighted by a dismal and gray reflection filtering through the
small windows. An inscription on the wall shows the date of construction
to be 1864. The cell where Boss Tweed died is pointed out to me.
Suddenly the electric lights are switched on and a bell starts ringing
in a loud, metallic, persistent note, not unlike the subway starting
bells. A heavy, automatic, dull noise in the distance announces the
approaching footsteps of the convicts returning from work. In measured
step, each gang followed by its keeper, more than a thousand men march
past the head keeper's desk.
All the varieties of ages, figures, physiognomies, expressions, are
illustrated to my astonished eyes. Young men with red cheeks and simple
faces; strong men with bullet heads, broad shouldered, surly or
impassive; fat men with wabbling bellies and cheerful faces; old men
bent and hoary with age; slow and listless young men with effeminate
gestures; a few cripples on sticks or crutches, and wobbling along
behind the lines, a paralytic led by a companion. They all file by,
stamping their feet in German military fashion.
At moments the order is given to slow up or stop, and the convicts
continue to move the legs in rhythmic step, their bodies almost
touching, and giving the appearance of an enormous centipede dancing a
gruesome, macabre saraband.
Finely shaped heads are rare; it looks as if an almighty sculptor had
left his handiwork unfinished, or purposely kept it in rude outline.
Foreheads are either too bulging or too retreating, eyes too sunken or
too protruding, noses too large or too small, mouths too sensual or too
cruel, chins too powerful or too weak.
Smiling or frowning, aggressive or indifferent, surly or pleasant, all
the different expressions and gestures are sketched out in violent
chiaroscuro, and compose a cartoon worthy of a Frans Hals or a
Michelangelo.
My eyes absorb the kaleidoscopic, ignoble, unbelievable pageant. As an
artist I am fascinated, hypnotized by this fantastic procession of human
zebras, slashed with broad stripes of gray and black, with the four
prison tiers as a background, and the dark blue uniforms and gold
buttons of the keepers adding a touch of color.
As a human being I am shocked and repelled by this grotesque, degrading
parade.
Is this really the Inferno or only the last Judgment, I ask myself?
"Get in line, you loafer!" shouts a red-faced keeper, shaking his stick
at me. Thus I am awakened from my dreams.
I
I am locked in the old prison for the night--my first night in the
penitentiary.
A bed made of an iron frame with coarse canvas stretched across it, two
cheap cotton blankets, a straw pillow, a large covered pail and a
drinking cup, complete the total of my furniture. It is the simple life
with a vengeance. The bed takes up the whole length of the cell; there
is no room for walking except sideways from the bucket to the cell door.
Sitting in a lateral position on the couch, with my back touching the
wall, I can place my legs on the opposite wall only in a bended posture.
A tier man comes to the cell shouting "Water." While pouring it into my
cup from a large can I peer at his face through the bars. His pale
features, beaked nose, cruel mouth and yellow eyes make him seem like
some tropical carrion-eating bird. I am so fascinated by his depraved
and satanic look that I allow water from the cup to drop onto the
floor.
He utters curses, "not loud, but deep," and returns to mop the floor.
I try to interest myself in an old magazine, but my mind seems unable to
concentrate in a continued effort; I read, but my imagination wanders
away in an interminable circle without beginning or end.
The cold is intense; the blankets, thin and gray, afford no protection.
My whole body is shivering and shaking uncontrollably as if in high
fever, my teeth rattle like castanets accompanying a Spanish fandango. I
light a cigar and watch the smoke curl slowly, lazily across the cell
until it appears like a veil between the ceiling and the floor and
finally settles over my couch like a pale, transparent shroud.
Evidently there is no ventilation, but I continue to puff away, hoping
to fumigate and kill the fetid odor in the cell.
Everything is still except for the occasional moaning of a sick man.
Finally the electric light at the foot of the bed is extinguished, and I
am left in the dark.
I turn into bed with all my clothes, including cap and shoes, trusting
in this manner to warm myself and in the hope of forgetting my troubles
in blissful sleep.
But there seems to be no rest for me.
As soon as a little heat radiates from my body, scores of bedbugs are
attracted and start a vicious, incessant campaign. When I am deceived
into sleep by a lessening of their attacks, I am awakened by the cold
air under the canvas, which freezes my back and forces me to shift my
position.
Horrible nightmares shake me with a start as soon as I am lulled into
slumber. My throat is parched as if sand had been my last meal, and I
pick up the tin cup to get a drink; to my intense despair the rusty,
filthy cup has a leak, and all the water has trickled to the floor.
I dream that the cell, with its massive walls reeking with stench and
humidity, is growing smaller, closing upon me like an accordeon, until
the cell door is as small as a keyhole from which I get the last gasp of
air; then instead of air, an endless cool, refreshing flow of water runs
down my throat. But, unluckily, my intense thirst awakens me and I start
toward the cell door calling for water in a faint, hoarse whisper.
A keeper silences me with a gruff, impatient voice: "Where in hell do
you think I can get it?"
And I can hear the water dripping lustily from a faucet into a full
barrel on the ground floor!
I try philosophically to force my thoughts into past and pleasant
memories, but the present distress is so tyrannical and overpowering
that all the physical, moral and intellectual suffering of the world
seems to be centered within the few square feet of this dungeon. My via
crucis has begun. I reflect with terror that my mind may not withstand
the strain of uninterrupted agony, and suicide appears as an easy
solution.
The absurdity of the impulse is evident, for my death in this filthy
cell, like a rat in a hole, would delight those responsible for my
presence here; and furthermore it would shock and sadden those dearest
to me.
What is all my fortitude and philosophy worth if it cannot steady and
concentrate my will at the most crucial, heart racking and desperate
moment of my life?
Why should my trained mind crumble like a match box and be destroyed
under physical torture, mental distress and moral humiliation?
Is not suffering the greatest of all tests, necessary, purifying and
regenerating? Why not wait patiently and courageously for the day of
reckoning, worthy of the gods on Olympus?
I count my heart-beats to get an idea of the passing of time. The
minutes seem to have frozen on the fountain of time; they drip
laboriously as if each and every one of them represented eons of
memories and experiences; as if each was attempting to demonstrate that
in the accounting of eternity they were as significant as centuries. In
a supreme physical effort of my will I grip the bars and grit my teeth
to stop the impending and foolish disintegration of my mind. The waves
of despair, the racking pain, the insane delirium are slowly beaten back
into submission, like a defeated army. The imagination is disciplined,
the will has thrown the switch and illuminated the real inward self, as
I stand watching, through the steel bars, the windows on the opposite
wall. I feel calm, serene and strong.
Of a sudden, as if to illustrate my state of mind, out of the gray, blue
mist, a large, luminous, rose disk slowly arises beyond the opening.
The sun, the glorious sun! Silently it looms up, magnificent through the
haze, like a mirage announcing the advent of better things and more
hopeful days.
The same sun I had seen arise in India, Egypt, Italy, Mexico, in many
frames of classical and tropical beauty; but never has it seemed to me
so divine, so perfect, so precious as on that awful morning.