One day a poor Italian woman, after overcoming all the difficulties in
actually getting to the gates of the prison, happened to arrive a few
minutes late. The iron gates were banged in her face and she was ordered
away.
She had come a long way to see her son, and she could not tear herself
away from the neighborhood of the prison. She was poorly dressed,
without even a hat. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. In her
ignorance she looked up to the barred windows of our hospital imagining
that it contained her son. She waved her hand, smiling through her
tears, hoping--perhaps thinking--that she could communicate to him that
little, distant greeting. Then a keeper came out, shook a stick at her
and ordered her away.
She went back to the docks and onto the little boat that was to carry
her back to New York. As the boat moved away she continued to wave a red
bandanna handkerchief until she disappeared from view.
Miss M---- came to see me one day but she was refused admittance because
I had had another visitor in the same month. The warden asked her: "What
do you want to see him for? Are you his wife?" "No," answered Miss
M----, "I wouldn't visit him if he was my husband."
The warden is very punctilious and severe towards infractions of the
rules relating to visits and visitors. His strict regard for the rules,
however, did not deter him from allowing two detectives, sent by agents
of the Mexican government, to visit me without my permission; he even
placed another detective on the line next to another visitor so that he
could overhear our conversation.
I had written to a friend that, as it was not only unwise, but
impossible in my situation to put on paper certain matters of importance
and of grave concern to me, I would wait for the day of his visit to
communicate it orally.
On that day a red-headed detective was placed next in line to my
visitor, ostensibly to talk to a convict; but the prisoner told me
afterwards that he did not know the alleged visitor and that he had
never seen him before.
I had to whisper my message in French so as to prevent the spy from
overhearing and understanding it.
This proved to me that my letters were copied by somebody in the
Warden's office, and communicated to the American lawyers representing
the Mexican government; and also that somebody was powerful enough
politically to give orders in the Commissioner's office, which in its
turn placed the detective at my visitor's side.
But when two newspaper men asked permission to see me I was informed
that I would not be permitted to stay in the hospital if I allowed
reporters to visit me.
One day I heard the warden upbraid a girl who had come for the first
time to see her brother. Not being used to such ill-mannered treatment
she began to weep, and that of course only made matters worse.
Half an hour later the Commissioner of Prisons arrived on a visit of
inspection. In the hospital he called the warden to task for
something--but the warden was as mute as an oyster. Together they went
into the consumptive ward, where the warden began extolling the quality
and quantity of the fresh air circulating in the room. The commissioner
turned round and snapped impatiently: "And that's about all they ever
get!" But the warden never said a word. This man, this mighty czar of
the penitentiary, who is so brutal and so insolent to the convicts, so
arrogant to the keepers, and so uncouth to the visitors, in the
presence of the man who could take his good job away from him, was as
meek as a lamb.
A keeper who knew the warden well remarked: "He has the soul of a valet,
insulting to his inferiors and fawning to his superiors."