About a dozen women convicts come twice a week to scrub the hardwood
floor of the hospital. The majority of them are colored; the white women
are either old and faded, or young and dissipated-looking. Very few of
them are either refined or good-looking. Petty larceny is the crime for
which most of them are sent to the prison.
Two negro women, young and rather tough-looking, are scrubbing the
floor. They are in prison for having held up and robbed a man in the
streets of New York. The man never recovered his $800.
As the convicts always attempt to joke and to flirt with the scrubbing
women, they are usually ordered into the bathroom until the work is
done, with the exception of the bedridden patients.
I discovered that quite a correspondence goes on between the men and
women convicts. A young convict became quite enamored of a blonde,
sporty-looking girl, and they took great risks to communicate their love
notes. I was made the confidante in their love affair. Some of the
passages read thus: "I love you, I love you, where did youse put the
tobacco?" ... "I dreams of you day and night.... Get me some butter."
... "You was the best looker I ever seen.... Don't forget to put the
matches at the foot of the stairs."
The women do not get the weekly ration of tobacco allowed to the men,
and as a consequence they must beg tobacco and matches from the men.
All the house work, such as making beds, sweeping, cooking and waiting
on table, in the house of the warden, in the apartment of the deputy
warden, and in the dormitories of the keepers and matrons, is performed
by the women convicts.
An old Irish woman while in prison took such loving care of the children
of a former warden that whenever her time was up and she was discharged,
her weakness was encouraged, and she was even purposely made drunk, then
arrested and sentenced to the penitentiary again as an old offender,
year after year, until the children of the warden grew big enough to
take care of themselves.
Before the present system of having a physician live in the prison came
into vogue, doctors visited the patients once a day; the surgeons came
over only for the operations. The operating room is always shown with
great pride to visitors, but never the "cooler."
'Twas told that one night, in the earlier period, when there was no
resident physician, a woman convict startled the prison with piercing
cries. She was in the throes of child-birth. The doctor and the warden
being absent, the matrons did not dare to open the cell. Later a young
doctor from the city hospital was called in. He peered through the bars,
then turned and declared that the woman would be all right in the
morning. When the cell door was opened next day the woman was found
unconscious and the child was dead, strangled or suffocated.
The other day I went for the first time into the women's section to take
some medicines and carry away our laundry. The women's section is under
the same roof as the old prison wherein I passed the first two nights. A
wall divides them, but the cells and the system of tiers are the same.
The cells measure about 3 by 7 feet, with gray, damp, greasy, massive
walls, without any ventilation.
As I was looking around I noticed many women sitting in their cells,
some working outside, sewing or knitting, others sweeping or mopping
the tiers or the floor.
My attention was attracted by two women with babies in their arms. A
third, a young, quite delicate, fine-looking girl convict, was sitting
on a chair sewing. Near her, as if afraid to move, stood a little girl
three or four years old, with dark, curly hair, red cheeks, and big,
black serious eyes. She looked at me with the sad, wistful smile of some
of Da Vinci's women.
My imagination carried me back to the trial room where the little girl
had stood near her mother to hear the sentence; I thought of how she had
shared with her the cell in the Tombs; how she had been carried to the
penitentiary in the "Black Maria," with her mother shackled to another
convict; how every night she slept in the narrow, dark, foul cell,
barred and locked; how she ate the prison food, and remained all day
behind gray walls, without seeing the sun or the sky or any
flowers--only striped convicts, matrons and steel bars.
The innocent child must have seen all these strange happenings, and
wondered what it all meant. And some day, when she is grown to
womanhood, or motherhood, she will remember it all, she will know that
she lived with her mother in a prison. She will recall the infamy, the
degradation--and the shame of it will be branded on her soul as long as
she lives.