The other day a man was brought up to the hospital to have his broken
arm bandaged. He had got up in the mess hall and started to voice a
protest against the rotten meat. Two keepers jumped on him with their
sticks and beat him until he was insensible. Later the "Dep" came
upstairs to look him over, and said: "So you think you are a tough guy!"
The man kept silent; but later he was sent to the "cooler."
There is an old Italian tailor in the hospital who has become popular
because he mends our socks and makes pockets in our trousers. He eats
enormous quantities of food, and after he is through he wipes his mouth
with the crust of bread which does service for him as a napkin!
A dope fiend, who had kept us awake five nights: in succession, was
allowed to sit at the table after he had broken his fast with milk. He
was warned to eat sparingly. One Friday, as fish was served and I knew
only two pieces had been eaten, I was wondering where it all had gone
when I emptied the dishes in the garbage can. Out of sixteen pieces of
fish that had been served, only two could be accounted for. I turned to
look over the room, and I noticed our dope fiend still chewing away at
something. Then I noticed the shirt round his belt bulging in an unusual
fashion across his very lean body; and I was surprised to discover what
had happened to the missing portions of fish.
Not satisfied with having eaten two pieces of fish, our dope fiend had
stuffed the other fourteen pieces inside his shirt, so as to make sure
that he would have enough food to last him through the night.
For five consecutive nights he had kept us awake with his moaning and
raving, sitting upright in his bed, swinging his body back and forth
pendulum fashion. He could not keep anything in his stomach, either food
or water. He begged piteously for an injection of morphine, but the new
doctor was obdurate; he said that it was either cure or kill. When the
morphine was eliminated he became himself again, and he was cured of his
habit. Some morphine fiends die from the stoppage of the supply, but
many of them are effectively cured.
A bald-headed, consumptive negro keeps us in constant laughter--when
prison lets us laugh--with wonderful and never ending stories of his
adventurous life. Even the doctor will stand by the hour listening to
his quaint speech and stories. Although he is an old rascal and an old
offender, one cannot help liking him for his cheerful, gay attitude
towards life.
He related how one time, after serving a term in the reformatory, he
went back to his wife in New York. She lived in an apartment on the
ground floor, and she seemed to be happy to see him again. She inquired
about his health and asked about his future prospects. While they were
talking he heard somebody opening the front door with a latch key. He
became quite nervous, and asked his wife who it was that dared to come
in without ringing the bell. "Dat's de husband I'se married while you
was in jail; and he's a big black coon," she said.
He jumped hastily through the window, he confessed to us, so as not to
embarrass husband number two, and leaving behind a grip with his
clothes. He came back next night to get his belongings, and he used the
window this time as a means of entrance. But fate was against him. As
he emerged from the window again he fell into the arms of a watchful
policeman, who promptly arrested him. Being an ex-convict, he was
sentenced to a year in the penitentiary, as he said, for stealing his
own pants!
A tall, blond Pole behaved in such a disgusting manner at the table that
the keeper ordered him back to his bed.
The first two weeks that he was in bed we could not induce him to get up
to perform the most normal animal functions. But, as there did not seem
to be anything the matter with him, he was finally forced to get up and
go to the bathroom.
For more than two weeks we had plied him with questions--myself, the
doctors, and all the convicts who knew different languages. He looked at
us with his big, blue eyes, shaking his head as if he did not understand
what we were talking about. We finally came to the conclusion that he
either spoke some unknown language, or that maybe he was deaf and mute.
One day Richard, the young assistant, made him get up, but instead of
walking, he crept on all fours to the bathroom. Then he got up like a
human being and started drinking water from the faucet. Richard took him
to task for his uncleanliness. He said to him: "Wash your face, you
dirty pig!" And to the utter amazement of Richard, the supposed deaf
mute turned round angrily and said, in perfect English: "You go to hell,
will you!" A few weeks later he was taken to Matteawan.
Later I gathered from another Pole who had talked to him and succeeded
in making him answer, that he had been a petty officer in the Russian
navy, and that he had mutinied, and later had succeeded in escaping to
America.
He had hit upon the idea of feigning insanity in order to foil the
vigilant Russian secret service agents, who would be on the lookout for
him upon his release from the Island; he feared that they would create
an opportunity to "shanghai" him on board a Russian ship, and he knew
that they would hang him if he ever was returned to the fatherland. He
had been sentenced to sixty days on the Island for vagrancy.