It was Saturday morning that I became an inmate of the Penitentiary.
I was conducted to the kitchen, where I was to oversee the cooking for
the prisoners, and to the prison adjoining it, which I was to see kept
in order, by the Deputy Master of the institution, who gave me my keys
and installed me in my office of Prison Matron.
When we first went in he called the six women who do the work in the
kitchen, and the three "sweeps" who keep the prison clean, to him, and
presented their new mistress, in my person, to them.
They were convicts that surrounded me at his call; but they were human
beings. Human faces looked up to mine for sympathy and care. Some of
them were fine looking, even in their coarse uniform, some were pretty
as I picked them out one by one. They all looked at me earnestly, for a
few moments, as though they were reading their sentence of harshness or
kindly treatment, under my rule, in my face; then, turned away to their
work again.
They whispered as they stood together, and I saw by their furtive
glances that they were watching, and discussing me, as I walked around
to take a survey of my new field of labor. They were undoubtedly
commenting upon my personal appearance; and making their predictions as
to my sharpness in detecting their impositions, and ability to control
their perverseness; or, I imagined so.
The Deputy showed me the mush boiler, that would cook two large tubs
full of that farinaceous edible at a time; the potato steamer, that
would hold four barrels of that esculent vegetable at a cooking; the
soup and coffee kettles, of still larger dimensions; and that comprised
all of the apparatus required in preparing the mammoth meals which were
to serve above four hundred people. These cooking utensils were kept in
operation by pipes conducting steam to them from a boiler stationed in
the middle of the room.
When he put the steam boiler under my direction I shrank back in terror
from the task of managing it. The huge culinary apparatus, which he had
been exhibiting, although outside the pale of ordinary housekeeping, was
still within the reach of my understanding; but I had no idea of the
management of steam; it was not only a difficult, but dangerous affair.
"The house will surely be blown up if you leave the care of that upon
me," I said to him.
"You must watch it very closely."
"I don't know how, and I have no aptness for learning that kind of
science."
"One of the women will tend it." And he went on with explanations that
were all Greek to me. "It is safe when you have on twenty pounds of
steam. There is your gauge," and he pointed to a clock-like looking
affair on the wall. "That hand will move round and tell you how much
steam you have on. You must keep water enough in the boiler or you will
get blown up. If it runs from that centre stopcock, on the side, it is
safe. You notice that glass tube in front. The water is just as high in
that as it is in the boiler. This faucet is to let the water off if you
get the boiler too full. Turn that faucet when you let the water on,"
and he went along and pointed to one in a pipe by the wall, "and that
pump is there in case of accident. You must have it worked every day so
as to keep it in order."
All knowledge is useful, I thought, and in time I shall understand
running a steam-engine. As the women have been trusted with the
dangerous thing, they may still continue to be, till I have leisure to
learn the science of steam as applied to cooking.
After I had taken a survey of the kitchen the Deputy took me into the
women's prison which led out of it.
The centre of the hollow square, in which the dormitories are built,
looked like a huge block of glittering ice, so white were the washed
walls of brick and stone. The black, grated doors of the cells, inserted
into them, like the teeth of grinning demons, were ranged along the
sides about two feet apart, tier after tier, five stories, one above
another.
The Deputy led me along past the iron doors. I trembled and shrank back;
but I had no idea of receding from my undertaking. I "screwed my courage
to the sticking-point," and looked into the narrow, stone rooms; but it
was many days before I could force myself to enter one.
I grew heart-sick, and faint with apprehension of unknown terrors at
their cheerless aspect.
"What lodgings for human beings!" I exclaimed.
"They are not very pleasant," said the Deputy.
"If you were the one to blame for it I should certainly charge you with
great inhumanity."
"I suppose you will think us very cruel sometimes."
"In this case I don't know as you can help it. You did not make these
sleeping apartments for the prisoners. The public functionaries of the
State may be thanked for showing such tender mercies as these."
"We are used to seeing them, and they don't look to us as they do to
you."
"Does that make them any more comfortable for the prisoners? Do they get
used to them so as to be comfortable?"
"I presume so. I know they are more comfortable places than some had
before they came here."
"Then it should be the work of the vaunting Christianity of this
religious land to raise such degradation to cleanliness, comfort, and
respectability."
"There might be a great deal done in that direction if people were only
disposed to do it."
"Our prisons are rather private affairs, I believe. They can only be
visited on certain days and occasions."
"It would be very inconvenient for our work to have people running in,
and over the place at all times. We could not have it. And it wouldn't
be liked by the prisoners to be gazed at constantly."
I made no reply; but I thought it might have a salutary effect upon the
discipline of the prison, which he had just said I might think cruel, to
be exposed to the observation of the public. The prisoners must have
lost the sensibility which would shrink from being made a spectacle
before they came in there. If visiting were allowed only on certain days
and occasions, the place and the convicts would be put in order for
company, and a very incorrect idea of the every-day life of the
prisoners would be obtained.
If there were liberty to visit the place, every day, many might go from
curiosity, and it might become annoying. That very curiosity might
discover and discuss faults in the management, which ought to be
remedied, and thus produce a counterbalancing benefit.
The officers might dislike such scrutiny, especially, if they were not
doing their duty. They are officers of the government. Is it not proper
that their conduct should be looked after by the people as much as that
of any other government official?
Evil comrades might go in and hold improper communication with the
prisoners. Can they not do that on regular visiting days?
Is it not only the work of humanity to see that crime is punished in a
way that will not increase it; but also that of the legislator as a
matter of civil policy; and that of the taxpayer as a matter of personal
interest. It should interest every man and woman as a matter of personal
protection from the depredations of vice to know how convicts are
treated, and to judge whether that treatment tends to reform the
criminal, or to harden and lead him deeper into crime when he is let out
into the world again to pursue his own ways.
Ought the punishment of criminals, who have been tried, convicted, and
sentenced publicly, to be conducted in secret? It is to be presumed that
the keeper of the prison is trusty. There should be no presumption in
the matter. It should be known that he is so, and he should be kept so
by the ceaseless vigilance of public inspection. What is the quarterly,
or semi-annual visit of fifty or a hundred men when the visit has been
notified, and the prison put in order for their reception, towards
effecting that?
My residence in that prison led me to see that the descriptions of
Dickens, and his compeers in the regions of fictitious writing, have
given, not the poetic illusions of imaginary sufferings to the
contemplation of the world--hardly a vivid picture of the truth.
God speed the day when our prisons and penitentiaries may take a place
beside public schools, orphan asylums, houses of refuge, all
institutions for the cultivation of a knowledge which tends to the
elevation of virtue, and the suppression of vice, in the care of the
public!
Our own children may not stimulate to an interest in them. Our own
children may not require the benefit of the public school, or orphan
asylum; but somebody's children will. In working for the elevation of
everybody's children are we not benefiting our own?
After he had shown me around, so that I might take a general survey of
my field of labor, the Deputy left me with my charge, saying,--
"You are mistress here. No one has a right to interfere with you, and
you are responsible to no one but me, or the Master."
"But the Head Matron will, of course, come and instruct me in the
details of my work. I must know what work belongs to each woman, and how
she is expected to perform it."
"The women know their work and will do it. The most you have to do is to
keep order."
"That may be a man's idea of managing a kitchen; but there are a great
many details that I ought to understand in order to get the work
properly done, and done in its proper time; and with the greatest ease
to myself and the women."
"The other Matrons will tell you. I will tell you all I can."
I thought, but I did not say it,--You are better disposed than informed.
He saw by the anxious expression of my face that I was not satisfied,
and added, "The women know, they will tell you."
I made no reply; but I thought--It is not the proper thing for me to
receive my instructions from the convicts. It is their place to be
instructed by me. If I am taught by them, I am placed in an inferior
position to them. In order to entertain a proper respect for me they
should look up to me as their superior in all things.
The arrangement for receiving my directions from them placed me too much
in their power also. It would be only indulging natural proclivities to
"play off" on me under the circumstances; and I could hardly expect
these poor, abandoned creatures to be superior to the temptation to do
it when the opportunity was afforded them.
I could not consider such teachers reliable. If, by misleading me, with
regard to a rule of the institution, they could obtain an indulgence, or
relieve themselves of a burden, would they not take the advantage which
they had of me and do it. I was suspicious that they would.
There was, probably, some pride mixed with these considerations, that
rebelled against becoming a pupil of convicts when I was their mistress.
I stood looking on, or walking around, watching the movements of the
women very narrowly, till one of the other Matrons came in. Then, I went
to her with a volume of questions.