At seven o'clock, P. M., came the marching in to supper, and the locking
up of all the prisoners.
I looked to see, as they filed past me, one by one, if they carried
marks of their crimes upon their faces. I saw nothing unusual in the
mass; occasionally an individual countenance betrayed the vicious habits
which had brought the woman there. If I had not known that they were
convicts, I should never have suspected them to be different from the
ordinary poor people who are constantly passing along the streets.
About sixty of the women in the Penitentiary were employed in the shop
upon contract vests, pantaloons, coats, and shirts. There were about
fifty employed upon sewing-machines. The rest cut, basted, and finished
the work.
There were from four to ten in the wash-room. These were all lodged in
my domain, with the exception of two or three who slept in the hospital.
When they left their work, at night, they were placed in file, in the
order of their cells, and marched into the prison past the ration door,
where their meals were handed out to them, through a slide, from the
kitchen.
Their supper was a "skillet pan" of mush, or a slice of bread, and a
quart of rye coffee, which was taken to their cells to be eaten after
they were locked in their rooms--or stone dens, I called them in my
indignation. The sight of those little, cramped stone cells recalled to
my memory the pictures of dungeons, and imprisonments, and tortures
which I had looked at in my childhood till my heart was racked with
agony at the cruelties which they portrayed.
It was no paper picture that I was looking upon, but a stern reality;
and my shrinking spirit asked again and again, as I saw those poor
creatures marched in, and immured for the night,--Why did your folly
prompt you to undertake such work?
Never shall I forget the hissing creak of the sliding bar as it closed
them in; or the click of the lock as I turned the key in it, for the
first time, upon those poor wretches. Long before I got through with the
thirty-six locks, it fell to my share to bolt, my fingers were bruised,
and my arm ached; but not so much as my heart.
I looked in upon the poor things, one by one, as I locked them in. An
agony of pity worked itself into my soul, and oppressed me almost to
suffocation.
I said to myself--Is this a woman's work? May be. If it must be done, it
should be done tenderly. Great God, for Christ's sake, pity them in
their cold, damp, narrow cells, and make their straw pallets couches of
rest! I prayed mentally as I left the grated doors.
I had thought this to be missionary ground. I might teach some of them
the way to Eternal Life, and the way to reformation. Alas! I found
little chance with those who went to the shop and wash-room. They rose
at sunrise, and worked till sunset. No one was allowed to hold
communication with them, but their own Overseer, about their work.
Neither were they allowed to talk in their cells at night, and they
would have been too tired if they had been given the liberty to do so.
The taskmaster had been over them all day to drive them, pitilessly, to
fulfill their sentence of so many months hard labor in the Penitentiary.
I turned away, sadly, from that disappointed hope; but I saw the
opportunity still before me to teach the nine, whom I had under my
immediate care, to govern their tempers, and their passions, and to lead
a new life. It was teaching only that could effect it. They were
ignorant of the way to do it.
My bonnet and shawl had lain all day upon the table that was placed for
my use in the kitchen. The woman, who was to wait upon me in my room,
had asked if she should take them up. I had said, no, thinking I might
find time to go with her; but that opportunity did not offer.
After the women were locked up, the Receiving Matron said to her, "Take
those things to our room! We will go up now," she said to me.
I started back as she led me to the stone stairs of the prison, and
began to ascend them.
"Where are we going?" I asked in surprise.
"Our room is up here," she replied quietly.
"In the prison! are we to sleep in the prison?"
"Yes."
She made no further comment. It was too late in the day to recede or
demur. I followed her up, up, up, over five stone flights, along a stone
walk to the farther end of the building, through a grated door, into a
room made up of a half dozen cells with a dormer window in the roof.
Some straw had been thrown down upon the stone floor, and an old woolen
carpet laid over it. The walls were of stone like the cells, and
whitewashed like them. There were some wooden chairs, an old bureau, two
sinks, and two single beds, arranged on opposite sides of the room. In
one corner was a double wardrobe, apparently to be shared in common by
both Matrons.
I had not given my own accommodations a thought in taking my place in
the prison. In all institutions of the kind which I had ever been in,
each Matron had a nice bed-room to herself, in a comfortable part of the
house, and most of them comfortable sitting-rooms attached. It never
occurred to me that a female officer, in any public institution, could
be requested to occupy such a room. However I could bring myself to it
for the sake of carrying out the purpose that induced me to take the
place.
I stood a moment, and looked all round the room. I then examined the
bed. It was clean, and looked comfortable.
"Is this all the room, and are these all the comforts we are to have?" I
asked of the Receiving Matron.
"You see all," she replied. "If we had more, we should have no time to
enjoy them."
"Rather a sorry prospect if one is to take herself into consideration at
all. Is there a bath-room that we can use? To take a bath would be
really refreshing, and help me to sleep to-night, I am so tired."
"I am tired all of the time, and there is no chance to rest. We must
rise at four in the morning, and be on the spring every moment till
eight in the evening; you will be on duty till nine, because you receive
the keys at that hour."
"Every day?"
"Every day!"
"There is usually a Relief Matron in such institutions, so that the
other Matrons can have rest."
"There used to be one here; but, instead of that, there is an Assistant
Matron in the shop."
"Then the Shop Matron has all of the relief, and the others none. Why is
that?"
"They want to get as much work done in the shop as possible, to support
the institution, the Master says. When I get tired, and feel like
grumbling, I tell them it is money taken out of our flesh and blood to
make the institution rich."
"It is probably the way the Master takes to recommend himself to the
Board of Directors. They like him for his thrift in managing."
"I don't know where the money goes; but I know we are worked to death. I
am dying by inches."
"Why must I be up an hour later than the rest to receive the keys?"
"Because you have them in charge during the night, those that stay in
the prison. If you are out, I take them."
"Out! What time have I to go out?"
"Three evenings in the week, after the prisoners are locked up, if you
wish."
"What time have I then?"
"You can be gone till four o'clock in the morning, if you like."
"When shall I sleep?"
"You can make your own arrangements for that. Perhaps on the way, if you
take a horse car."
"I am afraid to go out evenings alone; but in that relief I can get a
bath."
"I forgot your question about the bath-room. There is none, that I know
of, for the officers' use. There is one in the house for the Master's
family. I don't know whether the Matrons that lodge there are allowed to
use it."
"Then some of the Matrons are lodged comfortably in the house. Why is
that distinction made?"
"I don't know. There are bathing-tubs, for the prisoners, in my
wash-house. I never use them; but if you wish to, you can. They are
scrubbed out clean."
"I must be up from four A. M., 'till nine P. M. That makes seventeen
hours of labor."
"Sometimes you will be required to sit up one, two, or three hours
later."
"Why?"
"The Master's wife or daughters may have company, and keep the women
up-stairs. We have to sit up and wait for them to come in, so as to lock
them up."
"And be up all the same at four next morning?"
"Yes."
"Do the Master's wife and daughters get up at four the next morning,
after sitting up so late, and go to work?"
"Of course not."
"If the wife is Head Matron, has she not her duties to do in the morning
as well as we? And ought she not to see that the other officers are not
worked like that? If she possesses the common feelings of humanity, she
would provide some relief, if it were in her power."
"There is not much humanity in exercise here. We are all too hard worked
to think of any one but ourselves."
"I should think that might be your case."
"I often tell them it is as much a House of Correction for the officers
as the prisoners."
"Ten hours of labor is now considered a good day's work. To drag the
convicts from sunrise to sunset only exhausts them. They do not get
through with as much work as they would do in ten hours, and the
intervening time given to rest."
"That has been an established rule here for fifty years or more."
"It is certainly a very antiquated idea, all of a half century old. I
recollect hearing my grandfather say that people worked that way when he
was a boy. But people's ideas have changed since that time, and the
people of this generation consider such demands of labor very
unreasonable."
"The only changes here have been to make things harder. They will put
upon you all they can make you do."
If she had been telling the truth that was a plain, but correct
statement of facts.
"How long has the present Master had charge here?"
"Forty-five or fifty years."
"It is no wonder that his heart has become like the nether millstone. No
man ought to remain in such a place such a length of time. The best
human heart that ever beat would become ossified, if it ever entertained
human feelings, if compelled to exercise such continued tyrannous
exactions."
"I don't know whether he ever had human feelings--he does not exercise
much humanity, as I regard it, now."
"But he does not make the laws for the regulation of the institution.
There must be State laws and a Board of Overseers to which he is
accountable. There must be printed regulations for the management of
this prison. I will get them from the Deputy to-morrow."
"If you can, you will accomplish more than the rest of us have been able
to do."
"I can try."
"You can try, and I hope you will succeed. The rest of us have been told
that there were no printed rules that would do us any good. It may be a
benefit to the rest of us if you succeed."
I lay down upon my bed. Sleep was out of the question. The effluvia of a
hundred human bodies came up through our open door, rank with nauseous
odor. I got up and opened our one window to its utmost extent, first
asking my room-mate if it would be disagreeable to her to have it left
so.
Fatigue even would not overcome the noise of the rattling buckets, the
snoring, coughing, and groaning of the tired women. If I closed my eyes,
my head was in confusion. I was going up, up, up over the stone steps,
and looking over the rails down the dizzy height, to the stone floor
below.
I lay thinking over my prison prospects. Seventeen hours of regular
labor, to which might be added occasionally, one, two, or three more.
The other seven, with the noise of that prison ringing in my ears, and
the care of it, if accident or sickness intervene. How long can any
constitution bear such a strain? Surely the Board of Directors cannot
understand how things are managed here. They cannot understand the
amount of work which is demanded by the Master of his female Prison
Matron. One other was no more favored, by her own account.