WEDNESDAY EVENING
In my cell, later Wednesday evening, October 2.
Upon arriving back here this afternoon, and before sitting down to my
usual supper of bread and water, I shave leisurely. In spite of the jar of
hot water which George has kindly brought to the cell before I am locked
in for the night, my toilet arrangements leave much to be desired. It is
true I have shaved at times under greater disadvantages. As, for instance,
in camp, when I have had to use the inside of my watch-cover for a mirror.
Here in prison I have at least a real mirror, such as it is.
My toilet completed, I make as much of a meal as I can of bread and water.
Then I take up my journal to chronicle the events of the day.
The twenty minutes of musical pandemonium come and go, the violinist as
usual being the first to begin. Perhaps he may be the fortunate possessor
of a watch. Then, also as usual, a silence follows, rendered all the more
profound by reason of the previous discord. The cell-house has settled
down for the night. Only a few muffled sounds make the stillness more
distinctly felt. Then----
Suddenly the unearthly quiet is shattered by a terrifying uproar.
It is too far away to hear at first anything with distinctness; it is all
a confused and hideous mass of shouting--a shouting first of a few, then
of more, then of many voices. I have never heard anything more
dreadful--in the full meaning of the word--full of dread. My heart is
thumping like a trip hammer, and the cold shivers run up and down my back.
I jump to the door of the cell, pressing my ear close against the cold
iron bars. Then I can distinguish a few words sounding against the
background of the confused outcry. "Stop that!" "Leave him alone!" "Damn
you, stop that!" Then some dull thuds; I even fancy that I hear something
like a groan, along with the continued confused and violent shouting.
What can it be?
While I am perfectly aware that I am not in the least likely to be harmed,
I am shivering with something close akin to a chill of actual terror. If
anyone near at hand were to give vent to a sudden yell, I feel as if I
might easily lose my self-control and shout and bang my door with the rest
of them.
The cries continue, accompanied with other noises that I cannot make out.
Then my attention is attracted by whispering down at one of the lower
windows in the outer wall of the corridor opposite my cell. It is so dark
outside that I can see nothing, not even the dim shapes of the whisperers;
but apparently there are two of them, and they are looking in and
commenting on the disturbance. Their sinister whispering is very
unpleasant. I wonder if they can see what is going on. I feel inclined to
call out and ask them, but I do not know who they are; and I do know that
such an act would be entirely against the rules and liable to provoke
severe punishment, and I am not yet ready to be sent to the jail.
The shouts die down. There are a few more vague and uncertain sounds--all
the more dreadful for being uncertain; somewhere an iron door clangs! then
stillness follows, like that of the grave.
It is useless--I can make nothing of it all; so I sit down again and try
to compose my mind to write, but the effort is not very successful.
Presently, just after the bell at the City Hall has given its eight
o'clock stroke, the Warden appears quietly at the opening of my cell.
"Something has happened," I begin breathlessly, "I don't know what it is,
but it ought to be looked into----"
I come to an abrupt stop, for I am suddenly aware of the figure of a man
standing in the shadow just behind the Warden.
"Who is that?" I ask, and he steps farther along the gallery, but not
where the light from the cell can strike him.
"Only the night officer," answers the Warden.
That is all very well; but why was the night officer lurking in the dark
behind the Warden? I decide to ask him a plain, direct question; for he
has already heard what is uppermost in my mind.
"Captain," I say, politely, "what was that noise I heard a short while
ago?"
The officer, pretending that he has not heard my question, turns to the
Warden with some perfectly irrelevant remark, and moves off, along the
gallery.
It strikes me as a curious proceeding.
"Warden," I begin again, after waiting until the man must be out of
hearing, "I heard shouting off in the corridor somewhere, not very long
ago; and I am afraid something bad has happened. Would it not be well to
find out about it?"
This the Warden promises to do, so I stifle my fears as best I can and
turn to the events of the day. I report progress; and we again debate
whether or not I had better make a change of occupation. Last evening we
decided that I should remain still another day in the basket-shop; for it
seemed as if I were getting as much out of my experience there as I could
anywhere. The Warden is inclined to agree with me that we have been
singularly fortunate so far, in the working out of our plans, and that it
might be a mistake to change. Jack Murphy, when I talked with him about it
to-day, said, "What good would it do you, to go and work in a shop where
you can't talk? You can learn everything there is to know about such a
shop by spending ten minutes there, any time." Then he added, with a
smile, "You know, Brown, we don't want to lose you here." I hope this last
is true, and I think it is; but, aside from that, his reasoning impresses
me as good.
So the Warden and I agree that I am to stay in the basket-shop at least
another day, and he leaves me to my thoughts and my fears.
I shall now put away this journal, and prepare my bed for the night. I
fear that my sleep will be haunted by echoes of those dreadful sounds.
* * * * *
It may be well to interrupt my journal here, and explain the noises of
Wednesday evening. As will be seen in Thursday's journal, I heard many of
the details the next day, but it was some time before I learned the whole
story. I have examined personally several eye-witnesses of the occurrences
and am convinced that the following statement is accurate.
There had lately been sent up from Sing Sing a young prisoner named
Lavinsky. He is physically a weak youth; pale, thin, and undersized. His
weight is about one hundred and twenty pounds; his age, twenty-one. On the
charge of being impertinent to the officer of his shop, he was sent down
to the jail, as the punishment cells are called, and kept there for five
days in the dark on bread and water. Then he was allowed to go back to
work. He did so, but was of course utterly unfit for work. The next day he
was ill and remained in his cell, which was on the fourth tier on the
south side of the north wing. This was on the opposite side of the
cell-block from where I locked in, and a considerable distance down toward
the western end of the wing; which accounts for my not hearing more
distinctly the sounds which aroused in me such feelings of terror.
The day that Lavinsky returned to work was Tuesday, my second day in
prison. On Wednesday he was afflicted with severe diarrhea all day, but
for some reason, in spite of his repeated requests, the doctor was not
summoned. The reason probably was that Lavinsky was in the state known in
prison as bughouse--that is to say, at least flighty if not temporarily
out of his mind. He himself, as I have subsequently found in talking with
him, has no very distinct recollection of the events of that Wednesday
evening. If not out of his mind, he was certainly not fully possessed of
it.
In the evening, after his failure to get the doctor, Lavinsky created
some disturbance by calling out remarks which violated the quiet of the
cell-block. I understand that the form this took was something of this
sort: "If you want to kill me, why don't you do it at once, and not
torture me to death?" He seemed to be possessed with the idea that his
life was in danger. I do not know in what condition he was when first
placed in jail, but I do know that the time he spent down in that
hellhole, five days, was quite sufficient to account for his mental
condition when he came out.
Now here was a young man, hardly more than a lad, in a sick and nervous
condition that had produced temporary derangement of mind. What course did
the System take in dealing with that suffering human being? Two keepers
opened his cell, made a rush for him, and knocked him down. One
eye-witness says that they black-jacked him, that is, rendered him
unconscious by striking him on the head with the instrument of that name.
During the brief scuffle in the cell the iron pail and the bucket were
overturned. Then, after being handcuffed, the unresisting if not
unconscious youth was flung out of his cell with such violence that, if it
had not been for a convict trusty who stood by, he would have slipped
under the rail of the gallery and fallen to the stone floor of the
corridor four stories below, and been either killed or crippled for life.
Then the two keepers, being reinforced by a third, dragged their victim
roughly downstairs, partly on his back, kicked and beat him on the way,
and carried him before the Principal Keeper, who promptly sent him down to
the jail again.
Let it be remembered that this poor fellow is a slight, undersized,
feeble specimen of humanity, whom one able-bodied man ought to have had
little trouble in handling--even if any use of force were necessary.
This scene of violence could not pass unnoticed; and the loud protests and
outcries of the prisoners whose cells were near by, as they heard and saw
the treatment accorded to their helpless comrade, were the sounds I heard
far away in my cell. One of the trusties who, having the freedom of the
corridors, was enabled to see most of the occurrence, so far forgot his
position as to venture the opinion that it was a "pretty raw deal." This
remark was overheard by an officer; and the trusty at once received the
warning that he had better keep his mouth shut and not talk about what
didn't concern him.
If it is realized that these officers have what almost amounts to the
power of life and death over the convicts, it can be understood that such
a warning was not one to be lightly disregarded.
Lavinsky, having been landed again in the jail, was kept there from
Wednesday evening until Saturday afternoon. What special care or attention
was given him during that time I am unable to state, but there is no
reason to suppose that any exception was made in his case. Like the other
denizens of the jail, he was fed only on bread and a very insufficient
quantity of water--three gills in twenty-four hours--and also experienced
the intolerable conditions of that vile place.
On Saturday afternoon, three days later, he was still down there, and
still bughouse. Then as there was a disturbing rumor among the officials
that I was planning to be sent to the jail, he was taken away about an
hour before my arrival. His cell was the very one which I occupied, after
it had been thoroughly cleaned.
He was removed from the jail to a special cell, where his case was taken
up personally by the Warden, and where the poor youth was at last put
under the care of the doctor, and received some humane and sensible
treatment. When I first saw him, some three weeks after my term had ended,
he had not become entirely rational, although he has since recovered
himself. As I have already said, he had at first no clear recollection of
the brutal treatment of which he had been the victim, nor in fact of
anything that occurred at the time. Perhaps it was all the better that
this was so.
An exceptionally intelligent convict, whose term expired soon after these
events, and who could have had no earthly object in misrepresenting the
matter, described to me after his release the episode in detail. He had
been an eye-witness of the entire occurrence, as he was standing on the
gallery where he could see everything that happened. He summed it up in
these exact words: "Mr. Osborn, it was one of the most brutal things that
I have ever seen, in all my experience in prison."
His story is fully corroborated by what I have learned, upon careful
inquiry from other men.
Doubtless some will say that the statements of convicts are not to be
believed. That touches upon one of the very worst features of the
situation. No discrimination is ever made. It is not admitted that, while
one convict may be a liar, another may be entirely truthful; that men
differ in prison exactly as in the world outside. It is held, quite as a
matter of course, that they are all liars, and an officer's word will be
taken against that of a convict or any number of convicts. The result is
that the officers feel themselves practically immune from any evil
consequences to them from their own acts of injustice or violence. What
follows from this is inevitable. Our prisons have often been the scenes of
intolerable brutality, for which it has been useless for the victims to
seek redress. They can only cower and endure in silence; or be driven into
insanity by a hopeless revolt against the System.
Not so very long ago one of the prisoners at Auburn, on a hot night in
summer, as an officer was shutting the windows in the corridor outside,
called out from his cell, "Oh, Captain, can't you let us have a little
more air?"
The officer promptly went to the tier of cells whence the voice came and
made a chalk-mark around the keyhole of one of the locks. When a man is
"round-chalked" he is not released when the rest of the prisoners are let
out of their cells, but reserved for punishment. In this case the officer
mistook the cell from which the voice had come, and round-chalked the
prisoner who was locked in next to the one who had dared to ask for more
air.
The next morning, finding that his neighbor was about to receive the
punishment intended for himself, the culprit promptly told the officer
that he was the guilty party, and if anyone was to be punished, he ought
to be. This honorable action was allowed no weight. He had some of his
hard-earned money taken away from him, three days of his commutation
cancelled, and the disc removed from his sleeve as a mark of disgrace; in
short, he was severely punished--as his innocent neighbor would have been,
had he not prevented it by taking the punishment upon himself.
The point is this: that no convict has any rights--not even the right to
be believed; not even the right to reasonably considerate treatment. He is
exposed without safeguard of any sort to whatever outrage an inconsiderate
or brutal keeper may choose to inflict upon him; and you cannot under the
present system guard against such inconsiderate and brutal treatment.
I should not like to be understood as asserting that all keepers are
brutal, or even a majority of them. I hope and believe that by far the
greater number of the officers serving in our prisons are naturally
honorable and kindly men, but so were the slave-owners before the Civil
War. And just as it was perfectly fair to judge of the right and wrong of
slavery not by any question of the fair treatment of the majority of
slaves, but by the hideous possibilities which frequently became no less
hideous facts, so we must recognize, in dealing with our Prison System,
that many really well-meaning men will operate a system in which the
brutality of an officer goes unpunished, often in a brutal manner.
The reason of this is not far to seek--a reason which also obtained in the
slave system. The most common and powerful impulse that drives an
ordinary, well-meaning man to brutality is fear. Raise the cry of "Fire"
in a crowded place, and many an excellent person will discard in the
frantic moment every vestige of civilization. The elemental brute will
emerge, and he will trample down women and children, will perform almost
any crime in the calendar in his mad rush for safety. The truth of this
has been demonstrated many times.
In prison, where each officer believes that his life is in constant
danger, the keeper tends to become callous, the sense of that danger
blunts his higher qualities. He comes to regard with mingled contempt and
fear those dumb, gray creatures over whom he has such irresponsible
power--creatures who can at any moment rise in revolt and give him the
death blow. And as they undoubtedly possess that power, he is always
fearful that they may use it, for are they not dangerous "criminals"? And
undoubtedly there is basis for his fear, for some of those men are
dangerous, rendered more so by the nerve-racking System.
I can conceive no more terribly disintegrating moral experience than that
of being a keeper over convicts. However much I pity the prisoners, I
think that spiritually their position is far preferable to that of their
guards. These latter are placed in an impossible position; for they are
not to blame for the System under which their finer qualities have so few
chances of being exercised.
But I have been betrayed into rather more of a discussion than I intended,
a discussion out of place in this chronicle of facts. I have inserted so
much by way of explanation both of what I have narrated in the foregoing
chapter and of what I shall have to tell in those that are to come.
Since the above was written I have run across a passage in a book on
English prisons which confirms so strikingly one of the statements just
expressed that room must be made for it. "The real atmosphere of
Dartmoor," says the author, Mr. Albert Paterson, writing of Dartmoor
Prison, "so far as the men responsible for its well-being and discipline
are concerned, is that of a handful of whites on the American frontier
among ten times their number of Apache Indians. 'We stand on a volcano,'
an officer said to the writer in a matter-of-fact tone. 'If our convicts
here had opportunity to combine and could trust one another, the place
would be wrecked in an hour.'"
Aside from the author's ridiculously belated simile of the American
frontier, we have here an accurate and forcible statement of the prison
keeper's constant nervous apprehension of danger and the necessity of
being prepared at any moment to sell his life as dearly as possible. And,
of course, this feeling of the keeper increases his severity and the
severity increases the danger, and so we have the vicious circle complete.
I am not now in any way disputing the necessity of a keeper being
constantly on his guard, I am not saying whether this view of things is
right or wrong, and when I use the word fear I do not mean cowardice--a
very different thing, for a brave man can feel fear. I am simply trying to
point out that in prison, as elsewhere, when men are dominated by fear,
brutality is the inevitable result.