Part 3

The air is cold, crisp, exhilarating, after the oppressive night. The whole prison is marching line after line to a well-shaped opening, wherein the dirty water and excreta are dumped in succession by the men, while an old convict belabors its interior with a long pole to prevent the opening being clogged. The clear morning air cannot blow away the overpowering stench of a thousand dirty buckets, intensified by the acrid smell of chloride of lime which is thrown into the hastily washed pails.

III

The resting day without reading or occupation or exercise of any sort is agonizing; intolerable in the extreme.

From four o'clock on Saturday afternoon until Monday morning at eight, except for the short freedom for meals, we are locked up in our cells. There is no exercise, no work, for almost forty hours. Most of the cases of insanity in prison are due to this enforced inaction, and the accumulation of foul air in the cells. Even the keepers who have to inspect the top tiers run swiftly along the galleries with their noses closed tight.

Hoping to break up this dreadful monotony, I attend the Catholic mass in the morning and the Protestant service in the afternoon. The one delightful and exquisite balm to our jaded minds is the music of the organs, which accompanies the singing of hymns by convicts.

The chapel on the second floor is crowded with prisoners; and on one side there are a few women, with large poke bonnets covering their faces to prevent their flirting with the men.

A convict informs me that I would have been punished "against the wall" if I had been caught going to the two services. At the slightest infraction of the rules, I learn, the offender is dragged towards the main prison and kept standing, facing the wall, sometimes all day without food or water--and there is no way of finding out what and how many rules there are.

On week days the warden stops to inquire and punishes according to the state of his mind or his stomach, or perhaps the weather.

The dinner consists of a soup of beans, carrots, lentils or potatoes; meat with vegetables, or cornbeef and cabbage; and "bootleg." For supper there is unsweetened tea, bologna sausage or red gelatine with bread.

The anticipation of another night like the last one fills my mind with uneasiness and dread and fright. The memory of it is burned forever into my consciousness. But fortunately it was not so full of terror. It was bad; but no other night ever could be as horrible as the first night I spent in that place.

IV

In the morning we are ordered into the new section of the prison. The old bums go to the workhouse, and we await our turn to be placed in the shops, according to our sentences and our work or profession. The distribution of labor among us is strange and mysterious. A butcher, for instance, is sent to work in the stone quarry, a smuggler into the kitchen gang, a lawyer in the "skin gang," a "sissy" into the coal gang, a waiter into the garden; a burglar is sent to make socks, and I am sent into the tailor shop.

In this simple distribution of labor we shall learn many things which will be highly useful and remunerative when we go out into the world again.

I am finally alone in my new cell, which is spacious, clean, airy. I can walk seven or eight paces up and down, like an animal in a cage.

The steel beds are chained to the walls; instead of the filthy canvas, a steel wire is stretched across the frame, but there is no mattress or sheets as there were in the Tombs. There is also a covered bucket in the lower corner, and a tin cup. The bars are strong, but nevertheless plenty of air and light come in from the large windows opposite our cells. Two small hand towels and a piece of scrubbing soap are added to our simple belongings.

The number of my cell is 23, the last one in our row, and on the second tier, which contains men who work in the tailor shop. The shops stand together, in a separate building between the prison and the river, on the Brooklyn side. The shops where they make brushes, shoes, beds, and the tailor and repair shops, are under one roof, and under the control of a contractor. In the shops all kinds of work are performed: repairing, cutting and making clothes for outgoing prisoners; there are machines turning out underwear and socks; mattresses are made, stuffed and sewn up. At one end of the large room a keeper sits on a platform, while another surveys it from the other end.

Although the prisoners are forbidden to talk, nevertheless they communicate as freely as if the rule did not exist. When I attempted to ask my neighbour a question, he hushed me up with a hissing noise--but he answered my question. His lips did not move, but I could hear him talk in a faint murmur which would have been inaudible ten paces away.

It is very hard at first to follow this new method of carrying on conversation, as in everyday life one is used to watching a man's eyes and lips while listening to his voice. But after a while the hearing becomes used to it and is trained to listen and catch these slightest sounds, which escape the untrained ear of the keeper.

The convicts never glance into the speaker's face or at his lips; they look straight ahead and talk in the manner of ventriloquists, but instead of using a loud and clear tone they whisper in a low murmur. Men who have passed years in jail can always be recognized by their monotonous, whispering manner and their almost expressionless faces. This form of speech is necessary in order to avoid punishment.

Under the pretext of helping me, a young convict comes over to my side of the shop. He shows me the intricate workings of the machine which turns out the uncut cloth for the prisoners. Later it is cut and fashioned into prison underwear.

On top of the machine the spools feed the thread incessantly. Care has to be taken not to use "sabotage" methods, as punishment is meted out unmercifully by the contractor, who seems to have as much power over us as the warden.

My other companion is a young Russian sailor, healthy looking, fair and quite peaceful when let alone. He warns me that my anxious instructor is a "stool pigeon," who proves his status by giving me very detailed instructions as to how to manage to escape successfully.

I ask why he has not put his own methods into practice; and he gives as an excuse that he is going to be released in a few days.

Then he furnishes me with paper, pencil, and soap; and he even offers to send out letters for me. When I answer that I have no letters to write he recites an endless list of rules, and tells me how to evade them, and how to keep the friendship of the keepers.

He reveals to my astonished ears the underground system of communication with the outer world. With money and friends a convict can get all the contraband he desires: dope, newspapers, matches, letters--coming in and going out--whiskey, writing paper and pens, stamps, delicacies, tobacco. My mentor has passed a year in the penitentiary for the offense of "repeating," or of voting many times on election day. The gang leader who paid him for his work is looking out for him from his Brooklyn haunts.

Facing us there is a long table at which old convicts are sitting, without making a pretence at working. As long as they keep quiet nobody notices them. Some of them look over seventy years old; sad-faced, pallid, curved, almost venerable in their old age. They are mostly old sneak thieves and pickpockets, the wrecks and failures of their profession. They sit like graven images, silently, patiently, hour after hour, year in and year out, until some fine day one of them will be found rigid in his cell, and then four striped convicts and a keeper acting as a pallbearer will carry him away in a large black coffin to the morgue.

To-day for the first time since my incarceration I beheld the reflection of my face in a mirror. The sight was humiliating and shocking in the extreme. My keen sense of caricature lowered my well fed conceit half way down the ladder of vanity.

Then I consoled myself by thinking of all the good-looking, impressive, well-groomed men friends, enemies and acquaintances of mine; and I tried to imagine them with clipped hair, togged out in ill-fitting, patched, striped garments and cap; collarless and tieless; with a week's growth of beard on their cheeks--and the comparison made me laugh and cheered me up considerably.

The Deputy Warden comes in on his daily visit. His approach has been telegraphed in some mysterious manner and the whole shop takes on a lively bustling appearance. Second in rank as an officer of the penitentiary, the "Dep," a tall, good-looking man, strides into the room like a Prussian officer. He is not disliked by the convicts, as he seems just in his dealings with them.

Going back from work through the yards, a fat German convict who had been working in the brush shops, broke away from the line and, before he could be stopped, jumped into the river in an attempt to drown himself. A few shots were fired. A negro and two white convicts jumped in after him, and with the help of a keeper who patrols the island in a row boat, they fished him out. They laid him flat on the ground and worked to revive him.

His fat belly stuck out like a barrel, his face was livid, his lips purple. Finally he opened his eyes, and sputtered and murmured: "Let me die! Let me die!" "Shut up, you s----!" yelled an angry keeper, and he was dragged feet first to the hospital.

V

My skin has been itching for two days, and I attribute it to the coarse underwear and ill-fitting clothes. In my cell after the day's work I make a careful inspection and am quite frightened to find my whole body covered with red spots. Evidently I have caught some skin disease from those tattered old rags which have been worn by generations of unclean and diseased convicts. The thought of having to pass a year in a prison hospital is anything but cheerful.

I turn my thoughts to other things by trying to read a novel from the prison library. A slip had been left in the cell to be filled out with the name of any book that I might desire to read. In my innocence I put down "Shakespeare's plays or the Bible." A novel entitled "Truthful Jane" was left in their stead.

But I cannot read. And so I start instead to inspect my surroundings. The new cells compare very favorably with the cells of the old prison, which are really holes in the wall and reeking with the mysterious unwholesome smell of rat holes and graveyards.

At one end of the cell opposite the door are two small openings for ventilation; one at the top on the right hand side and the other at the bottom on the left. In trying to find out the depth and direction of the holes I plunge my arm into the opening, and my hand feels a square object. It is a small bible! I am delighted by the discovery. On the fly leaf there is some handwriting in pencil in a careful, intelligent hand: "To my successor: May this book while away your long and weary hours and make you forget your troubles and worries as it did to me. Don't forget to replace the book where you found it when you leave."

A tier man comes to the cells with a light for those who care to smoke. He is a pleasant-faced individual, quite polite and ready to do any small services within his limited powers. I find out that he has been condemned to a year for keeping back mail in the post office. The tier man who had made such a disagreeable impression on me that first night in the old prison, is a church thief.

My battered and rusty cup has been filled up with water. I am afraid to drink from it, as it might have been used by some consumptive or syphilitic convict. Necessity being a great inventor, I press some paper to the rim of the cup to prevent my lips from touching it.

As I walk up and down the cell I am always unconsciously trying to put my cold hands in my trousers pockets, only to discover over and over again that there are no pockets there, only one on the inside of the coat.

The clipping of my hair so close to the skin at the height of the cold season has brought a cold in the head. I have no handkerchief, and shall have to wait a whole month until they allow me to write to have a few sent by mail.

These apparent trifles, and all the nagging, idiotic rules, invented by senile commissions and wardens to torment the helpless captives of society, are always magnified by men brooding in the solitude of cells. But I have made up my mind not to permit anything to ruffle my equanimity, so I pick up some letters from friends and read and reread their cheering contents. If people who write to their unfortunate friends in prison only guessed how they yearned to receive those familiar scrawls, and how they are treasured and memorized, they would write oftener.

A night keeper walks by like a shadow, flashing a bull's eye lamp into the cells to catch us in any infringements of the rules.

There is only one rule tacked up on the walls, but the other 999 we have to guess or learn from fellow convicts. The list of rules which we have to find out at our own expense or from wiser convicts would fill up a small volume.

As there are no written rules, and nobody informs us of all the unwritten rules on our entrance here, as is done in Sing Sing, the thought comes to my mind that this apparent forgetfulness is really meant to give the warden and the keepers an unchallenged power of persecution over suspected and unruly convicts.

Most of the punishments inflicted by the warden are for infractions of rules which the newcomers are in entire ignorance of, and these infractions occur no matter how obedient and willing the new arrivals may be to keep within bounds of the prison laws. The foreigners, Italians, Slavs and Teutons, all those who do not know English and who cannot learn the rules from their fellow prisoners, are the greatest sufferers from this carelessness, whether it is intentional or otherwise.

VI

After breakfast I was watching from my cell some sparrows that had nested inside the prison walls, high up on top of the large windows facing the tiers. I dropped some bread crumbs on the floor of the gallery, and some on my cell floor, to induce the little birds to come in.

At first they were afraid to trust themselves inside the bars of my cell; but they kept fluttering about nervously outside, keeping up an incessant twitter and chatter that sounded quite musical to my ears.

Finally they grew bolder, and recklessly they flew into my cell, first peeping at me, with bended heads as if they would ask: "Are we really safe here from capture or treachery of any kind?" And hastily picking up the crumbs, they flew out to inform their companions of the god-send of fat bread crumbs in a large, barred room, instead of the poor hunting in the prison courtyard.

Then they came back fearlessly, and thanked me with quick little nods of their pretty heads, and sidelong trusting looks from their black beads of eyes; with low, graceful courtesies and a cheerful piping song.

And then one morning a keeper who had been attracted by the noise, shooed the birds away and swore in a gruff voice, warning me that it was against the rules to throw crumbs on the floor, as well as to keep bread in my pockets or in my cell.

Once a week the prisoners are privileged to wait in line to see the warden, to protest against any injustice, to recount a grievance, or to ask a favor.

Like a dozen or more I stood waiting for the quick-lunch justice of the Czar of the penitentiary. After a while he appeared, accompanied by a tall young secretary who jotted down our names and the details of the business on hand. Walking slowly, with bent shoulders, hands behind his back, the warden seemed to be about seventy-five years old. His face was furrowed with irregular, meaningless wrinkles, and he had small shifty eyes, with white hair and a white beard. He had a habit of staring at the convict who was speaking to him, and suddenly bending one ear toward the speaker as if he were partially deaf.

The warden's answers came quickly, in the jerky, high pitched voice of the Sistine Chapel cantors, and often breaking under the strain of anger. A convict suffering from locomotor ataxia, leaning on a walking stick, hanging on to a companion, begged for permission to get a pair of crutches ... his mother would get them for him.

"What for?" queried the warden, innocently.

"Because I can't walk with this stick," answered the convict.

"Then why don't you get a cab!" said the warden. And he snickered and then coarsely guffawed.

Again he furiously upbraided another petitioner.

"Where do you think you are? At the Waldorf-Astoria? Next thing they'll be asking me to get them flowers, candy and theatre tickets. I am here to see that you are punished. See?"

After having thus vented his spleen he uttered some alleged witticism at the expense of the helpless convict, and showed a great appreciation of his own humor, uncovering a row of yellow, brown, half-decayed teeth in a sneering grin most unpleasant to behold.

My turn came, and I asked for an extra blanket, as the cold was intense and the metal springs of the bed offered no protection against it. This it seemed was also against the rules. When I suggested that as he was the warden he could make and unmake the rules, he did not answer, but asked irrelevantly how I liked his hotel?

I answered that it was preferable to the castle of San Juan de Ulloa in Vera Cruz.

He looked puzzled, then he smiled as if he saw the point.

"We'll take care of you," he repeated twice, waving a thin, wrinkled, old hand.

VII

At lunch time the sick convicts ask their keepers for permission to see the doctor. They are kept waiting in line near the head keeper's desk. The head keeper is a person of great power in the prison, only third in importance of rank, but as he comes in daily contact with the convicts, his good or ill will is felt more keenly than the warden's. The discipline of the prison, the distribution of the mails, of the clothes, underwear, shoes, all the details of management, are carried on through him.

As we were waiting for the doctor, the head keeper came along to look us over. He had a big brown face, and a large mustache covered his mouth; two piercing gray eyes gave the impression of an unlimited reserve of pent-up bile, anger and contempt, which at times flowed in a torrent of choice and rare blasphemies.

"Damn you, wop! I'll cure you! You s----!" he shouted, and with both hands he clutched the neck of an Italian, and shook him as savagely as a terrier shakes a rat. His face red and with sickness in his eyes, the unfortunate man tried to explain that he had a sore throat and a fever; but without success. He only aroused another fit of anger.

"You're a faker, that's what you are! You're all fakers, every one of you!" he yelled at us, and finished up by spitting on the floor. The next moment he punished a convict for doing the selfsame thing.

A young doctor hardly out of his teens entered the old prison, escorted by a convict carrying a tray filled with medicine bottles.

Sick prisoners are cured in the simple, old-fashioned way of having mixtures administered to them, the medicine bottles being labeled according to the contents, and the most prevalent ailments, which do not require the remanding of the sick man to the hospital. Cough mixture seemed to be quite popular, fever mixture less so, then followed constipation and diarrhoea mixture, toothache mixture, court-plaster, some pills, and various ingredients for venereal diseases, some cotton gauze, and the indispensable large bottles containing salts and codliver oil.

The visit did not take long. Those who had come twice on the line without having been found sick were punished "against the wall."

After a short inspection the doctor ordered me to the hospital, without allaying my fears by any diagnosis or declaration of a disease, but cautioned me to take a hot bath every day, and to rub the skin with sulphur ointment.

THE HOSPITAL

The hospital is situated on top of the chapel, over the main entrance and hall of the prison.

Two spacious rooms are dedicated to that purpose. The smaller one with a bathroom faces the Brooklyn side and overlooks the mess hall, the keepers' dining room and kitchen, and is usually kept apart for the consumptives. The larger room, also with a bathroom, contains a dozen beds, a closet for underwear and clothes, another for the crockery, two tables, two medicine closets, chairs, and some small tables for patients near each bed.

Six windows face towards East 55th Street on the Manhattan side. Two higher windows look over the roof of the prison, across the Queensboro bridge. The hardwood flooring, the small hospital cots, with mattresses, white pillows and spreads, all spotlessly clean, made the place look quite cheerful and sunny. Every opening was heavily barred. A spacious, clean and airy prison, but still a prison, with a tantalizing outlook towards New York, which seemed so near that one could discern people on the other side of the river.

I

There are five sick men, plus three consumptives, in the two rooms; and our large room looks deserted.

The patients wear a cheap, white shirt, instead of the striped one, and slippers instead of shoes.

A bald-headed man with small, kindly gray eyes and a close-cropped mustache, keeps perfect discipline without raising his voice, using profane language, or bullying the patients. In character, breeding, morals, education, he is superior to the warden and to most of the keepers. His name is Charles Noonan.

Between the hours of eight o'clock in the morning and four in the afternoon a uniformed hospital orderly attends to the distribution of medicine, takes temperatures, and reports to the doctor. At night another orderly takes his place.

The cleanliness of the two hospitals, the distribution of bedding, laundry and food, is in the hands of a convict, usually a patient; all the unpleasant tasks and irksome duties which the orderly is too proud or too lazy to perform the trusty is obliged to do.

Servant and boss, scullion and diplomat, doctor's help and sick man, waiter and majordomo, the convict orderly is the last buffer in the line of authority, the expiatory goat of the penitentiary hospital, a suffering soul in a modern purgatory.

When a criticism drops from the lips of the supreme Prison Commissioner, the Warden passes it along to the "Dep," who calls down the hospital keeper, who in his turn upbraids the orderly, who in the end roasts the trusty.

The present trusty is an old man suffering from an eczema on his fat legs. Tall, bloated, gray, pale, he is despised by the convicts for his avariciousness, his gluttony, his arrogant attitude. They suspect him of being a stool pigeon, and they revenge themselves by making his life miserable through a series of cruel persecutions.

Another trusty who sleeps in a cell downstairs, and eats in the keeper's kitchen, is a famous pickpocket.

Like all or nearly all the old timers, Ed, as he is called, never gossips about his private affairs; he may joke and talk about other prisoners, but never does he say a word about his life outside. He is an old offender, but obedient, useful and energetic; and he is always welcomed back as a trusty or a tier man.

Once inadvertently I asked him: "What do you do outside for a living, Ed?" His laconic answer was, "Oh, everybody!"

But one evening several weeks later, when we had become quite chummy, at the psychological moment when even the most silent and sullen crooks will sometimes confess and bare their hearts, he unfolded his life, his methods, his cynicism and his mental make-up.

It was an amazing story, interspersed with slang, picturesque phrases, and a callous, sordid philosophy. Later, the testimony of other thieves proved that his story was true.