Part 6

There is a convict here afflicted with suicidal mania. Those in the hospital who are not insane have been told to watch him and prevent him from harming himself. He is the same man who tried to drown himself by jumping into the river. We have to keep the medicine closet locked and the bread knife hidden.

One night he waited until everybody was asleep, then, sneaking into the bathroom, he took a bottle of medicine which had been left standing on top of the ice box, and gulped a great quantity before the bottle was torn from his lips. He was quite sick for two days. Luckily the bottle only contained "Cascara Sagrada," a powerful cathartic.

Another time he tried even to push the razor into his throat while a convict barber was shaving him. And yet, every time the barred door is locked or unlocked, he seems to be in mortal fear that somebody is coming to shoot him.

The other evening he sat near me while I was reading and suddenly he leaned over and, with quivering nostrils and in a hoarse terrified whisper, asked me, in German, if I was his friend.

"Certainly," I answered. "What can I do for you?"

"They are going to shoot me to-night!" he said. "Get me the bread knife so that I can cut my throat, or some poison to kill myself."

I tried to pacify him, but he was in a state of abject terror. So, thinking it best to do so, I offered him what he imagined to be poison. He drank it quickly and with great relish, waiting impatiently, with gleaming eyes and a sickly, malicious grin, for the death that was to come. But death did not come; the medicine was only a strong dose of salts. This second cathartic potion cured him effectively of his suicidal mania, for thus he came finally to the conclusion that all the alleged poisons in the hospital were only snares and delusions.

After a few months two men with papers came over from the asylum of Matteawan and plied him with questions, his answers to which one of the men wrote down. The poor German cobbler was scared stiff, answering the queries as if his life depended on his replies.

Among other things, he was asked why he had jumped into the river.

"To learn shwimming," was his quick retort.

While we were getting him ready to be taken to the insane asylum he was blubbering and sputtering, frightened and inarticulate; and the tears streamed down his round, fat, childish face.

XIV

The hospital has become a sort of observatory for the insane. But all the convicts who show signs of insanity are not brought up to the hospital.

Confinement in the cells without work or exercise from Saturday afternoon to Monday morning, and the punishment in the "cooler," are responsible for most of the cases of insanity.

When the supposedly insane convicts do not try to commit suicide, or do not keep the prison section awake at night by their yells, they are usually kept in solitary confinement in a cell, sometimes for weeks at a time, until at last they are visited by doctors and declared insane.

An Italian peddler who claimed to have been sentenced unjustly for buying stolen copper wire, was found within a few weeks after his arrival at the island with two tin cups in his cell. One cup had been left behind by a released convict, the other belonged to him. Although he could not have known of the infraction of the rules, he was dragged to the wall by a keeper. When the warden came to dispense "justice," he heard the keeper's story and then asked the prisoner to explain. The man tried to explain in his broken English that he had found the cup in his cell; but the warden cut the gordian knot impatiently by saying: "None of your damned excuses! Two days in the cooler!"

The result can be imagined. The unfortunate peddler, frantic already from the idea of having been unjustly sentenced, and worried sick over the fate of his helpless wife and children, could not stand this other bolt from the sky; this punishment for something he did not understand, in the form of terrible torture in a pitch dark cell, without food or water, for an infraction of unknown rules; and he broke down completely under the strain. When he came out of the "cooler" he was, as the keeper declared, "completely bug-house."

For some time we were kept busy watching the peddler; even his shoes had to be taken from under his bed as he tried to knock the heels into his skull.

Much to my dismay, I was put to sleep near his bed. Half a dozen times he tried to strangle himself, and on the morning of his release, while I was asleep with my back to him, he jumped on my bed like a cat, and with his two powerful hands tried to choke me to death. Convicts came to my rescue; and when he was asked the reason for his attempt on my life, he calmly declared that it was because I had signed the warrant for his death at nine o'clock in the morning.

When we took him downstairs later, he refused to change his striped suit for his street clothes, and shouted that he had made up his mind to die in the "cooler" at nine o'clock. His wife had to be brought over from the 54th Street side, and she induced him to dress and go home.

A religious maniac was put under our care a week before his release. His particular delusion was that he was preaching in the desert. When a keeper approached to silence him, he lifted his right arm and, with eyes popping out of their sockets and a terrified look on his face, he shouted in a stentorian voice: "Vade retro satanas!" ("Get thee behind me, Satan!") "I say, for it is written, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve!"

In his sane moments he was silent and morose; and when told about his strange behaviour, he answered that he knew by the sudden rising of heat to his head when a fit was coming.

His religious sermons, which kept us awake several hours in the night, were interrupted by excursions under beds and tables, while he barked like a dog at any one who tried to stop him. He was then impersonating the champion bulldog, Rodney Stone.

Another addition to our collection of the insane was a giant negro; but fortunately the expression of his derangement was only before meals, when he knelt at the table, saying grace, but refusing all food.

Even Matteawan sent us a man who was supposed to be cured. He was a muscular, low-browed German sailor who spoke bad, ungrammatical German and worse English. An accident to his leg brought him upstairs, and when the doctor undressed him we saw that his whole body was covered with blue and red tattoos, primitive and childish drawings of nude figures, which reminded me of some of Matisse's masterpieces.

He asked us every few hours in a terrified whisper if we did not see the furniture and the walls rock as if in an earthquake. At night he would point a long finger to the ceiling, where he claimed to see a small opening out of which a keeper thrust his head, abusing him with vile names, and shouting that in a short time he would be electrocuted.

Otherwise he was inoffensive; and sometimes he would amuse us by relating his adventures with the women in Matteawan.

Like most insane men, he slept very little, sitting up in his bed all night, holding two crutches tightly clutched, on the alert for the keeper who was going to electrocute him.

But an unwise threat to brain Richard, the assistant, deprived him of the necessary but dangerous crutches.

XV

Another patient was sent up by the doctor. He seemed so sick and weak it appeared a wonder that he could still walk. He was a poor Jew, suffering from stomach trouble. Emaciated, yellow, with an expression of intense suffering on his face, which was deeply furrowed by wrinkles, with a beard a week old, and his long, pointed nose, he looked like a sick vulture.

When he begged for special food, the orderly sarcastically offered him the choice between filet mignon with potatoes, or cutlets with French peas. The doctor, however, realized that unless he was put on a special diet, the man would die on his hands.

He had been sentenced to two months in the penitentiary for stealing two packages of cigarettes, and the judge did not realize that it was his death sentence. The tenacity of the man in clinging to life was amazing; it exemplified anew the remarkable vitality of his race.

He was always disobeying the doctor's orders. He tried to get up from his bed one afternoon, but he fell, and the bed pan, with all its contents, emptied over him and all over the floor. I ran to assist him, but--I was never well in prison--the stench was so overpowering that I became sick and hesitated for a moment, and had to turn away. Two convicts who had joined me saw my sickly face and smilingly said: "Never mind, boss; you go to the window to get some fresh air. We'll clean up the mess for you."

Everybody wondered how the poor man had managed to keep a flicker of life in a body which was mere bone and skin.

One night in my sleep I imagined that I had heard him call. As I sat up in my cot I heard his rattling, hoarse whisper calling the night orderly: "Oh, Mr----, please give me some water! A glass of water! I am dying!"

The orderly, who had been sleeping with his feet on the desk, woke up, looked towards the patient, changed the position of his feet, and shouted: "Ah, shut up, you kike!"

I got up and brought him a glass of water. He thanked me, and whispered: "I am dying! I don't want to die in jail!"

I tried to cheer him up with the thought that he would be released in two weeks; but he shook his head. Terror was written on his ghastly features. "Please, I don't want to die in jail," he said.

They were his last words.

XVI

A boy with blond hair, blue eyes, pink and white as a girl, modest as a nun, gentlemanly and soft spoken as Lord Fauntleroy, came upstairs to be operated on for a tumor. A sentence of two and a half years had been inflicted on him for selling cocaine. This deadly drug was furnished to him by a friend once when he was suffering from a cold. He did not know what it was, but he felt a wonderful exhilaration and a new strength come upon him, so that his illness seemed to vanish. The reaction was terrific, but he became addicted to the drug; and as he could not afford to buy the stuff, he began selling it, both for the profit and to be able to acquire it. His youth, and his already weak will, made him an easy prey to the evil company into which he was soon thrown. His father and mother and sisters were respectable and law abiding people of the middle class, but they did not seem able to cope with the peculiar conditions into which he had fallen.

Now that he is behind the bars he seems to realize the danger of his weakness, and he speaks of going back home to work among his own people.

After he was well again they sent him downstairs to work in the machine shop. Within two months he was back again in the hospital to be operated on for another tumor.

What a transformation! Instead of the gentle, well-mannered, repentant young sinner, we found a pale-faced young tough, with a sneering grin, walking with stooped shoulders, chin forward, arms curved, closed fists, in imitation of "gorillas" looking for trouble.

In his speech there was also a great change. Where there had been little personality or color, there was now a picturesque wealth of blasphemies; names and adjectives and punctuation were expressed by short but intensely vile words.

When we remarked at the astonishing change, he answered, speaking through one side of his mouth: "Ah, quit your kiddin'! You talk like a preacher. I ain't no sissy no more. When I gets out o' here I'll pull something big that'll knock you stiff. You get me?" And he spat sideways on the floor in supreme contempt. But when we laughed at his pretence and strutting, he blushed in anger and disappointment.

It seems that when he was sent downstairs after his first operation he was "doubled up" with a notorious burglar, who undertook to educate him and train him, with a view to using the lad to assist him in his work after his release. A few weeks later his mentor joined him in the hospital, but unlike his talkative pupil, who was quickly ordered to "shut his mug," he was reserved and secretive as to his life and plans.

But one evening at dusk, as we were both watching the New York skyline from the barred windows, the reserve gave way, and the cracksman told me of his life.

It was one of those rare moments when even a strong and evil spirit will waver and doubt; when his heart will overflow with disgust and the hopelessness of his earthly quest. The attitude of contrition dissipated like smoke when he was asked if it was not possible to make a living in an honest way.

"Nothing doing," he said. "The bulls won't give me a chance. They'll spot me and job me if I don't put up the dough. It's a fight to a finish. At the other end there is either Sing Sing or the death chair. There ain't no hope. I'll live and die a crook."

Two years later I read that my friend the cracksman and his pals had been caught trying to blow up a safe in a most daring and scientific manner. And the whole gang was sentenced to Sing Sing for a long term.

XVII

A Jewish pickpocket is one of the patients who is under suspicion of faking. The young doctor suggested my watching him, and when I reported, he declared that he was satisfied in his suspicion, but did not send him to his cell at once, as he would have been punished.

Meanwhile he helps and amuses us with stories of his checkered career. At first I could not make out what was the matter with him. He couldn't walk any distance without jerking his head backwards. I thought he suffered from some peculiar nervous trouble in the muscles of the neck. When I asked him about it he confessed that it was a habit formed by years of unconscious but very useful watching to see if he was followed by detectives. Even in the hospital, when he knew that he was not followed, he would throw his head in quick glances backwards.

He told us that the last time he had been caught by the detectives he was taken to headquarters and given a taste of the third degree. As he wouldn't confess, the brave detectives, wearing masks, beat him until he was insensible, and even broke two of his front teeth. The generous head of the detectives promised that if he did not make a complaint to the newspapers he would see to it that he would be sent for only a year to the penitentiary instead of up the river for several years.

We have several pickpockets in the hospital. One of them has grown a beard; he is a Jew, tall, thin but muscular, and when he walks to the bathroom in his night shirt, he seems like a caricature of one of the prophets of his faith.

He volunteered to rub sulphur ointment on my body as the doctor had ordered. The strength of his muscles, and the vise-like grip of his hands, was almost beyond belief. When he took hold of my arm to massage it I felt that he could easily have broken it with a quick blow; but he was very gentle and kind withal.

A red-headed consumptive, who killed his wife and child in a fit of anger and jealousy, was sent over from the Tombs while waiting for trial. He ordered me in a peremptory manner to do something for him. I repeated to him the lecture I had read to the bulldog negro, but he lost his temper, and began foaming at the mouth and abusing me in a violent and insane fit of anger.

I did not answer, as I felt that he was not responsible for his actions; and left him alone. Fifteen minutes later he came into the bathroom, where I was cleaning some medicine bottles. I fully expected to have to defend myself against an attack. Instead of that, however, he began apologizing for his unwarranted behaviour, adding that when he lost his temper he did not know what he was saying or doing; that anger went to his head like poison and completely overcame his reason. He begged me to forgive him and accept his apology.

This is the third time that a convict has offered an apology for having lost his temper and used profane language to me.

I asked one of the convicts who had apologized if he thought I had kept silent because I was afraid of him. "No," he said. "The man who loses his temper is the one who is afraid. The one who never becomes angry is never afraid; he is the better man of the two."

XVIII

I had been three months in the hospital before I began to suspect that I would never get over my skin disease so long as I wore the tattered and patched striped trousers which had been handed to me on my arrival. Therefore I begged the hospital keeper for permission to get a new or at least a clean pair. He told me to go downstairs to the head keeper's desk. The reception I got from the head keeper was not surprising, but his sudden burst of anger and his intemperate language puzzled me not a little. As soon as I approached him he turned around sharply and shouted: "What the h---- do _you_ want?"

Before I had time to complete my request he interrupted me, and shaking his fist at me, yelled: "A pair of trousers! What do you think of that dude in the hospital wanting a new pair of trousers! Go on back to your hospital, you dirty bum. You ----! Get out!"

I turned back slowly without answering, trying meanwhile to puzzle out how I could represent two such different social extremes in the mind of the irate keeper--a dude and a dirty bum!

When I related the incident to my hospital keeper, he shook his head and declared the head keeper an uncouth, stupid animal, and promised to speak about it to the Deputy. Next day a runner brought me a brand new pair of striped trousers, which looked quite becoming and a good fit after the rags I had worn for so long.

XIX

A great many doctors come to visit the hospital. Sometimes the young students from the city hospital, then the aristocratic and famous surgeons who operate on desperate cases, specialists, all grades and classes of physicians, enter accompanied by the little doctor who lives upstairs on the top floor. His name is B. Davidson. He is so small that he seems almost a schoolboy; his eye-glasses are the only elderly thing about him. But he is very efficient, scrupulous and--a marvelous thing in prison--humane in his treatment of the convicts.

The warden and the keepers hamper him continually in his work, as he will not listen to their opinion about convicts who, according to them, are all fakers. They have the temerity to place their ignorance, and their hatred of the prisoners, against the professional knowledge and humanity of the doctor.

The boy who had a tumor on his back was kept a week locked in a cell, and was not allowed to see a doctor, because the keeper claimed that he was faking. The doctor laughed when he related the story. "Imagine anybody faking a tumor the size of a cocoanut!"

In the opinion of most prison keepers, every man who reports on the sick list is an incipient faker. The sick man has to inform his own keeper and he is then reported to the head keeper. Should they diagnose the case as a fake, then the prisoner is shoved back gently to the line; but should the convict in spite of their verdict insist that he is sick, he is locked up in a cell to get well without a doctor, or to rot in it, until even the doctor's help is of no avail.

Most cases of consumption, paralysis, insanity, or any internal disorder, are considered fake cases. Only when a man breaks a limb or splits his head open, or when some disease "breaks out" on him, is he believed to be sincere.

The sturdy young sailor who had worked at my side in the tailor shop was brought to the hospital. He was so changed that I hardly recognized him. I had to ask him his name, and if he remembered having worked in the same shop with me, before I became convinced that he was the same man.

They kept him locked up in a cell a whole week before the doctor was permitted to visit him, and then they discovered that he was suffering from typhoid fever. Meanwhile he had been eating food from tin plates which were washed in the kitchen.

A convict who was in perfect agony from neuralgia of the teeth was visited twice. As no cavity could be discovered, they punished him by extracting forcibly three perfectly healthy teeth from his jaw.

This incident was related as a great joke by a young assistant to a doctor, to two companions who were preparing a patient for an operation.

A pair of prison-made shoes, with a nail sticking up inside the heel, was forced on a new-comer by the head keeper. When he protested, he was abused, insulted and threatened with punishment if he did not put on that particular pair of shoes. For two days the unfortunate man hobbled about, working in the kitchen, trying as best he could to ease the intense pain on his heel inflicted by a rusty nail. His foot began swelling and, made desperate by the pain, he finally refused to work until he had seen a doctor. When the doctor examined him, he discovered that he was suffering from blood poisoning of the foot, and he had to be kept over two months in the hospital.

A boy was discovered, by accident, working in the bakery suffering from a loathsome venereal disease.

The young doctor could not stand the persecution of the system, and he left in disgust.

The new doctor is a sallow-faced, green-eyed individual, evidently a dope fiend. He leaves morphine hypodermic syringes lying all over the place; and any one who wants an injection can have it for the asking. Luckily for us, he did not stay very long.

One night we were kept awake by heart-rending, piercing howls, which came from the apartment occupied by the doctor on the top floor. He had, as we found out later, taken an overdose of morphine.

Next day he appeared in the hospital, staggering sideways, breathing heavily and with a hollow sound, like a damaged bellows. His body shook as if with the palsy, his hands trembled as they groped for support; and all the while he was moaning, whining, grunting. He fell into a sitting posture on the floor, and began catching imaginary flies on his sleeves.

We had to carry him upstairs and put him to bed. He went away the next day.

The doctor who succeeded him is a young man who seems sympathetic and efficient, but he has to keep his job, and so he takes orders from the consulting keepers, who diagnose cases before he is allowed to see them or to send them to the hospital.

XX

The conversation at our meals in the hospital table d'hôte, although carried on in an undertone, is very often amusing and enlivened by quite witty repartee. The table manners of the men are not as bad as might be expected from the motley crowd which adorns our board. All the nationalities and races and classes of this wide world have been waited upon by us: negroes, Chinamen, Mexicans, Slavs, Italians, Jews, Hungarians, Arabs, Syrians, Hindus; members of all the different professions, such as waiters, lawyers, hold-up men, capitalists, fortune tellers, doctors, sneak thieves, bankers, bums, dentists, burglars, "sky pilots," grafters, butchers, gamblers, street car conductors, confidence men, tailors, insane men, tramps, crooks, horse poisoners, saloon keepers--everybody and everything!

In a restaurant, in a public café, in a barroom, one meets or sees many people whose profession or real status is a mystery, and often a secret; but here everybody's profession, character, antecedents, sentence, criminal record, are known, judged and commented upon. Here nobody can put on airs because he has a fat bank account, finer clothes, more expensive jewelry, better family connections, or greater political influence. A man is judged by his character, his personality, his attitude toward the prisoners and the keepers. This is one place where fine feathers do not make fine birds.