Part 3

While on the subject of the County Prison, it may not be amiss to present a few statistics regarding the number of those who have been its inmates during the year 1863. The whole number of commitments was 17,219. The philanthropist who looks at the effect of vice or misfortune on individuals, will be startled at such a statement, when he considers how much private misery and domestic grief there were involved in all these incarcerations; not only in the separation of so many persons from their social and domestic associations, but more than that, often the long career of annoyance to family and friend, from the regular advance in crime and vice which led to the incarceration. One other fact is noticeable, the increase in imprisonment in 1863 over those in 1862 was 2,573. That, it is evident to those who visit the prison and examine into the cause of such painful effects, is, in part, one of the bitter fruits of the present war. And the mortifying fact, that 794 of the increase of committed were females, is evidently referable to the same cause. In 1861 and a part of 1862, the number of commitments of males was greatly decreased, as the army was absorbing with better elements, many of those who were almost monthly successful candidates for the prison, while at the same time, the number of females increased, owing to the absence of those to whom they were responsible, and to the periodical reception of money in larger amounts than they had been accustomed to receive. The return of whole regiments to our city, serves, by supplying only a few vicious from each, to bring up the number of males without diminishing those of females committed. Yet we must not overlook the fact, that a large portion of those extra commitments are of persons who contrive to make their appearance at the prison in about ten days after having served thirty days in the cells. They are new commitments, but they are old offenders; and they furnish one strong argument, or rather, perhaps, show the necessity for a House of Correction.

FEMALE DEPARTMENT.

The Philadelphia County Prison is composed of four different departments, one of which is called the “Debtor’s Department,” so denominated because it was destined to receive and retain those who were to be incarcerated for not paying their debts. The merciful laws of Pennsylvania have abolished imprisonment for debts by contract, and now the building is used for the detention of some United States prisoners, for some who are adjudged to be in contempt of court, some who are detained on mesne process, &c., or who are sentenced to pay fines or costs. With these and others under the charge of the sheriff, the committee have had little intercourse; their circumstances, or the temporary character of their almost nominal confinement, not rendering it probable that visits would be acceptable or profitable.

The south wing of the prison is devoted entirely to male vagrants, drunkards, breakers of the peace, those who await a trial, and some who are sentenced to short imprisonment and fines. The middle building contains male convicts, sentenced to separate confinement and labor, and also those who have been sentenced to capital punishment. Among the inmates of these two buildings the visitors of the Society are constant and assiduous in their labors, and we have already referred to some of the results of their visitations.

The north building is entirely separate from the other, having two lots of ground and a high wall between that and the male convict department. The northern building is exclusively devoted to females. The vagrant, the drunkard, the accused, and the female criminal of every class, are here kept, under the care of a male keeper, and a matron and assistant matron. And as this department presents a peculiar field for the action of our Society, we shall make special reference to the character of the inmates, the nature of their offences, the circumstances of their committal, and the character and results of labors for their moral and physical improvement; not because these labors are greater or more effective, but because the pursuits, the misfortunes, the errors, and the crimes of the prisoners differ from those of the males, according to the circumstances of their condition and sex, and require some additional means to secure an amelioration of the state of their lives.

In dealing with female offenders, we have to encounter the same incentives, the same passions that influence the males; and most of the same crimes that are punished in the male convict department are here expiated by the females. But the mode of dealing must vary with the varying circumstances of the prisoner; and those circumstances must greatly depend upon the character of the individual, resulting from her sex and the condition of her earlier life.

It is calculated that more than one thousand females divide their time between the cells of the county prison and the practice of those vices or the committal of those crimes which send them there. For a large number of these, no more than thirty days imprisonment can be given at one time; and many of those thus committed are discharged much sooner: so that there is little time for any moral dealings with them, and even were it practicable to deal with them in exhortation and advice,—were the time of their imprisonment sufficiently long to warrant a hope that they could be persuaded to form good resolves, still the fact that more than one, and often four or five, are found in the same cell, renders almost hopeless any attempt to induce the drunkard to forsake her resort to the bottle, or the impure to avoid the haunts of vice which she has frequented. The evidence of contrition which kindness and faithful dealing on the part of the visitor may call forth from the prisoner, are inducements to her companions in the cell to ridicule the moral teacher, and to laugh the repenting one out of her half-formed resolves. The experienced visitor learns to fix a just estimate upon the tears and promises of those expectants of favors; but the good female visitors who occasionally seek to bring “glad tidings” to the miserable offenders of their own sex, usually suffer deep mortification at the disappointment of pleasant hopes, and are compelled to seek their consolation in the consciousness of good intention and perfect fidelity to the object which they profess to serve. The great, almost the only mode of serving the inmates of this part of the prison, is to induce them to enter some of the asylums in the city, and yield themselves to the gentle discipline of institutions founded for the good of those who have lost their self-respect and forfeited the good will of society. And the records of the “House of the Good Shepherd,” of “The Magdalen Asylum,” “The Rosine” institution, and some other associations for the meliorating the condition of the frail, the vicious, and the guilty, will show what valuable auxiliaries these institutions have been to the Society for Meliorating the Condition of Prisons.

While on this branch, we may as well say that, by an Act of Assembly, the Inspectors of the County Prison may, at their discretion, discharge at once any person committed for vagrancy, drunkenness, and disorderly conduct, or a breach of the peace. Of course, a sound discretion is to be used; and it is within the knowledge of all who are conversant with the administration of the County Prison, that great good has resulted from the exercise of this power by the Inspectors, and incalculable evils have been prevented. Without any effort on the part of this Society, it has happened that more than one of its appointed visitors to the County Prison have been Inspectors; and in the exercise of the power conferred on the latter, the duties of the former have been most valuably discharged. The condition of many prisoners has been meliorated by a timely inquiry into the cause of their incarceration and the duties that awaited them at home. If it should appear that accidental association had brought a poor innocent girl to the cells, it is a beautiful and profitable exercise of power to send her home before she should make acquaintance with the habituées of the prison, or before a knowledge of her misfortune should become general among her acquaintances, by a notice of her absence from the scene of her ordinary duties. Take one example as illustration of the idea.

A girl about seventeen years of age, well dressed, was seen emerging from the van, that at the prison

“Each morning vomits forth its sneaking crowd”

of police committals. Her neat appearance and unusual sadness arrested the attention of one of the visitors of this Society, who was there on duty as an Inspector. He learned that the girl, going home on a summer evening from work, by which she maintained herself and mother, was annoyed by the appearance and bad language of a drunken woman. The disturbance drew to the place a police officer, who did not see the real offender escape, and finding only the poor girl there, he arrested her, and she was sent down for “disorderly conduct.” Close examination into the case might have shown the mistake, but there were many more cases, and so the poor girl took her place among a crowd of miserable wretches of her own sex. Her story was found to be true, and she was at once dismissed.

It is not worth while to dwell on the importance to that girl, and her mother dependent upon her labor, of the prompt release. Since that time, the arrival of the van has been watched, and the appearance of its inmates carefully noticed, and other cases have presented themselves for the prompt and valuable exercise of the power entrusted to the Inspectors.

But it is not alone the entirely innocent that receive the attention of the Inspectors. Inquiries are made into the circumstances of the poor inebriate, of the temptations that beset her, of the chance of finding some employment abroad; and the promise of amendment is rather taken than depended on, and a discharge is granted. It often happens that the promise is kept much longer than was supposed probable, and thus so much time is redeemed from the waste of vice and crime. The repetition made the actor, at least, no worse than a continuance in idleness would have made her. If she had been detained for thirty days, she would probably have found no employment, and a return to vice would have been almost the certain result.

And on that point it may not be improper to make a remark. A large part of the poor females who are habituées of the prison, depend less on regular engagements in the houses of their employers, than on demands upon their time and labor in seasons of emergency,—such as house cleaning in the city, or garden work in the country. It often happens that in the midst of the demand for these women, they are in the cells of the prison for “vagrancy,” “disorderly conduct,” or “breach of the peace.” If they can be released, they may earn something, in the spring, summer and autumn, to support them in the winter; or at worst, they are supported while they are at work. If they are detained during the demand, they lose the present and the future employment and its remuneration, and leave the prison, when their thirty days shall have expired, with no expectation of immediate engagement; and they return to the prison by the way of the haunts of vice, from which labor would have saved them, temporarily at least.

It is in such cases that the exercise of the power to release on the part of the Inspector becomes greatly useful to the community and to the prisoner; and certainly it is eminently in furtherance of the plans and wishes of this Society. It may be added, that numerous instances might be cited of the entire reformation of females by their timely discharge from prison when there existed a demand for their labor.

In this department of the prison is found the best illustration of the vast difference of the influences upon the minds and character of the prisoners wrought by the separate and the social system of incarceration. It is true that all convicts are or ought to be separately confined; but a very large proportion of the female prisoners here are awaiting trial, or held for some offence below felony, in such numbers as to render it quite impossible, even with all the discharges granted by the Inspectors and procured by the Agent, to limit the number of that class of prisoners to less than from two to four in many of the cells. Here, then, side by side, or in close vicinity, is found an example of the social and the separate systems, and to some extent a judgment is easily formed of the effect of the two modes. In the cell where are more than one female, (we speak of females, because, accidentally, our means of information, as it regards the condition of that sex, in prison, are more ample than they are concerning the males, though the circumstances being the same, the effect of similar treatment would be different only in proportion to the constitutional difference of the sexes—the female being much more social, and much more ductile and impressible, and thus more easily influenced by her associates,)—in these cells monitions and advice are offered by the visitors, and for a moment there seems, beneath the respectful attention of one or two, a kind of resolve to try to do better,—books and tracts are accepted, and perhaps read, and there is a promise, which to the unexperienced visitor seems well founded, that the miserable object of his or her care will seek to amend a course that leads so directly to disgrace and misery. But scarcely does the visitor leave the door of the cell, when the deluge of ridicule poured out by the companions of the “promising” offender, obliterates all sense of compunction, and all resolve of amendment, if any were formed, and virtue and decency are coarsely ridiculed, and their humble advocate laughed at as an easy dupe. But the visitor to the cell of the convict, or the prisoner separately confined, has easy access to the feelings of the inmate, and the lesson given is allowed time to have some favorable effect. The resolution for good which the unhappy woman forms upon the evidence of unwonted interest in her fate, may not be permanent,—the feelings may have acted rather than the judgment,—but the repetition of the visit and of the lesson scarcely fail to beget that sense of wrong doing which is the parent of repentance; and especially, if the visitor makes evident a deep feeling of affection, and gentle sympathy in the character and condition of the prisoner as a human being, may there be hope that good will follow. There must be heat applied, before the iron can be wrought into useful shape.

It is not to be supposed that all who seem to maintain to the last day of their imprisonment their resolve to amend their lives, do indeed carry into effect that resolve beyond the prison wall. That would be too great a harvest to hope for. When the resolution is taken, the pain of punishment is felt, the sense of confinement is keen, and the view of personal degradation in presence of a virtuous teacher is mortifying; and the force of former habits forgotten, and the attractions of vice underrated, and especially the sense of shame among those who knew them, not calculated on, they go forth in the resolution of amendment—they meet the suspicions of the good and the imitation of the bad—and they allow passion to triumph over virtue.

“The bow well bent and sharp the spring, Vice seems already slain; When passion rudely snaps the string, And it revives again.”

But discouraging as such cases are, and especially in their frequency, there are many cases where the convict, after having promised, in the crowded cells of the vicious and accused, to mend her life, and then returned to vice and crime at the suggestions of her vicious companions, has been led by the gentle invitation of the faithful visitor to resolve on good, and where the solitude of her confinement has led to that reflection which gives permanency to her resolution. And, it may be added, that it is probable that of the many failures of success which are to be deplored, some are due to the want of entire separation of the convict, consequent upon the form and location of the cells, that forbid entire seclusion, at least render unfruitful all attempts to prevent the occupants of neighboring cells from holding conversation with each other by message, viva voce, or some conventional signal or sounds. Marvelously ingenious are the contrivances and the resorts of the human mind when an exclusion from outward objects assists in the concentration of faculties upon some desired end. It may be added here, that almost all the success that attends the efforts of the philanthropist to reform females in the County Prison, is due to separate confinement; and even when the inmate is “sent down” only for drunkenness and disorderly conduct, judgment, founded on her appearance and manner, has been well exercised in placing her either in a separate cell, or if that be not possible, then in selecting her a companion, and thus bringing her within the genial action of visitors of her own sex, without the danger from subsequent ridicule of her cell-mates. In this relation, too, has proved highly beneficial, the habit noted elsewhere, of meeting the van as it reached the prison, and selecting at once those who are new to the place, and, after inquiry, if not dismissing them to their family, at least placing them apart from the more abandoned of their sex.

Before closing this division of the Report, it may not be amiss, even though it be a partial repetition, to notice that the visitors to the two prisons in this city agree, as it is elsewhere stated in this Report, that all other things being equal, the hopes of successful dealing with a prisoner rest much upon the length of his sentence, and the completeness of his separation from all intercourse with other prisoners. Hence the little hopes expressed of favorable results from advice and persuasive dealing with the inmates of the vagrant and drunkard’s cell, whose imprisonment does not extend beyond thirty-one days. We may remark that usually the convict is less a victim of vice than of crime; and he generally has more mind upon which to operate by argument, though, perhaps, he may have less conscience to be affected; and this applies especially to men, who, as convicts, seem by a strange law of society, to be exempted from censure for their vices, while the female convict is made responsible, not only for the crime for which she suffers, but for all the vices that are incident to an erring female. But it seems almost certain that if the vicious female should be made the inmate of a separate cell, and be the object of the gentle attention, and persuasive argument of moral visitors for as long a time as is the criminal female, she would be as likely to yield to those moral allurements as is the convict. To produce the means of alleviating misery, we must have a change in prison economy; we can, perhaps, scarcely hope for success till the House of Correction supplies the means.

MORAL INSTRUCTION.

Every effort made by the Society, in its attempt to alleviate the miseries of public prisons, is intended to be in a moral direction; and whether the person in whose behalf the agent or representative of the Society labors, is to be the tenant of a cell for years, or to be immediately released, it is to the moral perceptions that addresses are made, and it is the moral condition that is the object of public and private labor; it is for the moral improvement that the physical condition is regarded, and what may appear to the careless or indifferent observer as merely an exercise of philanthropic feeling, or of a humane sentiment, has for its great end such a disposition of the offender, or the accused, as will secure to him the means and condition of moral improvement, making the cell endurable to the felon by a growing appreciation of the justice that placed him there, and a sense of the benefit of reflection upon the past, and the comprehension of the advantage of resolves for good, which, by kind monition and gentle persuasion he is induced to adopt. The moral image defaced by vice, or buried beneath the accumulation of crime, begins to assume its earlier charms, begins to move under its superincumbent mass, and, with a recognition of its proprieties and value, vice and crime not only lose attraction, but become hideous and repulsive; the spirit of hostility to the world is gradually weakened, and a lively sensibility to all the duties of social life takes the place of that wretched resolve to misapply power by felonious appropriation, and indulge passion in the violation of the laws of decency and morals.

Or, if the prisoner is to leave his cell, the efforts are to fix in his heart the great principle of moral excellence, and to strengthen the resolutions which he formed while in prison. To follow, indeed, the liberated man to his home, if he have any, or failing that, to provide him with temporary shelter and employment, and to watch over his conduct, and guide and guard him amid the temptations upon which he has entered with delicate susceptibilities and wounded self-respect. Resolves formed in the solitude of cells, are like roots that vegetate in darkness, they are certain not to be very fruitful in their secluded condition, and are exceedingly liable to perish unproductive when exposed to the light.

Care, watchfulness, kindness, and condescension on the part of those who would perfect their work of good, are absolutely necessary to that reformation in the prisoner, which is to make him a useful citizen, and restore him to the confidence and respect of associates. It is not permitted here to give instances of the beneficial exercise of this species of practical, long-enduring kindness, lest the sensibilities of the benefactor should be wounded, and the beneficiary find his condition and circumstances injured by unnecessary publicity. But instances are not wanting of the recent criminal occupant of a felon’s cell, returning to his moral teacher to give thanks, to present the fruits of his amendment, and, while asking additional advice, to solicit continued interest in the future.

The cheerful, kind reception of the young penitent by his friend and guide, seemed to seal the work of reformation; and if he who had been justly charged with, and severely punished for, repeated felonies, felt the healing influence of Christian forbearance, and the long exercise of reforming efforts on the part of the moral instructor, who shall tell the effect upon the repentant’s future interests, upon his associates, and upon the business men of the world, with whom he must mingle, of the freedom of his access to the house of his benefactor, the cordiality of his reception and entertainment, and kindness and good wishes with which he publicly takes leave of him at the open door.

This kind of conduct is that “_coup d’epaule_” which denotes true dignity and greatness in the bestower, and which confers upon the recipient the freedom of virtuous society, and the power to become a useful member in a good community.