Part 1

Transcriber's Note:

Text surrounded by _ was originally marked up in italics. Obvious printer errors have been corrected, inconsistent hyphenation has been left as in the original.

WOMAN IN PRISON.

BY

CAROLINE H. WOODS.

NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON. Cambridge: Riverside Press. 1869.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by CAROLINE H. WOODS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.

WHY WRITTEN.

I was reading an evening paper. I glanced over the advertisements. One attracted my attention, and held it so strongly that I read it over and over, again and again. There was nothing unusual in it to ordinary observation. It read, "Wanted.--At the Penitentiary, a Matron. Inquire at the Institution."

I turned the paper over to read the general news; but could not place my thoughts so as to comprehend the meaning of the words before my sight. Without the intention to do so, I looked again at the advertisement. It became a study to me.

Said Thought--If you were to answer that advertisement, and obtain the situation, it would place you upon missionary ground, and at the same time give you employment which would afford you a support while you are teaching the ignorant. You would get knowledge in the position. A new phase of life would be opened to your view. You would have an opportunity to observe, practically, how well the present system of prison discipline is adapted to reform convicts, and repress crime. But the cost is too much. I cannot become a Matron in a Penitentiary.

I laid the paper down, without reading it, because I could see nothing in it except that advertisement.

The next day I went in town, sat down in the office of a friend, and took up a morning paper. No sooner had I opened it than that advertisement spread itself out before me. It changed the form of its appeal; left out what my selfishness might gain, to enlist my compassion and aid, entirely, in what I might accomplish for others. It called to me, in piteous tones, to go work for the prisoner. It was the echo of a voice that I long ago heard, Come into our prisons, and help us, we beseech you!

I cannot! I have other things to do, and they are as much for the benefit of humanity as anything I may be able to accomplish for you. My spirit darkened as I made the answer; a cloud of guilt settled down upon it. I threw down the paper in order to dissipate it, and to avoid the plea.

I turned and talked with my friend; but my thoughts were not in what we were saying. That advertisement followed them, and filled them to the exclusion of every other subject.

In the abstraction which it caused the hour in which I was to leave the city passed, and I missed my train. I must remain and avail myself of another.

While I was waiting, that advertisement returned to my reflections, and urged its cause imperatively as a command. It was a call, to me, resistless as the voice that awoke the young Israelitish Prophet from his slumbers. In another moment the struggle with my pride was over, and my spirit answered,--I will go, even to lust-besotted Sodom if thou leadest, Light of my path!

I seated myself in a street car, went to the prison, applied for the place, and obtained it.

Day by day I wrote down what I saw and heard, what I said and did. Why? In obedience to the same Voice that called me to the work.

The tale is before you.

May it touch the heart of every one who reads the story, and melt it into a compassion which will labor for the redemption of the prisoner; into a pity which will echo around the cry--Open the prison doors, not to let the prisoner go free, but to let in, to him, the light of moral knowledge, and the discipline of Christian charity.

CONTENTS.

PAGE

WHY WRITTEN iii

I. FIRST DAY IN PRISON 1

II. AT NIGHT 13

III. SECOND DAY IN PRISON 23

IV. A QUARREL, AND DISCIPLINE 34

V. THE SUPERVISOR, AND THE RULES 48

VI. FIRST NIGHT ALONE IN PRISON 58

VII. THE MASTER AND THE RULES 75

VIII. MRS. HARDHACK 79

IX. A BREAD-AND-WATER BOARDER 87

X. AN ARRIVAL 93

XI. INSIDE MANAGEMENT 98

XII. SUNDAY 102

XIII. LIFE AMONG THE LOWLY 110

XIV. INSPECTION OF PRIVATE APARTMENTS 127

XV. A DAY OF ODDS AND ENDS 138

XVI. A FRIGHT 151

XVII. VISITING DAY 156

XVIII. CALLAHAN AGAIN 163

XIX. DISCOMFORTS, AND THE END 178

I.

FIRST DAY IN PRISON.

It was Saturday morning that I became an inmate of the Penitentiary.

I was conducted to the kitchen, where I was to oversee the cooking for the prisoners, and to the prison adjoining it, which I was to see kept in order, by the Deputy Master of the institution, who gave me my keys and installed me in my office of Prison Matron.

When we first went in he called the six women who do the work in the kitchen, and the three "sweeps" who keep the prison clean, to him, and presented their new mistress, in my person, to them.

They were convicts that surrounded me at his call; but they were human beings. Human faces looked up to mine for sympathy and care. Some of them were fine looking, even in their coarse uniform, some were pretty as I picked them out one by one. They all looked at me earnestly, for a few moments, as though they were reading their sentence of harshness or kindly treatment, under my rule, in my face; then, turned away to their work again.

They whispered as they stood together, and I saw by their furtive glances that they were watching, and discussing me, as I walked around to take a survey of my new field of labor. They were undoubtedly commenting upon my personal appearance; and making their predictions as to my sharpness in detecting their impositions, and ability to control their perverseness; or, I imagined so.

The Deputy showed me the mush boiler, that would cook two large tubs full of that farinaceous edible at a time; the potato steamer, that would hold four barrels of that esculent vegetable at a cooking; the soup and coffee kettles, of still larger dimensions; and that comprised all of the apparatus required in preparing the mammoth meals which were to serve above four hundred people. These cooking utensils were kept in operation by pipes conducting steam to them from a boiler stationed in the middle of the room.

When he put the steam boiler under my direction I shrank back in terror from the task of managing it. The huge culinary apparatus, which he had been exhibiting, although outside the pale of ordinary housekeeping, was still within the reach of my understanding; but I had no idea of the management of steam; it was not only a difficult, but dangerous affair.

"The house will surely be blown up if you leave the care of that upon me," I said to him.

"You must watch it very closely."

"I don't know how, and I have no aptness for learning that kind of science."

"One of the women will tend it." And he went on with explanations that were all Greek to me. "It is safe when you have on twenty pounds of steam. There is your gauge," and he pointed to a clock-like looking affair on the wall. "That hand will move round and tell you how much steam you have on. You must keep water enough in the boiler or you will get blown up. If it runs from that centre stopcock, on the side, it is safe. You notice that glass tube in front. The water is just as high in that as it is in the boiler. This faucet is to let the water off if you get the boiler too full. Turn that faucet when you let the water on," and he went along and pointed to one in a pipe by the wall, "and that pump is there in case of accident. You must have it worked every day so as to keep it in order."

All knowledge is useful, I thought, and in time I shall understand running a steam-engine. As the women have been trusted with the dangerous thing, they may still continue to be, till I have leisure to learn the science of steam as applied to cooking.

After I had taken a survey of the kitchen the Deputy took me into the women's prison which led out of it.

The centre of the hollow square, in which the dormitories are built, looked like a huge block of glittering ice, so white were the washed walls of brick and stone. The black, grated doors of the cells, inserted into them, like the teeth of grinning demons, were ranged along the sides about two feet apart, tier after tier, five stories, one above another.

The Deputy led me along past the iron doors. I trembled and shrank back; but I had no idea of receding from my undertaking. I "screwed my courage to the sticking-point," and looked into the narrow, stone rooms; but it was many days before I could force myself to enter one.

I grew heart-sick, and faint with apprehension of unknown terrors at their cheerless aspect.

"What lodgings for human beings!" I exclaimed.

"They are not very pleasant," said the Deputy.

"If you were the one to blame for it I should certainly charge you with great inhumanity."

"I suppose you will think us very cruel sometimes."

"In this case I don't know as you can help it. You did not make these sleeping apartments for the prisoners. The public functionaries of the State may be thanked for showing such tender mercies as these."

"We are used to seeing them, and they don't look to us as they do to you."

"Does that make them any more comfortable for the prisoners? Do they get used to them so as to be comfortable?"

"I presume so. I know they are more comfortable places than some had before they came here."

"Then it should be the work of the vaunting Christianity of this religious land to raise such degradation to cleanliness, comfort, and respectability."

"There might be a great deal done in that direction if people were only disposed to do it."

"Our prisons are rather private affairs, I believe. They can only be visited on certain days and occasions."

"It would be very inconvenient for our work to have people running in, and over the place at all times. We could not have it. And it wouldn't be liked by the prisoners to be gazed at constantly."

I made no reply; but I thought it might have a salutary effect upon the discipline of the prison, which he had just said I might think cruel, to be exposed to the observation of the public. The prisoners must have lost the sensibility which would shrink from being made a spectacle before they came in there. If visiting were allowed only on certain days and occasions, the place and the convicts would be put in order for company, and a very incorrect idea of the every-day life of the prisoners would be obtained.

If there were liberty to visit the place, every day, many might go from curiosity, and it might become annoying. That very curiosity might discover and discuss faults in the management, which ought to be remedied, and thus produce a counterbalancing benefit.

The officers might dislike such scrutiny, especially, if they were not doing their duty. They are officers of the government. Is it not proper that their conduct should be looked after by the people as much as that of any other government official?

Evil comrades might go in and hold improper communication with the prisoners. Can they not do that on regular visiting days?

Is it not only the work of humanity to see that crime is punished in a way that will not increase it; but also that of the legislator as a matter of civil policy; and that of the taxpayer as a matter of personal interest. It should interest every man and woman as a matter of personal protection from the depredations of vice to know how convicts are treated, and to judge whether that treatment tends to reform the criminal, or to harden and lead him deeper into crime when he is let out into the world again to pursue his own ways.

Ought the punishment of criminals, who have been tried, convicted, and sentenced publicly, to be conducted in secret? It is to be presumed that the keeper of the prison is trusty. There should be no presumption in the matter. It should be known that he is so, and he should be kept so by the ceaseless vigilance of public inspection. What is the quarterly, or semi-annual visit of fifty or a hundred men when the visit has been notified, and the prison put in order for their reception, towards effecting that?

My residence in that prison led me to see that the descriptions of Dickens, and his compeers in the regions of fictitious writing, have given, not the poetic illusions of imaginary sufferings to the contemplation of the world--hardly a vivid picture of the truth.

God speed the day when our prisons and penitentiaries may take a place beside public schools, orphan asylums, houses of refuge, all institutions for the cultivation of a knowledge which tends to the elevation of virtue, and the suppression of vice, in the care of the public!

Our own children may not stimulate to an interest in them. Our own children may not require the benefit of the public school, or orphan asylum; but somebody's children will. In working for the elevation of everybody's children are we not benefiting our own?

After he had shown me around, so that I might take a general survey of my field of labor, the Deputy left me with my charge, saying,--

"You are mistress here. No one has a right to interfere with you, and you are responsible to no one but me, or the Master."

"But the Head Matron will, of course, come and instruct me in the details of my work. I must know what work belongs to each woman, and how she is expected to perform it."

"The women know their work and will do it. The most you have to do is to keep order."

"That may be a man's idea of managing a kitchen; but there are a great many details that I ought to understand in order to get the work properly done, and done in its proper time; and with the greatest ease to myself and the women."

"The other Matrons will tell you. I will tell you all I can."

I thought, but I did not say it,--You are better disposed than informed. He saw by the anxious expression of my face that I was not satisfied, and added, "The women know, they will tell you."

I made no reply; but I thought--It is not the proper thing for me to receive my instructions from the convicts. It is their place to be instructed by me. If I am taught by them, I am placed in an inferior position to them. In order to entertain a proper respect for me they should look up to me as their superior in all things.

The arrangement for receiving my directions from them placed me too much in their power also. It would be only indulging natural proclivities to "play off" on me under the circumstances; and I could hardly expect these poor, abandoned creatures to be superior to the temptation to do it when the opportunity was afforded them.

I could not consider such teachers reliable. If, by misleading me, with regard to a rule of the institution, they could obtain an indulgence, or relieve themselves of a burden, would they not take the advantage which they had of me and do it. I was suspicious that they would.

There was, probably, some pride mixed with these considerations, that rebelled against becoming a pupil of convicts when I was their mistress.

I stood looking on, or walking around, watching the movements of the women very narrowly, till one of the other Matrons came in. Then, I went to her with a volume of questions.

To most of them I received the answer,--

"I don't know about that particularly. I have never had anything to do with this department."

"Then, how am I to learn my duties, and get definite orders for the regulation of my work? Is there no Head Matron, no superior officer in the women's prison to whom I can go?"

"The Master's wife is enrolled as Head Matron, and receives pay as such, but she never comes round."

"I would go to her if I knew where to find her."

"I don't think she knows much more about it than you do, if you were to go to her. We will all tell you."

"But you don't know. If there is a Head Matron, and she is paid for doing the duties of one, why does she not perform them? Is she enrolled head officer of this prison merely to obtain the salary? The government is very obliging to make her office a sinecure."

I was already perplexed--I was beginning to get vexed.

"Her husband does them for her, perhaps."

"Perhaps! Then why is he not here, to tell me the work which belongs to each woman, and how she is to do it; what work is required, and how I am to get my things to do with? But how can the Master attend to his own duties and those of the Head Matron too?"

"The Deputy will tell you."

"He must have his own duties to attend to--how can he perform hers? He is just as willing to tell me as you are, and I don't think he knows any more about my place than you do."

"The women know, they will tell you."

I was thrown back upon the convicts again for my instructions.

I went on, despairing of help, to study them out as best I could. Sometimes by asking left-hand questions of the women, and sometimes by getting direct explanations from them; but chiefly by watching the progress of the work. The place seemed to me full of disorder, confusion, and dirt.

When the Deputy came round again, I was full of trouble.

He said, when I complained to him,--

"You will find things in confusion. The Matron who went away yesterday was inefficient."

"Perhaps so," I replied; "but the confusion appears to me to date farther back than the last Matron. It arises from the want of a head officer to regulate affairs."

"I have double the trouble on this side, with four Matrons and a hundred women, than with three hundred men and more than a dozen officers on the other."

"You would insinuate that women are more difficult to get on with than men. I make a very different solution of the difficulty in this particular case. You are on the ground all of the time; explain his duty to every officer, and see that he does it. That makes the officer's work distinct before him. It is done under your eye, which makes it promptly and well done. If that were the case on this side, we might be as orderly, and have as little trouble in performing our part, as you on yours. The cook tells me that certain work belongs to the slide woman; the slide woman says it belongs to the sink women; the sink women shift it on the steam woman, and so I am kept on the chase, from one to another, for some one to do a piece of labor. I do not know who ought to do it, and they know it. If they do not intend to confuse me, they intend to clear themselves of all the work they can."

"Use your own judgment, and call on whom you please. They are all obliged to obey any order that you give."

"If I call upon one to do the work that has formerly been done by another, I stir up ill feelings among the prisoners towards each other, and contention, and they think me hard and unjust. It makes me trouble. They obey my order reluctantly, and say, 'That isn't my work.'"

"If they quarrel, they know the punishment. If they refuse to obey your orders, report them to me, and I will put them where they will be glad to obey." He nodded towards the prison door.

I knew he must refer to some kind of punishment. I did not know what; but frightful visions of the cruelties of which I had read rose in my imagination, and I said no more.

I vowed to myself that I would never get them punished by refusing to obey my unjust exactions if I could help it.

My thoughts did not stop with my words. I reasoned with myself. If my ignorance, or bad management, cause me to be unjust towards those women, and if I, by my injustice, arouse their bad temper so as to cause them to be punished, who will be most in fault? I decided that I should be. The question suggested itself to me--If you get them punished unjustly who will avenge them? The All-seeing-Eye will notice, and avenge it. I will be careful.

I resolved to feel my way along softly and carefully. There was no relief for my dilemma, except in my own ingenuity to find out the ways of the place, and the proper management to apply to it.

II.

AT NIGHT.

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.