Part 2

I turned away, sadly, from that disappointed hope; but I saw the opportunity still before me to teach the nine, whom I had under my immediate care, to govern their tempers, and their passions, and to lead a new life. It was teaching only that could effect it. They were ignorant of the way to do it.

My bonnet and shawl had lain all day upon the table that was placed for my use in the kitchen. The woman, who was to wait upon me in my room, had asked if she should take them up. I had said, no, thinking I might find time to go with her; but that opportunity did not offer.

After the women were locked up, the Receiving Matron said to her, "Take those things to our room! We will go up now," she said to me.

I started back as she led me to the stone stairs of the prison, and began to ascend them.

"Where are we going?" I asked in surprise.

"Our room is up here," she replied quietly.

"In the prison! are we to sleep in the prison?"

"Yes."

She made no further comment. It was too late in the day to recede or demur. I followed her up, up, up, over five stone flights, along a stone walk to the farther end of the building, through a grated door, into a room made up of a half dozen cells with a dormer window in the roof. Some straw had been thrown down upon the stone floor, and an old woolen carpet laid over it. The walls were of stone like the cells, and whitewashed like them. There were some wooden chairs, an old bureau, two sinks, and two single beds, arranged on opposite sides of the room. In one corner was a double wardrobe, apparently to be shared in common by both Matrons.

I had not given my own accommodations a thought in taking my place in the prison. In all institutions of the kind which I had ever been in, each Matron had a nice bed-room to herself, in a comfortable part of the house, and most of them comfortable sitting-rooms attached. It never occurred to me that a female officer, in any public institution, could be requested to occupy such a room. However I could bring myself to it for the sake of carrying out the purpose that induced me to take the place.

I stood a moment, and looked all round the room. I then examined the bed. It was clean, and looked comfortable.

"Is this all the room, and are these all the comforts we are to have?" I asked of the Receiving Matron.

"You see all," she replied. "If we had more, we should have no time to enjoy them."

"Rather a sorry prospect if one is to take herself into consideration at all. Is there a bath-room that we can use? To take a bath would be really refreshing, and help me to sleep to-night, I am so tired."

"I am tired all of the time, and there is no chance to rest. We must rise at four in the morning, and be on the spring every moment till eight in the evening; you will be on duty till nine, because you receive the keys at that hour."

"Every day?"

"Every day!"

"There is usually a Relief Matron in such institutions, so that the other Matrons can have rest."

"There used to be one here; but, instead of that, there is an Assistant Matron in the shop."

"Then the Shop Matron has all of the relief, and the others none. Why is that?"

"They want to get as much work done in the shop as possible, to support the institution, the Master says. When I get tired, and feel like grumbling, I tell them it is money taken out of our flesh and blood to make the institution rich."

"It is probably the way the Master takes to recommend himself to the Board of Directors. They like him for his thrift in managing."

"I don't know where the money goes; but I know we are worked to death. I am dying by inches."

"Why must I be up an hour later than the rest to receive the keys?"

"Because you have them in charge during the night, those that stay in the prison. If you are out, I take them."

"Out! What time have I to go out?"

"Three evenings in the week, after the prisoners are locked up, if you wish."

"What time have I then?"

"You can be gone till four o'clock in the morning, if you like."

"When shall I sleep?"

"You can make your own arrangements for that. Perhaps on the way, if you take a horse car."

"I am afraid to go out evenings alone; but in that relief I can get a bath."

"I forgot your question about the bath-room. There is none, that I know of, for the officers' use. There is one in the house for the Master's family. I don't know whether the Matrons that lodge there are allowed to use it."

"Then some of the Matrons are lodged comfortably in the house. Why is that distinction made?"

"I don't know. There are bathing-tubs, for the prisoners, in my wash-house. I never use them; but if you wish to, you can. They are scrubbed out clean."

"I must be up from four A. M., 'till nine P. M. That makes seventeen hours of labor."

"Sometimes you will be required to sit up one, two, or three hours later."

"Why?"

"The Master's wife or daughters may have company, and keep the women up-stairs. We have to sit up and wait for them to come in, so as to lock them up."

"And be up all the same at four next morning?"

"Yes."

"Do the Master's wife and daughters get up at four the next morning, after sitting up so late, and go to work?"

"Of course not."

"If the wife is Head Matron, has she not her duties to do in the morning as well as we? And ought she not to see that the other officers are not worked like that? If she possesses the common feelings of humanity, she would provide some relief, if it were in her power."

"There is not much humanity in exercise here. We are all too hard worked to think of any one but ourselves."

"I should think that might be your case."

"I often tell them it is as much a House of Correction for the officers as the prisoners."

"Ten hours of labor is now considered a good day's work. To drag the convicts from sunrise to sunset only exhausts them. They do not get through with as much work as they would do in ten hours, and the intervening time given to rest."

"That has been an established rule here for fifty years or more."

"It is certainly a very antiquated idea, all of a half century old. I recollect hearing my grandfather say that people worked that way when he was a boy. But people's ideas have changed since that time, and the people of this generation consider such demands of labor very unreasonable."

"The only changes here have been to make things harder. They will put upon you all they can make you do."

If she had been telling the truth that was a plain, but correct statement of facts.

"How long has the present Master had charge here?"

"Forty-five or fifty years."

"It is no wonder that his heart has become like the nether millstone. No man ought to remain in such a place such a length of time. The best human heart that ever beat would become ossified, if it ever entertained human feelings, if compelled to exercise such continued tyrannous exactions."

"I don't know whether he ever had human feelings--he does not exercise much humanity, as I regard it, now."

"But he does not make the laws for the regulation of the institution. There must be State laws and a Board of Overseers to which he is accountable. There must be printed regulations for the management of this prison. I will get them from the Deputy to-morrow."

"If you can, you will accomplish more than the rest of us have been able to do."

"I can try."

"You can try, and I hope you will succeed. The rest of us have been told that there were no printed rules that would do us any good. It may be a benefit to the rest of us if you succeed."

I lay down upon my bed. Sleep was out of the question. The effluvia of a hundred human bodies came up through our open door, rank with nauseous odor. I got up and opened our one window to its utmost extent, first asking my room-mate if it would be disagreeable to her to have it left so.

Fatigue even would not overcome the noise of the rattling buckets, the snoring, coughing, and groaning of the tired women. If I closed my eyes, my head was in confusion. I was going up, up, up over the stone steps, and looking over the rails down the dizzy height, to the stone floor below.

I lay thinking over my prison prospects. Seventeen hours of regular labor, to which might be added occasionally, one, two, or three more. The other seven, with the noise of that prison ringing in my ears, and the care of it, if accident or sickness intervene. How long can any constitution bear such a strain? Surely the Board of Directors cannot understand how things are managed here. They cannot understand the amount of work which is demanded by the Master of his female Prison Matron. One other was no more favored, by her own account.

I was glad when the four o'clock bell rung me up to my duties.

III.

SECOND DAY IN PRISON.

There was a small bell hung directly over my head; the wire from it reached into the men's prison. It was rung by the watchman at four o'clock in the morning, to call me up.

I sprang out of bed at the first tinkle, threw a shawl around me, put my feet into my slippers, ran down, unlocked my steam woman to make her fire, and my cook to start her breakfast. I let them into the kitchen, and locked them in. Then, I went back to dress myself.

Up, up, over the five flights, past the grated doors, over the stone walks. The air of that prison sent a chill over me like that of a tomb. Were not those cells the tomb of love, of hope, of peace, and respectability! In them lay buried all of this world's success, all that it values: how much of the inheritance of the life to come God knows. Those black doors were a pall of disgrace of deeper dye than that which covers the coffin with its lifeless clay. I was chilled through and through by my thoughts and the objects that engendered them. And those objects were to be ever there before my sight, while I remained in prison, and those thoughts must ever arise to be my company. I could escape; no prison bar was slid upon me to keep me there; but the convicts _must_ remain. The unyielding lock, the unremitting toil, the pursuing regret, and the torture of remorse were before them, upon them, within them.

I might be able to speak to them a word of pity, of hope in a better life to come. The thought gave me courage to go to my day's work.

I took no unnecessary time for personal adorning; but my fingers were benumbed and moved slowly. I had scarcely finished dressing when the "first bell" rung.

That was the large bell in the yard that called all of the prisoners from their beds.

At that signal I was to assist in unlocking the rest of the women. If they were not out of their beds when the key was put in the lock, they were called to sharply by the Matron who was with me--

"Come, get up! How dare you lie there after the first bell has rung!"

It might prove necessary to talk to some laggards in that harsh way; but I would try some other method, with those of whom I had the care, first.

Yawning, and groaning, and moaning, they dragged themselves out of their beds and made them up. After this was done they tied them up against the wall with a cord which was attached to the iron bars upon which the bed rested, and then passed over a hook in the side of the cell. Then, they stood waiting for the second bell, which was the signal for them to go to work.

Poor, pitiable objects, they looked, as they were mustered for the long day's drill of thankless, unrequited toil. They worked without a motive, and they went to it with listless indifference, or the sullen determination to escape all of the task which they could. They accomplished their work as it was driven from them; not by the lash, but by fear of passing the night upon the bare iron bars of their bed-frame; or the stone floor of the solitary cell, without covering beside their ordinary dress, without food, save the daily slice of bread and quart of cold water.

Between the ringing of the bells the unlocking had been accomplished. One of the sweeps was stationed at the end of the upper tier of cells. When the second bell rung I called to her,--

"Slide your bar!"

The long bar that runs across the top of all the cells of one division, with a bolt reaching down over each door to keep it shut when it is unlocked, was then drawn out by her, so that the doors could be opened. I then called,--

"Third Division!"

At that they all appeared at their doors.

I called, "Front!"

The doors were opened, and they stood on the threshold.

"Right face!" All wheeled to the right.

"March!" was the next order.

At that word they marched down the stairs, in the order that they came out of their cells, deposited the ration pan and quart, in which they had carried their supper to their rooms the night before, on the ration table, to be taken into the kitchen and washed, ready to receive their breakfast, which was passed out in them when they came in from work at seven.

The other divisions were called out in the same way, and followed in their order.

Unrefreshed, sleepy, and without energy, they moved along to their two hours of labor before breakfast. And such a breakfast to look forward to when it came. Rye coffee and mush, varied with brown bread once a week, and this purposely stinted to the least possible amount which one could subsist on and work.

I noticed that most of them took only their coffee, and worked upon that when it was brown bread morning till the noon meal came.

Many a one looked into her quart, as she passed me, and sighed out, "God help us!"

"May He help you! He only can--I cannot," was my response; but not always made audibly.

He only knew how I longed to do so. I often said to myself, as the days passed on, I would not starve a dumb dog as those poor human things are starved. I would not work a dumb animal as those poor human things are worked! Nor would the Master feed his horse as they were fed; nor would he stall him as those prisoners were lodged.

I did what I could for them. I asked the Deputy if he could not substitute flour bread for the brown which they refused. He answered,--

"No! They will come to it. The Master will not change the order."

They did not come to it. And day after day, as I saw them go breakfastless to their work, I wished,--was it wrong? perhaps so,--that the avenger might be on the track of that unfeeling Master, and that the day might come when he might be obliged to breakfast upon a quart of rye coffee and a slice of brown bread, instead of the steaks, and eggs, and toasts, and other delicacies that I saw carried to his room from the kitchen, as I passed through it to the officers' dining-room.

If it aroused such indignation to witness such cruelty, what must it do in the hearts of those who suffer from it! Does such correction of convicts tend to arouse better purposes in their hearts than those which brought them into prison? Such treatment aroused in them anger and revenge. When they dared, and in every way which they could invent without laying themselves liable to punishment, they gave expression to their feelings.

When they were dismissed from the prison, the officer usually remarked, "We shall have that boarder back again."

The answer that I should have made, had I spoken my thoughts, would have been--The whole tendency of their discipline here is to produce that end.

The first thing that I did, after breakfast was over, was to take the names of my six kitchen women, and learn, as nearly as I could, just what work belonged to each one of them.

There were two sink women, McMullins and Magill. Their work was to wash the dishes, keep the sink clean, and scrub about one quarter of the floor. The slide woman scrubbed the ration table, a certain portion of the floor, washed the quarts and piled them up, scrubbed the table in the centre of the room, took care of the flour bread when it came in, and the pieces that were left. At meal time she passed out the coffee, and put the potatoes in the ration pans.

The cook made the mush, which was boiled twice a day, the soup, and hash, and stewed the peas. She had a certain portion of the floor to scrub, and the room to keep tidy, as well as her boilers to wash.

The steam woman took care of the steam boiler, made the coffee, helped the cook slice the meat, and kept her portion of the floor clean. It was a part of her work to pile the ration pans in rows of pyramids on the centre table.

The one who tended the women's slide had one half of the floor to scrub, and the Master's furnace, which stood in the centre of the kitchen, to tend.

There were many things to be done in common, where all helped; like the carrying out of the swill, which was emptied into tubs when the ration pans came in to be washed. That was carried a long way down the yard, poured into barrels, and left for the yard man to take to the piggery.

They all helped to bring up the potatoes, four barrels at a time, wash them in the sink with a large bat-stick, and then put them in the boiler to be cooked by steam.

To make the confusion more confounded, the work was changed round, and new hands put to it, the day I went there. The bringing up of the coal, for the steam boiler, which had heretofore devolved upon the steam woman, was now required of all the rest, to be divided among them, because the steam woman had had a broken wrist, and it was not quite strong again. That gave dissatisfaction, and created grumbling, and the constant contention of shifting the labor from one to the other. The rest were constantly fretting Allen, the steam woman, because she asked it of them.

To settle the difficulty I asked the Deputy, when he came round,--"who should bring up the coal for Allen?"

"Any of them that you see fit to order."

That was an excellent hint to me. Allen had been in the habit of giving her own orders, which made it necessary for me to interfere continually so as to get them executed, and also to keep peace. They invariably answered her back with refusal when she asked for coal, and made altercation over every bucket that was needed.

All orders, like information, were given promiscuously. I at once gave direction that all orders were to be given through me.

"Allen, when you wish for coal, come to me for it!"

Orders had no authority when given by one to another; and by watching I discovered that Allen was disposed to retaliate the little peckings she received, by making the one that aggravated her most bring up the most coal.

It was more than one day's work to bring them to this arrangement. So I made it another rule that when they differed they were never to answer back; but come to me to settle the trouble. That was rather more difficult to establish than the first, they were so hot-headed, and anxious to defend themselves.

O'Sullivan, one of the slide women, undertook to try my authority on the first order which I gave for coal. She sat idly upon her table, and I asked her to bring it up.

A scowl came over her face, she hesitated, and then answered,--

"She's just as well able to bring up the coal as I."

"That's so! that's so!" came from three or four other voices.

"Stop! every one! It is the order that Allen is not to bring up coal; you have nothing to say about it."

The others were silenced.

"O'Sullivan, will you bring up a bucket of coal?"

"I'm not going to bring up her coal; she's as well able to fetch it up as I."

"You will do just what I tell you! Go now and bring a bucket of coal!"

She started, after looking me in the eye a few seconds to see whether she could succeed if she attempted to disobey.

"When you come back I will talk with you about it."

I must have prompt obedience. I saw that her condition, that of motherhood, required consideration.

While she was gone Allen came to me and whispered,--

"They never lock up women like her, so she takes the advantage."

After she had brought up the coal, and sat down upon the table again, I went along to her, laid my hand upon her shoulder, stooped down, and said softly,--

"I see the condition that you are in,--I know that it requires care,--I am a mother,--I will see that you do no more than your part. You will do as I wish in future, pleasantly, will you?"

"Yes, ma'am!"

I then called them all around me, and said to them,--

"The bringing up of the coal for the steam boiler is to be divided among you. I will give each her share of it to do as equally as I can. If any one of you thinks she is doing more than belongs to her, rightfully, make no talk about it, but come directly to me, and I will see that it is made right."

My first object was to lead the women to make me the central, regulating power, in the kitchen, so that I could reduce the chaotic state of affairs to something like order.

"In a week," I said to the Deputy that day, "I hope to get something like order established."

"I will give you a month to get the run of things."

"You want the meals well cooked, and promptly passed out at the time; the place kept quiet and clean."

"That is what we want."

"Be patient, and in a week or two we shall arrive at that."

"I shall find no fault till I see occasion."

That night, after the work was done, I called them all around me, and told them they would find me kind and pleasant, if they were obedient. If they were not, they would surely find themselves in trouble, because it was a part of my duty to make them obey, and it must be done by the rules of the institution; I could not change them. I saw that their work was hard; but I would make it as easy as possible. The work was there, and they were put there to do it. The more willingly they undertook it, the easier it would go off. If they tried to help themselves, I would help them.

They all assented, and thus we made a compact to be kind to each other.

IV.

A QUARREL, AND DISCIPLINE.

It was my third morning in prison. I stood beside the mush boiler with Annie O'Brien, who had been scraping it, and was wiping it out with a dry cloth.

McMullins came along, and demanded the cloth from her. An altercation ensued. I hushed the noise, and asked,--

"To whom does the cloth belong?"

"It is my dish-cloth," said McMullins.

"You might let me have it a moment just to wipe this out!"

"I want it meself, I'm in hurry for it."

"Where is yours?" I asked O'Brien.

"I don't know, ma'am. I left it on the boiler, and some one has taken it."

She still kept on using McMullins'.

"I want my dish-cloth; I'm in hurry," said McMullins, impatiently.

"Give her the dish-cloth, and go find your own!" I said.

Annie O'Brien's temper was like a lucifer match. At the command she threw the cloth in McMullins's face.

Quick as a cat would spring upon a mouse, McMullins was upon her; and the report of the slaps that fell quick, and followed each other fast on the side of O'Brien's face, sounded through the room.

It was in vain that I called upon them to stop. O'Brien was enraged. She caught up an iron rod that lay upon the window seat, and struck McMullins a blow upon her forehead that brought blood.

I called the other women to the spot, and they were soon parted.

I sent McMullins out of the room, took O'Brien, who was white with anger, by the arm, and led her to a seat.

"Sit down!"

She looked defiance for a moment; then, did as I commanded her.

"What kind of behavior is this, Annie O'Brien?" I asked, sternly.

"She slapped me in the face--slapped in the face by that low hussy!"

The thought added fuel to her rage, and she started up again as though to pursue her.

"Be quiet!"

She sat down again. I stood silent by her.

"She slapped me in the face; by ----, I will not bear it!"

She darted past me, and caught up a carving-knife that lay on the table.

"She slapped me in the face; and, by ----, I will have her heart's blood!"

My heart sickened at the disgusting scene; but my duty was before me.

"Stop her, and take the knife away!" I shouted to the women at the other end of the room.

In a moment the knife was taken from her, and both of her hands were confined by four of the women.

"Annie O'Brien, come here!" I called.