Recollections of Windsor Prison; / Containing Sketches of its History and Discipline, with Appropriate Strictures and Moral and Religious Reflection

by of Vermont John Reynolds

PRISONERS' CORRESPONDENCE WITH THEIR FRIENDS.

To a certain extent, the prisoners have the privilege of corresponding with their friends. But this privilege, like many others, loses much of its value from the circumstances under which it is enjoyed. No prisoner is allowed to state his real condition, nor intimate that he is not kindly treated. Every letter must be examined before it is sent, and if a single word is too significant for the pleasure of the keeper, it is destroyed. The same is true of all letters sent to the prisoners by their friends. I find no fault with the keepers examining all letters sent by or to the prisoners. This is perfectly right. And it would be equally right to suppress all letters not written in a respectful style, or containing information that might afford facilities for an escape from the prison; but to interrupt a prisoner's correspondence with his friends, merely to gratify the capricious disposition of an unfeeling keeper, is unjust, inhuman, and criminal.

In order to ensure a passport for their letters, the unmanly conduct of the keepers has driven the prisoners into a style of writing which must be disgusting to all but those who love to be flattered. They generally devote one paragraph to the praise of the keepers. This paragraph is usually a very fine one; and as it contains some high sounding words of commendation, it tickles the vanity of those who examine it, and finds its way abroad.

When a letter is condemned, the prisoner is sometimes permitted to try again, and sometimes he is left to guess its fate. Should any one write a true account of the place, its laws, and customs, and regulations, it would be as impossible for the letter to get into the Post Office, as it is for a guinea to pass by the fingers of a Jew. And it is a very frequent case that a man is most shamefully abused by his keeper, on account of some lines in his letters, which he penned as innocently as a martyr, but which did not happen to be worded according to the grammar of the place. I write this from experience; for I am the man. But I am not the only man. Should any one ask the names of the others, I might answer—"legions," for they "are many." And for some offence innocently committed in this way, many have been marked for the arrows of vengeance, which have not lingered long on the string.

Should a letter to any prisoner be deemed inadmissible, he would not know that any had been sent to him. No matter how interesting it might be to him, the keeper destroys it and is silent. Many facts confirm this statement. I have now by me a letter which I recently received from my brother, in which he writes—"I received not one letter from you all the time you were there, though I wrote you many." Not one of his letters ever reached me, and I wrote very many to him. This is not a singular case; I know of many similar ones.

Another circumstance ought to be mentioned here.—There is no provision made to pay the postage on letters sent to the prisoners, and as they are generally destitute of money, it often happens that their letters are never taken out of the office. When any letter is taken out of the Post office, the postage is charged to the prisoner, and he must pay it, whether he gets the letter or not.

All other communications are subject to the same vexatious rules as the letters are. If a prisoner wishes to send a petition to his friends for them to sign in his behalf, and forward to the Governor and Council; or if he wishes to send one to that body with his own signature, it must be worded just so, or it cannot be sent. The keeper of the prison takes it upon himself to decide what is and what is not proper to go before the Executive. He also, as if possessed of omniscience, knows all the facts in the case, better than the man that has experienced them; and as there is no law binding him but his own will, he acts in such cases, very frequently, as if there were no God to take notice of his conduct, and no judgment for the guilty.

That the conduct of the keepers in respect to the correspondence of the prisoners is highly improper, no one will attempt to deny. That correspondence is sacred, and no unfeeling or capricious regulations ought ever to interrupt it. The tender sympathies of friendship are not destroyed, though the heart that contains them is chilled by a dungeon's damps and a prison's gloom. A father is a father still. A husband is a husband still. And dear to the heart are the thoughts of his children, and the recollections of his wife. These are as imperishable as his nature, and who that ever had a heart could touch lightly the sacred ark of his happiness? How infernal must be the nature of that man who can wantonly crucify the holy sympathies of a trembling sufferer? But it is not the sinner alone who suffers by this conduct of men in power, it is the innocent too; and who but a fiend would punish the innocent with the guilty? It would denote a moral and perfect fitness for any place but heaven, to take pleasure in afflicting, unnecessarily, even the vilest sinner; what then must be the moral complexion of that man's soul, who can sport with the unmerited sufferings of the crimeless, and take an unearthly satisfaction in multiplying the tears and agony of the innocent wife and the stainless orphan? But such men there are, and well I know them.