John J. Lytle.
“Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in in his season.”
Such was the passing of our beloved friend, John J. Lytle, whose death occurred on the 14th of Eighth Month, 1911, at his residence in Moorestown, N. J.
He was born at Alexandria, Va., in 1823, and had almost completed his eighty-eighth year. In his infancy his widowed mother brought her family to Philadelphia, and for the remainder of his life his residence was in or near that city. After he attained his majority he was a merchant for twenty-five years at the corner of Seventh and Spring Garden Streets.
Early in his business career he became deeply interested in personal visitations to the inmates of the Eastern Penitentiary. With the exception of Joshua L. Baily, President of the Society, his membership in the Pennsylvania Prison Society covered a period longer than that of any living member, both having been elected members in 1851. For nearly sixty years he was a member of the Acting Committee, and his official positions date from the beginning of his membership on the Acting Committee to the time of his death. Early in 1852 he was appointed Secretary of the Acting Committee, and in 1860 he was elected Secretary of the Society. This office he held till 1909, when, on account of the infirmities of age, he was released from the active duties of this position and appointed Honorary Secretary. From 1886 to 1908 he gave up almost his entire time and energies to work on behalf of prisoners. The Eastern Penitentiary was the scene of his greatest efforts. Almost daily did he visit this large institution, becoming personally acquainted with the thirteen hundred or more inmates and ministering untiringly to their physical and spiritual needs. He speaks of his great privilege and “pleasure to stand by the prisoner’s side, to grasp his hand, to put new life into his heart, to endeavor to restore confidence in himself.” While he believed in all changes in penal methods which are directed to the reformation of the prisoners, and in industrial and scholastic training, he was firmly convinced that the only sure basis of reformation was the life-giving, renewing power of the gospel of Christ. To this end he labored in season and out of season. He never forgot the spiritual interests of those whom he befriended. In his report for 1906 he says: “We must talk to the man in the cell as a man, a friend and brother.... That lives redeemed await the work of those who enter the prison cell with the message of Christ is well proven. Many a one has said to me—I believe in sincerity, ‘The best thing that ever happened to me in my life was my sentence to the penitentiary. Here I have found my Saviour, whom I knew not before.’” This theme is dwelt on in all the eighteen reports which he made after assuming the duties of General Secretary in 1886. To illustrate his faithfulness in the performance of duty, in a report made in his eighty-first year, he states that he had made during the year, four hundred and fifty visits to the Penitentiary (oftener than daily), and had conversed with the inmates, either in the cells or at the cell doors, about forty-five hundred times. “It is now fourteen years since my whole time has been given up to this work, and my interest in it grows from year to year.... I find there is an open door for me to talk to them of their spiritual needs....”
He was a delegate, in 1886, to the American Prison Association, and for twenty years thereafter he was usually in attendance at the sessions of that body, taking an active part in the proceedings and serving on its leading committees.
When the State Legislature, in 1895, discontinued the appropriation of $3,000 per annum for the equipment and support of prisoners discharged from the Eastern Penitentiary, John J. Lytle solicited private contributions to continue this aid, and so successful were his efforts that no prisoner in need in all these years has been dismissed from that institution without practical help and sympathetic attention. The task of making these collections and of attending to every minute detail of their distribution involved unremitting labor, which he ceased not until bodily infirmity in his eighty-fifth year compelled him to take a much-needed rest. From the autumn of 1908 till the time of his death he was mostly confined to his home and vicinity, but was able to maintain quite a large correspondence and to enjoy the visits of his friends. His genial, kindly disposition had endeared him to a large circle of acquaintances, who deeply appreciated the privilege of his intimacy. His interest in the cause of the prisoners never flagged. The summons came while sitting at his writing table by the side of his dear wife, who had been his faithful companion for more than sixty-two years. A stroke of paralysis, then a few days of unconsciousness and all was over.
He was a birth-right member of the Society of Friends. In 1849 he was married to Anna Reeve, and he is survived by the widow, one son and four daughters.