THE PENITENTIARY
"As long as a nation harbors a body of men authorized to inflict punishment, as long as there are prisons in which such a body can carry out these punishments, that nation cannot call itself civilized."
Message written on his prison wall,
by Francisco Ferrer.
It was a clear December morning when, from the little boat which carried me across the river, I spied the outline of the penitentiary squatting on the lower end of Blackwell's Island. It was my first view of it and the impression made on my mind was so ominous and sinister that my heart almost sank within me as I entered the fateful gates.
"Hey, there! Where do you t'ink you are? Take dem gloves off!" shouted a tough, strong voice as I stood waiting in front of the office window, recounting my pedigree and giving up my private belongings for safe keeping. In the old prison, I found six new prisoners waiting in line.
Our hair was clipped by a convict barber, and we were ordered to divest ourselves of our civilian clothes and take a shower bath. While we were trying to dry ourselves with two small hand towels, prison underwear and striped suits were thrown at our feet.
The trousers were decidedly too long, the coat, and the rag—unjustly named a vest—both too short; a cap which came down to my eyebrows made up this uniform of degradation and infamy. Harlequin's costume never looked more ridiculous than our own, which was mended, patched and repatched from long use by generations of long-suffering convicts.
The prison authorities, I suppose, are to be commended for their thrift; but I cannot help feeling that by putting on those frayed and wornout caricatures of uniforms we are endangering our health.
In the photographer's house behind the shower baths we are "mugged"; our Bertillon measurements are taken, even to "beauty spots" and pimples, by a red-haired, freckled-faced young man. A sign twelve inches long, black, with white numerals, is hung round my neck over a black cotton coat, and I am told to look pleasant until the camera has focussed my profile and full face.