A keeper who knew the warden well remarked: "He has the soul of a valet, insulting to his inferiors and fawning to his superiors."
XII
About a dozen women convicts come twice a week to scrub the hardwood floor of the hospital. The majority of them are colored; the white women are either old and faded, or young and dissipated-looking. Very few of them are either refined or good-looking. Petty larceny is the crime for which most of them are sent to the prison.
Two negro women, young and rather tough-looking, are scrubbing the floor. They are in prison for having held up and robbed a man in the streets of New York. The man never recovered his $800.
As the convicts always attempt to joke and to flirt with the scrubbing women, they are usually ordered into the bathroom until the work is done, with the exception of the bedridden patients.
I discovered that quite a correspondence goes on between the men and women convicts. A young convict became quite enamored of a blonde, sporty-looking girl, and they took great risks to communicate their love notes. I was made the confidante in their love affair. Some of the passages read thus: "I love you, I love you, where did youse put the tobacco?" ... "I dreams of you day and night.... Get me some butter." ... "You was the best looker I ever seen.... Don't forget to put the matches at the foot of the stairs."
The women do not get the weekly ration of tobacco allowed to the men, and as a consequence they must beg tobacco and matches from the men.
All the house work, such as making beds, sweeping, cooking and waiting on table, in the house of the warden, in the apartment of the deputy warden, and in the dormitories of the keepers and matrons, is performed by the women convicts.
An old Irish woman while in prison took such loving care of the children of a former warden that whenever her time was up and she was discharged, her weakness was encouraged, and she was even purposely made drunk, then arrested and sentenced to the penitentiary again as an old offender, year after year, until the children of the warden grew big enough to take care of themselves.