Woman in Prison

by Caroline H. Woods

There were from four to ten in the wash-room. These were all lodged in my domain, with the exception of two or three who slept in the hospital.

When they left their work, at night, they were placed in file, in the order of their cells, and marched into the prison past the ration door, where their meals were handed out to them, through a slide, from the kitchen.

Their supper was a "skillet pan" of mush, or a slice of bread, and a quart of rye coffee, which was taken to their cells to be eaten after they were locked in their rooms—or stone dens, I called them in my indignation. The sight of those little, cramped stone cells recalled to my memory the pictures of dungeons, and imprisonments, and tortures which I had looked at in my childhood till my heart was racked with agony at the cruelties which they portrayed.

It was no paper picture that I was looking upon, but a stern reality; and my shrinking spirit asked again and again, as I saw those poor creatures marched in, and immured for the night,—Why did your folly prompt you to undertake such work?

Never shall I forget the hissing creak of the sliding bar as it closed them in; or the click of the lock as I turned the key in it, for the first time, upon those poor wretches. Long before I got through with the thirty-six locks, it fell to my share to bolt, my fingers were bruised, and my arm ached; but not so much as my heart.

I looked in upon the poor things, one by one, as I locked them in. An agony of pity worked itself into my soul, and oppressed me almost to suffocation.

I said to myself—Is this a woman's work? May be. If it must be done, it should be done tenderly. Great God, for Christ's sake, pity them in their cold, damp, narrow cells, and make their straw pallets couches of rest! I prayed mentally as I left the grated doors.

I had thought this to be missionary ground. I might teach some of them the way to Eternal Life, and the way to reformation. Alas! I found little chance with those who went to the shop and wash-room. They rose at sunrise, and worked till sunset. No one was allowed to hold communication with them, but their own Overseer, about their work. Neither were they allowed to talk in their cells at night, and they would have been too tired if they had been given the liberty to do so. The taskmaster had been over them all day to drive them, pitilessly, to fulfill their sentence of so many months hard labor in the Penitentiary.

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.