Woman in Prison

by Caroline H. Woods

I was conducted to the kitchen, where I was to oversee the cooking for the prisoners, and to the prison adjoining it, which I was to see kept in order, by the Deputy Master of the institution, who gave me my keys and installed me in my office of Prison Matron.

When we first went in he called the six women who do the work in the kitchen, and the three "sweeps" who keep the prison clean, to him, and presented their new mistress, in my person, to them.

They were convicts that surrounded me at his call; but they were human beings. Human faces looked up to mine for sympathy and care. Some of them were fine looking, even in their coarse uniform, some were pretty as I picked them out one by one. They all looked at me earnestly, for a few moments, as though they were reading their sentence of harshness or kindly treatment, under my rule, in my face; then, turned away to their work again.

They whispered as they stood together, and I saw by their furtive glances that they were watching, and discussing me, as I walked around to take a survey of my new field of labor. They were undoubtedly commenting upon my personal appearance; and making their predictions as to my sharpness in detecting their impositions, and ability to control their perverseness; or, I imagined so.

The Deputy showed me the mush boiler, that would cook two large tubs full of that farinaceous edible at a time; the potato steamer, that would hold four barrels of that esculent vegetable at a cooking; the soup and coffee kettles, of still larger dimensions; and that comprised all of the apparatus required in preparing the mammoth meals which were to serve above four hundred people. These cooking utensils were kept in operation by pipes conducting steam to them from a boiler stationed in the middle of the room.

When he put the steam boiler under my direction I shrank back in terror from the task of managing it. The huge culinary apparatus, which he had been exhibiting, although outside the pale of ordinary housekeeping, was still within the reach of my understanding; but I had no idea of the management of steam; it was not only a difficult, but dangerous affair.

"The house will surely be blown up if you leave the care of that upon me," I said to him.

"You must watch it very closely."

"I don't know how, and I have no aptness for learning that kind of science."

"One of the women will tend it." And he went on with explanations that were all Greek to me. "It is safe when you have on twenty pounds of steam. There is your gauge," and he pointed to a clock-like looking affair on the wall. "That hand will move round and tell you how much steam you have on. You must keep water enough in the boiler or you will get blown up. If it runs from that centre stopcock, on the side, it is safe. You notice that glass tube in front. The water is just as high in that as it is in the boiler. This faucet is to let the water off if you get the boiler too full. Turn that faucet when you let the water on," and he went along and pointed to one in a pipe by the wall, "and that pump is there in case of accident. You must have it worked every day so as to keep it in order."