“It’s like a home!” he said humorously.
We went to the woman’s section. In one big cage sat three or four, one was greyhaired, her age was 74. “Smuggling drink” was her trouble. I began to feel that it is only a crime to be found out. In the next a woman sat alone. Big, thick, middle aged, with a face grown hard from suffering—she arose and came to the iron bars to talk with us. She had at last—she told the warder—slept one hour, and felt a little better. Her indictment was that she had shot her husband. “I adored him—” she said, “my daughter didn’t want me to marry him, because of the way he drank—we married just two years ago. Yes I am American born—my husband was a Swede. He was a cement-worker. His only fault was drink.—Last Saturday he bought some moonshine, mixed it up with beer,—firewater it was, it drove him crazy. He threatened to shoot me first and then himself. I got the gun off the Captain(?) who was in the house. I thought it was unloaded, and so I handed it to him as a joke, and it went off—”
“Lucky it went off on him instead of on you—“I said. She looked at me wearily through half closed eyes: “It might as well have been me—”
We left the prison.
In the basement of the building the Coroner had his office, and he invited us to see “the Morgue.” In a big room, a big table with a lamp and books gave the illusion of a salon. The four corners were partitioned off, and handsomely draped with velvet curtains. In these the bodies lie, the first few days, awaiting recognition. There were but two this day, one was completely covered over; the other partially. From beneath a sheet two stumps protruded, and a bucket hung to catch the blood. An Italian boy fishing from a raft, had drowned. His body had been rescued from man eating sharks. “We have two more in cold storage, down below,” said the Coroner. We followed him. The place was built like an aquarium. On either side were great show cases, lit up with electric light. In each a body was beautifully set, wrapped around in a sheet so that only the face could show. They can be preserved here for several months.
One’s first impression was “how life-like”—they seemed to be some waxen image, in the “Chamber of Horrors” at Madame Tussaud’s.
One, an old man, greyhaired, open mouthed, head thrown back and dilating nostrils, had committed suicide by gas asphyxiation. The other a little blood stained smiling boy, red haired looking at us with such wide open wondering eyes. He had been run over by a train. The announcement of a red haired boy, had brought about 50 people, but none so far had claimed him. From fifty families a red-haired boy had disappeared, it seemed incredible. But, it is midnight—I cannot go on writing and thinking of this place, with its dead below, and its dead-alive above. I will recall how I got out into God’s air, and drank the cool fresh evening in deep breaths. And so, across the square to Chinatown. Here at a street corner my detective guide hailed two strange, illdressed, square built stalwart men. These were detectives in disguise, who mingle with the Chinese crowd, and know the Chinese haunts. They seemed well-known in Chinatown, disguise is not much use! One of them joined us and we followed him. He took us into shops and eating houses, where blank faced Chinamen played their games of cards and dominos and hardly troubled to look up at us as we passed through. Into back premises we went, and down black stairs, through secret doors and passages, where by the light of an electric torch one saw the hatchet marks where doors and walls had been hacked down when the place was raided by the police.
However anyone ever discovered the latchless secret doors that seemed so perfectly a part of the panelled wall or dared to penetrate into the labyrinths of double walls, trapdoors and secret stairways, Heaven only knows.
Our stalwart guide, who looked more like an Irish prize fighter than a shrewd detective, seemed to glory in the game. Every day and every night must seem to him a great adventure. He led us down a black unlighted alley, a cul-de-sac between some tenements, where murders are not infrequent. Suddenly he turned round, on a silent footed follower whom I had not noticed: “What are you sneaking around here for—get out!” he said and flashed his torch in the grimly smiling Chinese face. Just for a second I felt the atmosphere rather tense—the Chinaman hesitated, and then retreated.
We pushed open a door ajar. A Chinese prostitute stood smoking her pipe. Soberly dressed, in black silk jacket and trousers, her hair so neat and shiny, her face almost unpainted, she shyly grinned at us. I made a comparison in my mind, between this and the half breed Mexicans at Tampico. In comparison the Chinese was a noblewoman.