Here are the names of the inmates I saw that day: Roland Burham Molineux, Dr. Kennedy, Eddie Wise, Jim Mullen, Fritz Meyer, William Newfeldt and Druggist Priora.
The two condemned men from Brooklyn, Ferraro and Zigwers, I did not know and had no particular interest in them except one of pity.
I came that day to see Mr. Molineux, whom I had known in the Tombs as a courteous gentleman and one that everybody liked. It seems almost unnecessary to say that he received me with his usual blandness. As I came up to the steel woven screen he smiled at me. I remember he looked pale and worried! And his eyes were dull and heavy. I tried to give him a little comfort as best I could under the circumstances.
I knew that in time Mr. Molineux would secure another trial and it came, thank God, and I was one of the first to congratulate him after the jury had filed into Court and said, “Not guilty.”
While I was speaking to Roland, Dr. Kennedy was having a visit from his wife. I saw her on the train coming up but I reached the prison some time before her as I came by way of the railroad track.
I had only a few words with Dr. Kennedy. I could see that he was in a state of great nervous excitement bordering on collapse, and no wonder, for his case was that day before the Court of Appeals. It was in the balance. The judges were then considering the circumference of the lead pipe which was the one thing in his case that led to a new trial. A sixteenth part of an inch decided his fate! I looked at Kennedy again and again; he was a study! His eyes were like balls of fire, his hair stood upright, his hands held on to the steel bars of his cage and braced him while he spoke to his wife. The strain was telling on him! His face was pallid and he looked as if he had not slept in a month. Not only did he look dejected and worried on account of the ordeal through which he was then passing, but he looked like a man almost beside himself. The Court of Appeals gave him a chance for his life, and after three trials failed to convict him, he was liberated. Since then the old indictment against him has been quashed.
There was another young man in the death house that morning. He was a New Englander—only a few feet away! It was Eddie Wise—an intelligent, wide-awake and bright young man. For several years he had led a wild life as the companion of criminals. What brought him here? Under the influence of cursed rum he took part in a “highway” in which the victim was killed in defending his watch and money. The other two “crooks” got away, and have never been found. This young man who simply looked on was held as a principal and convicted of murder in the first degree.
There is another man present who killed a companion at a game of cards on a Sunday afternoon. They had all been drinking; after a quarrel he went for a gun and shot his friend to death. He has a wife and five small children. Poor Priora!
The others in the cells are Jim Mullen, an ex-English soldier, Newfeldt, the Jew, and Fritz Meyer—all of them passed through the little iron door and paid the penalty of the law for their crime!
Some of the inmates call the death house a “Modern Inferno,” but I could not read Dante’s inscription, written over the portals, “None return that enter here.” Indeed, some who had spent from one to two years in those chambers of death have afterwards gone forth to liberty, and are now living in freedom. I have often thought that the awful monotony, the solitary silence, the deprivations of papers, letters and friends were enough to drive men in such a place crazy. But when one of the inmates came back to the Tombs to stand a new trial, I asked him regarding these things, and he informed me that they can only stand that awful silence and suspense a few days, when they break out and for hours make the place hideous with their yells.