Men and women that came from noble sires, scholars and specialists with trained minds that would have shone in any department of life, lawyers, teachers, business men, bankers, brokers and even men of letters, all under the cruel hand of fate, succumbed to the tempter in a weak moment and fell; alas! some never to rise again.
“Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years,
I am so weary of toil and tears.”
But, alas, it is too late. The die is cast forever!
Our young men and women should learn ere it is too late, or even before they launch forth on a career of crime, that we cannot break the divine law without punishment. “Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap,” is a law that is as true in the moral world as it is in the realm of nature. Our large cities are full of the whirlpools of vice that carry multitudes swiftly over the rapids of destruction into the maelstrom of eternal death.
The New City Prison
After many years of agitation the plans for the new Tombs Prison were prepared and approved during the Strong administration, which went into power on a reform wave in 1894.
The new City Prison contains three hundred and twenty steel cells arranged in four tiers in the men’s and four in the boys’ prison, with parallel corridors. There are forty large cells on each tier, arranged back to back, with all the recent improvements, which consist of running water, electric light, toilet, wash basin, hung table and cot. The new building is said to have cost over one million dollars.
On September 30th, 1902, the old offices on Leonard Street which had been in use since the front building on Centre Street had been torn down to make room for the new structure, were abandoned and the books and other important documents removed to the offices in the new building. This new building, however, was not entirely ready for use, but the first step had been taken and the occasion was hailed with joy. The second step in the entire occupation of the new City Prison took place Tuesday, January 6th, 1903, when the contractors handed over the entire structure to the City authorities and it was formally opened to the public by Mayor Seth Low and Commissioner Thomas W. Hynes in the presence of a number of invited guests. A few days afterwards the prisoners were transferred from the old prison to the new, and the work of demolishing the old Tombs was begun.
When the new Tombs was opened in 1901, John E. Van De Carr was Warden. And a kinder and more obliging man never lived than he. Both under the administrations of Mayors Strong and Low he was the official head of the city prison, and cared for the inmates of the prison as if they were his own family.