The Subterranean Brotherhood

by Julian Hawthorne

The hash, which often made the breakfast, was composed of fragments of gristle and refuse left on the prisoners' plates after dinner, mixed with potatoes and rancid grease; this, and the soups and gravies, which had a similar origin, gave out a most nauseating smell. The men would gulp it down—it was that, or starve—trying to help it on its way with all the condiments they could lay hands on; but the effect of it, and of the food generally, upon the digestive tract was so disastrous in most cases that they might better have left it alone. I myself retired from the enterprise in my second or third week, and would have literally died of inanition had not the doctor, moved by I know not what suggestion (not mine), put me on the milk and oatmeal diet during the remainder of my sojourn. This applied for breakfast and supper; I sat at dinner, but satisfied myself with nibbling bread crusts, and witnessing the forlorn and perilous efforts of my friends to walk the line between starvation and acute indigestion. Not many were successful.

For vegetables we had Irish and sweet potatoes, turnip tops (uneatable), black-eyed beans, bitter and greasy, and once a month, perhaps, a tomato. The butter was made of an inferior quality of lard, and cottonseed oil—a substance which entered into many other of our viands, and of which, with grease, it was calculated by an expert in the kitchen, we were offered as much as one pound per man every day. It produced a calamitous effect upon the digestive tract, inasmuch as there was hardly a white man in the prison who did not suffer chronically from stomach troubles—constant suffering, often becoming acute. The strongest digestions would resist for a while, but finally succumb.

There was a poultry farm on the grounds, donated by outside benefactors specifically and exclusively for the benefit of prisoners, beginning with the tuberculous patients. After it got going, there may have been an average of six hundred fowls on the place. Of these, not one ever appeared on the prison tables. With the exception of a possible few that were stolen by prisoners having access to the yard, all were appropriated by higher officials, and the eggs as well.

One official gave frequent dinner parties to his friends, and was said to use as many as five or six chickens a day, though I cannot vouch for that—it seems excessive. He certainly, sometimes, commandeered as many as fourteen or more at one time. There was a story of a great cake which he had made for some festival, into the composition of which entered one hundred and four eggs from our farm. To neither chickens nor eggs had he, of course, any title more legitimate than have you who read these lines. He had a large and hungry household, and many guests—among them, commonly, such government inspectors as were sent down from Washington, to see whether he and his fellow officials were honestly discharging their functions.

As for the tuberculous patients, I was never able to find any of them who had eaten chicken from the farm, or any part of one. Some chicken soup was at one time ordered for a patient by the doctor; a prisoner (a famous physician), a deputy of the doctor, happened to be at the tuberculosis camp when the soup arrived from the kitchen. It consisted of some warm water with the shank—not the drumstick, but the shank and foot—of a fowl in it. This aroused his interest, and twice again he was present when a chicken soup prescribed appeared at the camp. On both occasions—he stands ready so to testify under oath—he found the same foot and shank in it, but nothing else recalling chicken. The foot was identified by an imperfection in one of its toes.

Eggs were indeed provided for the hospital prisoners (never for the general mass), but they were cold storage eggs, the cheapest grade that could be bought in the market, and that is saying much for this sort of product nowadays. Out of one mess of eight that were served in the hospital, and of which I gained authentic news from the prisoner physician already referred to, six were bad. I am informed that these notes and comments of mine are not permitted to be read by the prisoners; but perhaps the original donors of the poultry farm may see them, and be prompted to inquire into their accuracy. Let us return to the dining room.

Sweet potatoes abound in the South, and subsistence upon them exclusively would reduce the cost of living; the only trouble is that the human stomach refuses to cooperate in this economy. Sweet potatoes were served at Atlanta during the season three times a day, baked, boiled and in pies; the men were hungry enough, and the supply of potatoes was adequate; but had they been of the finest instead of the worst quality in the market, the experiment would have failed; starvation proved preferable; we could not get them down. That soft, slimy sweetness, foul with dirt and often tainted with decay, reappearing day after day at every meal for weeks on end, outdid endurance, nor could we be stimulated by the argument that the Government was saving money by it. Had the sweet potato season lasted the year round, the warden would have lost his job from mere dearth of prisoners to earn his salary on.

I do not forget the corn, either; it was of the brand fed to farm animals; but this enumeration becomes monotonous. We had apple pies once a week or so; and I was told by an employee in the kitchen, who had been a farmer in his time, that the apples were such as could be bought at a dollar a barrel, and that the charge appearing in bills submitted to the Government was five dollars. The quality of the apples in the pies supports my informant's contention. As for the watermelons—a benefactor of the prisoners bought a consignment of them sufficient for the prison population, to be eaten on the Fourth of July, 1913. The contract was for the best melons obtainable; and Georgia is famous for good melons. A day or two before the Fourth, the benefactor called at the prison, and asked to see the melons, which had been delivered some time before. Examination showed them to be of an inferior grade, such as farmers used for cattle and poultry. It was too late, however, to get a fresh supply, and the benefactor had the mortification of seeing the kindly meant gift dishonored. It is pertinent, here, that there is said to be an individual in Atlanta not officially connected with the penitentiary who is commissioned to make all purchases for the prison—food, tobacco, and other supplies. He buys the stuff, and hands in his bills; but the bills he pays are not submitted. It is conceivable that there may be a discrepancy between the two amounts, and it might be interesting to learn whether he alone benefits by it.

Guards walk up and down the aisles between the tables, during meals, to keep order and also to attend to complaints or requests from prisoners. There is also the man in the window with the loaded magazine rifle, ready to settle any complaints that become too insistent. The common protest is against the badness of a specific piece of food, or against some example of dirt. The former seldom get relief; in the latter case, the dish or cup is sometimes changed.

A prisoner at my table called the guard's attention to a quid of tobacco which had got into his soup. The guard, who was of a humorous turn, replied, smiling, "Well, you use tobacco, don't you?" and passed on. This was the same guard who assaulted and clubbed a prisoner whom he was taking downstairs, as described in a previous chapter. On another occasion, a prisoner complained that there was a beetle in his hash. An examination was made; but whether the beetle was alive and got away, or whether the prisoner himself had "bugs," as the slang is, at any rate the examiners reported no beetle. The matter was then brought before the authorities, who ordered the complainant to the dark hole.