Recollections of Windsor Prison; / Containing Sketches of its History and Discipline, with Appropriate Strictures and Moral and Religious Reflection

by of Vermont John Reynolds

Quarkenbush was a young man, and a wife and aged parents, with brothers and sisters, wept over his untimely grave. I was personally and intimately acquainted with him, and I know that his death was caused by an injudicious prescription. He was a victim to the practical regulations of the prison; and as there was crime in his death, some one must answer for his blood.

CORLISS.

The work of the prison must be done, life or death; and as some part of this work can be done by only one man, that man must never be sick. Corliss was the only man that could do correctly the work to which he was assigned, and as there was a call for him every hour in the day, so every hour in the day he must work, sick or well. All men are liable to be sick, and there was no more exemption for him than for others; but he must do his work whenever called for. The life of a prisoner is estimated in cents, and of his happiness, no account is made. His labor is all that renders him valuable, and to this he is ever goaded; and when he can do no more, then—"poor old horse, let him die."

Oppressed by constant toil, Corliss began at length to fail, and his countenance began to denote the nature of his disease; but he could gain no release from his work, and frequently was he called out of his cell, when his cough and deathly look should have admonished his keepers to prepare him a winding sheet, and forced to do the labor of a well man.

Finding at last that his working days were over, the keepers recommended him for a pardon, and he was released just in time to die. It is one of the practical regulations of the prison, to keep all the profitable prisoners as long as possible, and to pardon all such as are of no use. Another regulation is, that when the work requires a prisoner to be in a particular place, there he must be at any rate. This regulation has borne hard on many beside the subject of this sketch, and when it has crippled them for life, they are generally let out to die. The ghosts of many whom I saw nailed to this cross, are at this moment crossing my mind. I could fill a page with their names, and the pains that dart every hour through my shadowy form, admonish me that my escape from the same doom was rather visionary than real.

SAVERY.

The subject of this sketch was a liberally educated, and highly esteemed clergyman of the Baptist denomination. Unhappily for his own peace and that of his family, and for the honor of Christianity, he fell a victim to the pressure of circumstances, and the force of temptation, and committed three distinct forgeries to a large amount, on one of which he was sentenced to the prison for seven years.

When he entered the prison he was an emblem of perfect health, and seemed to have a constitution that might smile at decay, and survive the ruins of an eternity. For some time no alteration in his appearance was visible, but the change of condition, from the pulpit to a dungeon, from respect to scorn, and from comfort to the want of all things, was more than he could endure, and disease began to admonish him that he was mortal.

He began now to learn a science that had not been taught him in college, and on which his divinity instructor had never lectured. He now for the first time in his life, had a practical demonstration of the solemn and humbling truth, that there is as much difference between the profession and the practice of piety, as there is between pedantry and real science; and that the priest and the Levite are the same now, as they were in the days of the good Samaritan. Christians left him to suffer without sympathy. Even the ministers of that holy religion which sends its votaries to the sinner wherever he may be found—which espouses the cause of the prisoner—and which says to the backsliding, "Return;" treated him with as much severity as language can convey. One of these, who only a few months before had taken counsel with him, and walked to the house of God, addressed to him from the pulpit the very words I am going to record. "Thou hypocrite!" said he, "dressed in the specious semblance of piety, while thy heart was filled with all abominations, a just and righteous retribution has fallen on thy guilty head!" Awful words these for one poor sinful mortal to use to another. They are the flame of an angry soul, and ill become the servants of him who, even when he was reviled, reviled not again. But if this was the spirit of the priest, what might not have been expected of the people? Alas! "like priest like people," for they too passed him in sullen silence, or with protruded lips.

Is this religion? If it is, away with it from the earth; it is the infamy and curse of the human race. Away with it and its votaries. It is worse than the religion of Dagon. If this is religion, I pray God that infidelity may banish it from the universe, of which it is the fellest scourge.