Within Prison Walls / being a narrative during a week of voluntary confinement in the state prison at Auburn, New York

by Thomas Mott Osborne

The Warden told me that one of the convicts who works in his household quarters locks in (to use the prison expression denoting temporary residence) next to me—Number 14 on this tier; and that he had felt rather hurt that I did not answer his taps. It seems that after finishing his evening’s work he gets back to his cell at ten o’clock, and that he tapped me a greeting last night. That was just about the time I fell asleep. I remember getting the impression in a vague way of some noises on the gallery near by, just as I was dropping off; that must have been the night officer letting him into his cell. To-night I shall stay awake and answer his message.

So the company I am in is the one I have been dreading, is it? “The toughest bunch of fellows in the prison”—Murphy and Stuhlmiller and “Blackie,” the good-natured fellow who gave away his tobacco and brings us the material for our baskets; and the other pleasant men whose acquaintance I have been making these last two days in the shop. It is incredible, inconceivable. What can be the explanation of it all?

Is it possible that I am being made the victim of a clever system of deception? This is naturally my first thought. I can well imagine that Jack Murphy enjoys the novel sensation of having as his partner a man who is for the moment an object of peculiar interest to this community, that is simply human nature. No doubt Harley Stuhlmiller enjoys giving directions to the member of a state commission, that again is human nature. But that these men could assume virtues which they have not, and carry out a wholesale system of deceit—that is not possible. I have been on my guard every moment I have been here, and I have observed some few attempts to get into my good graces, with a possible expectation of future benefits; but on the other hand there has been a remarkable and most successful effort to carry out my request—to treat me as plain Tom Brown.

No, that explanation doesn’t explain; the truth must lie in another direction. And here is my idea. I am not seeing the worse side of these men because there is no occasion for them to show me their worse side; but I have no intention of overlooking or denying that side. They wouldn’t be in prison if they did not have it. But, although they may form the toughest bunch in prison, they evidently have their better side also, and is that not just as real as the worse side? And is it not the better side that is the more important for us to consider? Important—whether we approach the matter from the side of philanthropy or from that of political economy. In either case we must consider it important that men should not leave prison in such condition, mental, moral or physical, that they will almost certainly commit more crimes and be returned to prison.

To which side, the better or the worse, does the Prison System now appeal? Which does it encourage and develop? These are pretty vital questions.

At any rate it seems to me to have been great good luck that I was placed in the basket-shop where I should associate with just these men; for if these fellows are really among the more difficult cases in the prison, then I think——

Wednesday morning, October 1.

At that interesting moment, while still writing my journal, the lights suddenly went out on me; so I am finishing this next morning. The Warden and Grant arrived soon after eight and must have stayed longer than I thought; and somehow I seem to have missed the warning bell. I had not begun to prepare for bed, when suddenly I was left in darkness. I had to get my writing materials into the locker and make my evening toilet the best way I could, with the help of the dim light from the corridor coming through the grated door. There was one good thing about it, however; I was too busy for a while to notice the blackness of the bars which had given me such a shock the night before. It did not take so very long to make my preparations, for the state of New York allows its boarders neither night shirts nor pajamas. We have to sleep in the underclothes in which we have worked all day. An arrangement which strikes one as being almost more medieval than the sewage disposal system.

On Monday night, according to Jack Murphy, the men in my corridor all waited to hear if I had the usual difficulties with my bed; and as some other fellow’s bed went down with him during the evening they thought they had the laugh on me. This Tuesday night they certainly had. That infernal armchair could not be placed where it did not catch the edge of the bed when I let it down, so as to leave one leg dangling loose, as only one could touch the floor at a time. In the course of my struggles with the bed, the whole miserable contrivance came off the hooks and fell down with a metallic rattle and bang that could be heard all over the corridor. Then came snickers from various distances, and my frantic effort to straighten things out only made more noise than ever. Bursts of smothered laughter came through the bars; and I laughed, myself, until I was almost in hysterics. Finally I got the bed hitched on to the back hooks, folded it up against the wall and started all over again. I began by putting the chair on its back as far away from the bed as possible, which wasn’t very far, and this time I just managed to get the legs of the bed to the floor. After that it was short work to get ready for the night.

I have not yet described my bed covering. I have one double and one single blanket and a thin blanket sheet—no cotton or linen of any sort. I do not need, in this weather, more than one of the three blankets; but if I were to be here long I know I should like some cotton bedclothes and pillow cases. These can be secured, apparently, only by buying them, and many prisoners have not the money to buy them. It seems as if the State should furnish them to all prisoners; certainly the present arrangement leaves much to be desired from a sanitary point of view.