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

by Thomas Mott Osborne

In the evening, after his failure to get the doctor, Lavinsky created some disturbance by calling out remarks which violated the quiet of the cell-block. I understand that the form this took was something of this sort: “If you want to kill me, why don’t you do it at once, and not torture me to death?” He seemed to be possessed with the idea that his life was in danger. I do not know in what condition he was when first placed in jail, but I do know that the time he spent down in that hellhole, five days, was quite sufficient to account for his mental condition when he came out.

Now here was a young man, hardly more than a lad, in a sick and nervous condition that had produced temporary derangement of mind. What course did the System take in dealing with that suffering human being? Two keepers opened his cell, made a rush for him, and knocked him down. One eye-witness says that they black-jacked him, that is, rendered him unconscious by striking him on the head with the instrument of that name. During the brief scuffle in the cell the iron pail and the bucket were overturned. Then, after being handcuffed, the unresisting if not unconscious youth was flung out of his cell with such violence that, if it had not been for a convict trusty who stood by, he would have slipped under the rail of the gallery and fallen to the stone floor of the corridor four stories below, and been either killed or crippled for life.

Then the two keepers, being reinforced by a third, dragged their victim roughly downstairs, partly on his back, kicked and beat him on the way, and carried him before the Principal Keeper, who promptly sent him down to the jail again.

Let it be remembered that this poor fellow is a slight, undersized, feeble specimen of humanity, whom one able-bodied man ought to have had little trouble in handling—even if any use of force were necessary.

This scene of violence could not pass unnoticed; and the loud protests and outcries of the prisoners whose cells were near by, as they heard and saw the treatment accorded to their helpless comrade, were the sounds I heard far away in my cell. One of the trusties who, having the freedom of the corridors, was enabled to see most of the occurrence, so far forgot his position as to venture the opinion that it was a “pretty raw deal.” This remark was overheard by an officer; and the trusty at once received the warning that he had better keep his mouth shut and not talk about what didn’t concern him.

If it is realized that these officers have what almost amounts to the power of life and death over the convicts, it can be understood that such a warning was not one to be lightly disregarded.

Lavinsky, having been landed again in the jail, was kept there from Wednesday evening until Saturday afternoon. What special care or attention was given him during that time I am unable to state, but there is no reason to suppose that any exception was made in his case. Like the other denizens of the jail, he was fed only on bread and a very insufficient quantity of water—three gills in twenty-four hours—and also experienced the intolerable conditions of that vile place.

On Saturday afternoon, three days later, he was still down there, and still bughouse. Then as there was a disturbing rumor among the officials that I was planning to be sent to the jail, he was taken away about an hour before my arrival. His cell was the very one which I occupied, after it had been thoroughly cleaned.

He was removed from the jail to a special cell, where his case was taken up personally by the Warden, and where the poor youth was at last put under the care of the doctor, and received some humane and sensible treatment. When I first saw him, some three weeks after my term had ended, he had not become entirely rational, although he has since recovered himself. As I have already said, he had at first no clear recollection of the brutal treatment of which he had been the victim, nor in fact of anything that occurred at the time. Perhaps it was all the better that this was so.

An exceptionally intelligent convict, whose term expired soon after these events, and who could have had no earthly object in misrepresenting the matter, described to me after his release the episode in detail. He had been an eye-witness of the entire occurrence, as he was standing on the gallery where he could see everything that happened. He summed it up in these exact words: “Mr. Osborn, it was one of the most brutal things that I have ever seen, in all my experience in prison.”