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

by Thomas Mott Osborne

Called upon in the course of the night by Joe to give an account of himself, Number Three makes his one remark. “You fellows’ll hev to excuze be; I god such a cold id by ’ead I cad’t talk. Besides I shouted so las’ dight that I cudd’t talk butch eddy how!”

I find myself wondering how Number Three manages to do without a handkerchief—having so bad a cold in the head. Blows his nose on his shirt, I suppose. Quite pleasant and cleanly for the next fellow who is to wear the shirt, and for whom it will not be washed by order of the Warden. Again I am thankful for that particular special privilege.

Now I come to Number Two, and, my feelings on this subject being rather strong, I shall not trust myself to do more than state coldly the plain facts. This boy, for he is only twenty-one years of age, on Tuesday of this week after being two weeks in the hospital, had an operation on his ear, being already deaf in that ear from an injury received before he came to prison. The operation was on Tuesday; on Thursday afternoon, two days later, he was discharged from the hospital as being able to work, although the wound in his ear had not yet healed. Being a slight, lightly-built youth, and just out of the hospital after an operation, he was put to work at—shoveling coal! But the next morning, Friday, before he had fairly started on his job, he was ordered to the jail office. There he found that a report had come down from the hospital to the effect that while there he had been somewhat troublesome and had talked with another patient.

For this offense the sick lad was sent down here to the dark cell on bread and three gills of water a day. No handkerchief to wipe the running wound in his ear. No water to wash his ear or his face. Clad in filthy clothes. And when I arrived on Saturday afternoon he had been down here nearly thirty-six hours. And was due to stay at least thirty-six more, for “they never let us out of here on Sunday.”

Nor is that all. This inhuman treatment—I hope I am not guilty of too much rhetoric in the use of the adjective—this punishment of being sent here to the dark cells, is only one, as I learn from my new friends, of five simultaneous punishments, all for the same offense.

There is First: Your imprisonment in the jail, under such conditions as I am trying to describe.

Second: Your hard-gained earnings are taken away by a fine which is charged against you on the prison books. As an instance, take my own case. My six days’ work in the basket-shop would have entitled me, as a convict, to receive from the state of New York the munificent sum of nine cents. But my fine for spending one night in the punishment cells was fifty cents. So at the end of my week’s work I owed the state of New York forty-one cents. If I had been a regular convict I should have had to work four weeks more before I could have got back even again. But, on the other hand, had I been a regular convict I should have been much more heavily fined, and my punishment would not have ended with a single night.

This is of course the highly humorous aspect of my particular case. To a prisoner who sometimes loses several years’ pay for the privilege of spending a few days in these cells, there is precious little humor about it. At the mere whim of a bad-tempered keeper he may lose the acquisition of months of patient toil. And against the keeper there is no practicable appeal whatever, for the P. K. simply registers the action of the officers, on the theory that “discipline must be maintained.” Experience has taught the convict that there is no use in kicking—that would only be to get into deeper trouble; so he takes his medicine as the shortest and quickest way out. But we may be quite sure that the convict does not forget his grievance, and ultimately Society pays the penalty.

But let us go on with the other punishments involved in this jail sentence.

Third: The disc upon your sleeve is bulls-eyed—that is, changed to a circle—or taken off altogether, as a mark of disgrace. And you never can regain your disc, no matter how perfect your future conduct. Your sleeve shows to every observer that you have been punished; that you are or have been a disturbing, if not dangerous, character. It is astonishing how much the prisoners get to care about this disc, and how deeply they feel the disgrace implied in the loss of it. But however strange it seems, there can be no doubt as to the fact.