They are allowed all over the place.
One can see them of a morning carrying baskets of clothes to the clothes-yard outside the walls.
They gather raspberries and strawberries in the prison garden, which is unsurrounded by any barrier.
In the afternoon, when their work is done, they are at liberty to read, crochet or sew in their rooms, which are all in a separate building, and quite as airy and well furnished as those of the officials.
Supt. Lowell indulges them in automobiling, evenings, taking them out three or four at a time, and when there is a band concert on the village green they may be seen sitting on the benches of the lawn facing the street, attended by the prison matron.
Either there is something in the old saying “honor among thieves,” or else, being treated so well, the prisoners have no desire to try to escape from their “happy home.” At any rate they seem well content, look well fed and well kept and are a credit to the “humane treatment.”
Within the last two years there have been none on the sick list in the prison hospital.
Before the advent of Mr. Lovell the prisoners filed in line to the yard three times a day, summer and winter, and received their bowls of soup or plates of hash through a slide which extended outside from the kitchen. Each one would then go to his cell and eat his portion. They now have a large dining room with long tables running the length of the room. Here they are fed upon “the fat of the land.”
There is a splendid vegetable garden in the rear of the prison—the pride of Supt. Lovell’s heart. Such large, juicy, red tomatoes, rows of string beans, cucumbers, lettuce and watermelons, beets, squashes, cabbages, and below a field of sweet corn! All of these vegetables are used for the prisoners; nothing is sold outside.
They are allowed from three to four ounces of meat a day. They eat molasses on their bread on week days, great glass jugs of it being placed at intervals on the long tables; but on Sunday they are given butter. On holidays, Christmas and Thanksgiving, etc., they have quite as good a dinner as any one, a turkey and “all the fixings.”