Beating Back.—Al Jennings and Will Irwin. Appleton’s, New York, 1914. Pp. 355.
A most readable narrative of the career of the “famous train robber”, Al Jennings, who figured in a number of holdups and subsequently in the Ohio State Prison and the Federal Prison at Leavenworth as inmate, and still later as candidate for county attorney in Oklahoma, and now as candidate for Governor of Oklahoma. Will Irwin has edited the autobiography, and it reads many times better than the old-style “From Log Cabin to White House” literature, besides being very human, and, to penologists, more than interesting. Here is a man that, according to his story, did not start out along criminal lines, but through force of circumstances and considerable of a temper, swung into crime in woolly Western days. He was finally caught, imprisoned, underwent the pretty rigorous penitentiary discipline of Ohio and Kansas, and discovered the importance of being honest. The tale is as good as a novel of adventure; more moral than many a didactic screed; and more just to prison regimes of the older days than many a diatribe of a narrow-visioned reformer.
O. F. L.
NOTES.
The most “innovating” sheet of the Umpire is that on which the schedule of baseball games, to be played this season at the Eastern Penitentiary, is given. The following clubs are included: “Cubs, Ninth, Shed, Band.” There are both home games and games on other grounds, but all within the prison yard. Total number of games to be played, 56. Contracts, protests, violations of agreements, ground rules, limitation of number of players carried by each club, limitation by ground rules (ball lodging on the roof to be counted for two bases only), furnishing of balls by the home club, etc., are all down in black and white. Good luck to the series! This is the institution that started by adopting solitary confinement in all its severity. Even now the Pennsylvania system is treasured as a great historical fact in Europe, and most continental prisons are built largely on the architectural model of the old penitentiary. How long will it be before the European prisons adopt the new Pennsylvania methods?
Hereafter all executions in the State of New York must take place at Sing Sing prison.
The first monthly report of Charles H. Girardeau, who was named warden following the recent shake-up in the county convict camps of Georgia, shows that whippings under the new regime have been reduced by more than 50 per cent. He admits the truth of the report that the food served the convicts was bad in some instances and makes a number of recommendations for further reforms in the system.