Mr. Osborne, having been appointed by Governor Sulzer as chairman of a commission to recommend improvements in the prison system of the State of New York, resolved to become a voluntary prisoner at Auburn and to put himself, as nearly as possible, in the place of the actual convict. He frankly declared his purpose in the prison chapel, asking the co-operation of the officers and prisoners to make his experience as realistic as possible; and they took him at his word.
He entered the prison gates in citizen’s clothes and was registered by the receiving officer as “Thomas Brown, 33,333x.” He was conducted by an officer to the tailor shop, where in a corner of the shop without any screens and in full view of all passers in and out, are three porcelain lined iron bath tubs side by side. He stripped, bathed and dressed in the conventional prison suit and was supplied with a “cake of soap, one towel and a bible.” He was admonished by the Principal Keeper (“P. K.”), was given a copy of the prison rules and was assigned to work in the basket shop. During the first two days he was catechized as to his past life, occupations, habits, etc., by the principal keeper, the chaplain, the doctor, and the clerk of the Bertillon identification system, with much repetition.
It had been agreed with the warden that Tom Brown should be placed, at first, with the “Idle Company,” a group of prisoners who were characterized by one of the officers as “the toughest bunch of fellows in the prison.” He was disappointed therefore when he found himself in the basket shop where the men were courteous, communicative and helpful, and was astonished after two days to discover that this was the identical “worst bunch in the prison” of which he had been told. Tom Brown was assigned to a cell 4 by 7½ feet and 7½ feet high. (Many of the cells are only 3½ feet wide). Many cells of this kind contain two men each. The cell contained a stool, a folding shelf, a folding bed, a wash basin, a tin cup, a broom, a small wooden locker, and an electric bulb.
Tom Brown swung open his cell door at a signal, marched in line, carried out and emptied his own cell bucket, ate prison fare in the prison dining-room (including prison hash), did his stint in the basket shop with refractory material which made his fingers sore, and served on a detail moving railroad cars with block and tackle. He received from his fellow prisoners donations of sugar, of doubtful origin, for his oatmeal. He received communications and newspapers from numerous sources by underground communication. He learned to talk without moving his lips and he found himself instinctively joining with his associates “agin the government.” He details most interestingly the petty items that make up the life of the prisoner and revealed how much unhappiness may be caused by things which appear insignificant in themselves, such as the collapsing of the folding cot, under inexperienced hands, after the extinguishment of the lights.
Tom Brown reveals startlingly the horrors of prison life to the man of refined sensibilities—the shock of the first night of cell life when the lights went out.
“The bars are so black that they seem to close in upon you,—to come nearer and nearer, until they press upon your forehead.... You can feel the blackness of those iron bars across your closed eyelids; they seem to sear themselves into your very soul. It is the most terrible sensation I ever experienced. I understand now the prison pallor; I understand the sensitiveness of this prison audience; I understand the high nervous tension which makes anything possible. How does any man remain sane, I wonder, caged in this stone grave, day after day, night after night?”
He tells the ghastly story of the collapse of a poor old prisoner in a shop:
“In due time a litter is brought; the pitiful fragment of humanity is placed gently upon it and is carried out of the shop into which he will probably never return. The look on his face was one not easy to forget in its white stare of patient suffering. It seemed to typify long years of stolid endurance until the worn-out old frame had simply crumpled under the accumulated load.”
He experienced the humiliation of being the object of pursuit by pertinacious curiosity-hunters and camera-fiends; yet the change in his appearance was so great that he escaped recognition by personal friends who were watching carefully for him. The crowning horror he describes as follows:
“The cell house has settled down for the night. Only a few muffled sounds make the stillness more distinctly felt. Then, suddenly, the unearthly quiet is shattered by a terrifying uproar. It is too far away to hear at first anything with distinctness; it is all a confused and hideous mass of shouting—a shouting first of a few, then of more, then of many voices. I have never heard anything more dreadful—in the full meaning of the word—full of dread. My heart is thumping like a trip hammer and the cold shivers run up and down my back.