My skin has been itching for two days, and I attribute it to the coarse underwear and ill-fitting clothes. In my cell after the day's work I make a careful inspection and am quite frightened to find my whole body covered with red spots. Evidently I have caught some skin disease from those tattered old rags which have been worn by generations of unclean and diseased convicts. The thought of having to pass a year in a prison hospital is anything but cheerful.
I turn my thoughts to other things by trying to read a novel from the prison library. A slip had been left in the cell to be filled out with the name of any book that I might desire to read. In my innocence I put down "Shakespeare's plays or the Bible." A novel entitled "Truthful Jane" was left in their stead.
But I cannot read. And so I start instead to inspect my surroundings. The new cells compare very favorably with the cells of the old prison, which are really holes in the wall and reeking with the mysterious unwholesome smell of rat holes and graveyards.
At one end of the cell opposite the door are two small openings for ventilation; one at the top on the right hand side and the other at the bottom on the left. In trying to find out the depth and direction of the holes I plunge my arm into the opening, and my hand feels a square object. It is a small bible! I am delighted by the discovery. On the fly leaf there is some handwriting in pencil in a careful, intelligent hand: "To my successor: May this book while away your long and weary hours and make you forget your troubles and worries as it did to me. Don't forget to replace the book where you found it when you leave."
A tier man comes to the cells with a light for those who care to smoke. He is a pleasant-faced individual, quite polite and ready to do any small services within his limited powers. I find out that he has been condemned to a year for keeping back mail in the post office. The tier man who had made such a disagreeable impression on me that first night in the old prison, is a church thief.
My battered and rusty cup has been filled up with water. I am afraid to drink from it, as it might have been used by some consumptive or syphilitic convict. Necessity being a great inventor, I press some paper to the rim of the cup to prevent my lips from touching it.
As I walk up and down the cell I am always unconsciously trying to put my cold hands in my trousers pockets, only to discover over and over again that there are no pockets there, only one on the inside of the coat.
The clipping of my hair so close to the skin at the height of the cold season has brought a cold in the head. I have no handkerchief, and shall have to wait a whole month until they allow me to write to have a few sent by mail.
These apparent trifles, and all the nagging, idiotic rules, invented by senile commissions and wardens to torment the helpless captives of society, are always magnified by men brooding in the solitude of cells. But I have made up my mind not to permit anything to ruffle my equanimity, so I pick up some letters from friends and read and reread their cheering contents. If people who write to their unfortunate friends in prison only guessed how they yearned to receive those familiar scrawls, and how they are treasured and memorized, they would write oftener.
A night keeper walks by like a shadow, flashing a bull's eye lamp into the cells to catch us in any infringements of the rules.
There is only one rule tacked up on the walls, but the other 999 we have to guess or learn from fellow convicts. The list of rules which we have to find out at our own expense or from wiser convicts would fill up a small volume.
As there are no written rules, and nobody informs us of all the unwritten rules on our entrance here, as is done in Sing Sing, the thought comes to my mind that this apparent forgetfulness is really meant to give the warden and the keepers an unchallenged power of persecution over suspected and unruly convicts.
Most of the punishments inflicted by the warden are for infractions of rules which the newcomers are in entire ignorance of, and these infractions occur no matter how obedient and willing the new arrivals may be to keep within bounds of the prison laws. The foreigners, Italians, Slavs and Teutons, all those who do not know English and who cannot learn the rules from their fellow prisoners, are the greatest sufferers from this carelessness, whether it is intentional or otherwise.
After breakfast I was watching from my cell some sparrows that had nested inside the prison walls, high up on top of the large windows facing the tiers. I dropped some bread crumbs on the floor of the gallery, and some on my cell floor, to induce the little birds to come in.
At first they were afraid to trust themselves inside the bars of my cell; but they kept fluttering about nervously outside, keeping up an incessant twitter and chatter that sounded quite musical to my ears.
Finally they grew bolder, and recklessly they flew into my cell, first peeping at me, with bended heads as if they would ask: "Are we really safe here from capture or treachery of any kind?" And hastily picking up the crumbs, they flew out to inform their companions of the god-send of fat bread crumbs in a large, barred room, instead of the poor hunting in the prison courtyard.
Then they came back fearlessly, and thanked me with quick little nods of their pretty heads, and sidelong trusting looks from their black beads of eyes; with low, graceful courtesies and a cheerful piping song.
And then one morning a keeper who had been attracted by the noise, shooed the birds away and swore in a gruff voice, warning me that it was against the rules to throw crumbs on the floor, as well as to keep bread in my pockets or in my cell.
Once a week the prisoners are privileged to wait in line to see the warden, to protest against any injustice, to recount a grievance, or to ask a favor.
Like a dozen or more I stood waiting for the quick-lunch justice of the Czar of the penitentiary. After a while he appeared, accompanied by a tall young secretary who jotted down our names and the details of the business on hand. Walking slowly, with bent shoulders, hands behind his back, the warden seemed to be about seventy-five years old. His face was furrowed with irregular, meaningless wrinkles, and he had small shifty eyes, with white hair and a white beard. He had a habit of staring at the convict who was speaking to him, and suddenly bending one ear toward the speaker as if he were partially deaf.
The warden's answers came quickly, in the jerky, high pitched voice of the Sistine Chapel cantors, and often breaking under the strain of anger. A convict suffering from locomotor ataxia, leaning on a walking stick, hanging on to a companion, begged for permission to get a pair of crutches ... his mother would get them for him.
What for? queried the warden, innocently.
Because I can't walk with this stick, answered the convict.
Then why don't you get a cab! said the warden. And he snickered and then coarsely guffawed.
Again he furiously upbraided another petitioner.
Where do you think you are? At the Waldorf-Astoria? Next thing they'll be asking me to get them flowers, candy and theatre tickets. I am here to see that you are punished. See?
After having thus vented his spleen he uttered some alleged witticism at the expense of the helpless convict, and showed a great appreciation of his own humor, uncovering a row of yellow, brown, half-decayed teeth in a sneering grin most unpleasant to behold.
My turn came, and I asked for an extra blanket, as the cold was intense and the metal springs of the bed offered no protection against it. This it seemed was also against the rules. When I suggested that as he was the warden he could make and unmake the rules, he did not answer, but asked irrelevantly how I liked his hotel?
I answered that it was preferable to the castle of San Juan de Ulloa in Vera Cruz.
He looked puzzled, then he smiled as if he saw the point.
We'll take care of you, he repeated twice, waving a thin, wrinkled, old hand.
At lunch time the sick convicts ask their keepers for permission to see the doctor. They are kept waiting in line near the head keeper's desk. The head keeper is a person of great power in the prison, only third in importance of rank, but as he comes in daily contact with the convicts, his good or ill will is felt more keenly than the warden's. The discipline of the prison, the distribution of the mails, of the clothes, underwear, shoes, all the details of management, are carried on through him.
As we were waiting for the doctor, the head keeper came along to look us over. He had a big brown face, and a large mustache covered his mouth; two piercing gray eyes gave the impression of an unlimited reserve of pent-up bile, anger and contempt, which at times flowed in a torrent of choice and rare blasphemies.
Damn you, wop! I'll cure you! You s——! he shouted, and with both hands he clutched the neck of an Italian, and shook him as savagely as a terrier shakes a rat. His face red and with sickness in his eyes, the unfortunate man tried to explain that he had a sore throat and a fever; but without success. He only aroused another fit of anger.
You're a faker, that's what you are! You're all fakers, every one of you! he yelled at us, and finished up by spitting on the floor. The next moment he punished a convict for doing the selfsame thing.
A young doctor hardly out of his teens entered the old prison, escorted by a convict carrying a tray filled with medicine bottles.
Sick prisoners are cured in the simple, old-fashioned way of having mixtures administered to them, the medicine bottles being labeled according to the contents, and the most prevalent ailments, which do not require the remanding of the sick man to the hospital. Cough mixture seemed to be quite popular, fever mixture less so, then followed constipation and diarrh?a mixture, toothache mixture, court-plaster, some pills, and various ingredients for venereal diseases, some cotton gauze, and the indispensable large bottles containing salts and codliver oil.
The visit did not take long. Those who had come twice on the line without having been found sick were punished "against the wall."
After a short inspection the doctor ordered me to the hospital, without allaying my fears by any diagnosis or declaration of a disease, but cautioned me to take a hot bath every day, and to rub the skin with sulphur ointment.
THE HOSPITAL
The hospital is situated on top of the chapel, over the main entrance and hall of the prison.
Two spacious rooms are dedicated to that purpose. The smaller one with a bathroom faces the Brooklyn side and overlooks the mess hall, the keepers' dining room and kitchen, and is usually kept apart for the consumptives. The larger room, also with a bathroom, contains a dozen beds, a closet for underwear and clothes, another for the crockery, two tables, two medicine closets, chairs, and some small tables for patients near each bed.
Six windows face towards East 55th Street on the Manhattan side. Two higher windows look over the roof of the prison, across the Queensboro bridge. The hardwood flooring, the small hospital cots, with mattresses, white pillows and spreads, all spotlessly clean, made the place look quite cheerful and sunny. Every opening was heavily barred. A spacious, clean and airy prison, but still a prison, with a tantalizing outlook towards New York, which seemed so near that one could discern people on the other side of the river.
There are five sick men, plus three consumptives, in the two rooms; and our large room looks deserted.
The patients wear a cheap, white shirt, instead of the striped one, and slippers instead of shoes.
A bald-headed man with small, kindly gray eyes and a close-cropped mustache, keeps perfect discipline without raising his voice, using profane language, or bullying the patients. In character, breeding, morals, education, he is superior to the warden and to most of the keepers. His name is Charles Noonan.
Between the hours of eight o'clock in the morning and four in the afternoon a uniformed hospital orderly attends to the distribution of medicine, takes temperatures, and reports to the doctor. At night another orderly takes his place.
The cleanliness of the two hospitals, the distribution of bedding, laundry and food, is in the hands of a convict, usually a patient; all the unpleasant tasks and irksome duties which the orderly is too proud or too lazy to perform the trusty is obliged to do.
Servant and boss, scullion and diplomat, doctor's help and sick man, waiter and majordomo, the convict orderly is the last buffer in the line of authority, the expiatory goat of the penitentiary hospital, a suffering soul in a modern purgatory.
When a criticism drops from the lips of the supreme Prison Commissioner, the Warden passes it along to the "Dep," who calls down the hospital keeper, who in his turn upbraids the orderly, who in the end roasts the trusty.
The present trusty is an old man suffering from an eczema on his fat legs. Tall, bloated, gray, pale, he is despised by the convicts for his avariciousness, his gluttony, his arrogant attitude. They suspect him of being a stool pigeon, and they revenge themselves by making his life miserable through a series of cruel persecutions.
Another trusty who sleeps in a cell downstairs, and eats in the keeper's kitchen, is a famous pickpocket.
Like all or nearly all the old timers, Ed, as he is called, never gossips about his private affairs; he may joke and talk about other prisoners, but never does he say a word about his life outside. He is an old offender, but obedient, useful and energetic; and he is always welcomed back as a trusty or a tier man.
Once inadvertently I asked him: "What do you do outside for a living, Ed?" His laconic answer was, "Oh, everybody!"
But one evening several weeks later, when we had become quite chummy, at the psychological moment when even the most silent and sullen crooks will sometimes confess and bare their hearts, he unfolded his life, his methods, his cynicism and his mental make-up.
It was an amazing story, interspersed with slang, picturesque phrases, and a callous, sordid philosophy. Later, the testimony of other thieves proved that his story was true.
As he told his story, it seems that clever thieves organize themselves into trusts, or what they call "mobs," frequent the same "joints" and "hang-outs," and work in co-operation with detectives. When a fair, a holiday, or any extraordinary event is announced in any part of the state—or anywhere in the world, for that matter—they are "tipped off," or told about it by the "bulls."
Then when the event "comes off," and a great crowd is gathered, a whole gang of pickpockets, two or three score of them, arrive on the spot.
To save time one after another is sent to the fair authorities to inform them of the presence of pickpockets, and an official jumps on a platform or soap box, and shouts a warning to the crowd against thieves; and while this is going on the keen-eyed "dips" watch the astonished and frightened people place their hands on the pocket or the region which contains their valuables. With this knowledge they can work without blundering, and in teams of three or four, by rubbing or jostling against their victims, they soon relieve them of their money or jewelry.
Watches are seldom stolen, as they are too easy of identification. Often a prominent "sucker" discovers his loss before he leaves the fair, and starts kicking up a row. At once a detective offers to find and return the stolen goods for a reward.
Then, after it is over, the result of the day's work is divided between the "bulls" and the "dips."
Ed became a pickpocket right after he left school. From the reform school to the house of refuge, from the house of refuge to the state reformatory, from the reformatory to the penitentiary, he has climbed all the rungs of the ladder of crime.
He soon discovered that "lonesome," single-handed thieves were crushed in the struggle, so he joined the Benevolent Association for Mutual Protection of "dips" and "guns," paid his dues, and then when he was caught, he got off with a light sentence. His return to prison was part of the game; he came back philosophically, as a travelling salesman returns to his favorite hostelry, as an intermittent but familiar visitor, recognized by the keepers and convicts, and knowing all the ropes along the prison line of least resistance.
Ed barely looks his age, although his face bears the stamp of his dissipated life and the mannerisms peculiar to his breed. He is a perfect fruit of the criminal system. Sodden with all the sexual perversities acquired in prison, he has finally caught the white plague, is afflicted with several venereal diseases, and has become an inveterate dope fiend. Although keen of intelligence, he seems to be without moral prop or ideal of any kind; coldly and cynically he surveys society as his natural prey, his rightful enemy, and an object of his revenge.
Morally, intellectually and physically as crooked and shifty as a mountain trail, he seems utterly beyond redemption, human or divine.
The view from the hospital window shows the bridge on the right; in front, the row of cheap tenement houses and streets abutting on the river front from the forties to the sixties; and on the left, looming out of the city-scape, appears the Metropolitan tower. Behind the innumerable painted signs on the river front, the Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, the Plaza Hotel and the St. Regis can be seen distinctly; the Times Building is also vaguely outlined. In the daytime the sight is commonplace; but after the sun, like an enormous ball of fire, has dipped behind the city line back of the streets in the fifties, the scene becomes inspiring to a painter.
The shadows, full of greens and purples, cover as with a charitable veil all the ugly details of the river front; the skyline becomes darker, as if cut out with monster scissors; the sky appears more resplendent and luminous with gorgeous tints, until the fiery blaze slowly dies out, and bluish tints, gray and purple predominate; and then the city lights, those on the bridge and in the Metropolitan tower, shimmer like innumerable stars.
Sometimes with a clear sky, sometimes in fog, in a snow storm, in rain or in clear moonlight, every night for ten months I have watched an ever recurring picturesque metamorphosis.
Through the north window I have watched the dawn come up behind the Queensboro bridge, and seen the sun appear like an enormous Japanese lantern of pure vermilion—a sight to gladden the heart of a Claude Monet.
Boats pass constantly by, day and night; they are the one great source of amusement of the patients. The little, swift-sailing tug-boats announce their passage by angry and piercing whistles; the graceful yachts of the multi-millionaires sound melodious notes; the large excursion boats announce themselves by their stronger and more ringing whistlings; the largest ones, on their way to Portland, are heard in the distance grunting like sonorous leviathans.
But the most amusing of all is the tiny boat that plies between the dock of the penitentiary and the foot of 54th Street. The distance is about two or three minutes, but this diminutive craft goes two or three blocks up the river and comes back down the same number of blocks, to show that if it tried it really could navigate on the high seas.
Should any vessel larger than this microcosm be seen from a distance trying to pass our little boat, it would start a series of angry, piercing toots, repeated in quick succession. We used to wonder and laugh—oh, we laugh, even in prison; how else could we live?—at the impertinence of this minnow of the river of New York, until we discovered that after a large boat like the Yale passed by, the waves left in its wake almost upset the little craft, and it took all the efforts of the brave pilot to bring it tossing like a champagne cork on top of the waves, back safe to the dock.
In summer time the excursion boats, returning home with crowded decks, with all the lights lit, and the band playing and the passengers singing, "The Island of Blackwell," make us home-sick and pensive with longing for life and the world we are shut away from.
The trusty in charge of the hospital is getting nervous as the day of his release approaches. A week before the release, no matter how disciplined and peaceful the prisoner may have been, he starts getting cranky and impertinent to the keepers. He acts like a man under great stress, and when he is disturbed he turns savagely round like an angry dog.
The old trusty acted like a drunkard, talking and laughing incessantly, and we thought it was for joy at the thought of his near release. But the real reason was soon discovered. The old thief, Fritz, had been operated on, and when the night orderly was ordered by the doctor to change the sick man's bandages every fifteen minutes, he bribed the old trusty with a long drink of whiskey to do the work for him.
The spectacle of the official orderly trying to do his duty was intensely amusing. In all the years of his work he had slept and snored peacefully and undisturbed. When the time came to change the bandages, he uncovered the patient and began gingerly removing the soaked bandages, holding them with two fingers, at a safe distance, and walking on tiptoe, as if expecting the whole thing to explode. When he saw the terrible, gaping wound he dropped everything back, saying: "I can't do it, it makes me sick!" and woke up the trusty to do the work for him. The next day he reported sick, and he never showed up again until he heard that the patient was dead.
In the meanwhile the old trusty left and I had to attend to the sick man. Every fifteen minutes of twenty interminable days and nights I had to watch, and nurse, and answer the calls of that cranky old man. The wound was ghastly. The surgeons had made an incision twelve inches long right down into the bladder, wherein they had stuck a thick rubber tube.
The sight was sickening, the work exhausting and thankless, and if I had not known that the patient had only a few days to live, I think I would have applied for a job in the coal gang.
On the twentieth night, at about twelve o'clock, I was awakened by the moans of the dying man, who was calling in a faint voice. His face was flushed and it seemed as if all the blood had gone to his head; but he seemed suddenly to turn deadly white, and he lay back still.
A young boy sleeping next to him hid his head under the bed clothes in fright. I was sent to notify the doctor upstairs.
The young doctor declared him dead, and turning to me ordered me to dress him.
I looked at him puzzled and asked: "Dress him up in his striped suit?"
No, answered the doctor, smiling, "put the shroud on and make him ready for the morgue."
But I have never dressed a corpse in my life and would not know how to go about it, I protested. So the doctor kindly volunteered to teach me.
First he closed the dead man's eyes; then we put on the shroud, which looked like a night-shirt with frills at the sleeves, and attached to it a conical fool's cap to cover his head; then his hands and feet were tied separately.
When we had done, we laid the body on an empty bed in the smaller hospital, very much to the dismay and terror of the three consumptives who slept there. But they kicked up such a row that they were allowed to sleep in our section.
The next morning when I went on an errand into the next room I stopped to gaze on the body of Fritz. The change that had taken place was startling. During the few months that Fritz had passed in the hospital, although disciplined and silent like most old convicts, he always wore a peculiarly shifty, sneering expression on his reddish face. Now it was wax white, the eyelids had opened, and the pale blue eyes were staring at me with a peaceful, angelic expression. For an instant I gasped at the thought that he might have come back to life, and I called out: "Fritz! Fritz!" but no answer came, and only the gentle, inscrutable smile persisted. I touched his cheek. It was cold and hard. But I could not explain the almost miraculous change in the expression of the face. Suddenly it dawned upon me that death had released the unclean spirit, and left the body to go back to mother earth as clean as it had been conceived.
Soon four convicts came into the room; one, a gangster, with a broken nose, and beady, black eyes, asked me: "Where is the stiff?" As in prison language "stiff" is also the name used for newspapers, I looked at him foolishly and answered that I had none. He added in explanation: "I mean the guy that croaked last night."
Neither the keeper nor the convicts relished the post-prandial funeral.... Death had come so suddenly and informally, and had left his victim in the enemy's camp, to be carried to the morgue, and later to be buried on a convict's island without benefit of clergy.