“The lessees of the convicts change from time to time, men selling their interest in the lease just as they would dispose of their property in anything else. The lessees to-day are not wholly and entirely the same lessees as operated the system at the beginning. Senator Joseph E. Brown is one of the few original lessees who still holds his interests. The changes have been many and various, and so are the stories of outrages. Several years ago children began to make their appearance in the penitentiary, not because of any due process of law, but because of shocking immoralities on the part of lessees and their subordinates. In one camp where the principal lessee was a man named Alexander, since dead, these scandals mostly originated. It was a difficult thing to substantiate the charges, and the Legislature never made any investigation. There were no white women in the penitentiary in Georgia at the time, and perhaps the affair alluded to was not so shocking to public opinion as it would otherwise have been. “To-day there is only one white woman in the penitentiary in this State. She is confined at the camp of the Chattahoochee Brick Company, Penitentiary Company No. 3, about six miles from this city. This poor woman, weak in intellect, untutored and unfamiliar with the wickedness of the camps, has to be locked up and kept in close confinement day and night, to prevent her being ruined. Since the Legislature has shown a disposition to look into these matters, the lessees of the camp at the brickyard have given the strictest orders about this woman. Her door is constantly locked and the key kept by the good wife of the principal boss, who allows no man to cross her threshold, ‘Great heavens!’ ejaculated a member of the House, when this circumstance was told him, ‘what sort of a system must this be when such measures have to be devised?’” “The lessees at various camps have been from time to time charged with cruelty to their prisoners. A common charge has been working them on Sunday; so it is common to hear of whipping them to death for refusing to work on Sunday, or when they have been worn out with fatigue. The charge of favoritism is so well established and so generally admitted that it has ceased to be urged. “The ‘Old Town Camp’ has a very bad reputation. Here most of the serious charges have been laid, and here it was proved that whipping-bosses positively whipped men to death. “Another camp prolific of charges is that of State Senator Smith in Oglethorpe County. He has been accused of working convicts on Sunday, of shooting them down in cold blood, and an affair of honor is now pending between Smith and Principal Physician Westmoreland, of the penitentiary. Westmoreland accuses Smith of gross inhumanity to the poor creatures under his charge, and dares him, or rather invites him, to meet him on the field of honor for the various false accusations and scandal that Smith has made against him.” _Another Account._