A prisoner named Keegan was killed at Atlanta not long before I was released, not by a guard's bullet, but by means as sure though slower and more cruel. We were all conversant with his case at the time, but I will quote the man who knew him and his sufferings most intimately. Here is his crude narrative written to me on prison paper. "William Keegan died in August of this year (1913) at the Pen. He was first taken sick with pains in the legs, hands and arms, and went to morning sick call, but could never get anything done, because he was a little deaf and could not hear what the doctor said, and so could explain no further, and he was in a very bad fix. They did nothing for him, and he was afraid to see the doctor, because he would have been impatient, and would have sent him to the hole, and then he would lose time. But he did go up to see him after the pains got into his back also, and he told him he would like to get out of the stone shed; and the doctor told him there was nothing the matter with him, but he was only faking and trying to get out of work--which I know and can swear to as being true. "If ever there was a sick man, Keegan was him. He told M. the foreman about it one day, who told him to have the doctor look him over, and sent him up one afternoon; the doctor looked him over and told him he was only a crank--nothing at all the matter with him. Soon after he was taken very sick, and one night I called the prison nurse to his cell, and he had him taken to the hospital, where he stayed some time, but it did him no good, for he came back to the cell house in just as bad a fix as before. Then they put him to work in the paint-house, and after he had been there about a week, they said he was crazy, and put him in the hole. He was treated shamefully in the hole, for the prison nurse even told me so. Then he was taken again to the hospital, and he never came out of it, for he died there, and the prison nurse told me he suffered terribly before his death. This I will swear is true before God. "Very near every man in the Pen had a bad stomach, and could get nothing for it, for if you went to the doctor, he would tell you you ate too much, and give you a big dose of salts, and if you did not take them, he would put you in the hole, and then you would lose good time. But if a man had a pull, he would get along right enough. There was A., a bank wrecker, he was clerk in the stone shed, and I have seen him have eggs right in the kitchen, when we had only rice to eat with cold water and bread which was sour. If he didn't want to work he didn't have to, for when I worked as runner for the plumber I have seen A. lying down and smoking and reading or pretty near anything he wanted to do; but if other men had done less than half the things he did, they would have been put in the hole and lost good time also. Things should be looked into, for it is sure run shamefully."