Within Prison Walls: being a narrative during a week of voluntary confinement in the state prison at Auburn, New YorkOsborne, Thomas Mott
History
Within Prison Walls: being a narrative during a week of voluntary confinement in the state prison at Auburn, New York
Osborne, Thomas Mott
Auburn Prison; Prisoners -- New York (State); Prisons -- New York (State)
At that interesting moment, while still writing my journal, the lights
suddenly went out on me; so I am finishing this next morning. The Warden
and Grant arrived soon after eight and must have stayed longer than I
thought; and somehow I seem to have missed the warning bell. I had not
begun to prepare for bed, when suddenly I was left in darkness. I had to
get my writing materials into the locker and make my evening toilet the
best way I could, with the help of the dim light from the corridor coming
through the grated door. There was one good thing about it, however; I was
too busy for a while to notice the blackness of the bars which had given
me such a shock the night before. It did not take so very long to make my
preparations, for the state of New York allows its boarders neither night
shirts nor pajamas. We have to sleep in the underclothes in which we have
worked all day. An arrangement which strikes one as being almost more
medieval than the sewage disposal system.
On Monday night, according to Jack Murphy, the men in my corridor all
waited to hear if I had the usual difficulties with my bed; and as some
other fellow's bed went down with him during the evening they thought they
had the laugh on me. This Tuesday night they certainly had. That infernal
armchair could not be placed where it did not catch the edge of the bed
when I let it down, so as to leave one leg dangling loose, as only one
could touch the floor at a time. In the course of my struggles with the
bed, the whole miserable contrivance came off the hooks and fell down with
a metallic rattle and bang that could be heard all over the corridor. Then
came snickers from various distances, and my frantic effort to straighten
things out only made more noise than ever. Bursts of smothered laughter
came through the bars; and I laughed, myself, until I was almost in
hysterics. Finally I got the bed hitched on to the back hooks, folded it
up against the wall and started all over again. I began by putting the
chair on its back as far away from the bed as possible, which wasn't very
far, and this time I just managed to get the legs of the bed to the floor.
After that it was short work to get ready for the night.
I have not yet described my bed covering. I have one double and one single
blanket and a thin blanket sheet--no cotton or linen of any sort. I do not
need, in this weather, more than one of the three blankets; but if I were
to be here long I know I should like some cotton bedclothes and pillow
cases. These can be secured, apparently, only by buying them, and many
prisoners have not the money to buy them. It seems as if the State should
furnish them to all prisoners; certainly the present arrangement leaves
much to be desired from a sanitary point of view.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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