Monday, May 28, 2012
Early Days at Sing Sing, 2: Studying a Society and Its Prisons
LOWER HUDSON VALLEY
In
1797, the first
state prison opened in New York City .
Although officially named the State Prison of the City of New
York , it was more commonly known as Newgate, after an infamous
prison in London .
From its opening, it was plagued with thorny
problems. Built to house 432 inmates in 54 eight-person cells, it soon became overcrowded,
dirty and violent. Women made up about 20 percent of Newgate’s prisoner population.
So
common were riots and jailbreaks, the city formed a special squad of armed
watchmen to patrol the neighborhood around the prison at night.
In 1824, a state commission
recommended abandoning Newgate and building a larger prison farther from New York City , the source
of most prisoners. The legislature appropriated $20,100 to buy the 130-acre Silver Mine Farm near
the village of Sing Sing
Elam
Lynds, warden of the state prison at Auburn ,
was selected to set up the prison at Sing Sing. A strict disciplinarian, Lynds
had developed the harsh Auburn system. Arriving
from the upstate prison with one hundred convicts, he found himself "without
a place to receive or a wall to enclose them."
After
erecting temporary barracks, a cook house, and carpenter and blacksmith shops,
they leveled the steep hillside on which to erect the first cell block. Under
the twin disciplines of silence and the whip, prisoners cut the gray-white
dolomitic limestone in a nearby quarry by day and slept in tents at night.
Working
11-hour days as stone masons, carpenters and painters, the inmates literally
built their own penitentiary. By the winter of 1826, 60 of the proposed 800
cells were completed. Modeled after Auburn 's
north wing, this first cell block would grow to be 476 feet long, 44 feet wide,
and four tiers high. Each cell was seven feet deep, three feet three inches
wide, and six feet seven inches high.
The first cell block was completed
by October of 1828. With Sing Sing officially open, male inmates were transferred upriver from
Newgate. (This
historic building still stands within the prison walls and can be seen from
Metro-North trains. An empty shell, it was gutted by fire on February 5, 1984,
during a snowstorm.)
On May 29, 1831, French visitors
Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont packed their bags in New York City and headed
north to Sing Sing, where they found lodging at a large house not far from Main Street . This
was the country home of James Smith, a New
York lawyer. Still standing on State Street , it would later become part
of the Printex Building
The idyllic Hudson Hudson , where Tocqueville taught
Beaumont
Shortly after arriving in Sing
Sing, Tocqueville described it in a letter to his father as “a town of 1000 to 1200
souls that has been rendered famous by its prison, the largest in the United States
“We have come here with the intention of examining it from
top to bottom; we have already been here a week, and we experience a well-being
you cannot conceive. The extreme agitation in which we were obliged to live in New York
"Here we have the best employed and most peaceful
existence. We live with a very decent American family that holds us in great
consideration. We have made the acquaintance in the village of several persons
whom we go to see when we are free."
Sing Sing Prison
Turning their attention to the prison, Tocqueville and
Beaumont pursued their investigation. Elam Lynds was gone, and the pair asked
questions of new warden Robert Wiltse on every aspect of the prison: its administration,
the keepers' salaries, what food was served, what work was done, how many
floggings were administered. The latter number turned out to be five or six a
day.
They pored over archival records,
examined architectural plans, poked into every corner, and quizzed everyone
they could find. They even sat in classes at the prison school and attended
Sunday religious services. They were amazed to discover that 34 keepers
controlled hundreds of convicts. The prisoners were "free" during the
day. They wore no chains and no walls kept them in, yet no one tried to escape.
Tocqueville's diary entry for May
30, 1831, reads:
"We have seen 250 prisoners working under a shed cutting
stone. These men, subjected to a very special surveillance, had all committed
acts of violence indicating a dangerous character. Each . . . had a stone
cutter's axe. Three unarmed guards walked up and down in the shed. Their eyes were
in continuous agitation."
After a week of prison visits,
Tocqueville decided he would not recommend the Sing Sing system. Beaumont wrote to his
mother that he, too, was surprised:
“So many inmates were all around the unfinished cell block,
unrestrained by chains and all engaged in hard labor, and yet, despite the
absence of a wall (a few guards were stationed around the perimeter), they
labor assiduously at the hardest tasks. Nothing is rarer than an escape. That
appears so unbelievable one sees the fact a long time without being able to
explain it."
Nevertheless, Tocqueville saw
portents of trouble:
"The system at Sing-Sing seems in some sense like the
steamboats the Americans use so much. Nothing is more comfortable, quick,
and--in a word--perfect in the ordinary run of things. But if some bit of
apparatus goes out of order, the boat, the passengers and the cargo fly into
the air."
In their subsequent report, the
two Frenchmen concluded ominously:
"One cannot see the prison of Sing-Sing and the system of
labor which is there established without being struck by astonishment and
fear. Although the discipline is perfect, one feels it rests on a fragile
foundation.
“The safety of the keepers is constantly menaced. In the presence
of such dangers, avoided with such skill but with difficulty, it seems to us
impossible not to fear some sort of catastrophe in the future."
American Idiosyncrasies
The two French visitors were also intensely interested in every
aspect of America
life: the structure of its free society, politics and the court system, its
vast geography, and its cruel treatment of Indians.
Tocqueville
described a state dinner in their honor as representing “the infancy of art:
the vegetables and fish before the meat, the oysters for dessert. In a word,
complete barbarism.”
Commenting on Americans’
attitude toward nobility, he wrote, “In this republican country they are a
thousand times fonder of nobility, of titles, of crosses, and of all the
inconsequential distinctions of Europe than we are in France .”
In a letter home, Beaumont described the peculiar
tendency of American women to break into song:
"They haven't the taste for it, it's only a matter of
fashion; they sing in a screamingly funny way. There is in their throat a
certain gentle cooing that has a particular character that I could never
render, but which has nothing in common with the laws of harmony. If one says
to them, 'You sing wonderfully,' they reply with rare ingenuousness, 'It's very
true.'
“They study piano for three months, then they play without the
least reluctance, admitting always with good grace they are mad about music and
they have a real talent.
"What's more, this love of praise crops up everywhere with
the Americans, and one could never praise them enough to satisfy them."
On June 7th, Tocqueville and
Beaumont returned to New York City by steamboat,
stopping briefly at Greenburgh (an alternate name for Tarrytown ,
according to Washington Irving). They remained in the city until June 30th,
when they took a sloop to Yonkers , starting
their epic journey across the length and breadth of America .
Tocqueville and Beaumont later
investigated penitentiaries at Auburn , N.Y. , Charlestown , Mass. , Wethersfield , Conn. , Philadelphia , Baltimore and Washington .
At Philadelphia 's
Eastern State Penitentiary, they took the unusual step of interviewing each
prisoner.
The Aftermath
By the time they returned to France
in June of 1832, Toqueville and Beaumont had become ardent admirers of America ’s
democratic institutions. Tocqueville found himself unable to concentrate on
writing their joint report on prisons. In the end, that task fell to Beaumont,
who is listed as the principal author. Tocqueville's contribution was limited
to the statistical notes in an appendix.
Du Système Pénitentiaire aux États-Unis, et de Son
Application en France France
to copy one of the two American penitentiary systems.
Translated into English by
Francis Lieber and published in Philadelphia
in 1833, On the Penitentiary System in
the United States and Its Application
in France remains the single best study and description of the two
contrasting American penitentiary systems of the 19th century.
Tocqueville's failure to
contribute much to the prison report is understandable. His eyes were on
distant horizons of memory. And he was turning over in his mind the treasure
trove of information he had gathered about the larger themes of American
society and institutions.
Two years later he would publish
the first volume of his remarkable two-volume Democracy in America, today regarded as one of the great books of
the western world. But the story of that enduring work will have to wait for
another day.
Monday, May 07, 2012
Early Days at Sing Sing, 1: Two Visitors from France
LOWER HUDSON VALLEY
Today, the average new book has a shelf
life somewhere between milk and yogurt. Yet a book published in 1835 continues
to command the attention of scholars, politicians, students of government and
the reading public.
Democracy
in America United
States largely written by his companion on their joint
trip to America
Tocqueville, 26, an assistant magistrate
at the law court of Versailles, would later briefly be France United States
Commissioned by the French Minister of the
Interior, they came to study American penitentiaries. Their interest in prisons
was actually a cover for a private purpose: to understand the social and
political institutions of the young republic.
In July of 1830, Charles X, the last
Bourbon king of France
Much of the more than nine months the two
spent in the United States America
They reached Newport ,
R.I. , on May 9, 1831, after a 37-day voyage
from Le Havre
The food on board having almost run out,
the enterprising duo convinced the captain to put them ashore at Newport New York City Trinity
Church
The Mercantile
Advertiser and New York Evening Post
of May 11, 1831, both carried the following notice of their arrival and
predicted they would find American prison authorities cooperative.
"We understand that two magistrates, Messrs. de Beaumont and de
Tonqueville, [sic] have arrived in the ship Havre, sent by order of the
Ministry of the Interior, to examine the various prisons in our country, and
make a report on their return to France
“The
French government have it in contemplation to improve their Penitentiary
system, and take this means of obtaining all proper information. In our
country, we have no doubt that every facility will be extended to the gentlemen
who have arrived."
A New York
They were royally entertained and shown some of the city's places
of detention. The House of Refuge for Delinquent Minors, housed in the old
arsenal near the northwest corner of what is now Madison
Square Park ,
was of interest to them because a similar institution along the same
architectural plan was being constructed in Melun, a suburb of Paris
Traveling in five carriages, the party
next visited the Bloomingdale Asylum for the Insane, located in remote farmlands
at what would become the Columbia
University 116th Street
On the return trip, the official party
stopped at the Deaf and Dumb Asylum on the south side of 50th Street First Avenue America
Their tour ended with a visit to a city
prison holding 400 inmates on Blackwell's Island in the East River (later
called Welfare Island and now Roosevelt Island ).
After two hectic weeks, the two young
Frenchmen were looking forward to escaping from the city. "You can have no
conception of the activity of our existence," Beaumont
The state prison at the village of Sing Sing
in Westchester was the largest in the United States
Thanks to their nine-day visit and close
examination of both the prison and the village, we have a clearer picture of
this part of Westchester in the 1830s. [The
village changed its name to Ossining in 1901
to distinguish itself from the prison.]
The Bad Old Days
The English colonists of America
brought with them the harsh 17th and 18th century criminal code practiced in England and Scotland
In the words of historian Edward Channing,
“Lesser offenders were treated with pitiless publicity combined with bodily
pain--flogging, mutilation and branding or public exposure to the taunts and
missiles of the populace.”
The latter took place in the stocks--a
heavy timber frame with holes for confining the ankles and sometimes the
wrists. Little concern was expressed for the rehabilitation or reformation of
criminals.
There simply was no prison problem. The
dead needed no confinement. Those who were punished harshly were returned to
society maimed and bruised--but alive. There was no middle ground. In the
mother country, debtors and those awaiting trial were held in local jails.
In the colonies, such practices became
unpopular. Religious freedom gave rise to calls for changes in the system.
Prison Reform Begins
One religious group in particular--members of the Society of
Friends, known as "Quakers"--opposed the harsh punishments of the
mother country. With a frontier requiring settlement and exploitation, the growing
feeling was that human resources were too scarce and too valuable to waste.
The American Revolution accelerated the
growth of these sentiments. With freedom from Britain
Results, however, were not what were
expected. Prisoners of all ages, sexes, colors or criminal experience were
incarcerated together in large, unventilated, unclean and unhealthful rooms.
The overcrowded pestilential prisons soon became veritable training schools of
crime and vice.
One logical solution was detention in
individual cells, a movement begun by Quakers in Pennsylvania
The Auburn System
In 1821, New York State decided to test the penitentiary theory on 80
convicts at the recently constructed Auburn Prison in the Finger
Lakes region. It soon became obvious that solitary confinement
broke the health and the spirit of prisoners. Within three years, so many had
died or became ill or insane the governor pardoned the survivors.
Penology
was still an infant science, but clearly it was better to employ convicts at
useful labor. Accordingly, during the day prisoners at Auburn
To maintain their isolation, inmates were
not allowed to talk or communicate in any way. The whip enforced this rule;
welts on a prisoner's body left by a whipping were called "stripes."
The practice of solitary confinement by night and group work by day--always in
silence--became known as the Auburn system.
The Pennsylvania
By contrast, the principle of total solitary confinement was
maintained in Pennsylvania
Opened in 1829, the Eastern State
Penitentiary in the Fairmount section of Philadelphia
epitomized the Pennsylvania
To attend a religious service or lecture,
at a signal each convict in his cell placed a pillowcase over his head and
stood by the cell door. Keepers then unlocked the doors; the convicts stepped
out and turned. With bodies pressed close together and one hand on the shoulder
of the man in front, they were led single file into the auditorium. The
peculiar shuffling gait required in this maneuver was called the “lockstep."
The auditorium was constructed with
enclosed seats and a small opening so each inmate in the audience could see only
the stage. After the event, the inmates donned their pillowcases again and locksteppd
their way back to their cells.
In effect, America
had two competing philosophies and two systems of imprisonment: the Auburn
system and the Pennsylvania
On May 28, 1831, Tocqueville wrote to Abbé
Lesueur, his former tutor in France
"We
are going tomorrow to Sing-Sing, a village ten leagues from New
York and situated on the North River .
We shall stay there a week to study the discipline of a vast penitentiary
system recently built there.
“What
we have seen up to now suffices to prove to us that prisons attract general
attention here and that in several respects they are much better than those of France
“We
are delighted to go to Sing-Sing. It is impossible to imagine anything more
beautiful than the North or Hudson River . The
great width of the stream, the admirable richness of the north bank and the
steep mountains which border its eastern margins make it one of the most
admirable sights in the world."
On this hopeful note we take leave of our
two intrepid visitors until Part Two.
