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.
