The daily gazette., 1877-01-18
Letter from Samuel Townsend.
For the Delaware Gazette.

II OF tile DeldWuTc NraZeIlp.
Mr.. EDIToR:-Some one of our Repre-
sentatives has sent me the printed propos-
ed Work House Bill, suppose, for nv
opinion, if said opinionis worth anything
/ give it cheap. Section 8, says: "The
Judges of the Courts of the State shall
constitute, and are hereby constituted
board of prison inspectors, and exercise
care and supervision over all the prisons
OF the State. They shall elect board of
Work House managers" This is pretty
use to put the Judges ofthis State to, Judge
Gilpin understand said that the Legis-
lature ought never to have put in the
Court the granting of licenses. Now a
Legislature proposes to make the Judges
prison inspectors. the meaning of this is,
l suppose, to put in the Judges, so they
can fill up any short comings in the law
that the legislators were too ignorant to
detect.
Section 8, is more fitting for the govern
ment of the quarter deck of q pirate YES
sell than the government of a Delaware
prison, and for the benefit of the public
quote it entire, it says: "It shall be law
full for the Superintendent of State Work
Houses, to employ or permit the use OF
1ceup0HS by the keepers or guards of the
prisoners to put down instructions by
force and to prevent escapes at all haz-
ards from said work house." Now here
is authority for any petty despot who
may have charge of said work house, to
call any collection of men. -Four, five or
six persons who may happen not to like
the kind of work they We're set at; or to
please some one or more of the keepers,
men may be changed to other work they
have not been doing, OF they may con
gregate for any simple purpose, and this
section gives evil disposed keepers the
excuse to bang away at them with pistols
iV11 t1
are called, black sheep in most families
in the State, then again some man per-
fectly sober NAV have sick and starving
family at home, and in his desperation
takes little provisions, wood or coal, he
is caught, and as it is theft, he is commit
ted to this Delaware bastile, he hears the
cries of his wife or sick children ringing
in his ears, he attempts to escape, he is
shot dead, his wife and children are call
ed in to look at his lifeless body. This
allowing petty officers to shoot people
should be stopped not encouraged, for
it was only short time back a Whining
ton policeman shot at q person he had
writ for, and the ball it wds said, killed
young woman very unexpectedly to the
officer, Then in section eleven, line six
and on down to the bottom of the section
reads as follows: "None but official yisi-
tors can have any communication with
the convicts, Nor shall any visitor
Uhoterer be permitted to deliver or re-
ceive from any of the convicts any letter
or message whatever, or to supply them
with any article of any kind under a
penalty of fifty dollars fine to be recover
ed, as fines of like amount are by law re-
coverable; one half of said fine to be paid
to the informer and the other to the treas
urer of the work house" Whether for his
own individual use it does not say. Now
YOU may go back to the dark ages, and
overhaul the laws that governed the
dungeons of England, France and Spain,
and you could not, L think, find more
lisense thrown around to keep
ers of said dungeons, according to this
said Delaware Work House bill. Cover
nor Cochran, Secretary of State, Judges,
Senators, or Representatives in Con
gress, could not even give a prisoner in
this proposed Delaware Bastile chew
of tobacco, kind word from his family
or take kind word to his family, or let
ter or anything else, or give said prisoner
good advice, under pain of being report
ed to the keeper by one of his spies and
then made to pay fifty dollars. If such
laws as this is passed, it ought to damn
the party that passes them.
SAMUEL TOWNSEND.
Townsend, Del, Jan. II, 1877