The Northern Pacific farmer. [volume] (Wadena, Minn.) 1878-1885, 1883-05-17
THE GOOD OLD DAYS.
A Sketch Of Prisoners in America a
Hundred Years Ago.

A Sketch OF Prisoners in America
Hundred Years Ago.
McMasters "History Of the People of the
United States.'
1t is pleasing to reflect that, while our
countrymen have been making such as
tonislling progress in all that admins
ters to the comforts and conveniences
of life, they have at the same time
grown charitable and humane. There
is indeed SARGE Il scrap Of information
bearing upon the subject extant which
does not go to prove beyond question
that the generation which witnessed the
revolution was less merciful and tender
hearted than the generation which wit
messed the civil war. Our ancestors, it
is true, put up just cry of horror at the
brutal treatment Of their captive coun-
trymen in the prison-sh,ps and hulks
So great and bitter was their indigna-
ton that money was to
be stamped with represent
tations of the atrocities Of which they
complained, that their descendants to
the remotest generations might hold in
remembrance the cruelty Of the British
and the suffering of the patriots. Yet
even then the face Of the land was dot
ted with prisons where deeds Of cruelty
were done in comparison with which the
foulest acts committed in the hulks sink
to a contemplate insignilicance. For
more than fifty years after the peace
there was in Connecticut an under
ground prison which surpassed in hor'
rors the Black Hole of Calcutta. This
den, known as the Newgate prison, was
in an old Worked-out copper mine in the
hills near CRANKY. The only entrance
to it was by means of ladder down 8
shaft which led TO the caverns under
ground. There, in little pens Of wood
| from thirty TO one hundred culprits
were immured, their feet made fast to
iron bars and necks chained
to beams in the roofs. The
darkness, was intense; the caves wrecked
with filth; vermin abO1,nded; water
trickled from the roofs and oozed from
the sides of the caverns; huge masses OF
earth were perpetually falling off. In
the dampness and the filth the clothing
of the prisoners grew moldy and rotted
away, and their limbs became stiff with
rheumatism. The Newgate prison was
pei haps the worst i'll the country, yet in
every country were jails such as would
now be thought unfit places of habita-
ton for the vilest and most loathsome of
beasts. At Northampton the cells were
scarce four feet high, and filled with the
noxious gases of the priVy vaults,
through which they were supposed to
be ventilated. Light came in from two
chinks in the walls. At Worcester pris-
on was number of like cells, four feet
high by eleven long, without a window
or a chimney. not even hole in the
wall, Nota ray Of light ever penetrated
them. In other jails in Massachusetts
the cells were so small that the prison
ers were lodged in hammocks swung
one over the other. In Philadelphia
the keeps were eighteen feet by twenty
feet, and so crowded that at night each
downin.
The misery of the unfortunate Great.
ures cooped up in the cells, even in the
most humanely kept prisons, surpassek
in horror anything ever recorded in fic
ton. No attendance was provided for
the sick. No clothes were distributed
to the naked. Such thing a:
| bed was rarely seen, and this
soon became SO foul witt, insects that
the owner dispensed with it gladly
Many OF the inmates of the prisons pass.
| ed years without so much as washing
| themselves. Their hair grew long
| Their bodies were covered with scabs
| and lice, and emitted !, horrible stencil.
| Their clothing rotted from their backs
and exposed their bodies, tormented
| with all manner of skin diseases, and 8
yellow flesh cracking open with filth
| The death rate often stood as high al
sixty in the thousand. As if such tor
ments were not hard enough to bear
| others were added by the halfmaddene(
| prisoners. No sooner did new conner
| enter the door of a cell than rush was
| made for him by the inmates, who strip.
| ped him of his clothing, and let him
stand stark naked till it was redeemed
by what, in the peculiar jargon Of the
place, was known as drnk"mOney. II
sometimes happened that the prisoners
we're in possession of q carefully-pre.
served blanket. Then this ceremony
called garnishing, was passed over fol-
the yet more brutal one of blanketing
In spite of prayers and entreaties, the
miserable stranger was bound, thrown
into the blanket, and tossed until he
was half dead and ready to give his tor
mentors every superfiuous garment K
sell for money With the tolls thus ex
acted liquor was bought, i'ndish reve
was held, and. when bad rum and bat
tobacco had done their work, the few
sober inmates of the cell witnessed sucl
scenes aswould be thought shocking il
the dance houses which cluster along
the wllarves of our great sea-board
| fnwna