Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1885-07-16
CONVICT'S SIGNALS.
How Prisoners in Solitary Confinement
Communicate - Unique Telegraph Sys-

How Prisoners in Solitary Confinement
Communicate Unique Telegraph Sys-
ems.
An impression prevails that when a
man is sentenced to term of years of
solitary confinement in the Eastern
Pententiary he is literally cut off from
all communication with the outside
world and during his term of imprison-
ment he knows nothing of the move
ments of the uncaged contingent of his
fraternity. To an extent this is true.
He is only permitted to talk with the
warden, chaplain, and inspectors of the
prison, but he hears none of the gossip
of the outside world through them.
Sometimes gang of his more fortunate
tellow-convicts file by and wake the
echoes of the dismal corridor with the
rhy thin of the ''lock-step march" but
they are not permitted to speak to the
SOLITAIRE" Notw outstanding all this,
the prisoner sentenced to SOLITARY
confinement, with hard labor man
ages to keep himself as well posted at
least with the doings of his fellow-con-
victs and the general affairs OF the in
Stitution as any convict with more hber-
ties and as we'll as almost any officer.of
the prison. This only applies to old
lawbreakers. as only such are sentenced
to solitary confinement.
This communication is effected by
communicating with each other from
cell to cell and from corridor to corri-
dor. During the past twenty years
various means have been devised by
which the convicts could communicate
with each other and keep posted as to
the movements of the criminal classes
and their enemies. The first and best
known was that of sending the NAL"
The convict who first introduced the
scheme was not in sol tary confinement
and was employed in the shoe factory.
He had occasion to send communca-
ton to SOLITARY" prisoner, confined
in a cell in the same corridor. While
at work he contrived to manufacture a
square, waterproof, leather box, in
which he inclosed a message scratched
on thin strip of leather. He then Sc
cured a quantity OF shoe-thread and
concealed the box and thread on his
person. That night he carefully meas
ured the width of his cell, and with this
information was able to calculate to an
inch the distance to his felbOw-convict's
CELL He then attached his thread to
the box and measuring off the exact
distance to his companions cell, fast
ened the other end to a knob and de-
posted the box in the sewerage-pipe
running through all of the cells. In the
morning stream of water is turned on
in this pipe in order to flush it and this
stream of water carried the box to the
limit of. the string, which brought it
directly under the trap in the convict's
cell for whom it was designed. The
message was read and then thrown
back into the pipe, through which it
travelled to the sewer and thence into
the Delaware.
The communication contained a
well-tormed scheme of escape, which
was attempted, but frustrated. The
secret of sending the MALI leaked
out, however, and after that and up to
the present day many such mail-bags
have travelled down the sewerage pipes
of the Eastern and other Penitentiaries
and plans of some successful and many
unsuccessful schemes of escape have
been communicated from cell to cell in