The examiner. (Hartford, Conn.) 1881-188?, 1886-08-21
CONvICTSs SIGNALS.
How Prisoners Communicate With
Friends by Private Telegraph.


An impression prevails that when man
Is sentenced to q term of years of solitary
confinement in the eastern penitentiary,
says the Philadelphia Times, he is liter
ally cut off from all communication with
the outside world, and during his term
of imprisonment he knows nothing Of
the movements of the uncaged contingent
Of his fraternity To an extent this is
tue. 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. Dur
ing the past twenty years various means
have been devised by which 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 "send-
ing the mall The convict who first In
troduced the scheme was not in solitary
confinement and was employed in the
shoe factory. He had occasion to send
communication to solitary" prisoner,
confined in q cell in the same corridor.
While at work he contrived to manufac-
ture a square, waterproof leather box, in
which he inclosed a message scratched on
q thin strip of leather. He then secured
O quantity of shoe thread and concealed
the box and thread on his person. That
night he carefully measured the width of
his cell, and with this information was
able to calculate to an inch the distance
to his fellow-convict's cell. He then at
tached his thread to the box, and meas
uring off the exact distance to his COM
panion's cell, fastened the other end
to knob and deposited the box in the
sewerage pipe running through all the
cells. In the morning a 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
convicts cell for whom it was designed.
The message was read and then thrown
back into the pipe, through which it trav-
eled to the sewer.
While undergoing a sentence in the
eastern penitentury Jack Canter invented
a system of telegraphy with an alphabet
similar to that invented by Morse. He
found means of teaching his alphabet TO
some of his fellow-convicts, and in the
course of q few months it was known to
almost every convict undergoing long
sentence. Those who were released
taught the system to criminals then on
the outside of the walls, and in course of
time the upper strata of the criminal fra
ternity became expert telegraphers. The
wires of this novel telegraph line consisted
of the gas and water pipes which pass
through every cell in the vast institution.
They are excellent conductors of sound,
and by means of sharp raps on the pipes
with piece of metal, or even the knuc-
k1es an expert operator could easily
and quickly send a message to a fellow
prisoner whose cell was not far distant.
II he wished to communicate with man
in another corridor his message passed
along from one cell, or "relay station"
to another until it reached its destination.
Every convict Of any note had land has
his "call," the same as operators along
any telegraph line.
Another means of communication en-
ployed by the convicts was recently dis
covered in q penitentiary in a neighboring
state. Two men, sentenced together to
solitary confinement, were placed in ad-
joining cells. One Of them, by patient
labor and the aid of piece of wire, picked
the plaster out between two stones in the
wall between the cells. During the day
he replaced the mortar with crumbs of
bread. In the course of few weeks he
bored hole through to the adjoining cell,
and every night held a conversation with
his partner in crime. The latter, in turn,
bored hole through the next partition
wall, and, in course of time. all of the
prisoners on that corridor were in COM
munication with each other, and a plan
of escape was Matched out, but frustrated
just before it was to be put in execution.
These are q few of the more ingenious
plans devised by convicts of communicate
ing with each other.