The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-12-11
WHERE SILENCE IS AWFUL.
Prisoners Who Eagerly Await the
Coming of Night.
Philadelphia Record.


When the presumptive system of segre-
gate confinement enforced at the Eastern
Penltentary aroused the Indignation of
Charles Dickens and his trenchant pen gave
expression TO his horror of such punish
ment, the institution on Fairmont avenue
was given sinister reputation beyond it's
deserts. Since the great novelist wrote in
terms so severe of solitary Imprisonment the
results obtained by the management of the
prison here have refuted in the main the
structures passed upon the Eastern Peni-
tentiary Penologists have given their testi-
mony in favor of the system which Dickens
condemned, and solitary confinement is in
vogue in many of the penitentiaries of the
country. If enforced to the letter and a
man was compelled to sit within narrow
cell day after day with nothing but his own
thoughts to occupy his mind, then indeed
solitary confinement would be a barbarity
that would shame civilization and humanity.
Madness and death could only result in the
majority of cases.
But when the convicted man stands he
fore his judge to receive his punishment
and listens to the words solitary confine-
ment," their terror is lightened by the mer-
ciful provision that his loneliness shall be
relieved by hard labor" Then, too, the
crowded condition Of the Eastern Peniten-
convicts shall be confined in the same cell,
and the solitary confinement part of the
sentence is more or less legal fiction.
While man has the company of his fell
lows and the boon of work in the prison
there is imposed upon him a punishment
the severity and irksomeness of which can
who has undergone it. The punishment is
silence. Throughout the day no man dare
speak to his fellow save of necessity or by
stealth. To man who has yielded to
temptation and fallen from an honorable
place in society the need Of human sympa-
thy, the sound of a kindly voice, a friendly
ear into which to pour the torturing surg
ings of his mind, is most necessary and
must make this imposed silence terrible to
bear.
The prison authorities recognize the Sc
verify of the punishment of these long
brooding hours and the mental strain i'm
posed on the convict. Many in passing the
penitentiary in the early hours of the even
ing, must have been startled by the cries
and tumult echoing from behind its stone
walls, and wondered they hurried by If
a bloody revolt was going on within. A re-
volt it is, indeed. that nightly takes place,
but it is the revolt Of -burdened hearts,
Of anguished souls, and black. evil minds
against the silence they have writhed under
during the day. From o'clock until each
night the ban of silence is raised, and the
inmates of the. prison are free to give vent
to the tun1ult Of their minds
Locked there in their cells the great ma
jority of the prisoners await eagerly the
hour of s. At the given time pandemonium
breaks loose The corridors echo and re-
echo to the yells, shrieks and songs of the
miserable Gagged men. Many of them have
ume to the general discord For three hours
the din continues, but on the stroke of 8
the electric lights in the cells go out, silence
once more broods over the gloomy place,
and fortunate the man who finds freedom in