The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1899-07-28


Office into the courtyard and stands watch
Ing tho day disappear As the sun goes
out of sight over the horizon he goes back
10 Inc principal keepers room, puts on his
hat selects book from abe small library,
and with pleasant goodnight goes to his
cell, whore he reads until 10 O'Clock, when
lights go out. There Is little danger Of this
youns man ever finding his way into pris-
on AGAIN. once he regains his freedom.
with the life men all is different Wheth-
or it's because most of them have just
managed 20 escape death or from some
other reason they are a remarkably philo-
sophicol lot They came to the jail de-
spOndent over the future, as is natural,
but they become more and more resignei
to their fates as the days roll by. In
Sing Sing prison. where to-day some twen-
~ men are serving bfe sentences, they
are the best prisoners in the place. They
have no Communication 90 earn by good be-
havior, yet lhey give little or no trouble.
They rarely get doWncGst and cry out
against their fateS. ON che contrary, they
are good-uatured about it. The only eX-
PLANTATION of their failure to pine away
from the very hopelessness OF their con
dition is that they all hope to be pardoned
sooner or later. According to Principal
Keeper Connaughton, whose twenty-five
years of service at Sing Sing has given
him a rare knowledge OF criminals and
their peCuliarites, the belief he will until
mately be pardoned is deep rooted in the
mind of every life prisoner There is
man in Sing Sing prison to-day who be-
gan his term of life imprisonment there
ou oct Is. 1867 During all this time there
hasn't been an incident on which this man
could reasonably base the hope of par
don. Yet there hasn't been minute IN
an these thirty-two years when this man
has lost hope. He believes to-day that
will Inc freed IaN and il ia this
belief that has buoyed him up all these
years and made a model prisoner of him.
II You told this man that there was no
hope for him, that he would die IN the
prison-as he probably willard succeed
ed In convincing him that you spoke the
truth. il would probably kill him. If Il
didn't. il would make him insane.
All the other life men are like that man.
firm in the belief that they will one dav
walk out of the prison free men. The
chances of the majority Of them ever real
iziug their hopes are small 1t isn't be-
cause IL would menace society to turn
them loose. for most of them are men
broken In spirit and more likely to become
charges on society than enemies of II, Il
freed. ana IL isn't because they haven't
been punished sufficiently for their crimes.
for there is no such thing as punishment
If twenty or thirty years i'm prison doesn't
constitute It, 1t Is because they have
been forgotten In all these years, and this
very people who threw up their hands in
horror at the time of their crimes would
be unable to remember anything about
them now.
II is to these dong term ana life men
| that the invention of the mysterious sys-
TEN Of communication between prisoners
| in large prisons Is credited. No one
| has ever been able to penetrate this mys-
| terry. Even men like Connaughton,
| whose experience and knowledge of prisons
| aHa1 r,rte. is fIs.t %
! living man. have never been able to I'M
| derstand Il. 4 piece Of news can travel
| from one end of Sing Sing prison TO the
| other In from fifteen minutes 90 half an
| hour, aud that, too at night when the
| men are locked In their GETS and cannot
| even see one another With watchful
| keepers all around them, on the alert for
| the slightest signs of communication, a
! piece of news can go the rounds. How
| il is done nobody knows but the prisoners
| themselves. and they'd cut out their
| tongues before they'd tell
| Newspapers do not reach the prisoners,
| visitors can only speak to them in the
| presence of Keepers and by special per-
| mission. and the keepers themselves give
| them no news. Yet the morning after the
| last Presidential election in 1896 every pris-
| oner In Sing Sing prison knew that VIII
Ham Mckinley had been elected. Every
| prisoner knew almost as soon as the out
| side world when FItzsimmons whipped
! Corbett, and even the result Of so recent
an event as the Jeffries- Fitzsimmons fight
was known all over the prison the day
| following the fight. There are many ways
| of course in which the news might get
| into the prison. but the means employed
| by the convict who first hears 1t in trans
| hitting 1t to his companions is the thing
| that has never been explained. That the
| system was devised by iong-term or life
man. and has been steadily improved by
| others is the general belief of the keep
| ers.
/