The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1903-02-15
DEAN Of AL
The G)NVC1S
John Downing Who Has Made
$4,000 Pairs of Shoes.
MOUSE HIS COMPANION
One of the Innocent Men Who
Suffer fortunes of He'll.
New York, Feb. G-The New York

World says:
John Downing, of Sing Sing, dean of all
the convicts-father of the chapel of
misery!
No other man of them has watched the
procession of hopeless days so long as he.
For twenty-five years he has worn the
prison garb and paced the prison Tag
stones by day and crouched in a prison
cell by night.
Now he is looking forward-for the first
time in a quarter of century. He was
sentenced for life, but he has lived so long
that evn the law has changed. 1t may
free him any day.
VIVA does John Downing remember
of his 9135 days-nine thousand one hum
dred and thirty-one days-of servitude?
What has he thought and done and suf-
fered during these weary years?
How will he face the world if the pri-
son doors shall open for him? Sometimes
prisoners learn, in a curious way, to make
friends with their misery. VIII he be
glad to go, or sorry?
John Downing answers all these quest
ions and many more in the story which
he tells below.
In the dawn l waited in the corridors
Of Sing Sing prison for old John Down
ing, the dean of all the convicts in that
forbidding place.
For a quarter of a century John Down
ings feet have shuffied over the stone
tagging of the cold, gray corridors of
Sing Sing. For twenty-five years he has
pursued the dun routine of his life with
In its grim walls. He is the oldest lag
Of them all. From sturdy manhood he
has passed into white-haired old age.
with an humble gravestone and a grave
wherein no tears will fall, not far ahead.
Up to a month ago John Downing had
lived without hope. To rise in the morn
ing with the prison bell, to eat, to work,
to eat again and creep to the narrow hole
which kennelled him and sleep the sleep
of weary beast, this has been the daily
routine
Over the same stone flags his feet have
shufiled in the degrading locksteps more
than two million times. In the forbidding
and cherries shop where he was set to
work twenty-five years ago. he has made
more than tweny thousand pairs of shoes.
He has seen old criminals come through
the dark. cruel gate, serve their time and
go away, only to come back again and
find John Downing where they had left
him many years before, pegging shoes.
He has seen young and callow law
breakers moisten the prison flags with
tears. He has heard them in the dead
of night sobbing in their cells. He has
heard the sickening crash that told of the
convict suicide over the gallery rail.
The various phases of convict emotion,
the soullick terror of novice and the slow
transition into utter hopelessness, are all
familiar to him.
And now a pardon may make John
Downing a free man. Twenty-Five years
ago in a drunken debauch with his wife
he killed her. He failed to remember
1t the next day. 1t happened in a fight
between the couple. Downing claimed that
he was fighting for self-preservation and
the jury. considering this palliating cir
cumstance sent him up for life
In the quarter of a century that has
elapsed since John Downing took up his
weary round of life at Sing Sing. life i'm
prisonment for manslaughter has been
done away with. This is why John Down
ing may at last go free.
He is not. and never was. natural
criminal. During the entire civil war he
fought with Company B, of the 5lst New
York volunteers.
He took part in many of the most i'm
portant battles of the war. He was
prisoner of war for six months and was
wounded at Antietam.
returning TO this city he learned the
trade of shoemaking and lived at No. 45i
West 5sth street Both he and his wife
drank heavily and it was this habit that
leu to his ruin and her death.
AS l stood waiting for the prison day
to begin the guards were moving like sha-
dows from cell to cell and from teir IN
tier. Through the narrow. barred windows
of the prison crept the pale wintry light.
The corridors Were gray with il. The
high roof was dim with a blue mist. On
all sides the innumerable cells doomed
tier over tier. black and forbidding.
Thirteen hundred convicts were sleep
fng here and vet there was no sound. II
was the silence of puilt-the silence of
the condemned-a silence without hope.
Here the gray granite flags were worn
smooth by the locksteps and the clanking
shackle.
Among this army Of criminals there are
innocent men. sent to their fate by per-
jury and false witnesses. And what must
innocent man ambitious and endowed
with self-respect suffer in a den like this2
To live day by day and year by year.
degraded. employed as beast of burden.
laboring shoulder To shoulder with muir
oerers. consorting with the vilest crimi-
mails and in the lapse of years even learn
Ing TO long for their friendship?
Many innocent men have lived out their
lives thus. in Sing Sing. and many will
live them out in years to come
Sharp and loud Their arose the clang
OF the prison bell. Once. twice. three
times. 1t pealed through the echoing cor
ridors
Convicts sleep like cats. In the dark
cells, on ali sides. you could hear steal
thy rustling sound as they sprans from
their iron cots to don their prison uni
forms
Two guards stood at the further end of
the lower corridor. The night guards
marched out. silent and weary-looking.
Day guards armed with rifles rapidlv
mounted the outer turrets The gallery of
each tier OF cells was manned by keepers
Sta ndinE near the door the head keeper
stopped and raped loudly on the
stone Tagging. The vast mechanism of
ell locks clicked and rasped and rum