Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-01-14
A Kentucky Prison Reform.

A warden or the Kentucky penllenlldry,
in giving his experience on the subject OF
discipline, said in his annual report for
1895, which reader of The Star has SUBJ
mitted:
THE strap was the principal mode OF
| punishment up to the time l was put in
| charge. / have recently run back over the
| punishments for four years just preceding
| the time took charge, and find that dur
| ing that time the average number of men
! strapped per month were over sixty, and
at times there were more than one hundred,
| and there were frequently over one thou
sand ticks struck per month for months.
| They were whipped for fighting. talking in
| dining room, for being short on tasks; $
| the strap was used for every manner OF
| offense. l was interested in knowing what
kind of discipline such a mode of punish
ment enforced, and investigation 1
found that in March, $780, convicts attack
ed a guard and drove him from the shops;
in May, same year, knocked a foreman
down and attacked a guard disarmed and
gagged him, and the month was wound up
by one convict killing another with a knife.
In July, same year, one convict killed an
other with "a knife. In March, 1891, the
deputy warden shot and killed convict.
Same month the warden shot man in the
arm In September, 1892, a convict was
killed by another convict In August, 1893,
thirty-four knives were found on the per-
sons of convicts, and during that month
| the records show that ,263 ticks were
| struck with the strap, and in that time
| nineteen made their escape from the prison.
"These facts convinced me that there was
| something radically wrong in the discipline
| of the prison, and determined to change 1t.
| SO a short time after l took charge in No
| vember, 1893, | introduced another kind of
| punishment and abandoned the strap. In
| the year 1894, in the place of having sixty
| men per month strapped on the bare back
| I had two, and that over a garment In
| the place of the strap l deprived them of
| privileges, locked them up in their cells on
4 to hat k,n
| bull pen,' in one corner of the yard, and
| for refusing TO work, handcuffed them in a
standing position until they preferred
working to standing.
In 1894 while I was experimenting with
| modes of enforcing discipline l had some
| trouble. In June, 1894. convict resisted
| guard and was shot and killed. The pun
| ishment book shows that iii the years 1892
| and 1893 he had been whipped enough
/ to crush all the manhood out of an Indian.
| Since that time no officers, guards or fore
| men have been attacked, and there have
| been no serious fights among the men, and
| they have been controlled without any sort
| of trouble, and there was for more than a
| year that there was not escape.
| "A number of the prisoners who were
| regarded as the very worst are now the
| best. One man who was regarded as the
| most desperate is now foreman in a de-
| partment in one of the shops. and is looked
| upon as being one of the best and most re-
liable men in the penitentiary. Another,
| whom amount of punishment could
| force TO do his work properly, was changed
| by a few kind words into one OF the best
| workers in the factory"
The Whipping Post in Virginia.
The following account of the whipping
| post in the Virginia penitentiary was given
| in an Iowa paper in 1883. which the same
| correspondent supplies:
| 'At the close of the rebellion Burnam
| wardwell was made warden of the state
~ n.
duties he discovered that he in charge
| of a desperate set of men.
| They had been treated with great sever
ity. The whipping post, which stood con-
| spicuous in the jail yard. a grim. blood
| besmeared specter. had been daily used in
| Wan to restrain and intimdate prisoners.
| "Burnam Wardwell looked with horror
| upon these things. I will have none of
| them,' he said. Such barbarity can do
/ nothing but create barbarisms. It is at
| war with nature. These men. however
| weak and sinful. are still men. with hearts
fashioned after the manner of my own.
The same infiueaces that inspire nobleness