The citizen-Republican. (Scotland, Bon Homme County, S.D.) 1???-19??, 1905-09-07
CONvlCTS EAT RATS
RATHER THAN STARVE
Gross Prison Cruelty Charged
by Released Convict Who
Alleges Much Brutality.
INMATES ARE TORTURED
Claims Those Adjudged Insane Are
FIossed with Leather Straps and
That Many Other lniquities
Are Practiced.

kalamazoo, Mich, Sept. 6.-Alleging
among other things that the brutal
logging Of prisoners in Marquette pri-
son has led to several attempts at sui
eide, some of them successful; that pri-
soners have been confined and fed on
bread and water longer thar the law
allows, until in some cases they have
caught rats and eaten them, Daniel
Eugene Hampton, who has just COM
pleted O sentence for burglary, is on his
way to see Governor Warner to make a
statement and to present an affidavit.
Hampton charges that Emil Wall,
sent from Detroit for murder, took his
subjected previously to ~unbearable
severity. He charges that E.. A. Pew
erett, known as Whitley Black" and
sent from Kalamazoo for participation
in the Richland bank robbery, to escape
a fogging, attempted in the presence OF
prison guards to take his life by sever
ing his hand with a knife, and that he
actually inflicted such a wound that
surgeons a to amputate the hand.
Hampton says he fioggings We're adj
ministered by a man weighing 200
pounds, the prisoners being extended
over a barrel and at times beaten until
the blood a down their legs.
He has a list of thirty witnesses, who,
he says, will swear to the facts, and
~ AAA AAS - - ~ ~ ~
connected with the prison management
are ready to swear to the mismanage-
ment and b%rutalities which he alleges
have been in vogue under the admins
tration Of Warden James Russell.
Tells of Rat Eating.
Hampton in his affidavit says:
Il vas put in the punishment cells
on the 18th day of April, 1905. After
the officers went out + asked Peverett
1lr,1u 1opo ~ 10 1,o1 honn ~, thnro oaffy,o o.
bread and water, and he said about
fifteen or eighteen days. I was in there
nearly a week with him, and on April
81 he killed a rat in his cell with the lid
of his bucket land skinned it with a
pocket knife which he had struggled in
with him. On the morning of April
81 Charles .D~evonshire, hallmaster, I'M
locked his door and handed in his bread
and cup of water. Peverett stood up
in front of his cell door with the
dressed rat. After receiving the bread
Peverett proceeded to eat the meal of
bread n rat, taking q bite OF each
alternately until he finished the rat and
morning Of April 30, n the ed and
the oath.
"Peverett told me that a consumptive
prisoner by the name of Spidell, who
went out Of the punishment cell just
before they put me in, had also eaten
eight rats. On April 81 I heard the
.hallmaster tell Peverett that he never
heard Of a white man eating rats but
he heard of Cinnamon doing so. The
hallmaster went out into the hall and
he brought Peverett d. rat trap. Pever-
EFT took same, put it in his cell, and
caught rats which he ate during the
succeeding three days.
Insane Persons FIogged.
The following prisoners, who We're
formally adjudged insane and had been
transferred TO the criminal insane
asylum at Ionia and were afterwards
returned to the Marquette prison. have
been fogged:
Frank Temple was flogged on April
~, 1905; A. e. Peverett, logged March
1, 1904; George Mccoy, hogged June 9,
1903; D.. e. Hampton, flogged May 13,
Is and 16.