The Mitchell capital. (Mitchell, Dakota [S.D.]) 1879-1918, 1905-09-08
'CONWCTS EAT RATS
RATHER THAN STARvE
gross Prison Cruelty Charged
by Released Convict Who
Alleges Much Brutality.
INMATES ARE TORTURED
Claims Those Adjudsed Insane Are
Flogsed with Leather Straps and
That Many Other lniquis,es
Are Practiced. b.

Kalamazoo, Mich, Sept. 6.-Alleging
among other things that the brutal
logging of prisoners i'll Marquette pri-
son has led to several attempts at sui
eide, some of them successful; that pr1-
soners have been confined and fed on
bread water longer than the Jaw
allows, until in some cases they have
caught rats and eaten them, Daniel
Eugene Hampton, who has just COM
pleted a sentence for burglary, is on his
way to see Governor Warner to make a
statement and to present an affidavit.
Hampton charges that Emil Walz,
sent from Detroit for murder, took his
own life to escape nogging, having been
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 logging, attempted in h 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 had to amputate the hand
Hampton says the %floggings were adj
ministered by a man weighing 200
pounds, the prisoners being extended
over a barrel and at times beaten until
the blood ran dow their legs.
He has a list of thirty witnesses, who,
he says, will swear to the facts, and
declares that men who formerly were
connected with the prison management
are ready to wear to the mismanage-
ment and brutalities 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 was put in the punishment cells
on the 18th day Of April, 1905. After
the officers went u I asked Peverett
how long he had been in there eating
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 lid
OF his bucket and skinned it with a
pocket knife which he had Struggled in
with him. On the morning of April
81 Charles Devonshire, ~hallmaster, un-
locked his door and handed in his bread
II 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
alternately until he finished the rat and
bread. He did the same thing on the
morning Of April %, and the Esd and
the gath.
"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
.hallmaster tell Peverett that he neve,
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 a rat trap. Pever-
EFT o same, put it in his cell, and
caught rats which he ate during the
succeeding three days.
Insane Persons Flogsed.
1.-THE following prisoners, who were
formally adjudgcd insane and had been
transferred to the criminal insane
asylum at Ionia and were afterwards
returned to the Marquette prison, have
been fiogged:
Crank Temple was fiogged on April
10, 1905; A. E. Peverett, logged March
1, 1904; George Mccoy, 1ogged June 9,
1908; D. E. Hampton, logged May 10,
Is and 16.