The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1910-06-28
Says Article Is Craze
Injustice To Alabama
Prominent English Publication Gives Horrible Description of
Recent Affair Lucille Mines and Elaborates Forms
of Punishment Used on Convicts

day. and are worked from dawn till dusk.
To get the very uttermost ounce of
work out of them that their strength Is
capable Of barbarous punishments have
been devised One of the commonest of
them, and the most dreaded is known
as "stringing up
Whipcords are fastened round the pris-
oner's thumbs, and the loose ends flung
over a convenient branch and pvluled
taut, until his toes swing clear of the
ground. The agony caused is well-nigh
intolorable.
Terrible Tortures
Visitors to these convict camps are al
most invariably struck by the singular
appearance of the hands of the unfortu-
nate beings confined therein. They re
semble the paws of certain apes. for their
thumbs, which are enormously enlarged
at the ends, are, nevertheiesa, quite as
large as their index fingers, the tips of all
being in a line.
This malformation is caused by string
ing-up, and it is only necessary to re-
fleet upon the amount of force requisite
to stretch out mans thumb fully three
inches to form some idea of the dreadful
severity of the punishment.
Flogging with leather straps, "sweat-
ing" and watering" are also resorted to
in most camps. The first named explains
itself; sweating is shutting up in a close
box without ventilation or light, in the
blazing southern sunshine, and the last
named is none other than the ordeal by
water torture of the Spanish inquis-
ton.
The guards are armed with rifles and
bayonets, the latter being carried fixed.
The squads are run in" at night at
the double from their places of labor to
the stockades, so as to make it possible
to work them up till the last moment,
and the laggards are cruelty prodded. In
fact the legs and backs of nearly all the
old convicts are covered with the scars
of bayonet wounds.
Their food is of the coarsest, fat white
bacon" corn bread and COW peas the
latter small red variety Indigenous to
the south. To add to their misery, the
pestilential swamps and forests, far from
habitation, where most of the convict
camps are situated, are full of fever. and,
as a consequence, dysentery, scurvy and
other similar dreadful maladies run riot.
For the same reason-that Is to say,
the isolation of the camps amidst swaSnps
and forests-any attempt at a successful
escape is extremely difficult. Indeed in
some camps, notably those situated in the
trackless Everglades of Florida, no at
tempt is made to follow a runaway.
None dare venture into this tangle OF
alligator-infested swamps, grass grown
lagoons. and traclkless palmetto flats
save only trained backwoodsmen, and
even these do SO at the risk of their lives
1t is in fact, huge natural man-trap.
When, therefore, a convict is missed, he
is simply left to his fate Rarely, If ever
Is anything more heard of him. He walks
on and on until exhausted then lies down
and dies He cannot return If he would
for the tropical monotony of the ever
glades is such that a man may wander
for days and not be sure whether or no
he has made any real progress.