Woman in Prison. Caroline H. Woods

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       Caroline H. Woods

      Woman in Prison

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4064066139285

Table of Contents

       I. FIRST DAY IN PRISON.

       II. AT NIGHT.

       III. SECOND DAY IN PRISON.

       IV. A QUARREL, AND DISCIPLINE.

       V. THE SUPERVISOR, AND THE RULES.

       VI. FIRST NIGHT ALONE IN PRISON.

       VII. THE MASTER AND THE RULES.

       VIII. MRS. HARDHACK.

       IX. A BREAD-AND-WATER BOARDER.

       X. AN ARRIVAL.

       XI. INSIDE MANAGEMENT.

       XII. SUNDAY.

       XIII. LIFE AMONG THE LOWLY.

       XIV. INSPECTION OF PRIVATE APARTMENTS.

       XV. A DAY OF ODDS AND ENDS.

       XVI. A FRIGHT.

       XVII. VISITING DAY.

       XVIII. CALLAHAN AGAIN.

       XIX. DISCOMFORTS, AND THE END.

I.

       FIRST DAY IN PRISON.

       Table of Contents

      It was Saturday morning that I became an inmate of the Penitentiary.

      I was conducted to the kitchen, where I was to oversee the cooking for the prisoners, and to the prison adjoining it, which I was to see kept in order, by the Deputy Master of the institution, who gave me my keys and installed me in my office of Prison Matron.

      When we first went in he called the six women who do the work in the kitchen, and the three "sweeps" who keep the prison clean, to him, and presented their new mistress, in my person, to them.

      They were convicts that surrounded me at his call; but they were human beings. Human faces looked up to mine for sympathy and care. Some of them were fine looking, even in their coarse uniform, some were pretty as I picked them out one by one. They all looked at me earnestly, for a few moments, as though they were reading their sentence of harshness or kindly treatment, under my rule, in my face; then, turned away to their work again.

      They whispered as they stood together, and I saw by their furtive glances that they were watching, and discussing me, as I walked around to take a survey of my new field of labor. They were undoubtedly commenting upon my personal appearance; and making their predictions as to my sharpness in detecting their impositions, and ability to control their perverseness; or, I imagined so.

      The Deputy showed me the mush boiler, that would cook two large tubs full of that farinaceous edible at a time; the potato steamer, that would hold four barrels of that esculent vegetable at a cooking; the soup and coffee kettles, of still larger dimensions; and that comprised all of the apparatus required in preparing the mammoth meals which were to serve above four hundred people. These cooking utensils were kept in operation by pipes conducting steam to them from a boiler stationed in the middle of the room.

      When he put the steam boiler under my direction I shrank back in terror from the task of managing it. The huge culinary apparatus, which he had been exhibiting, although outside the pale of ordinary housekeeping, was still within the reach of my understanding; but I had no idea of the management of steam; it was not only a difficult, but dangerous affair.

      "The house will surely be blown up if you leave the care of that upon me," I said to him.

      "You must watch it very closely."

      "I don't know how, and I have no aptness for learning that kind of science."

      "One of the women will tend it." And he went on with explanations that were all Greek to me. "It is safe when you have on twenty pounds of steam. There is your gauge," and he pointed to a clock-like looking affair on the wall. "That hand will move round and tell you how much steam you have on. You must keep water enough in the boiler or you will get blown up. If it runs from that centre stopcock, on the side, it is safe. You notice that glass tube in front. The water is just as high in that as it is in the boiler. This faucet is to let the water off if you get the boiler too full. Turn that faucet when you let the water on," and he went along and pointed to one in a pipe by the wall, "and that pump is there in case of accident. You must have it worked every day so as to keep it in order."

      All knowledge is useful, I thought, and in time I shall understand running a steam-engine. As the women have been trusted with the dangerous thing, they may still continue to be, till I have leisure to learn the science of steam as applied to cooking.

      After I had taken a survey of the kitchen the Deputy took me into the women's prison which led out of it.

      The centre of the hollow square, in which the dormitories are built, looked like a huge block of glittering ice, so white were the washed walls of brick and stone. The black, grated doors of the cells, inserted into them, like the teeth of grinning demons, were ranged along the sides about two feet apart, tier after tier, five stories, one above another.

      The Deputy led me along past the iron doors. I trembled and shrank back; but I had no idea of receding from my undertaking. I "screwed my courage to the sticking-point," and looked into the narrow, stone rooms; but it was many days before I could force myself to enter one.

      I grew heart-sick, and faint with apprehension of unknown terrors at their cheerless aspect.

      "What lodgings for human beings!" I exclaimed.

      "They are not very pleasant," said the Deputy.

      "If you were the one to blame for it I should certainly charge you with great inhumanity."

      "I suppose you will think us very cruel sometimes."