History from the inside out: Prison life in nineteenth-century Massachusetts

Journal of Social History

Volumn 31, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 108-125

  Goldsmith, Larry ^a  

^a Department of History ^*  (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0040007423     PISSN: 00224529     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jsh/31.1.109     Document Type: Article

References (70)

1. "Extract from Gov. Lincoln's Message, Jan. 1826," in Reports of the Prison Discipline Society of Boston (1826-54; reprint ed., Montclair, N.J., 1972), First Annual Report (1826), 43. References to this source are hereafter cited thus: PDSB 1 (1826), 43. Page references are to the numbers at the inner margins of the reprint edition.
2. "Extract from Gov. Lincoln's Message, Jan. 1826," in Reports of the Prison Discipline Society of Boston (1826-54; reprint ed., Montclair, N.J., 1972), First Annual Report (1826), 43. References to this source are hereafter cited thus: PDSB 1 (1826), 43. Page references are to the numbers at the inner margins of the reprint edition.
3. Curtis to Lincoln, 18 November 1828, in Legislative Papers, Res. 1828, c. 57 (20 February 1829), Massachusetts State Archives, Boston (hereafter "MSA"; emphasis in original).
4. The pathbreaking work on American prisons and other institutions in the nineteenth century is David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston, 1971), which highlights the social control objectives of Jacksonian reformers intent on maintining order in an increasingly anonymous and unruly society. Michael Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850 (New York, 1978), examines the English prison as an instrument of capitalist class control, and Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1979) focuses on the evolution of penal ideology and the modern penitentiary as more generalized "technologies of power." An alternative interpretation, one stressing the altruism and good intentions of the reformers of mental institutions, can be found in Gerald N. Grob, Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875 (New Yory, 1973). More recently, Adam J. Hirsch has advanced an interpretation of the nineteenth-century penitentiary much in sympathy with Grob. American prisons, Hirsch argues, were less an attempt at social control than simply a rational adaptation of longstanding institutional forms, like the colonial workhouse, to a post-Revolutionary problem of increasing crime. See The Rise of the Penitentiary: Prisons and Punishment in Early America (New Haven, 1992). In a later review essay, Ignatieff calls the social control interpretations, including his own, sharply into question. There is, he claims, a set of "basic misconceptions" common to such analyses: "that the state enjoys a monopoly over punitive regulation of behaviour in society, that its moral authority and practical power are the binding sources of social order, and that all social relations can be described in the language of subordination." In short, Ignatieff claims that such an analysis ignores the extent to which the prison, and the criminal justice system as a whole, lend expression to authentic moral sentiments of the poor and working classes; see his "State, Civil Society and Total Institutions: A Critique of Recent Social Histories of Punishment," in Stanley Cohen and Andrew Scull, eds., Social Control and the State (New York, 1983), 77. Allen Steinberg's study of criminal justice in nineteenth-century Philadelphia provides an eloquent example of this point; through the system of private prosecutions, poor and working-class people turned to their own ends an apparatus of state power which in its broader context was a tool of class control; see The Transformation of Criminal Justice: Philadelphia, 1800-1880 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1989). Ignatieff himself is among the few authors whose analysis of social control is tempered with an account of prisoners, staff, and institutional dynamics; indeed, prison culture plays an important role in his story, and for this reason his self-criticism seems overly harsh. A few other works have devoted attention to prisoners and the insides of their institutions; see Estelle B. Freedman, Their Sisters' Keepers: Women's Prison Reform in America, 1830-1930 (Ann Arbor, 1981); Patricia O'Brien, The Promise of Punishment: Prisons in Nineteenth-Century France (Princeton, 1982); Nicole Hahn Rafter, Partial Justice: Women, Prisons, and Social Control, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1990); and Pieter Spierenburg, The Prison Experience: Disciplinary Institutions and Thier Inmates in Early Modern Europe (New Brunswick, N.J., 1991).
5. The pathbreaking work on American prisons and other institutions in the nineteenth century is David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston, 1971), which highlights the social control objectives of Jacksonian reformers intent on maintining order in an increasingly anonymous and unruly society. Michael Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850 (New York, 1978), examines the English prison as an instrument of capitalist class control, and Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1979) focuses on the evolution of penal ideology and the modern penitentiary as more generalized "technologies of power." An alternative interpretation, one stressing the altruism and good intentions of the reformers of mental institutions, can be found in Gerald N. Grob, Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875 (New Yory, 1973). More recently, Adam J. Hirsch has advanced an interpretation of the nineteenth-century penitentiary much in sympathy with Grob. American prisons, Hirsch argues, were less an attempt at social control than simply a rational adaptation of longstanding institutional forms, like the colonial workhouse, to a post-Revolutionary problem of increasing crime. See The Rise of the Penitentiary: Prisons and Punishment in Early America (New Haven, 1992). In a later review essay, Ignatieff calls the social control interpretations, including his own, sharply into question. There is, he claims, a set of "basic misconceptions" common to such analyses: "that the state enjoys a monopoly over punitive regulation of behaviour in society, that its moral authority and practical power are the binding sources of social order, and that all social relations can be described in the language of subordination." In short, Ignatieff claims that such an analysis ignores the extent to which the prison, and the criminal justice system as a whole, lend expression to authentic moral sentiments of the poor and working classes; see his "State, Civil Society and Total Institutions: A Critique of Recent Social Histories of Punishment," in Stanley Cohen and Andrew Scull, eds., Social Control and the State (New York, 1983), 77. Allen Steinberg's study of criminal justice in nineteenth-century Philadelphia provides an eloquent example of this point; through the system of private prosecutions, poor and working-class people turned to their own ends an apparatus of state power which in its broader context was a tool of class control; see The Transformation of Criminal Justice: Philadelphia, 1800-1880 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1989). Ignatieff himself is among the few authors whose analysis of social control is tempered with an account of prisoners, staff, and institutional dynamics; indeed, prison culture plays an important role in his story, and for this reason his self-criticism seems overly harsh. A few other works have devoted attention to prisoners and the insides of their institutions; see Estelle B. Freedman, Their Sisters' Keepers: Women's Prison Reform in America, 1830-1930 (Ann Arbor, 1981); Patricia O'Brien, The Promise of Punishment: Prisons in Nineteenth-Century France (Princeton, 1982); Nicole Hahn Rafter, Partial Justice: Women, Prisons, and Social Control, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1990); and Pieter Spierenburg, The Prison Experience: Disciplinary Institutions and Thier Inmates in Early Modern Europe (New Brunswick, N.J., 1991).
6. The pathbreaking work on American prisons and other institutions in the nineteenth century is David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston, 1971), which highlights the social control objectives of Jacksonian reformers intent on maintining order in an increasingly anonymous and unruly society. Michael Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850 (New York, 1978), examines the English prison as an instrument of capitalist class control, and Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1979) focuses on the evolution of penal ideology and the modern penitentiary as more generalized "technologies of power." An alternative interpretation, one stressing the altruism and good intentions of the reformers of mental institutions, can be found in Gerald N. Grob, Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875 (New Yory, 1973). More recently, Adam J. Hirsch has advanced an interpretation of the nineteenth-century penitentiary much in sympathy with Grob. American prisons, Hirsch argues, were less an attempt at social control than simply a rational adaptation of longstanding institutional forms, like the colonial workhouse, to a post-Revolutionary problem of increasing crime. See The Rise of the Penitentiary: Prisons and Punishment in Early America (New Haven, 1992). In a later review essay, Ignatieff calls the social control interpretations, including his own, sharply into question. There is, he claims, a set of "basic misconceptions" common to such analyses: "that the state enjoys a monopoly over punitive regulation of behaviour in society, that its moral authority and practical power are the binding sources of social order, and that all social relations can be described in the language of subordination." In short, Ignatieff claims that such an analysis ignores the extent to which the prison, and the criminal justice system as a whole, lend expression to authentic moral sentiments of the poor and working classes; see his "State, Civil Society and Total Institutions: A Critique of Recent Social Histories of Punishment," in Stanley Cohen and Andrew Scull, eds., Social Control and the State (New York, 1983), 77. Allen Steinberg's study of criminal justice in nineteenth-century Philadelphia provides an eloquent example of this point; through the system of private prosecutions, poor and working-class people turned to their own ends an apparatus of state power which in its broader context was a tool of class control; see The Transformation of Criminal Justice: Philadelphia, 1800-1880 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1989). Ignatieff himself is among the few authors whose analysis of social control is tempered with an account of prisoners, staff, and institutional dynamics; indeed, prison culture plays an important role in his story, and for this reason his self-criticism seems overly harsh. A few other works have devoted attention to prisoners and the insides of their institutions; see Estelle B. Freedman, Their Sisters' Keepers: Women's Prison Reform in America, 1830-1930 (Ann Arbor, 1981); Patricia O'Brien, The Promise of Punishment: Prisons in Nineteenth-Century France (Princeton, 1982); Nicole Hahn Rafter, Partial Justice: Women, Prisons, and Social Control, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1990); and Pieter Spierenburg, The Prison Experience: Disciplinary Institutions and Thier Inmates in Early Modern Europe (New Brunswick, N.J., 1991).
7. The pathbreaking work on American prisons and other institutions in the nineteenth century is David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston, 1971), which highlights the social control objectives of Jacksonian reformers intent on maintining order in an increasingly anonymous and unruly society. Michael Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850 (New York, 1978), examines the English prison as an instrument of capitalist class control, and Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1979) focuses on the evolution of penal ideology and the modern penitentiary as more generalized "technologies of power." An alternative interpretation, one stressing the altruism and good intentions of the reformers of mental institutions, can be found in Gerald N. Grob, Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875 (New Yory, 1973). More recently, Adam J. Hirsch has advanced an interpretation of the nineteenth-century penitentiary much in sympathy with Grob. American prisons, Hirsch argues, were less an attempt at social control than simply a rational adaptation of longstanding institutional forms, like the colonial workhouse, to a post-Revolutionary problem of increasing crime. See The Rise of the Penitentiary: Prisons and Punishment in Early America (New Haven, 1992). In a later review essay, Ignatieff calls the social control interpretations, including his own, sharply into question. There is, he claims, a set of "basic misconceptions" common to such analyses: "that the state enjoys a monopoly over punitive regulation of behaviour in society, that its moral authority and practical power are the binding sources of social order, and that all social relations can be described in the language of subordination." In short, Ignatieff claims that such an analysis ignores the extent to which the prison, and the criminal justice system as a whole, lend expression to authentic moral sentiments of the poor and working classes; see his "State, Civil Society and Total Institutions: A Critique of Recent Social Histories of Punishment," in Stanley Cohen and Andrew Scull, eds., Social Control and the State (New York, 1983), 77. Allen Steinberg's study of criminal justice in nineteenth-century Philadelphia provides an eloquent example of this point; through the system of private prosecutions, poor and working-class people turned to their own ends an apparatus of state power which in its broader context was a tool of class control; see The Transformation of Criminal Justice: Philadelphia, 1800-1880 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1989). Ignatieff himself is among the few authors whose analysis of social control is tempered with an account of prisoners, staff, and institutional dynamics; indeed, prison culture plays an important role in his story, and for this reason his self-criticism seems overly harsh. A few other works have devoted attention to prisoners and the insides of their institutions; see Estelle B. Freedman, Their Sisters' Keepers: Women's Prison Reform in America, 1830-1930 (Ann Arbor, 1981); Patricia O'Brien, The Promise of Punishment: Prisons in Nineteenth-Century France (Princeton, 1982); Nicole Hahn Rafter, Partial Justice: Women, Prisons, and Social Control, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1990); and Pieter Spierenburg, The Prison Experience: Disciplinary Institutions and Thier Inmates in Early Modern Europe (New Brunswick, N.J., 1991).
8. The pathbreaking work on American prisons and other institutions in the nineteenth century is David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston, 1971), which highlights the social control objectives of Jacksonian reformers intent on maintining order in an increasingly anonymous and unruly society. Michael Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850 (New York, 1978), examines the English prison as an instrument of capitalist class control, and Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1979) focuses on the evolution of penal ideology and the modern penitentiary as more generalized "technologies of power." An alternative interpretation, one stressing the altruism and good intentions of the reformers of mental institutions, can be found in Gerald N. Grob, Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875 (New Yory, 1973). More recently, Adam J. Hirsch has advanced an interpretation of the nineteenth-century penitentiary much in sympathy with Grob. American prisons, Hirsch argues, were less an attempt at social control than simply a rational adaptation of longstanding institutional forms, like the colonial workhouse, to a post-Revolutionary problem of increasing crime. See The Rise of the Penitentiary: Prisons and Punishment in Early America (New Haven, 1992). In a later review essay, Ignatieff calls the social control interpretations, including his own, sharply into question. There is, he claims, a set of "basic misconceptions" common to such analyses: "that the state enjoys a monopoly over punitive regulation of behaviour in society, that its moral authority and practical power are the binding sources of social order, and that all social relations can be described in the language of subordination." In short, Ignatieff claims that such an analysis ignores the extent to which the prison, and the criminal justice system as a whole, lend expression to authentic moral sentiments of the poor and working classes; see his "State, Civil Society and Total Institutions: A Critique of Recent Social Histories of Punishment," in Stanley Cohen and Andrew Scull, eds., Social Control and the State (New York, 1983), 77. Allen Steinberg's study of criminal justice in nineteenth-century Philadelphia provides an eloquent example of this point; through the system of private prosecutions, poor and working-class people turned to their own ends an apparatus of state power which in its broader context was a tool of class control; see The Transformation of Criminal Justice: Philadelphia, 1800-1880 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1989). Ignatieff himself is among the few authors whose analysis of social control is tempered with an account of prisoners, staff, and institutional dynamics; indeed, prison culture plays an important role in his story, and for this reason his self-criticism seems overly harsh. A few other works have devoted attention to prisoners and the insides of their institutions; see Estelle B. Freedman, Their Sisters' Keepers: Women's Prison Reform in America, 1830-1930 (Ann Arbor, 1981); Patricia O'Brien, The Promise of Punishment: Prisons in Nineteenth-Century France (Princeton, 1982); Nicole Hahn Rafter, Partial Justice: Women, Prisons, and Social Control, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1990); and Pieter Spierenburg, The Prison Experience: Disciplinary Institutions and Thier Inmates in Early Modern Europe (New Brunswick, N.J., 1991).
9. The pathbreaking work on American prisons and other institutions in the nineteenth century is David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston, 1971), which highlights the social control objectives of Jacksonian reformers intent on maintining order in an increasingly anonymous and unruly society. Michael Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850 (New York, 1978), examines the English prison as an instrument of capitalist class control, and Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1979) focuses on the evolution of penal ideology and the modern penitentiary as more generalized "technologies of power." An alternative interpretation, one stressing the altruism and good intentions of the reformers of mental institutions, can be found in Gerald N. Grob, Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875 (New Yory, 1973). More recently, Adam J. Hirsch has advanced an interpretation of the nineteenth-century penitentiary much in sympathy with Grob. American prisons, Hirsch argues, were less an attempt at social control than simply a rational adaptation of longstanding institutional forms, like the colonial workhouse, to a post-Revolutionary problem of increasing crime. See The Rise of the Penitentiary: Prisons and Punishment in Early America (New Haven, 1992). In a later review essay, Ignatieff calls the social control interpretations, including his own, sharply into question. There is, he claims, a set of "basic misconceptions" common to such analyses: "that the state enjoys a monopoly over punitive regulation of behaviour in society, that its moral authority and practical power are the binding sources of social order, and that all social relations can be described in the language of subordination." In short, Ignatieff claims that such an analysis ignores the extent to which the prison, and the criminal justice system as a whole, lend expression to authentic moral sentiments of the poor and working classes; see his "State, Civil Society and Total Institutions: A Critique of Recent Social Histories of Punishment," in Stanley Cohen and Andrew Scull, eds., Social Control and the State (New York, 1983), 77. Allen Steinberg's study of criminal justice in nineteenth-century Philadelphia provides an eloquent example of this point; through the system of private prosecutions, poor and working-class people turned to their own ends an apparatus of state power which in its broader context was a tool of class control; see The Transformation of Criminal Justice: Philadelphia, 1800-1880 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1989). Ignatieff himself is among the few authors whose analysis of social control is tempered with an account of prisoners, staff, and institutional dynamics; indeed, prison culture plays an important role in his story, and for this reason his self-criticism seems overly harsh. A few other works have devoted attention to prisoners and the insides of their institutions; see Estelle B. Freedman, Their Sisters' Keepers: Women's Prison Reform in America, 1830-1930 (Ann Arbor, 1981); Patricia O'Brien, The Promise of Punishment: Prisons in Nineteenth-Century France (Princeton, 1982); Nicole Hahn Rafter, Partial Justice: Women, Prisons, and Social Control, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1990); and Pieter Spierenburg, The Prison Experience: Disciplinary Institutions and Thier Inmates in Early Modern Europe (New Brunswick, N.J., 1991).
10. The pathbreaking work on American prisons and other institutions in the nineteenth century is David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston, 1971), which highlights the social control objectives of Jacksonian reformers intent on maintining order in an increasingly anonymous and unruly society. Michael Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850 (New York, 1978), examines the English prison as an instrument of capitalist class control, and Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1979) focuses on the evolution of penal ideology and the modern penitentiary as more generalized "technologies of power." An alternative interpretation, one stressing the altruism and good intentions of the reformers of mental institutions, can be found in Gerald N. Grob, Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875 (New Yory, 1973). More recently, Adam J. Hirsch has advanced an interpretation of the nineteenth-century penitentiary much in sympathy with Grob. American prisons, Hirsch argues, were less an attempt at social control than simply a rational adaptation of longstanding institutional forms, like the colonial workhouse, to a post-Revolutionary problem of increasing crime. See The Rise of the Penitentiary: Prisons and Punishment in Early America (New Haven, 1992). In a later review essay, Ignatieff calls the social control interpretations, including his own, sharply into question. There is, he claims, a set of "basic misconceptions" common to such analyses: "that the state enjoys a monopoly over punitive regulation of behaviour in society, that its moral authority and practical power are the binding sources of social order, and that all social relations can be described in the language of subordination." In short, Ignatieff claims that such an analysis ignores the extent to which the prison, and the criminal justice system as a whole, lend expression to authentic moral sentiments of the poor and working classes; see his "State, Civil Society and Total Institutions: A Critique of Recent Social Histories of Punishment," in Stanley Cohen and Andrew Scull, eds., Social Control and the State (New York, 1983), 77. Allen Steinberg's study of criminal justice in nineteenth-century Philadelphia provides an eloquent example of this point; through the system of private prosecutions, poor and working-class people turned to their own ends an apparatus of state power which in its broader context was a tool of class control; see The Transformation of Criminal Justice: Philadelphia, 1800-1880 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1989). Ignatieff himself is among the few authors whose analysis of social control is tempered with an account of prisoners, staff, and institutional dynamics; indeed, prison culture plays an important role in his story, and for this reason his self-criticism seems overly harsh. A few other works have devoted attention to prisoners and the insides of their institutions; see Estelle B. Freedman, Their Sisters' Keepers: Women's Prison Reform in America, 1830-1930 (Ann Arbor, 1981); Patricia O'Brien, The Promise of Punishment: Prisons in Nineteenth-Century France (Princeton, 1982); Nicole Hahn Rafter, Partial Justice: Women, Prisons, and Social Control, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1990); and Pieter Spierenburg, The Prison Experience: Disciplinary Institutions and Thier Inmates in Early Modern Europe (New Brunswick, N.J., 1991).
11. The pathbreaking work on American prisons and other institutions in the nineteenth century is David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston, 1971), which highlights the social control objectives of Jacksonian reformers intent on maintining order in an increasingly anonymous and unruly society. Michael Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850 (New York, 1978), examines the English prison as an instrument of capitalist class control, and Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1979) focuses on the evolution of penal ideology and the modern penitentiary as more generalized "technologies of power." An alternative interpretation, one stressing the altruism and good intentions of the reformers of mental institutions, can be found in Gerald N. Grob, Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875 (New Yory, 1973). More recently, Adam J. Hirsch has advanced an interpretation of the nineteenth-century penitentiary much in sympathy with Grob. American prisons, Hirsch argues, were less an attempt at social control than simply a rational adaptation of longstanding institutional forms, like the colonial workhouse, to a post-Revolutionary problem of increasing crime. See The Rise of the Penitentiary: Prisons and Punishment in Early America (New Haven, 1992). In a later review essay, Ignatieff calls the social control interpretations, including his own, sharply into question. There is, he claims, a set of "basic misconceptions" common to such analyses: "that the state enjoys a monopoly over punitive regulation of behaviour in society, that its moral authority and practical power are the binding sources of social order, and that all social relations can be described in the language of subordination." In short, Ignatieff claims that such an analysis ignores the extent to which the prison, and the criminal justice system as a whole, lend expression to authentic moral sentiments of the poor and working classes; see his "State, Civil Society and Total Institutions: A Critique of Recent Social Histories of Punishment," in Stanley Cohen and Andrew Scull, eds., Social Control and the State (New York, 1983), 77. Allen Steinberg's study of criminal justice in nineteenth-century Philadelphia provides an eloquent example of this point; through the system of private prosecutions, poor and working-class people turned to their own ends an apparatus of state power which in its broader context was a tool of class control; see The Transformation of Criminal Justice: Philadelphia, 1800-1880 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1989). Ignatieff himself is among the few authors whose analysis of social control is tempered with an account of prisoners, staff, and institutional dynamics; indeed, prison culture plays an important role in his story, and for this reason his self-criticism seems overly harsh. A few other works have devoted attention to prisoners and the insides of their institutions; see Estelle B. Freedman, Their Sisters' Keepers: Women's Prison Reform in America, 1830-1930 (Ann Arbor, 1981); Patricia O'Brien, The Promise of Punishment: Prisons in Nineteenth-Century France (Princeton, 1982); Nicole Hahn Rafter, Partial Justice: Women, Prisons, and Social Control, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1990); and Pieter Spierenburg, The Prison Experience: Disciplinary Institutions and Thier Inmates in Early Modern Europe (New Brunswick, N.J., 1991).
12. The pathbreaking work on American prisons and other institutions in the nineteenth century is David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston, 1971), which highlights the social control objectives of Jacksonian reformers intent on maintining order in an increasingly anonymous and unruly society. Michael Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850 (New York, 1978), examines the English prison as an instrument of capitalist class control, and Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1979) focuses on the evolution of penal ideology and the modern penitentiary as more generalized "technologies of power." An alternative interpretation, one stressing the altruism and good intentions of the reformers of mental institutions, can be found in Gerald N. Grob, Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875 (New Yory, 1973). More recently, Adam J. Hirsch has advanced an interpretation of the nineteenth-century penitentiary much in sympathy with Grob. American prisons, Hirsch argues, were less an attempt at social control than simply a rational adaptation of longstanding institutional forms, like the colonial workhouse, to a post-Revolutionary problem of increasing crime. See The Rise of the Penitentiary: Prisons and Punishment in Early America (New Haven, 1992). In a later review essay, Ignatieff calls the social control interpretations, including his own, sharply into question. There is, he claims, a set of "basic misconceptions" common to such analyses: "that the state enjoys a monopoly over punitive regulation of behaviour in society, that its moral authority and practical power are the binding sources of social order, and that all social relations can be described in the language of subordination." In short, Ignatieff claims that such an analysis ignores the extent to which the prison, and the criminal justice system as a whole, lend expression to authentic moral sentiments of the poor and working classes; see his "State, Civil Society and Total Institutions: A Critique of Recent Social Histories of Punishment," in Stanley Cohen and Andrew Scull, eds., Social Control and the State (New York, 1983), 77. Allen Steinberg's study of criminal justice in nineteenth-century Philadelphia provides an eloquent example of this point; through the system of private prosecutions, poor and working-class people turned to their own ends an apparatus of state power which in its broader context was a tool of class control; see The Transformation of Criminal Justice: Philadelphia, 1800-1880 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1989). Ignatieff himself is among the few authors whose analysis of social control is tempered with an account of prisoners, staff, and institutional dynamics; indeed, prison culture plays an important role in his story, and for this reason his self-criticism seems overly harsh. A few other works have devoted attention to prisoners and the insides of their institutions; see Estelle B. Freedman, Their Sisters' Keepers: Women's Prison Reform in America, 1830-1930 (Ann Arbor, 1981); Patricia O'Brien, The Promise of Punishment: Prisons in Nineteenth-Century France (Princeton, 1982); Nicole Hahn Rafter, Partial Justice: Women, Prisons, and Social Control, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1990); and Pieter Spierenburg, The Prison Experience: Disciplinary Institutions and Thier Inmates in Early Modern Europe (New Brunswick, N.J., 1991).
13. The pathbreaking work on American prisons and other institutions in the nineteenth century is David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston, 1971), which highlights the social control objectives of Jacksonian reformers intent on maintining order in an increasingly anonymous and unruly society. Michael Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850 (New York, 1978), examines the English prison as an instrument of capitalist class control, and Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1979) focuses on the evolution of penal ideology and the modern penitentiary as more generalized "technologies of power." An alternative interpretation, one stressing the altruism and good intentions of the reformers of mental institutions, can be found in Gerald N. Grob, Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875 (New Yory, 1973). More recently, Adam J. Hirsch has advanced an interpretation of the nineteenth-century penitentiary much in sympathy with Grob. American prisons, Hirsch argues, were less an attempt at social control than simply a rational adaptation of longstanding institutional forms, like the colonial workhouse, to a post-Revolutionary problem of increasing crime. See The Rise of the Penitentiary: Prisons and Punishment in Early America (New Haven, 1992). In a later review essay, Ignatieff calls the social control interpretations, including his own, sharply into question. There is, he claims, a set of "basic misconceptions" common to such analyses: "that the state enjoys a monopoly over punitive regulation of behaviour in society, that its moral authority and practical power are the binding sources of social order, and that all social relations can be described in the language of subordination." In short, Ignatieff claims that such an analysis ignores the extent to which the prison, and the criminal justice system as a whole, lend expression to authentic moral sentiments of the poor and working classes; see his "State, Civil Society and Total Institutions: A Critique of Recent Social Histories of Punishment," in Stanley Cohen and Andrew Scull, eds., Social Control and the State (New York, 1983), 77. Allen Steinberg's study of criminal justice in nineteenth-century Philadelphia provides an eloquent example of this point; through the system of private prosecutions, poor and working-class people turned to their own ends an apparatus of state power which in its broader context was a tool of class control; see The Transformation of Criminal Justice: Philadelphia, 1800-1880 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1989). Ignatieff himself is among the few authors whose analysis of social control is tempered with an account of prisoners, staff, and institutional dynamics; indeed, prison culture plays an important role in his story, and for this reason his self-criticism seems overly harsh. A few other works have devoted attention to prisoners and the insides of their institutions; see Estelle B. Freedman, Their Sisters' Keepers: Women's Prison Reform in America, 1830-1930 (Ann Arbor, 1981); Patricia O'Brien, The Promise of Punishment: Prisons in Nineteenth-Century France (Princeton, 1982); Nicole Hahn Rafter, Partial Justice: Women, Prisons, and Social Control, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1990); and Pieter Spierenburg, The Prison Experience: Disciplinary Institutions and Thier Inmates in Early Modern Europe (New Brunswick, N.J., 1991).
14. The pathbreaking work on American prisons and other institutions in the nineteenth century is David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston, 1971), which highlights the social control objectives of Jacksonian reformers intent on maintining order in an increasingly anonymous and unruly society. Michael Ignatieff, A Just Measure of Pain: The Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850 (New York, 1978), examines the English prison as an instrument of capitalist class control, and Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1979) focuses on the evolution of penal ideology and the modern penitentiary as more generalized "technologies of power." An alternative interpretation, one stressing the altruism and good intentions of the reformers of mental institutions, can be found in Gerald N. Grob, Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875 (New Yory, 1973). More recently, Adam J. Hirsch has advanced an interpretation of the nineteenth-century penitentiary much in sympathy with Grob. American prisons, Hirsch argues, were less an attempt at social control than simply a rational adaptation of longstanding institutional forms, like the colonial workhouse, to a post-Revolutionary problem of increasing crime. See The Rise of the Penitentiary: Prisons and Punishment in Early America (New Haven, 1992). In a later review essay, Ignatieff calls the social control interpretations, including his own, sharply into question. There is, he claims, a set of "basic misconceptions" common to such analyses: "that the state enjoys a monopoly over punitive regulation of behaviour in society, that its moral authority and practical power are the binding sources of social order, and that all social relations can be described in the language of subordination." In short, Ignatieff claims that such an analysis ignores the extent to which the prison, and the criminal justice system as a whole, lend expression to authentic moral sentiments of the poor and working classes; see his "State, Civil Society and Total Institutions: A Critique of Recent Social Histories of Punishment," in Stanley Cohen and Andrew Scull, eds., Social Control and the State (New York, 1983), 77. Allen Steinberg's study of criminal justice in nineteenth-century Philadelphia provides an eloquent example of this point; through the system of private prosecutions, poor and working-class people turned to their own ends an apparatus of state power which in its broader context was a tool of class control; see The Transformation of Criminal Justice: Philadelphia, 1800-1880 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1989). Ignatieff himself is among the few authors whose analysis of social control is tempered with an account of prisoners, staff, and institutional dynamics; indeed, prison culture plays an important role in his story, and for this reason his self-criticism seems overly harsh. A few other works have devoted attention to prisoners and the insides of their institutions; see Estelle B. Freedman, Their Sisters' Keepers: Women's Prison Reform in America, 1830-1930 (Ann Arbor, 1981); Patricia O'Brien, The Promise of Punishment: Prisons in Nineteenth-Century France (Princeton, 1982); Nicole Hahn Rafter, Partial Justice: Women, Prisons, and Social Control, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1990); and Pieter Spierenburg, The Prison Experience: Disciplinary Institutions and Thier Inmates in Early Modern Europe (New Brunswick, N.J., 1991).
15. I have focused my attention in the present study on the Charlestown prison in the period 1805-1878. In the latter year, the state transferred the entire population to a new prison at Concord, intending to close the institution forever. The Concord prison soon became crowded, however, and in 1884, the legislature ordered its conversion from a state prison to a reformatory; it sent those prisoners considered less reformable back to the Charlestown prison, which then remained in operation until 1955. See St. 1878, c. 62 (14 March 1878); St. 1884, c. 255 (21 May 1884); St. 1955, c. 770 (12 September 1955); and St. 1956, c. 731 (5 October 1956). Nearly all the records of the Charlestown prison are at the Massachusetts State Archieves in Boston. The records include an assortment of Commitment Registers, totalling twenty-five bound volumes, and covering the period 1805-1960 (carrying over to the state prison at Walpole, where prisoners were sent in 1955); five bound volumes of Daily Reports, 1805-1829, kept first by the keeper and later by the warden; five bound volumes of minutes of the Board of Visitors (later called the Board of Directors and then the Board of Inspectors), 1805-1879); six bound volumes of Punishment Books, 1854-1955, with brief details of individual punishments inflicted; a volume of Warden's Memoranda of Prisoners, 1858-1902; and miscellaneous unbound reports and papers covering the period 1809-1851. A more detailed description of these records, and a more comprehensive look at the prison, can be found in my "Penal Reform, Convict Labor, and Prison Culture in Massachusetts" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1994). The bulk of the records were not rediscovered until 1981, and to my knowledge the only other study to have used them is Hirsch's Rise of the Penitentiary, which does so only minimally. For brief institutional histories of the prison, see Michael Stephen Hindus, Prison and Plantation: Crime, Justice, and Authority in Massachusetts and South Carolina, 1767-1878 (Chapel Hill, 1980), 162-181; and Anne Bauer, "The Charlestown State Prison," Historical Journal of Western Masschusetts 2 (Fall 1973): 22-29.
16. I have focused my attention in the present study on the Charlestown prison in the period 1805-1878. In the latter year, the state transferred the entire population to a new prison at Concord, intending to close the institution forever. The Concord prison soon became crowded, however, and in 1884, the legislature ordered its conversion from a state prison to a reformatory; it sent those prisoners considered less reformable back to the Charlestown prison, which then remained in operation until 1955. See St. 1878, c. 62 (14 March 1878); St. 1884, c. 255 (21 May 1884); St. 1955, c. 770 (12 September 1955); and St. 1956, c. 731 (5 October 1956). Nearly all the records of the Charlestown prison are at the Massachusetts State Archieves in Boston. The records include an assortment of Commitment Registers, totalling twenty-five bound volumes, and covering the period 1805-1960 (carrying over to the state prison at Walpole, where prisoners were sent in 1955); five bound volumes of Daily Reports, 1805-1829, kept first by the keeper and later by the warden; five bound volumes of minutes of the Board of Visitors (later called the Board of Directors and then the Board of Inspectors), 1805-1879); six bound volumes of Punishment Books, 1854-1955, with brief details of individual punishments inflicted; a volume of Warden's Memoranda of Prisoners, 1858-1902; and miscellaneous unbound reports and papers covering the period 1809-1851. A more detailed description of these records, and a more comprehensive look at the prison, can be found in my "Penal Reform, Convict Labor, and Prison Culture in Massachusetts" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1994). The bulk of the records were not rediscovered until 1981, and to my knowledge the only other study to have used them is Hirsch's Rise of the Penitentiary, which does so only minimally. For brief institutional histories of the prison, see Michael Stephen Hindus, Prison and Plantation: Crime, Justice, and Authority in Massachusetts and South Carolina, 1767-1878 (Chapel Hill, 1980), 162-181; and Anne Bauer, "The Charlestown State Prison," Historical Journal of Western Masschusetts 2 (Fall 1973): 22-29.
17. I have focused my attention in the present study on the Charlestown prison in the period 1805-1878. In the latter year, the state transferred the entire population to a new prison at Concord, intending to close the institution forever. The Concord prison soon became crowded, however, and in 1884, the legislature ordered its conversion from a state prison to a reformatory; it sent those prisoners considered less reformable back to the Charlestown prison, which then remained in operation until 1955. See St. 1878, c. 62 (14 March 1878); St. 1884, c. 255 (21 May 1884); St. 1955, c. 770 (12 September 1955); and St. 1956, c. 731 (5 October 1956). Nearly all the records of the Charlestown prison are at the Massachusetts State Archieves in Boston. The records include an assortment of Commitment Registers, totalling twenty-five bound volumes, and covering the period 1805-1960 (carrying over to the state prison at Walpole, where prisoners were sent in 1955); five bound volumes of Daily Reports, 1805-1829, kept first by the keeper and later by the warden; five bound volumes of minutes of the Board of Visitors (later called the Board of Directors and then the Board of Inspectors), 1805-1879); six bound volumes of Punishment Books, 1854-1955, with brief details of individual punishments inflicted; a volume of Warden's Memoranda of Prisoners, 1858-1902; and miscellaneous unbound reports and papers covering the period 1809-1851. A more detailed description of these records, and a more comprehensive look at the prison, can be found in my "Penal Reform, Convict Labor, and Prison Culture in Massachusetts" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1994). The bulk of the records were not rediscovered until 1981, and to my knowledge the only other study to have used them is Hirsch's Rise of the Penitentiary, which does so only minimally. For brief institutional histories of the prison, see Michael Stephen Hindus, Prison and Plantation: Crime, Justice, and Authority in Massachusetts and South Carolina, 1767-1878 (Chapel Hill, 1980), 162-181; and Anne Bauer, "The Charlestown State Prison," Historical Journal of Western Masschusetts 2 (Fall 1973): 22-29.
18. Erving Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (New York, 1961); Gresham M. Sykes, The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison (Princeton, 1958). See also Glen A. Gildemeister, Prison Labor and Convict Competition With Free Workers in Industrializing America, 1840-1890 (New York, 1987), 70-126. The seminal work on paternalism and slave culture is Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, 1974). On paternalism and the use of hegemony as a concept in historical analysis, see T. J. Jackson Lears, "The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities," American Historical Review 90 (1985): 567-593.
19. Erving Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (New York, 1961); Gresham M. Sykes, The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison (Princeton, 1958). See also Glen A. Gildemeister, Prison Labor and Convict Competition With Free Workers in Industrializing America, 1840-1890 (New York, 1987), 70-126. The seminal work on paternalism and slave culture is Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, 1974). On paternalism and the use of hegemony as a concept in historical analysis, see T. J. Jackson Lears, "The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities," American Historical Review 90 (1985): 567-593.
20. Erving Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (New York, 1961); Gresham M. Sykes, The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison (Princeton, 1958). See also Glen A. Gildemeister, Prison Labor and Convict Competition With Free Workers in Industrializing America, 1840-1890 (New York, 1987), 70-126. The seminal work on paternalism and slave culture is Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, 1974). On paternalism and the use of hegemony as a concept in historical analysis, see T. J. Jackson Lears, "The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities," American Historical Review 90 (1985): 567-593.
21. Erving Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (New York, 1961); Gresham M. Sykes, The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison (Princeton, 1958). See also Glen A. Gildemeister, Prison Labor and Convict Competition With Free Workers in Industrializing America, 1840-1890 (New York, 1987), 70-126. The seminal work on paternalism and slave culture is Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, 1974). On paternalism and the use of hegemony as a concept in historical analysis, see T. J. Jackson Lears, "The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities," American Historical Review 90 (1985): 567-593.
22. Erving Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (New York, 1961); Gresham M. Sykes, The Society of Captives: A Study of a Maximum Security Prison (Princeton, 1958). See also Glen A. Gildemeister, Prison Labor and Convict Competition With Free Workers in Industrializing America, 1840-1890 (New York, 1987), 70-126. The seminal work on paternalism and slave culture is Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York, 1974). On paternalism and the use of hegemony as a concept in historical analysis, see T. J. Jackson Lears, "The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities," American Historical Review 90 (1985): 567-593.
23. PDSB 2 (1827), 62, 16.
24. Rules and Regulations for the Government of the Massachusetts State Prison (Boston, 1823), 61. Public curiosity about the institution was apparently great; the annual report for 1829 records "Fees of Admittance" amounting to $413.50, which, at 25 cents per ticket, amounts to 1,654 paying visitors that year, Report of the Warden of the State Prison (Senate No. 2, 1829), 17. By 1854, the legislature's Joint Committee on Prisons reported a "great influx of visitors, now amount[ing] to about 6,000 annually," and it reported its opinion that "the present system of promiscuous visiting is highly injurious in its tendency, both in its moral effect and as it regards the discipline of the prison." Report of the Joint Committee on Prisons, 31 March 1854, in Legislative Papers, St. 1854, c. 302 (13 April 1854), MSA.
25. Rules and Regulations for the Government of the Massachusetts State Prison (Boston, 1823), 61. Public curiosity about the institution was apparently great; the annual report for 1829 records "Fees of Admittance" amounting to $413.50, which, at 25 cents per ticket, amounts to 1,654 paying visitors that year, Report of the Warden of the State Prison (Senate No. 2, 1829), 17. By 1854, the legislature's Joint Committee on Prisons reported a "great influx of visitors, now amount[ing] to about 6,000 annually," and it reported its opinion that "the present system of promiscuous visiting is highly injurious in its tendency, both in its moral effect and as it regards the discipline of the prison." Report of the Joint Committee on Prisons, 31 March 1854, in Legislative Papers, St. 1854, c. 302 (13 April 1854), MSA.
26. Daily Reports, 11 April 1817, 7 May 1822.
27. Daily Reports, 15 June 1807 (Holton's name is misspelled as "Holson" in this entry, but subsequently corrected), 27 June 1807, 29 June 1807, 30 June 1807, 6 July 1807.
28. Daily Reports, 25 November 1807, 20 May 1808, 25 April 1808, 16 April 1814, 10 July 1815.
29. Daily Reports, 19 April 1814, 22 April 1814, 23 September 1818, 16 October 1819, 22 November 1819, 3 November 1818, 14 December 1817, 27 November 1818.
30. Useful discussions of such networks in contemporary prisons can be found in David B. Kalinich, The Inmate Economy (Lexington, Mass., 1980); and David B. Kalinich and Stan Stojkovic, "Contraband: The Basis for Legitimate Power in a Prison Social System," Criminal Justice and Behavior 12 (December 1985): 435-451.
31. Useful discussions of such networks in contemporary prisons can be found in David B. Kalinich, The Inmate Economy (Lexington, Mass., 1980); and David B. Kalinich and Stan Stojkovic, "Contraband: The Basis for Legitimate Power in a Prison Social System," Criminal Justice and Behavior 12 (December 1985): 435-451.
32. Daily Reports, 25 March 1820, 4 October 1820.
33. Daily Reports, 11 March 1817, 3 March 1818, 12 November 1823, 20 March 1828.
34. Daily Reports, 14 August 1817, 27 August 1819; Board Minutes, 1 September 1819.
35. Daily Reports, 18 October 1816, 25 February 1822, 25 July 1822, 31 July 1822; Board Minutes, 31 July 1822.
36. PDSB 2 (1827), 34-8 (quotation, 36). See also the extract of the annual message of Governor Levi Lincoln, January 1826, reprinted in PDSB 1 (1826), 43-44. On the Auburn system and its competitor, the Pennsylvania system of round-the-clock solitary confinement, see W. David Lewis, From Newgate to Dannemora: The Rise of the Penitentiary in New York, 1796-1848 (Ithaca, 1965); and Rothman, Discovery of the Asylum, 79-88.
37. PDSB 2 (1827), 34-8 (quotation, 36). See also the extract of the annual message of Governor Levi Lincoln, January 1826, reprinted in PDSB 1 (1826), 43-44. On the Auburn system and its competitor, the Pennsylvania system of round-the-clock solitary confinement, see W. David Lewis, From Newgate to Dannemora: The Rise of the Penitentiary in New York, 1796-1848 (Ithaca, 1965); and Rothman, Discovery of the Asylum, 79-88.
38. PDSB 2 (1827), 34-8 (quotation, 36). See also the extract of the annual message of Governor Levi Lincoln, January 1826, reprinted in PDSB 1 (1826), 43-44. On the Auburn system and its competitor, the Pennsylvania system of round-the-clock solitary confinement, see W. David Lewis, From Newgate to Dannemora: The Rise of the Penitentiary in New York, 1796-1848 (Ithaca, 1965); and Rothman, Discovery of the Asylum, 79-88.
39. PDSB 2 (1827), 34-8 (quotation, 36). See also the extract of the annual message of Governor Levi Lincoln, January 1826, reprinted in PDSB 1 (1826), 43-44. On the Auburn system and its competitor, the Pennsylvania system of round-the-clock solitary confinement, see W. David Lewis, From Newgate to Dannemora: The Rise of the Penitentiary in New York, 1796-1848 (Ithaca, 1965); and Rothman, Discovery of the Asylum, 79-88.
40. Annual Report (1837), 5-6.
41. On literacy and education reform in the nineteenth century, see Harvey J. Graff, The Literacy Myth: Literacy and Social Structure in the Nineteenth-Century City (New York, 1979), esp. 235-267; and Michael B. Katz, The Irony of Early School Reform: Educational Innovation in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts (Cambridge, Mass., 1968).
42. On literacy and education reform in the nineteenth century, see Harvey J. Graff, The Literacy Myth: Literacy and Social Structure in the Nineteenth-Century City (New York, 1979), esp. 235-267; and Michael B. Katz, The Irony of Early School Reform: Educational Innovation in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts (Cambridge, Mass., 1968).
43. Prisoners indicated an affirmative answer by signing their own names in the space provided; if the answer was negative, or qualified, the official keeping the register wrote in "Cannot," "Read Only," or "Cannot Write." Occasionally the space was simply left blank. The ability to sign one's name was not, of course, the same as the ability to write, let alone read; the crudeness of many prisoners' signatures suggests that their writing abilities may not have extended very far beyond that act. But we should not dismiss too hastily the reading and writing abilities of prisoners who failed to meet this crude standard, especially given the amassed evidence of their literary activity, both legitimate and otherwise. And of course, as with occupational data, we should keep in mind that prisoners may have had their own reasons for dishonesty, in either direction. The register, noted one chaplain in 1853, "is frequently incorrect, from the fact that prisoners when first committed to the institution, are unwilling from feelings of delicacy, or less worthy motives, to state their actual attainments." Chaplain's Report (1853), 41n.
44. A fascinating account of similar struggles over the written word in twentieth-century California prisons can be found in Eric Cummins, The Rise and Fall of California's Radical Prison Movement (Stanford, 1994).
45. An Account of the Massachusetts State Prison. Containing A Description and Plan of the Edifice; the Law, Regulations, Rules and Orders; with a View of the Present State of the Institution (Charlestown, 1806), 25; Board Minutes, 9 June 1806.
46. Commitment Register, entry for Andrew McGee, admitted 27 February 1806; Daily Reports, 6 March 1807, 2 April 1807.
47. McGee's account apparently never found a publisher, although two such personal narratives from Charlestown prisoners did. See James Allen, Narrative of the Life of James Allen, Alias George Walton, Alias Jonas Pierce, Alias James H. York, Alias Burley Grove the Highwayman. Being His Death-Bed Confession, to the Warden of the Massachusetts State Prison (Boston, 1837); and John Southack, The Life of John Southack (n.p., 1809). The unpublished diary of an anonymous Charlestown prisoner, dated 1864, is at the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. On the confessional genre and the history of prisoners' writings, see Daniel A. Cohen, Pillars of Salt, Monuments of Grace: New England Crime Literature and the Origins of American Popular Culture, 1674-1860 (New York, 1993); H. Bruce Franklin, The Victim as Criminal and Artist: Literature from the American Prison (New York, 1978); Idem, American Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners: Their Writings: An Annotated Bibliography of Published Works, 1798-1981 (Westport, Conn., 1982); and Cynthia Owen Philip, ed., Imprisoned in America: Prison Communications, 1776 to Attica (New York, 1973).
48. McGee's account apparently never found a publisher, although two such personal narratives from Charlestown prisoners did. See James Allen, Narrative of the Life of James Allen, Alias George Walton, Alias Jonas Pierce, Alias James H. York, Alias Burley Grove the Highwayman. Being His Death-Bed Confession, to the Warden of the Massachusetts State Prison (Boston, 1837); and John Southack, The Life of John Southack (n.p., 1809). The unpublished diary of an anonymous Charlestown prisoner, dated 1864, is at the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. On the confessional genre and the history of prisoners' writings, see Daniel A. Cohen, Pillars of Salt, Monuments of Grace: New England Crime Literature and the Origins of American Popular Culture, 1674-1860 (New York, 1993); H. Bruce Franklin, The Victim as Criminal and Artist: Literature from the American Prison (New York, 1978); Idem, American Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners: Their Writings: An Annotated Bibliography of Published Works, 1798-1981 (Westport, Conn., 1982); and Cynthia Owen Philip, ed., Imprisoned in America: Prison Communications, 1776 to Attica (New York, 1973).
49. McGee's account apparently never found a publisher, although two such personal narratives from Charlestown prisoners did. See James Allen, Narrative of the Life of James Allen, Alias George Walton, Alias Jonas Pierce, Alias James H. York, Alias Burley Grove the Highwayman. Being His Death-Bed Confession, to the Warden of the Massachusetts State Prison (Boston, 1837); and John Southack, The Life of John Southack (n.p., 1809). The unpublished diary of an anonymous Charlestown prisoner, dated 1864, is at the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. On the confessional genre and the history of prisoners' writings, see Daniel A. Cohen, Pillars of Salt, Monuments of Grace: New England Crime Literature and the Origins of American Popular Culture, 1674-1860 (New York, 1993); H. Bruce Franklin, The Victim as Criminal and Artist: Literature from the American Prison (New York, 1978); Idem, American Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners: Their Writings: An Annotated Bibliography of Published Works, 1798-1981 (Westport, Conn., 1982); and Cynthia Owen Philip, ed., Imprisoned in America: Prison Communications, 1776 to Attica (New York, 1973).
50. McGee's account apparently never found a publisher, although two such personal narratives from Charlestown prisoners did. See James Allen, Narrative
51. McGee's account apparently never found a publisher, although two such personal narratives from Charlestown prisoners did. See James Allen, Narrative of the Life of James Allen, Alias George Walton, Alias Jonas Pierce, Alias James H. York, Alias Burley Grove the Highwayman. Being His Death-Bed Confession, to the Warden of the Massachusetts State Prison (Boston, 1837); and John Southack, The Life of John Southack (n.p., 1809). The unpublished diary of an anonymous Charlestown prisoner, dated 1864, is at the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. On the confessional genre and the history of prisoners' writings, see Daniel A. Cohen, Pillars of Salt, Monuments of Grace: New England Crime Literature and the Origins of American Popular Culture, 1674-1860 (New York, 1993); H. Bruce Franklin, The Victim as Criminal and Artist: Literature from the American Prison (New York, 1978); Idem, American Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners: Their Writings: An Annotated Bibliography of Published Works, 1798-1981 (Westport, Conn., 1982); and Cynthia Owen Philip, ed., Imprisoned in America: Prison Communications, 1776 to Attica (New York, 1973).
52. McGee's account apparently never found a publisher, although two such personal narratives from Charlestown prisoners did. See James Allen, Narrative of the Life of James Allen, Alias George Walton, Alias Jonas Pierce, Alias James H. York, Alias Burley Grove the Highwayman. Being His Death-Bed Confession, to the Warden of the Massachusetts State Prison (Boston, 1837); and John Southack, The Life of John Southack (n.p., 1809). The unpublished diary of an anonymous Charlestown prisoner, dated 1864, is at the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. On the confessional genre and the history of prisoners' writings, see Daniel A. Cohen, Pillars of Salt, Monuments of Grace: New England Crime Literature and the Origins of American Popular Culture, 1674-1860 (New York, 1993); H. Bruce Franklin, The Victim as Criminal and Artist: Literature from the American Prison (New York, 1978); Idem, American Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners: Their Writings: An Annotated Bibliography of Published Works, 1798-1981 (Westport, Conn., 1982); and Cynthia Owen Philip, ed., Imprisoned in America: Prison Communications, 1776 to Attica (New York, 1973).
53. Board Minutes, 10 April 1809, 16 January 1813, 13 March 1821; Daily Reports, 18 December 1806, 5 March 1807, 14 March 1807.
54. Board Minutes, 4 April 1821, 2 May 1821; Daily Reports, 16 April 1814, 4 August 1818, 4 January 1821, 19 May 1819.
55. Report of the Committee on the State Prison (1817), 8-9. On an earlier, less formal attempt to set up prison schools, see Daily Reports, 28 March 1814, and 17 January 1816.
56. Anne M. Boylan, Sunday School: The Formation of An American Institution (New Haven, 1988), 37.
57. See also Paul Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral Order in America, 1820 1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 1978), 34-53.
58. Report of the Committee on the State Prison (1817), 28. In addition to the distinctions in uniform, only prisoners in the highest class were eligible to receive recommendations for pardon from the Directors. Formal legislative recognition of the Sabbath school would not occur until 1838; see St. 1838, c. 152 (18 April 1838). The Prison Discipline Society of Boston, in its annual report for 1832, dated the beginnings of the school to 1815 although the accuracy of this latter date is not apparent from the prison's own records. See PDSB 7 (1832), 537.
59. Report of the Committee on the State Prison (1817), 28. In addition to the distinctions in uniform, only prisoners in the highest class were eligible to receive recommendations for pardon from the Directors. Formal legislative recognition of the Sabbath school would not occur until 1838; see St. 1838, c. 152 (18 April 1838). The Prison Discipline Society of Boston, in its annual report for 1832, dated the beginnings of the school to 1815 although the accuracy of this latter date is not apparent from the prison's own records. See PDSB 7 (1832), 537.
60. Chaplain's Report (1818), in Massachusetts State Prison, Reports and Correspondence, MSA; Rules and Regulations (1823), 57.
61. Board Minutes, 12 April 1823.
62. Commissioners' Report (Senate No. 6, 1826); the manuscript report, dated 12 January 1827, is in the Unpassed Legislation File, Senate No: 8383. The position was established as full-time, with the recommended salary, by St. 1827, c. 118 (11 March 1828). On the views of the Prison Discipline Society regarding the need for a full-time chaplain, and an account of the early career of the Rev. Jared Curtis at the New York State Prison at Auburn, see PDSB 2 (1826), 91-95.
63. Report of Joint Standing Committee on Prisons, n.d., in Legislative Papers, Res. 1844, c. 98 (15 March 1844), MSA.
64. Ibid. Additional testimony as to the extent of the prisoners' own book collections was given by Francis C. Gray, a member of the Charlestown Board of Inspectors from 1828 to 1833, in his book extolling the virtues of the Auburn system. Gray wrote that a chaplain from the Illinois State Prison, visiting Charlestown around 1846, admired the size of the library and lamented that prisoners in his own institution had no books at all. A Charlestown prisoner stepped forward to say that he and his shopmates had books to spare for the Illinois prisoners. The visiting chaplain returned to Charlestown the next day, "and took with him a large silk handkerchief to carry off the books. What was his astonishment to find in the room adjoining the chapel more than four hundred bound volumes, besides tracts and pamphlets! The silk handkerchief would not do; and the prisoners requested permission to make boxes to pack the books in." Francis C. Gray, Prison Discipline in America (1847; Montclair, N.J., 1973) 53-54. Gray himself was sufficiently impressed with the prison library that he personally donated $50 for the purchase of books in 1847; see Warden's Report (1847), 15; Warden's Report (1847), 15; Warden's Report (1848), 14-15, lists the books purchased with Gray's gift.
65. Ibid. Additional testimony as to the extent of the prisoners' own book collections was given by Francis C. Gray, a member of the Charlestown Board of Inspectors from 1828 to 1833, in his book extolling the virtues of the Auburn system. Gray wrote that a chaplain from the Illinois State Prison, visiting Charlestown around 1846, admired the size of the library and lamented that prisoners in his own institution had no books at all. A Charlestown prisoner stepped forward to say that he and his shopmates had books to spare for the Illinois prisoners. The visiting chaplain returned to Charlestown the next day, "and took with him a large silk handkerchief to carry off the books. What was his astonishment to find in the room adjoining the chapel more than four hundred bound volumes, besides tracts and pamphlets! The silk handkerchief would not do; and the prisoners requested permission to make boxes to pack the books in." Francis C. Gray, Prison Discipline in America (1847; Montclair, N.J., 1973) 53-54. Gray himself was sufficiently impressed with the prison library that he personally donated $50 for the purchase of books in 1847; see Warden's Report (1847), 15; Warden's Report (1847), 15; Warden's Report (1848), 14-15, lists the books purchased with Gray's gift.
66. Res. 1845, c. 88 (18 March 1845); Annual Report (1845), 6-7. See also Warden's Report (1845), 22.
67. Annual Report (1845), 7.
68. Catalogue of the Library, of the Mass. State Prison (Charlestown, 1858). For a list of books in the prison library at a later date, see the invoices in Legislative Papers, Res. 1871, c. 35 (28 April 1871), MSA.
69. Board Minutes, 1 November 1849; Chaplain's Report (1858), 42-3; Catalogue of the Library (1858).
70. Report of the [Senate] Committee on Prisons, 19 March 1858, in Legislative Papers, St. 1858, c. 162 (27 March 1858), MSA.