Recollections of Windsor Prison Part 4

During the afternoon, a very remarkable alteration was made in the funeral preparations. Instead of burying him in his clothes, as was directed, he was dragged on the ground like a dead dog, round to the other side of the chapel, and there stripped, laid on a board, and washed all over with brine; his head cleaned, and his hair combed, and then wrapped up in a clean sheet. This was paying his remains a degree of respect which was never paid to a prisoner before, and the inquiry was very naturally made--"What does it mean?" Some thought that the hearts of the keepers began to relent, and that this was a sign of a troubled conscience. Others thought _differently_, but it remained for time to explain the mystery.

The burying place is in the yard of the prison, and close by the building in which the prisoners sleep. There Fane was buried in the neat and clean style described above. Those who buried him, thought that his body _might_ be taken up and given to the doctors for dissection, and to be _certain_, they marked the grave in such a way that it could not be disturbed without their knowing it.

The next morning the grave was examined, but no alteration had taken place; but the second morning, the grave was found to have been opened, and the news went through the prison like a flash of lightning. "What! is it not enough to murder him, must his body be disturbed and given to the doctors?" was the indignant and wrathful expression of every tongue. The whole prison was in a blaze, and the united demand of the prisoners for an explanation was not trifled with. At noon the princ.i.p.al officers came into the dining room, when all the prisoners were a.s.sembled for dinner, and each of them made a speech, touching the subject of the violated grave; and it is due to them both, to give the reader their speeches unaltered, that he may judge of their guilt or innocence from their own words.

The Warden said, that a suspicion appeared to exist, that Fane's body had been taken away, but he thought without foundation. The grave did not appear to him to have been touched. At any rate, if the body was gone, _he_ knew nothing of it, and he did not think that any of the keepers or guard did. He could not see how it could be dug up, and the prisoners not hear it, as the grave was so near them. But if that _could_ be done, he thought it could have been taken out of the yard but by one of two ways, and if it went through either of these, the noise of the great gates must have been heard. His opinion was, that his body was still in the grave; but if it had been taken away, _he_ knew nothing about it, and he did not think that any of the rest of the keepers did.

This was the poorest speech I ever heard that man make, and his appearance told too plainly to be misunderstood, that from some cause or other, his mind was troubled. I do not mean to say that he removed the body himself, but when you hear the other speech, you will know that the prisoners had reason to suspect something.

The Superintendent said: "I clear n.o.body. That grave has been disturbed, and the body has evidently been removed. I did not once dream of such a thing; if I had had the least suspicion of it, I would have placed a guard there. It was his sacred bed till the morning of the resurrection, and no one had any right to disturb him. I don't know what to think, but I know that there is guilt somewhere, and, as the Superintendent of the prison, I will spend five hundred dollars but that I will find something about it."

This satisfied the prisoners of the innocence of the Superintendent, but not of the Warden. They retired to work fully convinced that the Warden knew about the removal of the body, and that conviction has not been worn off, but confirmed by after reflection. The reasons for supposing that the Warden was knowing to the disinterment of Fane's body, I shall now state, leaving the reader to judge of their force.

1. The Warden had a son at that time studying in the medical college at Hanover, only fourteen miles distant from the prison.

2. He ordered the body to be washed in brine, and laid out in a clean sheet, a mark of respect not granted to other prisoners.

3. The body _was_ taken away, and it could not have been removed without the knowledge of the guard, who was on duty that night; for he pa.s.sed directly by the grave every hour and a half all night, and sat so near it at all the other times, that he could hear a nut sh.e.l.l fall on it. It was then impossible for the body to be taken away without his knowledge; it could not have been stolen away by any one in the short time of an hour and a half, nor could the grave have been opened and closed without giving alarm.

And it was equally impossible for _one_ of the guard to know this, and be accessary to it, without letting others into the secret, for one was on duty only an hour and a half, when he was relieved by another.

Nor could _all_ the guard have combined in this without the knowledge of the deputy keeper, for the keys were all in his care. Nor would any of the keepers or guard have dared to commit such an act, without the Warden's instructions. Without his knowledge this could not.

4. The Warden's _guilty_ appearance; his effort to make it appear that the grave had not been touched; and if it had been, that _he_ and all the _keepers_ and _guard_ were innocent.

5. The fact that nothing was ever done by him to find the body--no reward offered by him--no stir of any kind--but the business was hushed up, and the prisoners not allowed to speak of it to their friends, or mention it in any of their letters.

6. It became after a few years an undisputed report, that the Warden permitted the body to be removed for the benefit of his son; and the manner of the removal, and the persons engaged in it, were the subjects of frequent conversation.

Such are the reasons for believing that the Warden was the princ.i.p.al agent in the removal of the body. It is not my office to render verdict on the evidence adduced, but I may be permitted to say that _if_ he was guilty, he was not fit for his office. The crime, according to the laws of that state, is severely punished; and aggravated as it was, if _he_ was guilty, imprisonment for life would not have been too great a penalty. He was an officer of high trust, and he could not have been guilty of that crime without connecting it with perjury and burglary. And if to these be added the crime of being accessary to his death I would ask what can be wanting to cap the climax of his iniquity?

I do not say that any of these sins belong to him. He _may_ be innocent, notwithstanding all these appearances and I could wish that he were. There is darkness around the subject, too much for him if he is not guilty, but not enough if he is. One thing is certain, it will be known at some future day; and if he should finally have to plead guilty before his G.o.d, his punishment will not linger then, though he may escape it here. He had taken an oath to enforce the laws, and abide by them himself, and in particular to treat his prisoners tenderly and humanely; and if instead of doing so, he broke them, and became the destroyer of life, and the disturber of the repose of the dead, I envy him not his peace of mind in this world, nor his doom in the next.

The Higginses and Plumley were confined in the solitary cells on bread and water for thirty days, a punishment by many degrees more painful than death. This was the second time that Plumley had endured that punishment, and this laid the foundation for that disease which carried him down a neglected and suffering victim to the grave. The Higginses served their time out and were discharged.

Various reports were circulated about the guard who shot Fane. He left that part of the country in a few years, and went to the West, where, it was reported, he gave himself up to drinking, and became deranged.

For the truth of these reports I shall not vouch, though I firmly believe them, and I am well a.s.sured that he never can think of PATRICK FANE without remorse.

It escaped my recollection in the proper place, that one of the prisoners was looking out of his cell window near the grave the night that Fane's body was taken, and saw the deputy Warden so distinctly as to be able to describe his dress and appearance, which he did in _his_ presence, before all the officers and prisoners. The deputy noticed how particular the description was, and said, with a blus.h.i.+ng smile--"He has described me exactly." No doubt he felt the force of his conduct, and conscience evidently was accusing him. This is another evidence that the body was taken by permission of the officers, and with their a.s.sistance.

A YOUTH.

From some cause unknown to me, the subject of this sketch had been deranged some time before he was sent to prison, and the effect produced on his mind was still visible in his looks and manners.

Naturally, he possessed bright and interesting traits of mind, and a very amiable and engaging temper; but when reason abandoned him, he became sullen, and if crossed in his wishes, was furious and untameable.

Not long after his commitment, the frequent vexations he had to meet with, and the unsympathizing temperament of his keepers, drove him to distraction. In this situation he was a fine object for the relentless severity of those, who should have treated him with the most humane and tender regard. None but the most thoroughly hardened, could have tortured a poor friendless and phrensied mortal, as he was tortured by his guard and keepers.

In the first place, he was punished because he did not perform his appointed labor, which, it was evident, was more than he _could_ have accomplished, if he had been in his right mind. This threw him into the most raging phrensy, and inspired the genius of cruelty with new life and energy.

To confine him, an iron jacket was provided, which kept his arms close to his body; and a new invention of iron, heavy and rough, brought his hands together, and confined them across his breast. This needless and inhuman contrivance wore the flesh from his hands and wrists, and kept them constantly bleeding. Thus bound in iron, worse than fancy paints the victims of Satanic sport in the world of wo, he was confined in a small cell, to groan out his misery in doleful cries, or sit in silent meditation on the _mercy_ of man to man.

I cannot think of this ruined lad without growing chill with horror. I hear now his phrensied shrieks! His unearthly murmurings are still falling with deathly emphasis on my soul!--O! my G.o.d! of what is the heart of man composed! Days, weeks, and months, he filled that dungeon with vocal misery; and yet no angel mercy drew near him to comfort or to pity; but the tiger looks of heartless man were his only suns.h.i.+ne, and frowns were his only music!

In this work of torture, one of the keepers gave himself an infernal distinction over the rest. Not satisfied with contemplating in this youth, the double ruin of body and mind, with a pa.s.sion for torture which I hope has returned to the breast of him whom alone it might not disgrace, he used to beat him with his sword and his fist, and allow him only a famis.h.i.+ng morsel of food. So unmercifully did he abuse this poor maniac, that he was mistaken by him for the _devil_--if indeed, it was a mistake--and declared to be the terror of his waking, and the odious spectre of his sleeping hours.

DEAN.

Only fourteen years had rolled over this boy's head, when he became a prisoner in Windsor on a sentence of three years. Rude, but not vicious--lively without design--and less experienced than a man of sixty, he was a promising victim for the _irrespective_ discipline of that dreary place. He soon took up his abode in the solitary cell, and there, young as he was, he spent much of his time, both in summer and winter. Fifteen days at a time has that little boy been in the cell in the dead of winter, with only one blanket, and a piece of bread not larger than his hand once in a day. All night long have I heard him cry, and plead to be let out, that he might not freeze; but no reply could he get from the keeper but--"Stop your noise--shut your head--learn to keep out--I hope you'll freeze."

To say nothing about the impropriety and unmercifulness of such conduct to _any_ prisoner, how does it appear in a man of sufficient years to know better, towards a small boy. Would Lucifer himself have treated even a young _christian_ so? Every one knew that Dean was by no means a _bad_ boy; he was thoughtless and imprudent, but never did he deserve such cruel treatment. Indeed such punishments as are properly called _cruel_, cannot be _const.i.tutionally_ inflicted on _any_ one, much less on a boy; nor for any _offence_, much less for a _trifle_. I here hold up to the view of humanity this tortured youth--his ears frozen, his limbs s.h.i.+vering, his fingers numb and red as blood, pinched with hunger, exhausted by exercise to prevent freezing to death, and dying for want of sleep. I hold him up in this predicament, amid the gloom of the solitary cell for some trifling error, at the dark and silent hour of midnight, in the cold months of winter, pleading for his life, and comforted only by this snarling reply of the guard, "Stop your noise." Yes, I hold him up in such circ.u.mstances, where I have often heard his piercing cries, and ask the beholders to read in him the _common mercy_ of that "_merciful Inst.i.tution_."

This is a _penitentiary_. It was erected as such. The laws consider it in this light. It is made the duty of the officers to have an especial eye, in all their conduct, to the moral reformation of the prisoners.

How inconsistent, then, must such conduct be? Can such cruelty on any person do him any good? Rather would not such treatment have the effect, even on a saint, to make him a sinner? But look at the punishment of this little boy. What he endured would have crushed a giant. No account made of his age and inexperience--no thought of the _kind_ and _degree_ of correction suited to him--no feelings of compa.s.sion; but the steel-hearted man, who ought to have thought of his own children of the same age, met this young unthinking trespa.s.ser on some of the _minor_ rules of the limbo, like a hungry bear, and threw him into the infernal machinery of his vengeance.

CHAMBERLAIN.

This man was a harmless lunatic. He never offered the least violence to any one, and was as unfit a subject of punishment as is commonly found. He did not, as might have been expected of any one in his situation, attend very closely to his work, and what he _did_ do, was not very _well_ done. By this he came under the letter of that common law which makes no allowance for bodily or mental imperfections, and was introduced to the solitary cell. He now found a home, and he soon became perfectly acclimated, and seemed not to care whether he was in the cell or out of it. When it was found that he was contented in that place, he was let out, and doomed to wear a block and chain; and between these two modes of suffering, he was kept in constant vibration. There was no feeling in the hearts of his punishers. What though G.o.d had set his mark on him in the ruin of his mind, and thus by his own signet commended him to the sympathy and protection of his fellow-men? What though no being on earth could give him a moment's penal suffering without trampling on all the principles of right, and propriety, and law, and insulting the majesty of Heaven in the abuse of its subjects? They had the _power_, and they gloried in its unfeeling and most outrageous abuse.

As an evidence of the manner in which this poor lunatic was used, I will relate an ill.u.s.trative circ.u.mstance.

He was lying one day on the ground, with his huge block and chain by his side. The keeper went to him and said, "Chamberlain, you must go into the solitary cell." "I must?" said he; "let me see. I have been out--_one_--_two_--_three days_--yes, it is time; I have not been out so long before this great while."

I would not dwell on these gloomy sketches--I could not prevail on myself to torture the public mind by the recital of such abusive, inhuman, and infamous acts, did I not hope, by this means, to do something that may ultimately effect a _cure_ for these evils. This is to be done _only_ by holding up the evils, in all their dimensions and enormity, to the eye of the public; and painful as is the task, I hope G.o.d will give me strength to support it, and to go on untiring, till the object is accomplished. These representations of human misery ought to elicit human sympathy, and inspire human effort for their removal. I know the things that I write; I have tasted the wormwood and the gall; and though my heart sickens at the remembrance of these things, still I have put my hand to the plough, and I will not look back.

MRS. BURNHAM.

Among those records of the past which fill the soul of man with the keenest pain, and fix the darkest stain on the pages of human guilt;--on that blood-red sheet that exhibits the mutual rage, persecution, and burning of religious fanatics, I have found an account of a woman who was doomed to the stake in such a situation that in the midst of her sufferings in the flames, she became a _mother_. The book dropped from my hand as I read this dreadful story, and I regretted my relation to a race of beings, capable of such iron-hearted cruelty and infernal guilt. But this was in ENGLAND, and it was some consolation to my sickening heart to reflect that I was an AMERICAN. I felt a sort of national pride, and wrapped myself up in the delusion, in which too many are now slumbering, that such things belong exclusively to the Old World, and will never blacken the history of the New. How foolish are such national prejudices; how absurd and contrary to all experience, to suppose that _local_ circ.u.mstances will alter the moral nature of man. The lion loses not his ferocity by treading the soil or breathing the air of Ma.s.sachusetts; and the founder of Providence can testify, that the pious settlers of New England caught the spirit of persecution as they were flying from its f.a.ggots and fire. Man is _man_, wherever you find him. By nature a tyrant, and ever glorying in the extension and display of his authority, every human being is either a pope or a Nero, and would become as offensive to G.o.d, and as dreadful to the human race as they were, if placed in the same circ.u.mstances. With the exception of those who are brought under the influence of the spirit of the gospel, this is universally true; and all the improvements of the arts and sciences and of civilization, are but so many refined inventions in the rebellion of earth against heaven.

Christianity makes the only grand and radical difference among men.

This brings all who heartily embrace it back to the authority of heaven, while all others are forcing themselves on to the perfection of a character as opposed to G.o.d and mutual happiness, as Beelzebub is to the Saviour of the world. I am now going to introduce a sketch which will evince the aptness of Americans in imitating the cruelties of Europe. "England _is_ what Athens _was_," says Phillips, and too soon, I fear will America rival England in those things which she professes to abhor. With how much reason I apprehend this, the following account, among others, will shew.

Mrs. Burnham had committed a crime as foul as sin could inspire, and I am not going to plead her cause. She ought to have been punished, and that severely, but not at the _time_, nor in the manner she was. She was married, and at the time of her trial and sentence, it was known that in a short time she would need a _sort_ and _degree_ of attention, which prisons were never designed to give; but no regard was paid to her situation, and she was sentenced to be confined in the State Prison, to hard labor for a number of years. What a child unborn had done to be doomed to date its birth in a prison, I leave for those to determine, who have read more law than I have.

The place of her abode was a small room, with one small and strongly grated window. From every hall the noise and tumult of the prisoners was forced directly upon her ears; and in the large s.p.a.ce from which her room was part.i.tioned off, was placed a guard during every night.

Her food was such as the other prisoners had, and her other treatment of the same kind.

In this place she spent her time till a few days before her confinement; when she was taken into the keeper's house till her babe was a few weeks old, and then sent back with it into her room. How she fared while in the house, I know not, as no prisoner visited that apartment at the time, to my knowledge; but the report is not at all in favor of the family residing in the house at the time. How she fared in the prison I need no one to inform me. One of the men who attended her, is gone to the world of spirits, and I hope he has found mercy of his G.o.d. Of another that had the care of her I can say, that if they that _show_ no mercy _find_ none, it is high time for him to agree with his adversary, lest he, in turn, shall find a small room till he shall pay the utmost farthing. The insult which that woman had to suffer--the indignity--the abuse--the oppression, are all recorded in a book that will be opened in the day of Judgment, and if all men shall be judged according to their actions, and receive according to the deeds done in the body, many will regret their conduct towards this afflicted and injured woman.

I might dwell with painful minuteness on this sketch, but from the nature of its details, this is no place for them. The great facts are _enough_ for my purpose, and _too much_ for the happiness or credit of those who are concerned. The deeply infamous truth on which I wish to fix the mind of the reader, is, the _situation_ of the woman when she was sentenced. What the law in such cases may be I know not, but I envy no man a station which compels him to such a deed as must carry horror to every mind that has the least sense of propriety, humanity, or justice. If the law makes no provision in such cases, then have we attained to a degree of refinement that would disgrace a savage. But if the law _does_ provide for such cases, where is that man's fitness for his station who denied this woman all the benefit of that provision, and inflicted on her a lash which made her unborn infant bleed?

Another circ.u.mstance to be noticed is, her treatment in the prison.

The subject is too delicate to be treated here, with any degree of particularity. Even the most corrupt of the prisoners was often indignant at the low and vulgar insults that were offered to her by those whose only excuse is, that they knew no better.

"Immodest words admit of no defence, For want of decency is want of sense."

She survived this train of abuse and cruelty, and the Governor and Council to their credit, and to the honor of the state, permitted her to return to her husband and family, as soon as her case could come before them.