244 STATE PRISON AT AUBURN. 



then existing, which seemed rather to harden than to have any 

 tendency to reform the delinquents, that it was generally believed 

 that, unless a severe system was adopted, the old sanguinary 

 criminal code must be restored. In the State of New York, and 

 in other of the most populous States, it should be noticed, that 

 no crimes are punished with death, excepting murder and fire- 

 raising ; and that in all the States of the Confederacy, transportation 

 beyond seas is a mode of punishment unknown. The legislature 

 of New York State, therefore, in the year 1821, directed a selection 

 of the oldest and most heinous offenders to be made, who should 

 be confined constantly in solitary cells. Eighty convicts were 

 accordingly put into solitary cells on the 25th. December, 1821. 

 Five of those convicts died during the year preceding January, 

 1823, while only five died out of 140 convicts confined at the 

 same time in prison, but who were kept at labour. The health . 

 of the solitary convicts was very soon seriously impaired. Some 

 of them became insane; and the eflfect of this constant imprison- 

 ment was not more favourable to reformation than to mental 

 and bodily health. 



Before the end of 1823, exclusive solitary confinement was en- 

 tirely discontinued, and the present successful system, combining 

 solitude and silence with labour, introduced ; a majority of the 

 commissioners, who examined the prison, have reported, that they 

 were entirely averse to solitary confinement without labour, on 

 the grounds of its being injurious to health, expensive, affording 

 no means of reformation, and unnecessarily severe. La Fayette, 

 when he was lately in the United States, and heard of the expe- 

 riment of exclusive solitary confinement, said it was just a revival 

 of the practice in the Bastile, which had so dreadful an effect on 

 the poor prisoners. " I repaired," he said, " to the scene on the 

 second day of the demolition, and found, that all the prisoners 

 had been deranged by their solitary confinement, except one ; he 

 had been a prisoner twenty-five years, and was led forth during 

 the height of the tumultuous riot of the people whilst engaged in 

 tearing down the building. He looked around with amazement, 

 for he had seen nobody for that space of time ; and before night 

 he was so much affected, that he became a confirmed maniac^ 

 from which situation he never recovered." 



The details of the management of the prison must be accurately 

 known, in order perfectly to understand the system now acted on. 



When convicts arrive, they have their irons taken off, are 

 thoroughly cleaned, and clad in the prison dress. The rules 



