184 
NOTE ON PENITENTIARIES. 
The first suggestion of the necessity of another penitentiary in the interior of the state, 
was made in the annual report of the officers of the prison in 1809. The friends of the ex¬ 
isting system, notwithstanding the annually developed evidence of its total failure for every 
other than the worst purposes, still clung to their old ideas ; and the admitted evils, manifest 
in the existing establishment, being ascribed to its crowded condition, when the erection of a 
second prison, at the village of Auburn, was determined upon in 1816, it was hoped that am¬ 
pler space of accommodation, and smaller subdivisions of numbers, would yet produce the 
salutary results originally expected. The south wing of this building was completed in 1818 ; 
containing sixty-one double cells, and twenty-eight rooms. Each of which was to contain 
from eight to twelve prisoners. But for reasons obvious to those at all familiar with the 
vicious tendencies of imprisoned convicts, this plan was soon found to be the most fatal that 
could be adopted; and it was evident that it would be better to throw fifty criminals together 
in the same room, than to divide them in small numbers, and especially in pairs. The sub¬ 
ject was much discussed at about this period, both in the legislature and the community at 
large; and in 1819 the erection of the north wing was ordered, to consist entirely of cells for 
solitary confinement. By a law of this year, too, for the first time the use of the whip was 
permitted when deemed necessary for the maintenance of the discipline of the prisons. 
At about the same period the public attention in the state of Pennsylvania also was much 
engaged with the same subject. In the year 1817, the manifest failure of the old system, as 
prevailing in the Walnut-street prison, led to the passage of a law for the construction of the 
Western penitentiary at Pittsburgh, and in 1821 for the Eastern penitentiary at Cherry-Hill, 
near Philadelphia ; in which it was determined to adopt entirely the system of uninterrupted 
solitary confinement. Desirous of making a similar experiment, the legislature of New-York, 
on the 2d April, 1821, directed the agent of the Auburn prison to select a number of the most 
hardened criminals, and to lock them up in solitary cells, night and day, without interruption 
and without labor ; and in December of the same year, a sufficient number of cells were com¬ 
pleted for the purpose, and eighty criminals placed in them. 
The result of this experiment, which was founded on the recommendation of a committee 
of the legislature, was disastrous in the extreme. Human nature could not endure the 
solitary horrors of such a doom. Within the year, five of the eighty died; one became 
insane ; another, watching an opportunity when his keeper opened his door for some neces¬ 
sary purpose, in a fit of despair precipitated himself from the gallery, running the almost 
certain chance of destruction by the fall; and the rest sank into a state of such deep de¬ 
pression, and of failing health, that their lives must have been sacrificed had they been 
kept longer in this situation. Under these circumstances the governor pardoned twenty-six, 
and the remainder were withdrawn from their cells during the day to work in the shops of 
the prison. From this period, 1823, this system of uninterrupted solitude was abandoned at 
Auburn. 
The failure of this experiment for a time seemed to endanger the success of the whole peni¬ 
tentiary system. The ardent hopes of its friends were nearly exhausted; and even some, whose 
feelings revolted at the idea of capital punishment, began to fear that it would again become 
