186 
NOTE ON PENITENTIARIES. 
table article on which their future labor should be employed for the benefit of the state. To 
Capt. Lynds, who had chiefly presided over the construction of the Auburn prison, as well as 
having performed the whole service of organizing its system of discipline and labor, was 
entrusted the charge of bringing forth the new establishment, as it were, out of the bowels 
of the earth. Were it possible to question its truth, as a literal historical fact, the manner 
in which he carried this into effect would be deemed incredible. According to his own plan, 
he was directed to take a hundred of the convicts from the Auburn prison, to remove them to 
the selected site, to purchase materials, employ keepers and guards, and make them com¬ 
mence the construction of their own future abode. The novel spectacle was exhibited on the 
14th May, 1825, of the arrival of this band on the open ground which was to be the theatre 
of operations, without a place to receive, or even a wall to enclose them. The remarkable 
moral energy of the man effected it with a success which must always remain astonishing. 
The first day sufficed to erect a temporary barrack for shelter at night, and ever after they 
continued in unpausing labor, watched by a small number of guards, but held under per¬ 
petual government of their accustomed discipline, and submission to the power whose vigi- 
lent eye and unrelaxing hand they felt to be perpetually upon them and around them. It was 
finished according to the original plan, in 1829, containing 800 cells ; to which 200 more 
were ordered to be added by an act of the following year. Another story being therefore 
raised for this purpose, the final completion of this vast and massive edifice, was in the year 
1831. A sufficient number of cells having been completed in May, 1828, the convicts in the 
old prison at New-York were removed to Sing-Sing, and that building abandoned and sold. 
In the year 1825, the legislature directed the erection of another building at Sing-Sing, 
adjacent to the main prison, though unconnected with it, for the reception of the female con¬ 
victs, who heretofore had been kept together by the city of New-York, at its local prison 
establishment at Bellevue, at a cost to the state of $100 per annum for each prisoner. They 
were there in a miserable and disorderly state ; that mode of maintenance being found replete 
with all the evils which it had been the object of the improved penitentiary system, as applied 
to the males, to reform. This was completed, in an elegant style of architecture, in 1840, 
and the convicts removed to it, and placed under the charge of a matron, whose admirable 
management soon brought them to a condition of good order, neatness and industry, before 
supposed impossible by those who had witnessed their former character and conduct. 
It is unnecessary to fill the present pages with descriptions of these vast establishments of 
penitentiary labor, beyond a few simple general features common to both. The cells rise in 
tiers above each other to the height of five stories. These central structures are surrounded 
with an outer shell or envelope of a second wall, about eleven or twelve feet distant from the 
interior. Along the front of each range of cells runs a gallery. The size of the cells is 
seven feet in depth, by three and a half in width, and seven in height; all of stone, with iron 
doors, of an open diamond grating from top to bottom, for the combined objects of security, 
ventilation and light. To these buildings are attached spacious workshops, surrounding the 
large court-yards of the prisons, in which different branches of mechanical industry are pursued, 
