Читать книгу Murder on the Inside - Catherine Fogarty - Страница 8

They are not to gaze at visitors passing through the prison nor sing, nor dance, whistle, run, jump nor do anything which might disturb the harmony or contravene the rules of the prison.

— 1836 prison regulations

In 1826, Hugh Christopher Thomson, a member of the Legislative Assembly for Kingston and editor of the weekly journal the Upper Canadian Herald, recognized that crime rates in British North America were on the rise due to the increase in immigration from the British Isles.¹⁰ He believed that the district or common jails operating in Upper Canada did not deal with any form of rehabilitation and prisoners sat idle until their release. Thomson, who was born in Kingston in 1791 to Loyalist parents from New York, travelled south to well-established penitentiaries in the United States to study and recommend a new approach to incarceration. In his report to the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada in February 1831, he stated that a penitentiary should be

a place which by every means not cruel and not affecting the health of the offender, shall be rendered so irksome and so terrible that during his afterlife he may dread nothing so much as a repetition of the punishment, and if possible, that he should prefer death to such a contingency. This can all be done by hard labour and privations and not only without expense to the province, but possibly bringing in revenue.

In 1832, the government of Upper Canada paid a modest one thousand pounds for fifteen acres of land on the shores of Lake Ontario overlooking Hatter’s Bay to build British North America’s first penitentiary. The location was two miles beyond Kingston’s western border on West Street. The location also afforded easy water access for the transport of goods, and the area had an abundance of limestone found in the local quarries that could be used in the construction of the facility.

The city of Kingston is situated at the eastern end of Lake Ontario midway between Toronto and Montreal. It is one of the oldest settlements in Canada. The War of 1812 resulted in a significant military and naval presence at Kingston and stimulated the local economy and population growth.¹¹ In 1832, the completion of the Rideau Canal, a 125-mile-long waterway, linked Bytown (later Ottawa) to Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River at Kingston. This development reinforced Kingston’s commercial function and its strategic military significance. Kingston was initially the largest town in Upper Canada and was the capital of the new Province of Canada from 1841 until December 1843.

Kingston offered a potential market for convict goods and the necessary supplies to operate the prison. But the proposed penitentiary was met with strong local resistance. Resident business owners were concerned about the free forced labour in the prison and the number of items that would be produced and sold into the local economy. It was generally acknowledged that prison-made goods could be produced in higher quantities and sold more cheaply than those manufactured by independent tradesmen. Local workers also felt the penitentiary would represent unfair, government-funded competition. Pointing to the experience of their fellow craftsmen in upstate New York, where the Auburn Prison had virtually destroyed the shoemaking trade, Kingston workers denounced the establishment of the penitentiary in their city. A petition was drafted deploring “the labour of rogues in competition with honest men.”¹² In 1835, before the arrival of any convicts, a public meeting in Kingston passed a resolution outlining the trades that the penitentiary should avoid at all costs.¹³ There was even a suggestion to move the penitentiary to Marmora, sixty miles northwest of Kingston. But despite fervent opposition, the government went ahead with building the new penitentiary in Kingston.

Originally called the Provincial Penitentiary of the Province of Upper Canada, the grey stone fortress was constructed in 1833–34. Deputy Keeper William Powers and master builder John Mills from the Auburn Prison in New York were hired to oversee the construction of the complex. Hugh Christopher Thomson, who was responsible for bringing the penitentiary system to Canada, was chosen to be the first warden, but poor health and a weak heart led to his premature death at age forty-three in 1834.

The original south wing of the penitentiary was a single, large limestone cellblock with 144 cells. The three other wings of the main building were completed by the 1850s, and the circular rotunda that connected the four cellblocks was added in 1861. The “dome,” as the rotunda came to be known, was the prison’s nerve centre. Circular in construction, it was more than one hundred feet high and about seventy feet across. The large skylight of German glass that illuminated the top of the dome became a famous landmark when viewed from water or land.¹⁴ All of the cells opened onto narrow iron catwalks or galleries leading to stairwells down to the floor of the rotunda. Eight cellblocks lettered A to H branched off from the circular dome. One former prisoner described it as a “human honey-combed beehive,” and continued: “Fresh air was at a premium. Open the dirt-splattered windows on the cellblock walls and a damp, shivering, dungeon-like cold would envelop your body like a shroud. Close the windows and the air would become stiflingly difficult to breathe.”¹⁵

One of the most prominent exterior features of the prison, the North Gate, was completed in 1845 and still stands on King Street West.¹⁶ According to local historians, the gates, which were designed by William Coverdale, have some symbolic meaning: the two limestone pillars that flank the door represent the pillars of justice, and the gates were constructed to remain constantly in shadow.

The prison officially opened with the arrival of six inmates on June 1, 1835. Mathew Tavender was the first.¹⁷ Sentenced to three years for grand larceny, he was put to work as a stonecutter on his second day. Like most of the original inmates, he worked in the limestone quarries until his release three years later. Convict work gangs were a common sight along the rural roads outside Kingston well into the twentieth century as uniformed inmates went to and from the local quarries. By 1845, there were 450 inmates, including women and children. Susan Turner, Hannah Downes, and Hannah Baglen were the prison’s first female inmates, sentenced on Aug. 28, 1835 for grand larceny.¹⁸

Although a women’s prison had been included in the original design of Kingston Penitentiary, it was not considered a priority. Female inmates were confined in a walled-off section of the prison. Their quarters were cold, cramped and crawling with bugs. By 1846 the vermin problem had become so acute that the women refused to work.

The two most common crimes for which both men and women were imprisoned were larceny (stealing money) and theft of animals. Stealing a pig or cow could get you a year in the penitentiary, while a horse or ox could get you five. For more serious crimes, Canada had the death penalty. In 1859, the offences punishable by death included murder, rape, treason, poisoning, injuring a person with intent to commit murder, and mistreatment of a girl less than ten years of age. By 1869, only three offences were punishable by death: murder, rape and treason.

In 1867, the government of Canada became responsible for the maintenance and management of the Kingston Penitentiary by virtue of section 91 of the British North America Act. The penitentiary was authorized to receive offenders sentenced to terms of more them two years who mainly came from the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The Penitentiary Act of 1868 established a federal Penitentiary Service under the jurisdiction of the federal Department of Justice.

The lakeside compound renamed Kingston Penitentiary became Canada’s first federal prison, and according to its warden all convicts residing within its walls were “devoid of rights and were to be regarded as dead to the outside world.” In its early years, “the Big House,” as it came to be known, was open to visitors for the sum of one shilling threepence for men and half that amount for women and children. One famous visitor by the name of Charles Dickens made mention of the institution in his book American Notes: “There is an admirable gaol here, well and wisely governed and excellently regulated in every respect.”¹⁹ Dickens knew prisons well, having visited his father in an English gaol, where the elder Dickens had been imprisoned for debt in 1836. When Charles Dickens visited Kingston Penitentiary in May 1842, he noted that the men were employed as shoemakers, rope makers, blacksmiths, tailors, carpenters and stonecutters, while the female prisoners were occupied in needlework. Dickens even took notice of one particular female inmate, a beautiful girl of twenty who had been incarcerated nearly three years already for horse stealing. “She had quite a lovely face, though as the reader may suppose from her history, there was a lurking devil in her bright eye which looked pretty sharply from between her prison bars.”

In 1901, Warden J.M. Platt finally cancelled tours of the prison, saying his institution was not a “zoo or a menagerie.”

Modelled after the prison in Auburn, New York, the new Canadian jail espoused a philosophy of order, discipline and punishment. As the word penitentiary implied, “it was to be a place to lead a man to repent for his sins and amend his life.” It was the Quakers of Philadelphia who had originally introduced the concept of the penitentiary, in 1789.²⁰ They felt it was possible to make offenders “penitent” and put them back on the straight and narrow by segregating them through imprisonment and offering them opportunities for labour and reflection. The concept of long-term imprisonment then spread to England as an alternative to exiling offenders to the penal colonies.

Combining the features of solitary confinement and group labour, Kingston Penitentiary was a place where inmates worked in total silence thirteen hours a day, six days a week, at a variety of trades. Hard work, strict rules and religion permeated the prisoners’ lives in the nineteenth century. It was thought that intense manual labour would encourage “clean living” and help the rehabilitation process. Inmates were forbidden to speak at any time, as it was believed that silence would promote a monastic, religious environment. It was only on Christmas and New Year’s Day that the ban on silence would be lifted. Incredibly, this rule continued until 1935 and was strictly enforced.²¹

Adjusting to the strict prison regime was not easy. Daily life was a numbing routine of roll calls, work and sleep. There was no recreation or allowance for private hobbies. Education was considered a great privilege and only well-behaved prisoners could attend evening classes after their long workday. An inspector’s memorandum from 1867 referred to lamps being introduced in the west wing of the prison to allow for the accommodation of reading. This was considered an indulgence, along with allowing prisoners to walk in the yard for half an hour on Sunday afternoons. But the administration hoped both privileges would prove an incentive to good conduct.

In the nineteenth century, a coarse diet was also considered to be part of the punishment. Kitchen keepers usually bought the cheapest supplies available, and fresh vegetables, milk and butter were luxuries seldom served. Cooks were often untrained and most of the food was steamed in big boilers, which made everything soggy and flavourless. In 1899, inspector Douglas Stewart admitted in his report that “frequent loathing is produced by the continuous and monotonous round of soups and boiled meats and the unbroken absence of roast and relish.” But prisoners found their own clever ways of supplementing their rations. Pigeons became a perennial favourite. They were considered a delicacy and often ended up in the stewpot.

At night, inmates were confined to sleeping cells with no windows. Stacked four storeys high, each cell measured thirty inches wide and eight feet deep. The tiny cells contained only a bed, a Bible, a small bucket for drinking water — called a “piggin” — and a bucket to use as a toilet.²²

At the back of each cell was a peephole that allowed guards to patrol what they deemed the “hidden avenues of inspection.” Prisoners were allowed to bathe only once a month, and the stench emanating from the cellblocks wafted out between the iron bars of the prison windows. Disease spread quickly amongst prisoners in their dirty, cramped quarters and many suffered from dysentery, scurvy, malnutrition and lice.

The staff at the nineteenth-century prison included a warden, a deputy warden, a clerk, a chaplain, a physician, eleven keepers and sixteen guards. Many of the employees came from Portsmouth village, immediately to the west of the penitentiary, since one of the conditions of employment at Kingston Pen was that officers had to live within the sound of the penitentiary bell. The bell was rung twice daily, at the start and close of the day, as a signal that staff could leave and to give assurance to the local community that all was well. For the villagers, the afternoon bell meant that all of the convicts were accounted for and were secure in their cells for the night. The symbolic practice of ringing the bell at the beginning and end of the day continued until the prison closed in 2013.

The first warden was Henry Smith, who took his responsibilities seriously — especially those that called for strict discipline in the enforcement of silence and hard labour. According to the Kingston Chronicle, “Mr. Smith’s habits of industry and active vigilance make him peculiarly fit for this responsible office.” From the start, Warden Smith set about imposing a severe regime of hard labour and discipline. Convicts could not speak to, look at, wink at, laugh with or nod to anyone. Anything that might disturb the silence of the institution was forbidden. Physical punishments such as whippings were often imposed on prisoners with absolute brutality. An inmate in violation of the rules would be brought to the keeper’s hall, where he would be stripped naked and buckled face down to a strapping table at his ankles, waist and wrists. The convict would be fitted with dark goggles to prevent him from identifying the guards administering the beating. Smith also had prisoners chained up in their cells with no light or put in the “box,” a kind of vertical oak casket with air holes.²³ Prisoners would be put in the coffin-like structure until the warden deemed them repentant. If those punishments were ineffective, there was the water bath. A convict’s arms and legs would be secured in wooden stocks and a small barrel would be placed over his head. A water pipe was connected via a larger barrel and the barrel encasing the prisoner’s head would slowly fill with water. This form of torture was eventually discontinued when an American prisoner died, but not before Kingston Pen officials had used it over three hundred times.

Life inside Kingston Penitentiary during the nineteenth century was humiliating and dehumanizing, and many reformists were critical of the Smith regime. Within months of taking the position, Smith had succeeded in raising his own salary, had put two of his relatives on the payroll and was demanding kickbacks from the Kingston merchants that supplied the penitentiary.²⁴ He even allowed one of his sons to use prisoners as target practice with his bow and arrow.

Smith’s cruelty eventually proved too much for the penitentiary physician, Dr. James Sampson. He laid charges against Smith, which ultimately resulted in an investigation. Just thirteen years after the opening of the Provincial Penitentiary at Kingston, the first commission of inquiry into its operation was convened. The commission’s secretary was George Brown, founding editor of the Toronto Globe (today’s Globe and Mail) and lifelong rival of Kingston native and politician John A. Macdonald. The Brown Report, issued in May 1849, was a scathing attack on Henry Smith’s administration of the institution.²⁵ It painted a picture of barbaric, dehumanizing conditions in which physical abuse was used repeatedly and indiscriminately. The commissioners were appalled by the practice of corporal punishment, particularly as it was applied to child convicts and women. Elizabeth Breen, a twelve-year-old girl, was flogged five times in a three-month period, and ten-year-old Peter Charbonneau was publicly lashed fifty-seven times for the repeated offences of winking and laughing. Antoine Beauche was given a three-year sentence at Kingston in 1845, when he was eight.²⁶ Beauche and his two brothers had been convicted for picking pockets on a steamship. According to the Brown Commission: “This eight-year-old child received forty-seven corporal punishments [the lash] in nine months, and all for offences of the most childish character.” Another child, eleven-year-old Alec Lefleur, was lashed on Christmas Eve in 1844 for speaking French.²⁷

It would not be until the passing of the Juvenile Delinquents Act of 1908 that any significant change would be made regarding the incarceration of young people.²⁸ During the same year, the Act Respecting Prisons for Young Offenders was also enacted to provide separate prisons for youth.

One of the main messages of the Brown Commission was that prisons should be more about reformation than punishment. Its recommendations were aimed at both ending corporal punishment and improving the physical conditions (diet, sanitation, medical treatment) of prisoners. It also suggested separating different types of prisoners: men from women, youths from adults, and the criminally insane from the sane. This idea established a strategy that has been used ever since with classifying inmates.

The Brown Report resulted in Warden Smith’s immediate resignation, and it became the first in a series of inquiries that would stretch well into the twentieth century, all of them highly critical of the penitentiary and its procedures. Corporal punishment, though reduced in frequency, continued for more than a hundred years after the Smith regime, and was not formally abolished until 1972.

In 1853, a women’s ward was finally built at the penitentiary in Kingston. Floggings diminished, but females were still chained, submerged in ice water, put in a dark cell, or kept on bread and water. The more rebellious female inmates would be humiliated by having their heads shaved. In 1913, the women at Kingston finally got their own building. But life behind the walls of Kingston Penitentiary, the oldest pen in the country, would remain repressive and inhumane for all of its occupants.