Читать книгу The New York Tombs Inside and Out! - John Josiah Munro - Страница 5

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When Warden Bissert was an involuntary inmate of the Tombs in the fall of 1901, he had so many privileges and such an old-fashioned good time that many persons rightly concluded that he owned the City Prison. Not only did he eat, drink, smoke the best Havanas and play cards at the Warden’s table, but he was allowed to receive from ten to thirty plain clothes policemen as his visitors daily! They had no passes whatever when they came to the Tombs, but these were not necessary. All they were required to say to the gateman was, “We are the Wardman’s friends.” On Sunday afternoons, when everything was quiet, a woman was allowed to pass through the front gate, enter a cell and be with a prisoner for immoral purposes! The Keeper had orders to allow her pass into the prison. I watched her enter the corner cell in the annex, which had a gas jet, she came every Sunday for weeks and usually stayed an hour. Nor was this an uncommon occurrence. Francis J. Lantry was Commissioner of Corrections, James Hagan, Warden, and William Flynn, the present Warden, was head keeper. Did I speak about it at the time? Certainly. And an investigation was promised but like all of Tammany’s investigations it never came!

The city cops that came daily to see the wardman always brought a plentiful supply of whiskey. And judging from the number of empty bottles found around the ten-day house, the quantity consumed on the premises was enormous. And often keepers, “trusties” and prisoners were found more than half drunk.

In these days Joe Williams, ballot-box stuffer, who was afterwards sent to Sing Sing for a term of years, had special privileges. Joe was seldom locked in his cell night or day. Many months afterwards when I personally visited Auburn Prison, I found a man who had been at that time in the “hall” with Williams; he informed him that the reason Williams had so many privileges bestowed on him was on account of being the “graft collector” in the ten-day house.

Williams, “Jimmie” Maguire and other trusties, were often “paralyzed” drunk in the tiers with the whiskey brought in for Bissert’s benefit. “Jimmie” Maguire had been in the Tombs no less than twenty times to my knowledge for drunk and disorderly conduct, and worked most of the time in the kitchen under the colored chef.

Every afternoon when the visitors had gone, keepers and inmates in various parts of the prison sat down and boldly “picked out” the winners of the races. And some made “books.” Then an official would be dispatched to a pool room opposite the Criminal Court Building, said to be over Tom Foley’s gin mill. This kind of gambling was kept up in the Tombs daily, Sundays excepted, for years under Tammany Hall. The prisoners saw the officials gamble and they in turn made “pools” and sent their money where it could do the most good.

This gambling became such a nuisance that it became known on the outside. A gentleman well known around the Criminal Court Building told me afterwards that to make sure of the rumor he sent a betting “commissioner” to the pool room over Tom Foley’s saloon and he waited there till the Tombs runner came and laid several bets on the ponies.

When I saw how the poor unfortunates were being robbed and ruined, by the prison gamblers, I made bold to go to Lantry and asked him to stop it. I saw at once that I touched him, for he got red in the face. He called Warden Flynn over the telephone and gave him a “roasting.” What he said after I left the room, I have no idea, but when I reached the Tombs I found that some persons had been struck by a cyclone. Thanks to Mr. Lantry, the regular pool room messenger had been “fired” to Blackwells Island and for several weeks the gamblers in the prison went out of business. But in a short time the crooked work went on as brisk as ever. At any rate, I relieved my conscience of a painful duty in the matter and stopped the mean business for a season. I wish now that I had called on Mr. Jerome and he might have sent the “bunch” to the Penitentiary.

From that time on these gambling officials became my Nemesis. They hated to see me around the Tombs. Commissioner Lantry afterwards told me that I was the only person among Catholics, Jews and Protestant missionaries that ever personally complained against the rotten conditions in the Tombs. But then cowards are afraid to tell the truth!