I never heard any
categorical statement in denial of it from any of the officials, though
I have read something to that effect in local newspapers. Visitors never
see them, and I know of no prison inspectors who have done so; they are
shown instead the light cells on an upper floor, which are habitable
enough, with windows admitting daylight, and a cot bed. But the dark
cells are another story altogether, and their existence can no more be
denied successfully than that of the prison itself.
A man named H.B. Rich was employed in the prison for nine years as
foreman of the blacksmith's shop; he says that he helped build two dark
cells in the basement, and often riveted chains on convicts there. "They
were chained to the door," he goes on, "hanging by their hands,
sometimes for twenty-four hours. Often they were thus chained up during
the day, but at night the chain attached to the frame of the door was
loosened; the other chain was attached to a vertical rod, the ring
sliding up and down, so that the man was able to lie on the bare cement
floor. There were no cots. The food was generally one slice of bread and
a cup of water a day, sometimes two or three. Men were often kept thus
for weeks at a time, and would come out so pallid and weak that they
could scarcely walk, and blinded from long confinement in darkness. A
convict named S.
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