Soon after he was
taken very sick, and one night I called the prison nurse to his cell,
and he had him taken to the hospital, where he stayed some time, but it
did him no good, for he came back to the cell house in just as bad a fix
as before. Then they put him to work in the paint-house, and after he
had been there about a week, they said he was crazy, and put him in the
hole. He was treated shamefully in the hole, for the prison nurse even
told me so. Then he was taken again to the hospital, and he never came
out of it, for he died there, and the prison nurse told me he suffered
terribly before his death. This I will swear is true before God.
"Very near every man in the Pen had a bad stomach, and could get nothing
for it, for if you went to the doctor, he would tell you you ate too
much, and give you a big dose of salts, and if you did not take them, he
would put you in the hole, and then you would lose good time. But if a
man had a pull, he would get along right enough. There was A., a bank
wrecker, he was clerk in the stone shed, and I have seen him have eggs
right in the kitchen, when we had only rice to eat with cold water and
bread which was sour. If he didn't want to work he didn't have to, for
when I worked as runner for the plumber I have seen A. lying down and
smoking and reading or pretty near anything he wanted to do; but if
other men had done less than half the things he did, they would have
been put in the hole and lost good time also.
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