Wardens, drunk with power, abuse their positions; they
are appointees of a system, inexperienced and incompetent in many cases;
chosen, not because of their fitness, but more likely to repay some
political favor. When a good warden is found, it is more or less an
accident. Give permission to whip, and the public would be horrified at
the result, if ever they should learn the circumstances."
That is fine; but the concluding words mean more than they say. How is
the public to know? If you had a mother or a sister or daughter in that
jail, would you feel entirely reassured by the declamations in the
legislature of these kindly gentlemen? Would it not occur to you that,
when this little flurry had blown over, the warden and his guards might
possibly, and as quietly as might be, revert to what they held to be the
only effective means of keeping order? It is easy, in a prison, to gag a
woman so that she cannot scream, and to take her down to a secluded
place, and there to lay on the leather heartily, with or without first
removing the inner garment. Who is to know, or to tell? We are not
Russians, to boast of these things openly.
At the turpentine camp at Atmore, Alabama, thirty-five convicts whose
contract had been annulled by Governor O'Neal, were brought to Mobile
October 10th, 1913, and placed in the county jail. All but fourteen had
been whipped with heavy straps loaded with lead, and affidavits were
offered showing that two of them had been whipped to death.
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