Prisoners

Prisoners engage in various recreations while incarcerated at Sing Sing for white collar crime. Caption: For the benefit of our grafting financiers whose health breaks down from exposure.

comments and context

Comments and Context

This cartoon by J. S. Pughe was not inspired by the coddling of prisoners, a putative situation that is charged, or confirmed, in cycles. Sing Sing Prison was a periodic site that, perhaps due to its 40-mile proximity up the Hudson River from the media center New York City, was alternately scorned or praised by reformers for its conditions.

Vignettes of life in prison show “Respectable” prisoners who play golf, wear fitted prison uniforms, go yachting, have their valets perform their hard labor, attend lavish dinners complete with speakers under the banner “The Lord Loveth a Cheerful Grafter,” and are transported in fine horse-drawn carriages. Caption: A way to aid Justice in landing the “respectable” crook.

comments and context

Comments and Context

In 1905 the first trial of Harry K. Thaw, Pittsburgh scion who famously killed his wife’s lover, was a year in the future, but readers can be assured that celebrities and trust magnates were being convicted of crimes and sent to prisons at an increasing rate. It was, after all the Age of the Muckraker, when exposes and revelations were continual fare in daily newspapers and monthly magazines.

An unidentified man sits in a chair in a cell at Sing Sing Prison. He has changed out of his prison uniform into a business suit, and is doling out money by the scoopful in return for “Bogus Securities” and “Bogus Collateral.” Chutes of money pour into his cell through windows labeled “Cashier, Vice-Pres., [and] President.” Sticking out of a back pocket is the “Star of Hope,” the Sing Sing Prison bulletin. Caption: A washday convenience for frenzied banks.

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Comments and Context

The maximum-security prison Sing Sing, in Ossining-on-the-Hudson, 40 miles north of New York City, was built in 1825. Eighty years later its security was as secure as its physical plant: there was a porous ability of inmates to interact with the outside world, and its physical plant and sanitation were in scandalous disrepair. A state commission in 1905 reported on these conditions and implicated political parties (particularly New York’s Tammany Hall / Democratic machine) as well as various levels of New York state bureaucracy.

In a courtroom, a prisoner and a police officer stand before a judge. The prisoner is explaining to the judge why he assaulted another person. Caption: Judge — You admit you sand-bagged the man. Have you any excuse? / Prisoner — Yes, yer Honor. De sand-bag wuz me own property and J.P. Morgan says a man has de right ter do wot he pleases wit’ his own property.

comments and context

Comments and Context

In this cover cartoon, ostensibly a simple gag about a tramp, arrested for assault, grasping for a mitigating excuse by quoting J. P. Morgan, Puck cannot resist making a point about the negative aspects of the prominent mogul’s philosophy. “Logical extensions” should be questioned, Ehrhart stated via this cartoon.

A man labelled “Trust Promoter” wakes up from a nightmare that shows a criminal labeled “Miller” and “520 per cent” breaking stones in a prison.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Anticipating the “pyramid scheme” of Carlo Ponzi that attracted investors by promising windfall dividends — but urged investors to roll over their “profits” and only made payments from new investments — the Franklin Syndicate of William F. Miller of Brooklyn began when a gullible man invested ten dollars. In months Miller raked in thousands of dollars a day, witnesses noting piles of cash in closets and desks of his offices.

The Secretary to Theodore Roosevelt writes to Joseph Perkins to inform him that Roosevelt is not interested in buying a bridle from Perkins and is sorry not to be able to recommend Perkins’ services to anyone else. It was common for prisoners of the Montana State Prison, where Perkins was an inmate, to make and sell bridles.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-05-25

President Roosevelt introduces Governor Hughes to John Lawrence Sullivan, who wishes to draw Hughes’s attention to the case of Edward Wise, a prisoner in Sing Sing. Roosevelt knows nothing of the case, but has been a friend of Sullivan for a long time and asks that Hughes listen to what he has to say.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1908-11-30

President Roosevelt relates an anecdote to author Melville Davisson Post about two gentlemen who were arrested for trying to use Confederate currency. One of the two men, after being arrested, appealed, and the Supreme Court decided that the notes were not counterfeit. While the man who appealed was released, Roosevelt argued with then Attorney General Philander C. Knox, and kept the second man in prison because Roosevelt believed that regardless of the legality, the man was a swindler and morally a criminal.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1908-01-17

President Roosevelt approves of an amendment that Senator Nelson of Minnesota sent to him, although he suggests a slight change. Roosevelt has considered the petition of a number of people to pardon C. W. Malchow, a doctor who has been convicted for circulating obscene literature; but upon further research into the case feels that “it is a hideous and loathsome book,” and that he “would as soon see poison circulated in the household as see that book put therein,” and therefore feels the man should serve his whole sentence.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-04-10

Earl Grey thanks Theodore Roosevelt for his invitation to the White House. Grey also discusses the logistics of handing off a prisoner.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1906-03-10

Frederick D. Grant forwards a newspaper article, apologizing that a matter he had handled himself should have somehow reached the press, especially since it concerns the Roosevelt family. He investigated how the matter came to the press, and he assures President Roosevelt he will take measures to prevent its further appearance. He also invites President Roosevelt and his wife to dine in his home.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1905-07-29

Collection

Charles C. Myers Collection

Creation Date

1908

Creator(s)

Unknown

Language

English

Edward Earl Britton writes his autobiography in several parts, discussing his youth and involvement in many business pursuits. He breaks briefly in 1908 before continuing in a second portion, written in 1911. After reaching the present, Britton continues on by offering a prediction for the future of economic development in Central and South America. During his life Britton became connected with the Eagle Savings and Loan Company, wand was sentenced to serve some time in prison for the company’s deeds. The final pages of his autobiography feature several letters from friends petitioning New York Governor Charles Evans Hughes for clemency.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-03

A Republican elephant wears a “postal scandal” jacket, and the words “Grafting Old Party” can be seen underneath. Uncle Sam holds up a prison uniform with ball and chain handcuffs at his feet.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1903-12-01

Scenes of Hastings H. Hart, penologist, consultant in delinquency and penology for the Russell Sage Foundation, and recipient of the 1930 Roosevelt Medal for Distinguished Service for the promotion of social justice. Opening scene of Hart greeting two guard officers at what appears to be a prison building in New York State; long shot of Hart posing with group of inmates and guards; and medium view of Hart talking with an unidentified inmate in a jail cell.

Collection

Library of Congress Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound

Creation Date

1930

The article on page one, titled “Mr. M’Kinley’s Will,” offers details of the reading of McKinley’s will. Page two has two articles: “Riding the President’s Exercise,” which relates that Theodore Roosevelt will exercise primarily by horseback riding; and “Czolgosz Collapses,” which describes the transfer of Leon Czolgosz to the Auburn prison. The article on page six, “Roosevelt and a Rooster,” is an anecdote about Roosevelt and “Old Bill” Sewall. The article on page seven, “Unfurled Dixie’s Flag,” is about Roosevelt’s mother’s Southern sympathies.

Collection

Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site

David B. Hill labeled “Hill-ism,” Richard Croker as the Tammany Tiger labeled “Croker-ism,” and Roswell P. Flower, wearing a tall stove-pipe hat, labeled “Flower-ism,” stand on “Condemned Row” in the “Prison of Public Condemnation.” They are watching a group of men, on the left, construct a guillotine labeled “Reform Movement.” Puck is standing on the left with “Parkhurst, Grace, Lexow, Godkin, Ottendorfer, [and] Goff,” who is posting a notice on the wall of the prison that states, “Notice! On Election Day, Nov. 6th 1894. Execution of Hill-ism, Croker-ism, and Flower-ism. By Order of the People.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1894-06-13

The Roman god “Mars” is shown bound to rocks, imprisoned with shackles and clamps labeled “Russo-German Commercial Treaty,” fastened with spikes driven by Alexander III of Russia and William II of Germany using large sledgehammers labeled “Ratification.” In the background, a female figure labeled “Peace” reclines in a hammock that hangs between the standards of each nation. Caption: Peace in Europe is safe for ten years more, anyhow!

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1894-04-04

A prisoner labeled “McKane” sits on a bench labeled “Reserved for Bosses who Steal Elections” at Sing Sing prison. McKane is holding a large pair of scissors, a measuring tape, fabric and thread. He is looking back at the new arrival, Edward Murphy Jr., sitting in a chair labeled “U.S. Senator,” that is being lifted over the wall of the prison by a pair of hands labeled “Justice.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1894-04-04

Three men are trapped in a small cage hanging outside the “Democratic National Headquarters.” The cage is labeled “Gorman Brice Smith, Jr. – Exposed Here – As a Warning, For All Time – These Traitors to Democratic Principles and Satraps of Trust and Monopoly.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1894-11-21