Sing Sing Correctional Facility

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.

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