Facts and Fictions of Life

I was seated on the "bench" beside the Judge. At this juncture a police officer stepped in front of the desk with his prisoner, and the Justice turned to him.

"Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole tr – 'n – g b tr'th – selp y' God. Kissthebook."

The policeman had lifted the greasy volume, and with more regard for his health than for the form of oath, had carried it in the neighborhood of his left cheek and as quickly replaced it on the desk.

"What is the charge?" inquired the Justice.

"Open on Sunday," replied the officer succinctly.

"See him selling anything?"

"No. I asked for a drink an' he told me he was only lighting up for the night and wasn't sellin' nothing."

"Anybody inside?"

"Only him an' me."

"You understand that you are entitled to counsel at every stage of this proceeding," said the Justice to the accused man. "What have you to say for yourself?"

"Your Honor, I have a dye house, and a small saloon in the corner. I always light the gas at night in both and have it turned low. I had on these clothes. I was not dressed for work. I went in to light up and he followed me in, and arrested me and I have been in jail all night. I sold nothing."

"Is that so, officer?" asked the Justice.

"Yes, your Honor, it is so far as I know. I seen him in there lighting the gas, an' I went in an' asked for a drink, an' he said he wasn't selling an' I arrested him."

"Give the record to the clerk. Discharged," said the Justice, and then turning to me he explained: "You see he had to arrest the man for his own protection. If a police officer goes into a saloon and is seen coming out, and doesn't make some sort of an arrest, he'll get into trouble; so, for his protection he had to arrest the man after he once went in, and I have to require that record, by the clerk, to show why, after he was brought before me, I discharged him. That is for my protection."

"What is for the man's protection?" I asked. "He has been in jail all night. He has been dragged here as a criminal to-day, and he has a court record of arrest against him all because he lighted his own gas in his own house That seems a little hard, don't you think so?"

The Judge smiled.

"So it does, but he ought to have locked the door when he went in to light up. Perhaps he was afraid to go in a dark room and lock his door behind him before he struck a light, but that was his mistake and this is his punishment. Next!"

Most of the cases were like this or not so favorable for the accused. In the latter instance they were held in bail to answer to a higher court. Two or three were accused of being what the officer called "plain drunks" and as many more of being "fighting drunks" or "concealed weapon drunks." In these cases the charge was made by the officer who had arrested them. There was no suggestion that "you are entitled to counsel," etc., and a fine of from "$10 or ten days" to "$100 or three months" or both was usually imposed.

A pitiful sight was a woman, sick, and old, and hungry. "What is the charge against her, officer?" inquired the Justice.

"Nothing, your Honor. She wants to be sent to the workhouse. She has no home, her feet are so swollen she can't work, and – "

"Six months," said the Justice, and turned to me. "Now she will go to the workhouse, from there to the hospital, and from there to the dissecting table. Next."

I shuddered, and the door closed on the poor wretch who, asking the city for a home, only, even if that home were among criminals, received a free pass to three of the public institutions sustained to receive such as she – at least so said the Justice to whom such cases were not rare enough to arouse the train of suggestions that came unbidden to me. He impressed me as a kind-hearted man, and one who tried to be a Justice in fact as well as in name. He told me that it was not particularly unusual for him to be called from his bed at midnight, go to court, light up, send for his clerk and hold a short session on one case of immediate importance – such as the commitment of a lunatic or the bailing of some important prisoner who declined to spend a night in jail while only a charge and not a conviction hung over him.

"I have never committed anyone without seeing him personally," he explained. "Some judges do; but I never have. Only last night a man's brother and sister and two doctors tried to have me commit him as a lunatic, but I insisted on being taken to where he was. They begged me not to go in as he was dangerous; but I did, and one glance was all I needed. He was a maniac, but I would not take even such strong evidence as his relations and two doctors afforded without seeing him personally."

"And some judges do, you say?" I inquired.

"Oh yes. Next."

"Next" had been waiting before the desk for some time. The officer went through the same form of oath. I did not see a policeman or court officer actually "kiss the book" during the two days which I spent in the Police Courts. Some witnesses did kiss it in fact and not only in theory. A loud resounding smack frequently prefaced the most patent perjury. Indeed in two cases after swearing to one set of lies and kissing the Bible in token of good faith, the accused changed their pleas from not guilty to guilty and accepted a sentence without trial.

These facts did not appear to shake the confidence in the efficacy of such oaths and the onlookers in the court did not seem either surprised or shocked. Certainly the court officials were not, and yet the swearing went on. That it was a farce to the swearers who were quite willing to say they believed they would "go to hell" if they did not tell the truth and were equally willing to run the risk, looked to me like a very strong argument for a form of oath which should carry its punishment for perjury with it to be applied in a world more immediate and tangible.

The afternoon found me in a more crowded Police Court. The Justice was rushing business. I stood outside the railing in front of which the accused were ranged. The charges were made by the police officer who faced the Judge. The accused stood almost directly behind the policemen something like four feet away. I was by the officer's side and so near as to touch his sleeve, and yet I can truly say that I was wholly unable to hear one-half of the charges made; most of them appeared to relate to intoxication, fighting, quarreling in the street, breaking windows and similar misdeeds.

Some of the "cases" took less than a minute and the accused did not hear one word of the charge made. What he did hear in most cases and all he could possibly hear was something like one of these:

"Ten dollars or ten days." "Three months." "Ever been here before?"

"No, your Honor."

"Ten days."

"Officer says you were quarreling in a hallway with this woman. Say for yourself?"

"Well, your Honor, I was a little full and I got in the wrong hall and she tried to put me out and – "

"Ten dollars."

"Your Honor, I'll lose my place and I've got a wife and – " The officer led him away. Ten dollars meant ten days in prison to him and the loss of his situation. What it may have meant to his family did not transpire.

To the next "case" which was of a similar nature, the fine meant the going down into a well-filled pocket, a laugh with the clerk and the police officer who took the proffered cigar and touched his hat to the object of his arrest, who, having slept off his "plain drunk," was in a rather merry mood. Many of the accused did not hear the charges made against them by the officer; in but few cases were they told that they had a right to counsel; almost all were fined and at least two-thirds of the fines meant imprisonment. A little more care was taken, a little more time spent if the face or clothing of the accused indicated that he was of the well-to-do or educated class. Indeed I left this court feeling that the inequality of the administration of justice as applied by the system of fines was carried to its farthest limit, and that it would be perfectly possible – easy indeed – to find a man (if he chanced to be poor and somewhat common looking) behind prison walls without his knowing even upon what charge he had been put there and without having made the slightest defense. If he were frightened, or ill, or unused to courts, and through uncertainty or slowness of speech, or not knowing what the various steps meant, had suddenly heard the Judge say "Ten dollars," and had realized that so far as he was concerned it might as well have been ten thousand; it was quite possible, I say, for such a man to find himself a convict before he knew or realized what it meant or with what he was charged.

I wondered if all this was necessary, or if attention were called to it from the outside if it might not set people to thinking and if the thought might not result in action that would lead to better things.

I wondered if a rapid picture of a boy of sixteen arrested for fighting, shot through this court into association with criminals for ten days, being found in their company afterward and sent by the criminal court to prison for three months for larceny, and afterward appearing and re-appearing as a long or short term criminal, would suggest to others what the idea suggested to me? I wondered, in short, if there were less machinery for the production and punishment of crime and more for its prevention, if life might not be made less of a battlefield and hospital for the poor or unfortunate. I wondered if the farce of oaths, the flippancy of trials, the passion of the prosecutor for conviction and all the train of evils growing out of these were necessary; and if they were not, I wondered if the vast non-court-attending public might not suggest a remedy if its attention were called to certain of the many suggestive features of our courts that presented themselves to me during my first two days as an observer of the legal machinery that grinds out our criminal population.

THROWN IN WITH THE CITY'S DEAD

I read that headline in a newspaper one morning. Then I asked myself: Why should the city's dead be "thrown in?"

Where and how are they "thrown in?" Why are they thrown in?

Why, in a civilized land, should such an expression as that arouse no surprise – be taken as a matter of course? What is its full meaning? Are others as little informed upon the subject as I? Would the city's dead continue to be "thrown in" if the public stopped to think; if it understood the meaning of that single, obscure headline? Believing that the power of a free and fearless press is the greatest power for good that has yet been devised; and believing most sincerely, that wrongs grow greatest where silence is imposed or ignorance of the facts stands between the wrong doer, or the wrong deed, and enlightened public opinion, I decided to learn and to tell just the meaning —all of the meaning – of those six sadly and shockingly suggestive words.

Suppose you chanced to be very poor and to die in New York; or suppose, unknown to you, your mother, a stranger passing through the city, were to die suddenly. Suppose, in either case, no money were forthcoming to bury the body, would it be treated as well, with as humane and civilized consideration as if the question of money were not in the case? We are fond of talking about giving "tender Christian burial," and of showing horror and disgust for those who may wilfully observe other methods. We are fond of saying that death levels all distinctions. Let us see whether these are facts or fictions of life.

The island where the "city's dead" are buried – that is, all the friendless and poor or unidentified, who are not cared for by some church or society – is a mere scrap of land, from almost any point of which you easily overlook it all, with its marshy border and desolate, unkempt surface. It contains, as the officer in charge told me, about seventy-nine acres at low tide. At high tide much of the border is submerged. Upon this scrap of land – about one mile long and less than half a mile wide at its widest point – is concentrated so much of misery and human sorrow and anguish, that it is difficult to either grasp the idea one's self or convey it to others.

There are three classes of dead sent here by the city. Those who are imbecile or insane – dead to thought or reason; those who are dead to society and hope – medium term criminals; and those whom want, and sorrow, and pain, and wrong can touch no more after the last indignity is stamped upon their dishonored clay. I will deal first with these happier ones who have reached the end of the journey which the other two classes sit waiting for. Or, perhaps some of them stand somewhat defiantly as they look on what they know is to be their own last home, and recognize the estimate placed upon them by civilized, Christian society.

Upon this scrap of land there are already buried – or "thrown in" – over seventy thousand bodies. Stop and think what that means. It is a large city. We have but few larger in this country. Remember that this island is about one mile long and less than a half mile wide at the widest point. In places it is not much wider than Broadway.

The spot on which those seventy thousand are "thrown in" is but a small part of this miniature island. This is laid off in plots with paths between. These sections are forty-five feet by fifteen, and are dug out seven feet deep. Again, stop and picture that. It looks like the beginning of a cellar for a small city house. But in that little cellar are buried one hundred and fifty bodies, packed three deep. Remembering the depth of a coffin, and remembering that a layer of earth is put on each, it is easy to estimate about how near the surface of the earth lie festering seventy thousand bodies. They are not in metallic cases, as may well be imagined; but I need only add that I could distinctly see the corpse through wide cracks in almost every rough board box, for you to understand that sickening odors and deadly gases are nowhere absent.

But there is one thing more to add before this picture can be grasped. Three of these trenches are kept constantly open. This means that something like four hundred bodies, dead from three days to two weeks, lie in open pine boxes almost on the surface of the earth.

You will say, "That is bad, but the island is far away and is for the dead only. They cannot injure each other." If that were true, a part of the ghastly horror would be removed, but, as I have said, the city sends two other classes of dead here. Two classes who are beyond hope, perhaps, but surely not beyond injury and a right to consideration by those who claim to be civilized.

Standing near the "general" or Protestant trench – for while Christian society permits its poor and unknown to be buried in trenches three deep; while it forces its other poor and friendless to dig the trenches and "throw in" their brother unfortunates; while it condemns its imbeciles and lunatics to the sights, and sounds, and odors, and poisoned air and earth of this island, it cannot permit the Catholic and Protestant dead to lie in the same trenches! – standing near the general trench, in air too foul to describe, where five "short term men" were working to lower their brothers, the officer explained.

"We have to keep three trenches open all the time, because the Catholics have to go in consecrated ground and they don't allow the 'generals' and Protestants in there. Then the other trench is for dissected bodies from hospitals and the like."

"Are not many, indeed most of those, also, Catholics?" I asked.

"Yes, I guess so; but they don't go in consecrated ground, because they aint whole." This with no sense of levity.

"Are not many of the unknown likely to be Catholics, too?"

"Yes, but when we find that out afterward, we dig them out if they were not suicides, and put them in the other trench. If they were suicides, of course, they have to stay with the generals. You see, we number each section; then we number each box, and begin at one end with number one and lay them right along, so a record is kept and you can dig any one out at any time."

"Then this earth – if we may call it so – is constantly being dug into and opened up?" I queried.

"I should think it would kill the men who work, and the insane and imbecile who must live here." "Well," he replied, smiling, "prisoners have to do what they are told to, whether it kills 'em or not, and I guess it don't hurt the idiots and lunatics none. They're past hurting. They're incurables. They never leave here."

"I should think not," I replied. "And if by any chance they were not wholly incurable when they came, I should suppose it would not be long before they would be. Where does the drinking water come from?"

"Drive wells, and – "

"What!" I exclaimed, in spite of my determination when I went that I would show surprise at nothing.

He looked at me in wonder.

"Yes, it is easy to drive wells here. Get water easy."

This time I remained silent. I did not wish to frighten away any farther confidences which he might feel like imparting.

There is one road from end to end of the island. The houses for the male lunatics and imbeciles are on the highest point overlooking at all times the trenches and at all times within hearing of whatever goes on there. The odors are everywhere so that night and day, every one who is on the island breathes nothing else but this polluted air, except as a strong wind blows it, at times, from one direction over another. The women's quarters – much larger and better houses – are at the other end of the island. Not all of these overlook the trenches.

Every fair day all these wretched creatures are taken out to walk. Where? Along this one road; back and forth, back and forth, beside the "dead trenches." To step aside is to walk on "graves" for about half the way. We sometime smile over the old joke that the Blue Laws allowed nothing more cheerful than a walk to the cemetery on Sunday. All days are Sundays to these wretches who depend on the "civilized" charity of our city. All laws are very, very blue; all walks lead through what can by only the wildest abandon of charity be called by so happy a name as a "cemetery," and even the air and water the city gives them is neither air nor water; it is pollution.

A gentleman by my side watched the long procession of helpless creatures walk past. One man waved his hand to me and mumbled something and smiled – then he called back, "Wie geht's? Wie geht's?" and smiled again. Several of the wretched creatures laughed at him; but when I smiled and bowed, nearly half of the line of three hundred, turned and joined in his salutation. They filed past four times (the whole walk is so short), and they did not fail each time to recognize me and bid for recognition. If they know me as a stranger, I thought, they know enough to understand something of all this ghastliness. The line of women was a long, long line. I was told that in all there were fourteen hundred women, and nearly five hundred men on the island. The line of women broke now and then as some poor creature would run out on the grass and pluck a weed or flower, and hold it gayly up or hide it in her skirts. One waved her hand at us, and said in tones that indicated that she was trying to assume the voice and manner of a public speaker: "The Lord deserteth not His chosen!" I did not know whether in her poor brain, they or we represented the chosen who were not to be deserted. Another said gayly and in an assumed lisp and voice of a little girl (although she must have been past fifty), "There's papa, oh, papa, papa, papa! My papa!" This to the gentleman who stood beside me. He smiled and waved his hand to her. Then he said, between his teeth:

"Civilized savages! To have them here!"

"It don't hurt 'em," said the officer beside us. "They're incurables. They won't any of 'em remember what they saw for ten minutes. People don't understand crazy folks and idiots. They're the easiest cowed people in the world. Long as they know they're watched, they'll do whatever you tell them – this kind will. They're harmless."

"But why have them here?" I insisted. "If they are to be poisoned, why not do it more quickly and – "

"Poisoned!" he exclaimed, astonished. "Why, if one of the attendants was caught even striking one, he'd be dismissed quick. They get treated well. Only it is hard to keep attendants. We can't get 'em to stay here more than a month or so – just till they get paid. We have to go to the raw immigrants to get them even then. Nobody else will come."

"Naturally," remarked the gentleman beside me.

"Yes, it's kind of natural. This kind of folks are hard to work with, and the men attendants get only about seventeen to twenty dollars a month, and the women from ten to twelve dollars."

"So the attendants of these helpless creatures are raw immigrants," I said; "who, perhaps, do not speak English, who are constantly changing. The water they get is from driven wells, the sights and exercise are obtained from and in and by the dead trenches. The air they breathe is like this, night and day, you say, and no one ever leaves alive when once sent here."

"No one."

"Who does the work – the digging, the burying, the handling of the dead, the carting, and the work for the insane?"

"Medium term prisoners. All these are from one to six months men," waving his hand over the men working below us in the horrible trench.

"Do you think they leave here with an admiration for our system of caring for the city's dead – whether the death be social, mental, or physical? Do they go back with a desire to reform and become like those who devise and conduct this sort of thing?"

He laughed.

"Why, it's just a picnic for them to come up here. You can't hardly keep 'em away with a club. Of course, the same ones don't work right here long; but when a fellow gets sent up to any of these places, he comes over and over until he gets ambitious to go to Sing Sing and be higher toned."

I thought of the same information given me at the Police and Criminal Courts a little while ago. I wondered if there might not be some flaw somewhere in the whole reformatory and punitive system. From the time a fourteen-year-old boy is taken up for breaking a window; sent to the reform school, where he is herded with older and worse boys, until he passes through the police court again, – let us say at sixteen, as a "ten-day drunk," – to herd again in a windowless prison van, packed close with fifteen hardened criminals (as I saw a messenger boy of fifteen on my way to the island), and taken where for ten days he enjoys the society of the most abandoned; returns to town the companion of thieves; and goes the next time for three or six months for petit larceny, then for some graver crime, on and up. At last, when he has no more to learn or to teach, he is given a cell or room alone until the State relieves him of the necessity of following the course which has been mapped out for and steadily followed by so many. He knows when he is a three months' man where he is going at last. Has he not helped to dig the trenches for the men who looked so hard and vile to him when he broke that window and stood in the Police Court by their sides?

Perhaps you will ask: "Why did he not take the warning, and follow a better course, turn the other way?"

Perchance it might be asked on the other hand – since court, and morgue, and cemetery officials unite in the assertion that the above record is almost universal, and that our present methods not only do not reform, but actually prevent the reform of offenders – why this system is still followed by the State, and if the warning has not been ample and severe here, also.

Are we to expect greater wisdom, more far-seeing judgment and a loftier aim in these unfortunates of society than is developed in those who control them?

Since it is all such a dismal failure, why not plan a better way? Why not begin at the other end of the line to keep offenders apart? Why herd them – good, bad, and indifferent – together, in the stage of their career when there is hope for some, at least, to reform; and begin to separate them only when the last mile of the road is reached?

Why, if the city must bury its dead in trenches and under the conditions only half described above (because much of it is too sickening to present), why, if cremation or some better mode of burial is not possible – and certainly I think it is – why, at least, need the awful, the ghastly, the inhuman combination be made of burying together medium term criminals, imbeciles, lunatics, and thousands of corpses all on one mere scrap of land? If a seven-foot mass of corruption exhaling through the air and percolating through land and water must be devoted to the dead poor of a great city, why in the name of all that is civilized or humane, permit any living thing to be detained and poisoned on the same bit of earth?