Читать книгу The New York Tombs Inside and Out!. Scenes and Reminiscences Coming Down to the Present. A Story Stranger Than Fiction, with an Historic Account of America's Most Famous Prison онлайн

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In those days some of the abuses were of a gross sensual character and had been going on for years but who would dare speak against them? And so the grafters had everything their own way!

I have nothing but kind words for the excellent work of the Hon. Thomas W. Hynes, who was an ideal Commissioner during the Mayor Low administration. Mr. Hynes was an honest, upright and fair Commissioner and sought in every way to keep his department clean. He removed Warden Flynn and it would have been well if the Courts had left him out as he certainly has made a poor Warden.

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When Warden Bissert was an involuntary inmate of the Tombs in the fall of 1901, he had so many privileges and such an old-fashioned good time that many persons rightly concluded that he owned the City Prison. Not only did he eat, drink, smoke the best Havanas and play cards at the Warden’s table, but he was allowed to receive from ten to thirty plain clothes policemen as his visitors daily! They had no passes whatever when they came to the Tombs, but these were not necessary. All they were required to say to the gateman was, “We are the Wardman’s friends.” On Sunday afternoons, when everything was quiet, a woman was allowed to pass through the front gate, enter a cell and be with a prisoner for immoral purposes! The Keeper had orders to allow her pass into the prison. I watched her enter the corner cell in the annex, which had a gas jet, she came every Sunday for weeks and usually stayed an hour. Nor was this an uncommon occurrence. Francis J. Lantry was Commissioner of Corrections, James Hagan, Warden, and William Flynn, the present Warden, was head keeper. Did I speak about it at the time? Certainly. And an investigation was promised but like all of Tammany’s investigations it never came!