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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While visiting, not far from Essex Market Court, a lady informed me that a member of my Sunday School was then in the Tombs, and asked me to go and see him. This was new work for me and I confess, I did not know how to go about it. I called to see the boy’s mother, who kept a beer garden in the neighborhood. But I could get nothing out of her, and came away feeling that my labor was all in vain. The woman was so much absorbed in her saloon business and so benumbed and besotted with beer that she seemed devoid of all motherly instinct and feeling. And she seemed not to care the snap of her finger about her boy.

After a good deal of difficulty I made my way to the Boys’ Prison in the Tombs, which was in the rear of the building. To my amazement I found a crowd of young thieves and pickpockets huddled together, and this Sunday School lad in the midst. In those days the authorities made no attempt at segregation or discrimination. The boys were all together, cursing and howling like a lot of devils! I was pained beyond measure, and I regret to say when I returned to the City Prison after nearly twenty years, almost the same condition existed. I found the Boys’ Prison in a filthy condition—damp and foul, more fit for hogs than human beings, and this besides the continual noises, yelling, howling, cursing, swearing and cat-calls in ten languages!