Chapter I: Act II: , Scene 16. 10

EVENTS IN BRIEF. 14
Legislation in Maryland. 14
The Lash in Delaware.
Why Prisoners’ Families Aren’t Supported by Prisoners’
Earnings. 14
Parole In Kentucky. 15
The Kansas State Prison Makes Money. 15
State Use in Ohio. 16
The Governors on Road Work by Prisoners. 16
Transportation Again? 16
Ohio Penitentiary Breaks Silence. 17
A Good Idea. 17
Prison Publicity. 17
State Use in New York. 18
Probable Abolition of Contract Labor at Chicago Bridewell. 18
Vermont’s State Prison Warden Resigns. 19
Prisoners’ Wages Reduced in Ohio. 19
Parole Law Recommended For Rhode Island. 19
Convicts Build Arizona Bridge. 20
In Iowa. 20
Auburn Inmates Celebrate Under Their Own Captains. 20
Tynan’s Way. 20
Tramps and the Railroads. 21
Changes in Military Prisons. 21
Frank Sanborn on the State Control of County Jails. 22
The Booher Bill Passes the House. 23
Gruesome! 23
National Agitation for State Use System. 23
Pardons. 24
Farming by Texas Prisoners. 24

VOLUME IV, No. 3. MARCH, 1914

THE DELINQUENT

(FORMERLY THE REVIEW)

A MONTHLY PERIODICAL, PUBLISHED BY THE

NATIONAL PRISONERS’ AID ASSOCIATION

AT 135 EAST 15th STREET, NEW YORK CITY.

THIS COPY TEN CENTS. ONE DOLLAR A YEAR

T. F. Garver, President.

Wm. M. R. French, Vice-President.

O. F. Lewis, Secretary, Treasurer
and Editor The Delinquent.

Edward Fielding,
Chairman Ex. Committee.

F. Emory Lyon,
Member Ex. Committee.

W. G. McLaren,
Member Ex. Committee.

A. H. Votaw,
Member Ex. Committee.

E. A. Fredenhagen,
Member Ex. Committee.

Joseph P. Byers,
Member Ex. Committee.

R. B. McCord,
Member Ex. Committee.

Entered as second-class mail matter at New York.

THE “DOPE HABIT”

[We reprint Edward Marshall’s illuminating article from the New
York Times of February 22nd on the most recent serious menace
within our prisons, and outside of them. There has come throughout
the country, apparently a relatively sudden realization of the
fearful effects of the habit-forming drugs.]

Habit-forming drugs and their ravages, destructive of both the morals and the health of the community, seem at last to have aroused commensurate human indignation, at least in New York city.

Discussion is continual of this strangest and saddest of the problems of our modern civilization; city officials are definitely interested, studying and planning; a committee, including in its membership magistrates and others of sociological force, works on an impulse supplied by Mrs. Vanderbilt; and from a third source definite legislation emanates to be offered in the Legislatures of this and other States and in the National Congress.

Nothing more astonishing, nothing more appalling than the hold which habit-forming drugs have taken on the community at large can be found among the tragedies peculiar to modern civilization.

And all this has come suddenly. Not so many years ago the opium smoker was the only known victim, and he was a curiosity of Chinatown; the morphine taker was a rare, and troubled spirit, stalking solitary in its slavery and misery; the cocaine fiend remained unknown, and the heroin addict--latest in all this incomparably tragic company--was undreamed of.

Now opium smoking, though still the cause of an occasional police raid, has sunk into insignificance by comparison with morphine taking; cocaine habitues are not uncommon sights upon the streets to those with the depressing knowledge which identifies them; police slang has coined a name for them--“snowbirds”; and we read in almost every issue of our daily newspapers of new developments of the “heroin habit.”

Habit-forming drugs of one kind or another have gained so strong a hold upon the people of this country, more especially upon the people of American cities, that they have reached the dread proportions of a national curse.

They play their tragic part in uncounted domestic tragedies; an annual crop of business and professional failures numerically approaching the sad army of alcoholic wrecks is thrust into the various bins wherein we hide our human refuse; drugs send their yearly thousands of young men into the prisons, of young women to the streets.

A native Southerner, of national fame, high in the councils of his party, told me recently that habit-forming drugs, cocaine principally, have of late so complicated the negro problem of the South as to triple its difficulties and dangers.

These heroin and cocaine groups, lately so conspicuous, are insignificant in numbers and in tragedy when compared by those who know with the thousands to be found among our citizenship who, driven only into misery, not into viciousness or crime, by drug addictions, fall innocent victims to this most terrible of modern curses, sad sacrifices to illness and to pain, to ignorance and to cupidity.

The victims of drug habits who have been led into them through the mistaken methods of the doctor, who first administers the drug to ease acute physical suffering, and by the proprietary medicine or drug store preparation passed out as cure-alls with an indifference to or ignorance of consequences which must remain incredible to those who understand, is infinitely more numerous than the growing group of drug takers led into their addictions by the tendency towards dissipation.

Drugs are even taking hold upon our youth. Within the year many instances have been cited in the newspapers, which have uncovered peddlers of cocaine and heroin to school children. I listened recently to the appalling story of a seventeen-year-old Connecticut boy, brought by his father for treatment in this city, who told how he had been the center of a group of not less than a hundred other boys in his own town who gained the drug through him and were completely at his mercy.

I was present recently when this father told the story, having brought the boy to the metropolis for treatment. It was practically the duplicate of many, and illustrates the real necessity of legislation, which will impose upon the druggist and the medical profession a general restriction.

“My boy,” this sorrow-racked and disappointed father said, “was
employed by a physician living near us to care for his automobile.
He paid him for his work by giving him prescriptions for heroin.
My boy quickly became a victim of the habit, and soon formed the
centre of a group of twenty or more other boy victims, who secured
from him the prescriptions by means of which they brought the drug.

“Two large manufacturing establishments in our home town were thus
infected, and at the present time not less than one hundred boys
have become slaves to the habit. They buy the drug in quantities as
large as they can pay for from the largest drug store in our city,
and are never questioned.”

Their home city is Bridgeport, Conn. I have in my possession one of the prescriptions given to the boy by the physician, who thus paid him for his services in attending to his motor car.

In New York State and city the situation is not better. The police records have been full of “dope cases” for years. Morphine and heroin are doing serious work in the demoralization of the city, and the ravages of cocaine are as serious here as they can be among the negroes of the South.

Miss Katharine B. Davis, now in the full swing of her duties as Commissioner of Correction, tells me that she finds her problems complicated all along the line by drug addictions among inmates of the city’s prisons and jails, and the Mayor and other members of the city government are looking into the whole subject with deep interest.

In her efforts to discover how the city’s prisoners get drugs, Miss Davis has uncovered strange, almost uncanny methods. A prisoner’s wife or “girl” brings him clean handkerchiefs or shirts, stiffly starched. Left alone with them, he chews them eagerly, getting thus the morphine which impregnates the starch.

Another prisoner greedily sucks an orange which has been brought to him. Investigation shows that through a tiny puncture its juice has been withdrawn, to be replaced through a hypodermic syringe, after it has been transformed into a saturate solution of morphine.

Fountain-pens are now taboo among the prisoners. Their barrels may be filled with drug tablets.

In a letter now in my possession, written to Charles B. Towns, the drug expert, by Dr. Charles W. Farr, prison physician of Sing Sing, the doctor, after announcing the successful treatment of some drug addicts, continues:

“But the men seem to be able to get the various drugs as readily
as ever. I suppose that the usual method is to have the guards
bring it in for them. When questioned the prisoners always blame
the traffic on the honest and unpopular guards who are not really
concerned with it. I asked a convict to estimate the number of drug
takers among the prisoners. He answered:

“‘Counting the habitual users and the “joy riders,” there are
probably two hundred in this prison.’”

And while these demoralizing novelties are frequently discovered in the underworld, the hold which habit-forming drugs are getting elsewhere, with the worth while, is admittedly appalling. There are pharmacists in New York city whose important trade is drug traffic; there are physicians here, and not a few, who, while drug addicts themselves, find their practice also among drug addicts, furnishing prescriptions daily to habitues, collecting fees proportioned to their victims’ purses.

As these things have become generally known, so has work begun to check the evils. Within a few days the most comprehensive legislative plan which has so far been proposed for regulation of the traffic in all habit-forming drugs has been launched at Albany.

It will presently be launched in the New Jersey and all other State Legislatures. It is further planned to make this definitely comprehensive and effective by Federal legislation, already drafted and soon to be introduced at Washington.

Charles B. Towns, its author, also wrote the law, already on the statute books of New York and several other States, permitting the sale of the hypodermic syringe only upon prescription by a doctor; he presented last year at Albany a comprehensive bill which did not pass.

His measure of this year, known in the Senate as the Boylan bill,
includes many features new to legislation of the sort, and has
already won outspoken approval from many members of the medical
profession, including Dr. Alexander Lambert of New York, and Dr.
Richard C. Cabot of Boston. Commissioner Davis has gone over it
with care, indorsing it.

“To wholly control the drug evil, which is so unfortunately
affecting New York City and the State, by any legislation entirely
local to the State,” said Mr. Towns, “is out of the question. But a
beginning must be made at home.

“For various reasons habit-forming drugs have found a stronger
foothold in this country than elsewhere in the world. Our annual
opium consumption, per capita, is far greater than that of China,
although we use it principally in the form of its derivatives,
morphine, etc., and our consumption of cocaine has grown to a
magnitude unprecedented anywhere.

“Most of the legislation drafted for the purpose of restricting the
use of habit-forming drugs has been ineffective. It is ridiculously
easy to-day to obtain morphine or any other of the inhibited
substances in New York without violation of the law, although New
York has laws which were designed to be of drastic force.

“The classification in my bill reads: ‘Opium, morphia, coca leaves,
cocaine, alpha and beta cocaine, their salts, derivatives and
preparations.’

“This classification includes automatically many substances which
it does not specifically mention, but which have recently attracted
much attention because of their common use among drug-habitues.

“Among these is heroin. But heroin is a derivative of morphine,
which is the active principle of opium, and is three times as
strong as the parent drug.

“It is not mentioned in the bill because the word ‘heroin’ is a
mere trade name, and a law prohibiting its sale under that name
would not prohibit the sale of the same substance under any one of
the new trade names which manufacturers would have no difficulty in
coining.

“I speak of this almost at once, because I have had several
inquiries as to why this drug apparently is omitted from the list
named in the bill.

“To intelligently discuss the reason for the prevalence of drug
addictions in this country would necessitate an exhaustive study of
national psychology.

“Patent medicines containing small quantities of habit-forming
drugs have wrought great havoc with us, for any medicine,
containing any quantity of any habit-forming drug, contains it in
habit-forming quantity if the dosage is regular. It is not the
quantity, but the regularity of dosage which produces drug habits.

“A lack of understanding of this fact upon the part of the medical
profession and the public has been responsible for many drug
addictions.

“The cocaine habit had its start in patent medicine, mostly
socalled catarrh cures, and will find its end in a national
degeneration if it is not checked by drastic legislation.

“Heroin was first advertised about fifteen years ago, and accepted
by the medical world as a non-habit-forming substance, having all
the useful qualities of the dangerous habit forming drugs.

“Having been thus started, and innocently promoted by physicians
and druggists, the progress of the habit, which has become a
sanitary, criminal, and social problem of real moment, can be
halted only by the passage of some law including such provisions as
those I have included in the bill now pending in Albany.

“My plan is not accidental. I went to the Orient in 1908-1909
and spent a year there, studying the opium curse as it has there
developed. Returning to this country I have since been thrown into
the closest contact with the various drug addictions, passing
several hundred cases in minute review each year. Last Summer
I toured Europe and found that drugs have gained comparatively
slight foothold there, and that no European nation has produced
restrictive legislation worthy of consideration.

“Our own internal revenue reports show us to be consuming as many
of these drugs as all of Europe put together uses.

“Of course, the fact that the drug traffic has continually
increased in this and every other State despite the presence on the
statute books of laws thought to be stringent, can mean but one
thing--that in these laws are loopholes.

“The same laws which require that these drugs must be dispensed
only upon presentation to the druggist of a physician’s
prescription fail to forbid a layman from posing as a physician in
making out prescriptions; no obligation of investigation is imposed
upon the druggist.

“The drug trade is practically without legal regulation, although
across the drug store counter are dispensed substances at least
as dangerous to individuals and public welfare as those which
are dispensed across saloon bars--and saloons are regulated very
rigidly.

“No registration of manufacturing, wholesale or retail druggists is
required by law. The importation, manufacture and distribution of
habit-forming drugs are now surrounded by fewer restrictions than
are thrown about tobacco. The proposed law provides for records
of each grain, from the time it leaves the manufacturer until it
reaches the ultimate consumer.

“Any druggist, wholesale or retail, may manufacture and market any
proprietary medicine he may desire, containing certain quantities
of these drugs, and offer it openly for sale, without the formality
of a physician’s prescription.

“The clause in the otherwise worthy and admirable National Pure
Food and Drugs act requiring that any drug store composition
containing any quantity whatsoever of any habit-forming drug must
bear upon its label an announcement of this content, was well
meant, but has worked havoc.

“Even as no physician who administers a habit-forming drug to ease
his patient’s pain should acquaint that patient with the nature
of the drug he gives, lest the patient turn again to it when
pain recurs and fasten something worse than pain upon himself,
despite the doctor’s wishes, so no medicine offered for general
sale and bearing on its label the announcement of its content of a
pain-killing, habit-forming drug should by the law be tolerated.

“Relieved by the medicine those who take it read its label
carefully, learn what has afforded the relief--it always is a mere
relief, it never is a cure--and, unacquainted with the dangers
attending substances of the sort, regularly dose themselves, either
with increased quantities of the medicine or more probably with the
straight drug.

“A drug-tainted patent medicine is absolutely certain to establish
a drug habit in any one who, for any length of time, takes it
according to directions.

“The proposed law makes such patent medicines, containing any
quantity whatever of the habit-forming drugs, illegal. Physicians
rarely if ever give prescriptions for them. The public will lose
nothing and gain much through their abolishment.

“Now let us consider the physician.

“Physicians are at present permitted to prescribe and administer
the habit-forming drugs as loosely and extravagantly as they
please, either to themselves or others, without responsibility as
to the outcome. Under the proposed law they are held responsible.

“There is real necessity for the provision which disbars from
medical practice physicians who take drugs. The drug-taking doctor
is more dangerous than the drug-taking druggist or drug clerk. All
are liable to irresponsibility at a time when it may well mean
death to others; and, furthermore, all are promoters of the drug
habit. The proposed law guards against them.

“The drug taker invariably introduces others to his drug, sometimes
openly, oftener secretly, through perverted sympathy for another’s
suffering.

“And if the drug-taking doctor should be barred from practice, so,
also, should the drug-taking nurse and the drug-taking veterinarian.

“Now how are these things to be accomplished? The State
Commissioner of Health is to prepare and furnish to all local
Health Boards or officers official prescription blanks, serially
numbered and bearing the State seal, making their imitation forgery.

“These are to be furnished to physicians on demand, and no drugs
of this class are to be dispensed, save on their presentation
properly filled out and signed; no prescription shall be refilled;
all filled prescriptions shall be filed and open to periodical
health board inspection, bearing not only dates and names of the
physicians, but the names of patients for whom the drug is ordered,
and no such prescription shall be filled more than ten days after
issuance.

“To the purchaser, for his protection, while he has the drug in his
possession, druggists must issue a certificate, giving their names
and addresses and those of the prescribing physician.

“These are the principal restrictions surrounding the prescription
blank, though there are others. And violations of these regulations
are to be regarded as misdemeanors.

“In this proposed law, also, is incorporated a provision similar
to that of the existing law restricting the sale of hypodermic
syringes to physicians’ prescriptions.

“This roughly indicates the proposed provisions covering the sale
of habit-forming drugs. They are followed by one which may seem
almost fantastic to the person unacquainted with the terrible
psychology of drug addictions.

“I shall preface any explanation of it with the announcement that
the drug habit is not a mental state, but a physical condition.
My knowledge of it, gained from observation of many hundreds of
its victims, will forever prevent me from proposing or pushing any
further restrictions of the traffic, until some provision is made
for the relief of those already enslaved.

“To deprive a drug addict of his drug without giving him definite
medical help must inevitably subject him to such suffering, such
incredible and indescribable torment, as cannot otherwise be
brought upon mankind. It may mean death; it is very likely to mean
insanity. The drug addict will steal to get his drug; indeed, he
may do murder in order to obtain it.

“Therefore this bill provides for the treatment and relief of those
who, rendered unable to procure their drug by the provisions of
the legislation, might otherwise be made the victims of a social
progression.

“Such a relief is possible and not too difficult. The treatment
by means of which it may be accomplished bears my name, but is no
monopoly. I could gain no profit from its use by the authorities
and others. It includes no medicaments not purchasable at any
well-stocked pharmacy. I have freely published broadcast every
formula connected with it, unrestricted, for the benefit of the
medical profession. It is now in use by the authorities in Sing
Sing Prison, at Bellevue Hospital, in the hospital on Blackwell’s
Island, and elsewhere. Plans are under way for its more extensive
use by the authorities.

“Very briefly I have sketched the provisions of this proposed State
legislation. It should be welcomed by the doctor, for it puts him
absolutely in control of one of his most valuable assets, the
pain-deadening drug, a control which he must share, as things at
present stand, with every corner druggist and every manufacturer
of patent medicines.

“Decent druggists will welcome the planned regulations. It will
protect them against thefts of drugs by employees, and the
drug-taking drug clerk is a dangerous and at present all too common
handicap on the employing druggist.

“A certain reputable retail druggist of my acquaintance tells me
that within a year he has discharged two clerks, one for taking
morphine, one for using cocaine. They were a threat against his
welfare. How much greater was their threat against the public
welfare?

“Neither the drug-taking doctor nor the drug-taking drug clerk
will be a possibility under the provisions of the proposed new
legislation, which demands that every grain of any of these drugs
dispensed by or in the possession of druggist or a doctor, shall be
instantly accounted for upon demand of the Health Board.

“The present situation, so terrifying that it forms a problem of
our modern civilization, has grown out of the fact that neither the
physician nor the druggist have been held really responsible.

“The druggist has been permitted to import and manufacture as
freely as he pleased, and to sell under restrictions which were
insufficient to prevent promotion of drug habits; the physician
has never been required to make accounting for prescription of or
the administration of these dangerous substances, and his medical
training, both in college and in hospital, has left him in the dark
concerning the danger point in their administration.

“This proposed New York State legislation has been drawn with
careful eye to the establishment, here in the Empire State, of a
model law for other States. General adoption of such legislation
would make proper Federal laws effective and without a perfect
understanding between the State and Federal Government as to where
responsibility of each begins and ends, no really effective action
will be possible to either.

“The first step for the Federal Government will be to require the
registration of all importers and manufacturers of habit-forming
drugs, all wholesale druggists and drug jobbers, and all retail
druggists. A similar registration is now required of all those
engaged in the tobacco trade.

“The regulation of interstate traffic in such drugs will be a
simple matter. A system of uniform order blanks furnished to the
buyer, and of uniform invoice blanks furnished to the seller on
demand, by the Government, can be so arranged that every step of
every interstate shipment can be closely followed.

“It will be necessary to require that habit-forming drugs shall be
shipped in bond; that the importer shall account for all which he
imports, the manufacturer for all which he manufactures.

“The passage of the law subjecting importations of opium prepared
for smoking to a prohibitive tax lost us millions in annual
revenue and increased the vice of smoking opium, for it forced the
preparation of raw opium for smoking in this country--an art which
theretofore had been in the exclusive possession of an ancient
Chinese company. Under this law opium prepared for smoking is
cheaper in this country than it was before its passage. Let us have
no more abortive legislation on this vital subject.

“Ninety-five per cent. of the whole nation’s drug evil could surely
be avoided by the general adoption in all the States of legislation
such as this proposed in New York State, supplemented by such
Federal legislation as I have outlined.”

A COURSE FOR PRUSSIAN PRISON OFFICIALS AND OTHERS

BY AUGUST PLASCHKE, MINISTRY OF JUSTICE, PRUSSIA

I am very glad to give to The Delinquent information regarding the course of instruction in penology which for the last ten years has been conducted by the Prussian Ministry of Justice. There are three kinds of prisons under the supervision of the Ministry of Justice:--

1. The local prisons, under the direction of
the local magistrate.

2. The county prisons, under the direction
of the ranking county district attorney.

3. The large, so-called “special prisons,” of
which the “Director” is the executive
officer.

We had the experience that the directors of those prisons I have named under 1. above did not always meet the demands that we believed the government had the right to require of them, because they did not possess the necessary means and knowledge. The training of the lower officials in these local institutions was also often faulty. To be sure, there prevailed in general a condition of cleanliness, order and honesty, but the treatment of the prisoner according to the crime and to the individuality of the inmate was often pretty poor.

On the other hand, we came to the conclusion that only those judges could properly and reasonably impose a just sentence who knew and had studied the effect of imprisonment and the administration of a prison sentence upon the prisoner. And so there developed from this idea the requirement that the judge should also be assigned to the office of prison warden. And so, with the introduction of the course on prison administration, we had two aims:--

1. The understanding of the judge should be strengthened as to the
effect of imprisonment upon the prisoner, in order that proper
sentences should be imposed, not only from the standpoint of the
law, but from that of the individual to be imprisoned.

2. It was important to develop prison wardens who would understand
the effects of imprisonment and who could therefore administer
their office properly. This required a proper training in all the
details of prison administration, and the rules and regulations.
We were confident that when the warden became conversant with all
these matters, if he then had the necessary knowledge and interest,
he would also train up in his turn the lesser officials of the
prison.

So much for the purposes of the course in prison administration. We carry on the course in the following manner. We issue, around January, not a special, but a general invitation to attend the course. The invitation goes to recently admitted members of the bar, judges, district attorneys, and also to clergymen, physicians and the higher prison officials, who have shown special interest in their work. The invitations are very numerous. But since we can receive at the most only from 24 to 27 persons, in order to do each person justice during the two weeks of the course, only about fifty per cent. of the requests for admission can be considered.

The course is divided into two parts, practical and a scientific. During the forenoon the men in the course work in the prisons, where they are instructed in all the details of the administration. In the afternoon, scientific lectures are held, with following discussion, lasting often four hours or longer. I regard this part of the course as of great value. After the close of the course, during which, by the way, there are inspections of a number of institutions, the participants in the course return to their occupations, with the admonition that they shall pass along the knowledge they have acquired, and especially to give to the lesser officials of the respective prisons from which they have come, the benefit of what they have acquired. In this manner we send out through the Kingdom of Prussia every year a corps of new teachers.

Moreover, we ascertain who among the men that have taken the course has shown special interest, and is inclined to become the warden of a prison, and we send him for several months to one of our best conducted institutions, “in training.” Here he takes up the ordinary duties of the minor officials, up to and including the duties of the director of the institution himself. And if he shows himself well qualified, he is assigned as soon as possible to the position of representative of the warden, or his associate in the case of especially difficult tasks, and in this manner comes to learn the duties of prison warden in a number of institutions. And from this group of men the directors of the prisons are chosen.

As to the subjects of the lectures of the course, I would say that I cannot be very specific, for they change from year to year. The lecturers are both executive and theoretical. Among the teachers I might mention Professors Kahl, von Hippel, and Moehli. Among the subjects are the following:

Prison System and Prison Architecture.

The Mentally Deficient: their responsibility and methods of
treatment.

The Treatment of Juveniles.

Organization of the Prison Administration.

If you wish, I shall be very glad to send you the program of the last course.

I can say, with much satisfaction, that we have really succeeded with these courses, and that they have found very favorable mention both in the press and in Parliament. The participants in the course complain sometimes because they are driven so hard, and I confess that the mental strain is considerable. But they nevertheless show great zeal and industry.

IMPORTANCE OF AN UP-TO-DATE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT IN A PENAL INSTITUTION.

BY JOHN L. WHITMAN, SUPERINTENDENT CHICAGO HOUSE OF CORRECTION

[Read at the American Prison Association, October, 1913]

It would seem as though the management of penal institutions, and especially houses of correction, could do no greater service to society than to give to their inmates the medical treatment and training they so badly need, and send them back to society at least somewhat prepared to take their places among men with a more equal chance of success.

As a result of observation made at the Chicago House of Correction, along these lines, the medical department of this institution has been equipped and enlarged during the last five years, so as to carry on some of the kind of work indicated.

The demonstrations made are most encouraging, not only to continue, but to still further increase the capacity. At present, instead of having only one physician, as in former years, who was expected to look after the needs of the entire population in all the different branches of medical science, which is impossible for one man to do, no matter how efficient and interested he might be, we have in addition to Dr. Sceleth, the Medical Superintendent, whose entire time and attention is given to the department, four internes, who are physicians, and two professional and registered nurses, who also reside on the premises, and are instructors for the inmate nurses used in accordance with their capacity.

As a consulting staff, we have twelve physicians, surgeons and specialists, who are actively engaged in the work of the department, visiting the institution at least once a week, and oftener as required.

The entire staff consists of nineteen, who are experts in their profession, find an abundance of work that, in doing, is in most cases a direct benefit to the community, as well as to the individual treated, as the delinquency of many can be traced to their physical ailments.

As a typical case, I might relate the story of a man that had been a delinquent or criminal (so called) for several years, during which time he had been estranged from family and relatives, who did not want to be identified with one of his reputation. He had for a long time been suffering from a rupture, and used this fact as an excuse for not applying himself to ordinary labor, and claimed he could not earn a living otherwise, so had drifted into criminal ways. When committed to the House of Correction and opportunity given him to be treated for his trouble, he gladly accepted; an operation was successful, and while convalescing he realized an obligation for having received, while under the bane of the Law, that which he had for years so badly needed.

The return to normal physical condition brought to him a desire to discharge that obligation. Upon the advice of the General Superintendent, he communicated for the first time in years with his family, and satisfied them that he was determined to no longer disgrace them, whereupon, with their moral support, he did renounce his vicious way, and has been in no further trouble with the law.

In other ways the Medical Department is of great assistance to the management of the institution, especially in furnishing to it reports of findings in individual cases of limited mental or physical capacity, so that the facts contained in the report may be considered in making assignments to work. Everyone, especially prison wardens, can readily see the advantage of this.

Not long ago, one of the boys in the School Department was reported to the management for apparently making no effort, particularly in his physical training exercises, to develop with the class, and was indolent in other studies. He was sent to the doctors for examination, and they learned by applying the X-Ray that he was suffering from tuberculosis of the shoulder joint. It is needless to say that the boy did not merit punishment under the circumstances.

Out of the fourteen thousand commitments to the Chicago House of Correction last year, three thousand three hundred and seventy-two were treated in the hospital, besides those who were prescribed for in the cell house, whose ailments did not require hospital care. Two hundred and fifteen were major surgical operations.

The results obtained in this work have attracted the attention and commendation of all who have observed them, especially judges of the courts, and captains of the police department, who could see an opportunity for great good to come to many individuals, their own work facilitated and simplified, if treatment could be given and observation made before the cases were disposed of in court.

In order to do this and prevent legal technicalities from arising by receiving patients before commitment by the courts, the House of Correction Hospital was organized by the executive officers of the institution as individuals, and is operated under a license granted by the city, under the name of the Sceleth Hospital. In one section of it, regularly committed sick prisoners to the House of Correction are kept, and in another section those under arrest, and cases pending in the courts, are brought by the police, placed under treatment and observation, and when able are taken to court with a statement from the physicians as to mental and physical conditions, so that the court can more intelligently dispose of them. Some are returned for further treatment and confinement under fine or sentence; others may be held to await the action of the grand jury on more serious charges; while others who had been treated for alcoholism, and for the first time in years were free from the effects of liquor, physically able and willing to support their families as they should, would be allowed to go home, with no record of fine or imprisonment against them.

The courts, and especially the court of domestic relations, finds that the hospital is a great aid in solving some of the problems submitted to them by families whose breadwinners have become neglectful or abusive, as a result of excessive drinking. In such cases, a sentence may be imposed, which carries with it a recommendation for such treatment as the defendant may need. When he has responded to treatment, and the proper disposition is shown toward his family, the court is made aware of the fact, and he is released. In a normal physical condition, he is very apt to realize his possibilities as the head of a family and avoid the courts in the future. I can best describe the different classes of cases brought to the Sceleth Hospital by using the words of the Medical Superintendent, in a report made to me by him, which is as follows:

“I wish to emphasize the importance of a higher medical and
surgical standard for the treatment of prisoners in our penal
institutions.

“The officials controlling the Medical Department in ninety-five
per cent. of our prisons and workhouses do not provide a proper
equipment or staff of trained surgical and medical specialists, and
they fail to recognize the importance of the medical department in
educational and reform work.

“The proper care of prisoners and the remedying of bodily defects
through such treatment as modern surgery and medicine can give,
will decrease the prison population. There is not a day that we do
not receive unfortunates who are compelled to beg or steal, because
of their inability to earn a living on account of some physical
infirmity which is readily cured by proper surgical or medical
treatment.

“The Chicago House of Correction to-day is looked upon by the
police department, the judges, and part of the public, as a city
emergency hospital and sanitarium for all the alcoholics, drug
habitues, epileptics, chronic incurables, cripples, blind and
helpless beggars, cranks, perverts, and general mental and moral
defectives who require special medical and surgical attention.
Fully twenty per cent. of the cases that we receive are sent here
by the judges for medical and surgical care. During last September
four hundred and thirty-six cases were treated in the male hospital
alone, with eleven deaths. Almost one hundred of these were ‘no
paper’ cases, admitted to the Sceleth Emergency Hospital for
treatment and observation. Among the cases that have been sent to
us as alcoholics, we have found unfortunates suffering from skull
fractures, syphilis, softening of the brain, delirium of pneumonia,
brain tumors, acute dementia and other forms of insanity.

“Cases of nervous disease, with symptoms which simulate the ‘drunk’
in walk, speech and dull intellect, cases of coma, due to kidney
disease, to hemorrhage, or injury of the brain, to exposure, to
cold, to apoplexy, to sunstroke, meningitis, narcotic poisoning,
etc.

“Please understand this is not a criticism of our ambulance
surgeons or our police department, ‘as they need more than a
curbstone diagnosis’ but to give you an idea why you need an
efficient medical department. A man may be sitting on a curb, or
lying in the gutter in a collapsed condition, with cold clammy
skin, unable to talk intelligently, with or without an alcoholic
breath; he may be on the verge of delirium tremens, or his
condition might also be due to heart disease, to arsenic or lead
poisoning, to intestinal, kidney or liver colic, to intestinal
obstructions, to sunstroke, to the rupture of an artery in his
brain, to shock, to the onset of some acute disease, or to a plain
fainting spell.

“He may have had a tremor that looks like chronic alcoholism, but
it may be a disease of the spine or brain, paralysis agitans or
general paralysis of the insane. There was a time not very long
ago when these cases were taken to the police station, locked
up as drunks and died in a cell, when proper medical or surgical
assistance would often have saved a life. Over one-half of our
‘no paper’ cases are not able to give any history of themselves;
we know absolutely nothing except that the police brought in
an unconscious man to us. This makes a diagnosis almost an
impossibility in many cases. A printed history sheet was given to
the police department, a sample of which is enclosed, which has
been of great assistance to us in making a diagnosis.

“A number of insane cases, which are not responsible to man or God,
are sent here for violating some statute. Among them are violent
cases who have tried to commit murder, or assault, and would be a
danger to any city to have at large; these of course are sent to
asylums.

“Another type are unfortunates who are charged with being
shiftless, who will not work to support themselves or their
families. These are often unrecognized cases of brain or spinal
diseases which leave the victim absolutely helpless and unable to
work. These are often treated as worthless bums, when they need
good medical care and kind treatment.”

Another point of view deserving of strong emphasis is one directly the opposite of that usually held. We know well that alcohol is responsible for many conditions which are daily called upon to treat, but we do not give due consideration to the fact that the alcohol or drug habit had its beginning in an effort to relieve pain due to sickness, or to obtain solace after unsuccessful attempts to obtain or keep a job, when handicapped by some disease, recognized or not. Disease, alcoholism and crime are very closely interwoven.

Especial efforts are made at our institution to detect pulmonary tuberculosis in its early stages. Whenever possible, such cases are transferred to institutions devoted to the care of such patients, the aid of the courts being invoked in many cases to overcome the legal obstacles. If it is necessary for us to retain the tuberculosis patients, we place them under the best possible hygienic conditions. We point with pride to our out-of-door cottage tents, where the three essentials for cure are at hand--fresh air, rest and good food.

The House of Correction has a well deserved reputation for its success in the management of drug and alcoholic cases. But no “cure” such as is employed in most institutions is made use of here. The treatment is essentially educational. The offending drug is withdrawn, and the patient convinced that he can get along without it. Then, upon his release, it is entirely “up to him,” so to speak, as to whether he returns to the habit or not.

This is in no sense intended to underestimate the psycho-therapeutic treatment where it is indicated. However, we do desire to point out the absurdity of psycho-therapeutic treatment in cases suffering with a definite physical ailment where a careful and complete physical examination by competent men is most essential.

We have each week the following clinics:

Three Surgical Clinics,
One Medical Clinic,
One Nervous and Mental Clinic,
Two Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Clinics,
One Skin Genito Urinary Clinic,
One Gynecological Clinic,
Two Dental Clinics.

In addition to the above, the health of two thousand inmates and the sanitation and food are cared for.

A SCENE FROM “THE MAN INSIDE.”

[This scene gives in special detail Mr. Roland Molineaux’s attitude
toward the present-day treatment of the delinquent. “The Man
Inside,” written by Mr. Molineaux and presented by Mr. Belasco, had
a successful run in New York early in the winter. The following
scene was the original, which was somewhat altered because of the
exigencies of the stage.]