Word: convict
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Every convict is assigned to at least one job. Warden Lawes tells of some difficulties in fitting the assignment to the convict's previous vocation. The skywriting aviator was "given a job painting the smokestacks and roofs; the prison warden was put in charge of the chickens; the radio-announcer was given a mop; the judge was made a waiter in the mess hall; the preacher was given the task of cleaning the chapel each day; the bartender was put to washing dishes; the pugilist was made a fireman in the power house; the masseur was given...
...arising gong sounds at 6 a. m. The parade to the open sewer to dump the slop buckets begins at 6:30. Then breakfast, and the working day from 8 to 4, with an hour off for lunch. From 4 to bedtime, the convict has his fun-baseball, gabbing, movies, reading. Most escapes are attempted during this period...
...Significance. Warden Lawes does not believe in capital punishment. He would substitute life imprisonment for the electric chair. He has great faith in the well-run prison, for long terms or short. To the freed convict, he would have society give a more gentlemanly chance than it now does...
...Author has been seeing prisons from within for 25 years. He was president of the National Wardens' Association in 1922. Many a convict counts him a great & good friend. He works in shirtsleeves when going through a batch of Sing Sing statistics. Usually mild mannered, he becomes for short periods, about a dozen times a year, nervous,, irritable, troubled with insomnia...
...visitors left before midnight. The prison quieted down. In a secluded room sat Convict Thomas ("Red") Moran, 22, who murdered two Brooklyn policemen in 1926. Convict Moran was playing pinochle with his keeper and talking to Warden Lawes and Father McCaffrey, the prison chaplain. About 1 a. m. some others came in. Convict Moran lit a cigaret. They led him to, and through, a little green door. He flipped away his cigaret and sat down silently in the electric chair. Six minutes later he was pronounced dead. It was New York's 288th execution...