Word: turnkeys
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...pallid inmates of one of the cell houses were assembled for a Thanksgiving Day cinema. The silence was broken by a shuffling of feet and hoarse muttering. Seven or eight convicts had slipped from their places and surrounded Assistant Turnkey Ray Singleton. They were dragging him towards a door from the cellhouse into the adjacent hospital. They were telling him to get the master key. Turnkey Singleton was answering that the master key, which would open the main door of the cellhouse, had been taken away from its usual place at the telephone switchboard...
Weapons began to flicker in the half-light of the prison-daggers and stilletos wrought out of files, kitchen utensils, shovels, razor blades. One man had an automatic pistol. As Turnkey Singleton stammered his answers, some one shoved a knife in his back. Someone else struck him deep in the stomach...
...sniping continued. Floodlights were arranged to prevent a night sortie. The convicts asked for a doctor. The Prison Physician went in to them and he found a whole night's work. Nine men, including Turnkey Singleton, lay dead. Four more were dying. Thirty-one convicts were wounded, one of whom died while the doctor was amputating...