WALLED CITY ASTOfcYOF THE CRIMINAL INSANE Hf EDWARD HUNTINGTON UCSB LIBRARY . /^7 A . THE WALLED CITY A STORY OF THE CRIMINAL INSANE BY EDWARD HUNTINGTON WILLIAMS, M.D. Formerly Assistant Professor of Pathology and Bacteriology, State University of Iowa; formerly Assistant Physician at the Matteawan State Hospital for Insane Criminals; Assistant Physician at the Manhattan State Hospital for the Insane, etc. FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY NEW YORK AND LONDON 1913 Copyright, 1913, by FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY (Printed in the United States of America) Published May, 1913 CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION 9 Chapter I. TYPES OF THE INSANE ... 13 Chapter II. SOCIAL POSITION IN THE WALLED CITY 27 Chapter III. LAW AND ORDER IN THE WALLED CITY 45 Chapter IV. THE CITIZENS AT PLAY . . 65 Chapter V. THE LAW'S LONG ARM . . 97 Chapter VI. THE SHORTCOMINGS OF THE CITY RULERS 143 Chapter VII. WITS versus THE LONG ARM 163 Chapter VIII THE "SHOT" 189 Chapter IX. CONTENTED CITIZENS . . . 213 Chapter X. WHEN DANGER THREATENS THE CITY 231 Chapter XI. INJUSTICE WITHIN THE WALLS 243 Chapter XII. THE EFFECTS OF GOOD GOV- ERNMENT . . 253 ILLUSTRATIONS PACING PAGE A FAMOUS WALLED CITY . . Frontispiece DORMITORY AND LIBRARY IN THE DANNE- MORA (N. Y.) STATE HOSPITAL .... 52 DAY ROOM AND MACHINE SHOP IN THE HOS- PITAL AT OVERBROOK, N. J 53 AN EXHIBITION OF HOME-MADE PRODUCTS IN THE HOSPITAL AT OVERBROOK, N. J. 80 THE ATTRACTIVE AMUSEMENT HALL AT OVERBROOK, N. J 81 A WALLED-CITY BROOM FACTORY .... 134 CITIZEN RUG MAKERS 135 A MODEL KITCHEN 156 THE BAKERY IN THE HOSPITAL AT OVER- BROOK, N.J 157 RECREATION HALL AT THE DANNEMORA (N. Y.) STATE HOSPITAL 196 THE PROLONGED BATH 197 A DAY ROOM IN THE DANNEMORA (N. Y.) STATE HOSPITAL 224 AN AMUSEMENT HALL AT THE DANNEMORA (N. Y.) STATE HOSPITAL 225 AN ATTRACTIVE COURT YARD FOR PA- TIENTS AT OVERBROOK, N. J 256 ONE OF THE DINING-ROOMS IN THE HOSPITAL AT OVERBROOK, N. J 257 INTRODUCTION So far as I am aware no true story of the life of the insane criminal has ever been written for the general public. It has been told in a technical manner, of course, for the benefit of those interested in the scientific and sociological aspect of the subject, but such writings have little popular interest, and do not convey a cor- rect picture to the mind of the average reader. There have also been sensational writings by former inmates, or by well- meaning enthusiasts, who have taken a hasty and altogether inadequate survey of some criminal institutions and upon this veneer have founded their stories. But none of these writings give the average reader a true picture of the daily life as it goes on in these interesting institutions. 9 INTRODUCTION The first are too technical; the second too prejudiced; the last too unreliable as to facts. It is my purpose here to tell of the life in these "Walled Cities" as I have seen it, untrammeled by the restraint that curbs the person holding an official position, the bias that blinds the former inmate, or the mere surface knowledge of the outsider. With this end in view I have confined my- self largely to a straightforward narrative of events, most of which have come under my personal observation in the last fif- teen years. To the generality of people many of these things are novel and start- ling; to those familiar with the subject they are commonplace facts. But I be- lieve that most people will be surprised to find that the picture, on the whole, is not a particularly gloomy one, as they may have imagined it. There are high lights here as in every other picture. 10 Chapter I TYPES OF THE INSANE 11 THE WALLED CITY Chapter I TYPES OF THE INSANE Occasionally some outsider penetrates the secret chambers of some interesting but obscure community glances between the covers of the closed book of a Shaker colony, a Mormon settlement, a Trappist retreat and finds a new world full of in- terest because of its very novelty. Here he finds ordinary human beings like him- self who are living lives like our own in the main, and yet with certain distinct dif- ferences differences that have become characteristic of each community. It is these differences, of course, that are of perennial interest to the outsider. 13 THE WALLED CITY Most of the pages of these erstwhile closed books of the communities, however, have been so thoroughly scanned in recent years that much of the novelty and charm of turning the pages has disappeared. They are now simply well-thumbed tomes in our library of general information. But there are other interesting com- munities scattered all over the world whose doings are quite as interesting and vastly more thrilling than those of prosaic Shaker or Trappist. Every country and every state has such settlements com- munities of the greatest importance to the commonwealth of which many people have never heard, and into whose secret chambers few, indeed, have even pene- trated, outside a small official family. Closely guarded, heavily walled institu- tions where the criminal mental derelict finds a resting place, frequently a haven. I refer to those institutions for the care of 14 TYPES OF THE INSANE the criminal insane, great Walled Cities, as strongly built and as carefully guarded as medieval strongholds, and frequently with quite as many inhabitants within the walls. The very name of these institutions sug- gests creepy possibilities. To most per- sons the word " asylum" suggests only visions of padded cells and strait- jack- ets; yet neither of these things are now found in most criminal asylums. But there are many things to be seen about such in- stitutions quite as interesting and far less repulsive. Within the tightly closed walls of these great establishments life goes on, with its loves and hates, desires and ex- pectations, hopes and ambitions, almost the same as in the great world outside. Almost, but with a difference. In the very nature of things life, with its various imports, does not cease to the condemned man with the closing behind 15 THE WALLED CITY him of the steel portals of Matteawan, or any other similar institution. His hopes for the future, while they may be perverted according to outside standards, are just as real, true, and important to him, as are those of his more fortunate brother. A Thaw or a Shrank commits a revolting crime, is adjudged insane, and sent away to the criminal asylum to spend the rest of his days there. To the world he is dead, for he will never appear again out- side. And yet his life goes on, possibly becomes a happier and more useful life than it has ever been before. Something of the life as led by such men must surely be of interest to many people. To most people the insane man is a hair- tearing, raving creature, quite different from our normal selves. But in point of fact most lunatics are not "raving mani- acs ' ' at all. Someone has said that ' ' there are more raving maniacs in works of fic- 16 TYPES OF THE INSANE tion than ever existed in fact"; and in truth the most dangerous lunatic may be the very antithesis of the raving maniac, the cool, calculating, melancholy type of person, rather than the excited one. Yet of course the excited ones do exist, al- though in the wards of the Walled City their numbers do not predominate are scarcely more proportionately, indeed, than the excitable members of many nor- mal communities. Excitability alone, then, cannot be taken as a distinguishing characteristic of the inhabitants of the City. But what is the distinguishing mark of these people ? How are we to tell an inhabitant if we should chance to meet him? The answer is a difficult one : so difficult, indeed, that no one has as yet been able to express it satisfactorily. And yet there is a very definite answer ; one upon which all the rulers of all Walled Cities will 17 THE WALLED CITY agree. But it is one born of experience, and no one can learn it from rules found in books, any more than the diamond ex- pert can learn to detect the gem from the imitation except by long practice. The significant thing is that he can detect the difference with unfailing certainty. If asked to tell just how he did it, he is at a loss for an answer. He could not lay down any rules or give scientific tests that would enable anyone to learn to detect the gem at a glance anyone but an expert like himself who has learned by long practise what apparently cannot be learned in any other way. The case of the expert judge of insanity is in many ways analogous to that of the gem-expert. Long practise and long as- sociation make it possible for him to de- tect mental aberration almost instinc- tively. Unlike the gem expert, however, he is unable to confirm his diagnosis im- 18 TYPES OF THE INSANE mediately by chemical analysis if neces- sary, although in practical results the great institutions where the patients are confined and carefully observed may be said to play the part of the chemical lab- oratory for a final determination. Instead, therefore, of attempting the im- possible task of defining the conditions of the inhabitants of the Walled City, we shall do better, after glancing hastily at a few of the more general types, to tell some- thing of the every-day life of the inhabi- tants. How they are governed, what they think and do, and what finally becomes of the great majority of them. As we said a moment ago, a much more common type of man than the excited maniac, always to be seen in the halls of every asylum, is the melancholy type of lunatic. All day long he may be seen sit- ting with drooping head and shoulders bowed down by the weight of imaginary 19 THE WALLED CITY sorrows. He pays no attention to his sur- roundings; the palace would be the same as the prison to him; for he cannot take his thoughts from himself and his trou- bles, and surroundings make no difference. Possibly he varies the monotony of sitting drooping in his chair by shuffling up and down, up and down the halls, wringing his hands, and repeating his sorrows, or mum- bling incoherently to himself. Or, again, he may refuse to speak at all under any circumstances; or, if he can be roused to answer a question, he mumbles some dis- connected and entirely irrelevant sentence a meaningless jumble of words that he has repeated thousands of times. It is this type of insane man that is most frequently imitated by malingerers, of whom I shall have more to say a little farther on. The reason for this is obvious. Even a very poor actor may simulate de- pression and sorrow, may mumble one in- 20 TYPES OF THE INSANE coherent sentence, may refuse to speak or eat. And such a person may deceive even a very skilful expert for a time, as shown by such a case as that of Nellie Bly. But it requires a consummate actor, with the skill of a Booth or an Irving, to imitate the raving maniac in a manner to deceive the alienist. It is doubtful, indeed, if any malingerer who attempted this form of de- ception ever succeeded for any very great length of time. Almost as common as the melancholy type of lunatic is the man who hears imag- inary voices calling him; imaginary to others, but terribly real to him. Wherever he goes, whatever he does, his voices fol- low him and call to him. Possibly they tell him to kill : in which case we may have the insane murderer. Perhaps they command him to burn; and a "fire bug" is the re- sult. Or perhaps they confine themselves to heaping abuses and revilings upon the THE WALLED CITY afflicted man himself. Escape from their torments is impossible; and it is the vic- tim of such hallucinations that springs from his chair now and again shaking his fist in the air and cursing his tormentors when he can bear their torments no longer. Occasionally, though far less frequently, the imaginary voices bear pleasant mes- sages. And then the listener smiles to himself, or even laughs outright at the funny things they tell him. But by far the most dangerous, and all too common, type of insanity is that known technically as ' ' paranoia, " and popularly as monomania. This is the type where most of the faculties may appear to be practically normal, and judgment and rea- soning power seem unimpaired save only on the one subject, or train of subjects, of the delusion. Unfortunately this delusion usually takes the form of imaginary perse- cution. An employer, or a friend, or a 22 TYPES OF THE INSANE relative, is plotting against the victim. Day after day he goes about his business secretly bearing his cross, until the load becomes intolerable; and then may come some terrible tragedy the assassination of a Garfield or a Humbert. As a member of the Walled City com- munity this man's condition is likely to be most deceptive. He is intelligent, active, useful. He reads the literature of the day and can discuss all subjects intelligently and logically save only the one that most vitally concerns him. No one but an expert may detect his abnormality, unless fa- miliar with his fixed delusion. But he is doomed to remain a permanent member of the community, for no case of this kind of insanity has ever been known to recover. There are still other types of insanity that have come to be recognized only in recent years, such as the one known fa- miliarly as * * paresis. ' ' But suff erers from 23 THE WALLED CITY this form of aberration are not quite as likely to be found in criminal institutions as in the more aristocratic ones. It is essentially a disease of high-life, although the lower strata of society do not escape entirely. And since our dealings are with the criminal insane the discussion of this and some of those other forms of mental afflictions may be left for another place, particularly as our concern here is largely with them as members of a definite com- munity rather than with their forms of mental affliction. Chapter II SOCIAL POSITION IN THE WALLED CITY Chapter II Pen pictures of the insane in the differ- ent phases of their insanity give only vague impressions of the actual life as it goes on within the City. A closer inspec- tion and a more intimate association are necessary if we are to become acquainted with the innermost workings of the com- munity. One orientated into the mysteries of the criminal asylums would soon discover that altho there is no distinction of classes as far as the asylum authorities are con- cerned, yet such distinctions do exist in the wards. Patients of all classes mingle 27 THE WALLED CITY in the great sitting rooms of the building, from fifty to a hundred of them in each of the well-lighted halls. All eat the same kind of food, sleep on the same kind of beds. All of them are criminals and pris- oners. Yet there are " aristocrats " and "common herd" here, just as there are outside. Your forger of a fifty thousand dollar check, or the professional safe- blower and bank robber, may be on the best of terms with the common "sneak thief" seated near him may even conde- scend to play cards with him and chew his tobacco. But as for considering him as an equal ! That is quite another matter. ' ' Why that fellow is nothing but a sneak thief," a burglar said to me one day, speaking in all seriousness contemptu- ously of a fellow convict. "Well, you are in for burglary yourself, are you not?" I suggested mildly. "Sure I am," he assented, "but not for 28 SOCIAL POSITION pocket picking. I am a second-story man, I am." There it was in a nut-shell. In our Walled City all were convicts, but not the same kind of convicts. The housebreaker held the pick-pocket in contempt, and was in turn looked down upon by the forger, and so on up the scale of the social ladder. And, when one came to know the different classes better, one discovered that there was a good reason for this : that the men- tal gap between a "high-class" criminal, such as a safe-blower, and a common sneak thief is as wide as that between a Stewart or a Wanamaker and a corner groceryman. This mental gap is evidenced in many ways. In newspaper reading, for example, the "yellow journal" that appeals to the low-class criminal is often looked upon with contempt by his "high-class" brother and in the criminal asylums newspaper reading is a favorite pastime. A patient 29 THE WALLED CITY may be greatly perverted on some particu- lar subject, or have the most peculiar fixt delusion about himself, and yet be able to read, appreciate, and enjoy the newspa- pers. Not only that, but he may have a grasp of political situations and financial conditions that would do credit to any hon- est citizen outside. I had charge of a criminal patient at one time who firmly believed that he was the president of the United States. The ear- nestness of his belief had brought him to the asylum. And yet this man was ra- tional enough on most other subjects, and had sufficient intelligence to discuss po- litical and financial situations of the day with quite as keen perception and with as calm judgment as any intelligent man out- side. But even so much as touch the magic button that connected with his delusion, even hint that he himself was not the presi- dent of whom the papers were speaking. 30 SOCIAL POSITION and this man of keen perception would be transformed into a gibbering sophist. It is this type of unfortunate who is for- ever being haled to court, and convicted and sent to prison, because he "cannot tell right from wrong." He can do so in the abstract but not in the case where self is involved. This man in the hospital will often ridicule a patient whose delusion is a counterpart of his own, and yet be abso- lutely unable to recognize the similarity of their cases. Such cases afford thought for the crim- inologist, and should be better understood by juries and jurists. And this is equally true of another class of cases, those that can do some things so well and still be so irrational and irresponsible. In a certain town in the West not long ago a murderer was condemned and exe- cuted, largely because he was the best euchre player in the jail in which he was 31 THE WALLED CITY confined before his trial. No one doubted or disputed the charge of murder brought against him ; indeed he admitted it himself. As a defense his lawyer entered the plea of insanity, and the usual number of medi- cal experts pro and con testified at the trial. But it was brought out that the ac- cused, who spent much of his time while in jail in playing euchre, was the best player in the place. This fact so impressed the jury (as I was told by a juryman after- wards) that it outweighed all the other evi- dence. They argued that the man was shamming; that any man who could play cards so well "was not so very crazy/* And yet there are men in every asylum men so demented that no jury could fail to recognize their true mental condition who are good euchre players. Card-playing, indeed, is one of the chief amusements among the patients of the criminal asylums. From morning until 32 SOCIAL POSITION night groups of players may be seen, for- getful for the moment of delusions and hallucinations in the fascinations of the game. It is because of this induced for- getfulness that the hospital authorities en- courage card-playing among their charges. It is curious to observe how habit and past experience influence the players. Most of them play the games that were familiar to them in their rational days, and do not attempt to learn new ones. In- deed a large percentage of the players are absolutely incapable of learning a new game at all, altho they may play an excellent game of the one familiar to them. This applies particularly to the simpler games such as euchre games which can be played mechanically, and do not re- quire the tax of memory necessary to play- ing such a game as whist. But even some of the very good whist players find it diffi- cult to learn new games. Their minds run 33 THE WALLED CITY fairly well in the old established channels, but rebel at taking new highways. An example of how firmly the mind be- comes fixt by frequent and persistent repetitions, and how much like a machine it becomes under these circumstances, is furnished by the case of a gambler who was a patient in a criminal asylum. In his younger days the man had been an ex- pert euchre player, which game, curiously enough, was the one he played in gambling, instead of the usual poker. When he came to the asylum his mind, altho crowded with delusions, was still keen in many ways. Naturally at that time he was the crack euchre player in the City, and he spent hours every day at the playing tables. Little by little his mind failed, his keenness of thought dulled, until at last he became too stupid to appreciate any but the most commonplace things about him. He seemed, indeed, an automaton, scarcely 34 SOCIAL POSITION more intelligent than the mechanical ones exhibited in museums. And yet, even in this stage of dementia, he could still play an excellent game of euchre. The five cards held in his hand seemed to touch some responding centers in his brain that were still open to impression, open to those impressions, at least, that had been worn deepest by years of repetition. Judged by the standard of his card playing the man was a responsible, intelligent being : by any other standard he was scarcely higher than many of the lower animals. But newspaper reading, card playing, ball playing and the like, while favorite amusements in the City, are no more dis- tinctively characteristic of the Walled City than of other cities where walls are un- necessary. There are some other ways of passing the time, however, which are es- sentially characteristic of the inhabitants. For example, one sometimes sees a pa- 35 THE WALLED CITY tient engaged in vigorously twisting the rung of a chair, gripping it tightly, twist- ing and turning it with his hands, until the perspiration starts. Anon he varies the performance by hooking the ends of his fingers together, pulling hard until they relax and snap apart from sheer muscular exhaustion. Or he may stand before the bars at the window, grasping a pair of them between thumb and finger-tips, and twist and pull as if he would break the steel with his digits. To the uninitiated such actions are simply the freaks of an insane man. But the merest tyro on the ward, if you ask him, will tell you that the man is vigor- ously exercising the muscles of his fingers, keeping them strong and well developed so that he will be able to practise his profes- sion successfully when he is released. His 11 profession," if you please, is that of pocket-picking in general, and watch- 36 SOCIAL POSITION pocket-picking in particular. If his fingers are not strong he will find some difficulty in deftly extracting the watch from a pocket and in "ringing" it with one hand, leaving the useless ring dangling at the end of the chain. And so, as the following of his trade is denied him temporarily, he takes the means that we have seen of keep- ing in condition for work as soon as the gates of the City are opened to him. Not quite as enigmatic as the actions of the watch-ringing man are those of another man who may be giving a kind of private performance of his own in some other part of the hall. This man is apparently a physical culture enthusiast. He hangs by his arms from a convenient cross bar, or a door frame, or even the bars at the win- dow, drawing himself up and down as many times as he can, until his face is purple and his muscles quiver. Sometimes he varies this performance by simply 37 THE WALLED CITY hanging at arm's length as long as he can, or perhaps hanging by each hand al- ternately. Possibly you may venture the comment that such enthusiasm in exercising is very commendable ; and even wonder if the man is a believer in " health foods," and a veg- etarian diet, like so many other physical culturists. If you inquire of the man him- self, however, you will discover that physi- cal culture is not merely a hobby with him. He too is preparing himself for the prac- tise of his calling, which in the City is re- garded as a very much higher one than that of the watch ringer. He is a ' ' second- story man" the burglar who must earn his living by clambering laboriously into second-story windows, since an unkind world sees fit to cover its windows of the lower story with iron bars. The results are practically the same, of course, but the work is much more arduous ; and one must 38 SOCIAL POSITION have his climbing muscles in the very best of training. As this can be done only by constant exercise, a little time each day is given over from the too ample allowance of the City. This " watch ringer" and the "second- story man" represent the active, earnest type of citizens men who give much thought to to-morrow. They are repre- sentative of a class; but there are other classes far less strenuous, who let the morrow take care of itself. There is al- ways the chronic good-story teller the prototype of the grocery-box philosopher of the country town and he reels off yarns by the hour when he can find listen- ers, as usually he can. Every Walled City has some of these who are the "charac- ters" of the community, and "many of their stories are well worth listening to. Indeed this same story teller may have earned a good living telling these same THE WALLED CITY stories before the footlights in former days, and before he fell into evil ways. I knew one of these wags by the name of Jackson who acted as a leaven to the mirth of the whole ward wherever he was stay- ing. He had been a Citizen for many years, but his fund of stories seemed prac- tically inexhaustible; and he had the fac- ulty of giving a funny twist to everything that happened, serious or otherwise. The only subject that appealed to him seri- ously was the fact that he was kept a pris- oner. He would joke about it occasionally, to be sure, but more frequently the subject called forth his choicest sarcasms and fiercest vituperations. His shafts were always aimed at officers of the law in gen- eral, and the various officers who governed the City in particular. When a new patient was sent in to the ward, he was immediately buttonholed by Jackson. 40 SOCIAL POSITION " What's your name!" he inquired one day of a new Citizen. "John Igo," the newcomer replied. , ' ' Igo I ' ' queried Jackson. * ' How do you spell it?" "I-g-o," was the reply. Jackson thought the matter over for a minute and then said : "Young fellow, when you've been here a while you'll change the spellin' of that name. Instead of spellin' it I-go, you'll spell it I- stay." At another time a clergyman who was visiting the institution and had noticed Jackson asked that he might have a talk with Tiim. Accordingly Jackson was brought in to the superintendent's office, and, as it happened, was given a chair placed between the clergyman and the chief physician. On his right and left, there- fore, were representatives of two classes of persons whom he looked upon as ene- 41 THE WALLED CITY mies of mankind; and one of Jackson 's peculiarities was that he never allowed an opportunity to pass without expressing his opinion in the -most biting way possible. On this occasion he seated himself, crossed his knees and folded his hands in his lap and announced simply: 1 1 Gentlemen, I am a better man than the Saviour. ' ' "And in what way?" asked the clergy- man, innocently. "Why like this," said Jackson, turning from right to left and looking significantly at the men seated on either side of him; "The Saviour died between two thieves, but I'm alive and a settin' here." Chapter III LAW AND ORDER IN THE WALLED CITY Chapter III LAW AND ORDER IN THE WALLED CITY Before this time the question has prob- ably arisen in the mind of the reader, How, then, is this Walled City this veritable den of thieves controlled and governed. Since most of the inhabitants are crimi- nals, many of them desperate outlaws, all thirsting for liberty, how can such a city be governed by a handful of unarmed men if the inmates are allowed to mingle freely together? The answer is simple. And yet, to those not familiar with the peculiarities of in- sane patients, it is perhaps more incom- prehensible than any other single thing. 45 THE WALLED CITY Here is a ward on which there are some seventy-five criminals under the care of five keepers, unarmed and in no manner differently equipped from their patients, except that they carry keys. Physically they are no better than a corresponding number of the criminals. Why is it that some half dozen of the desperate inmates do not plan a concerted attack, secure the keys and escape ? The hope of gaining his liberty is uppermost in the mind of each and everyone of the seventy-five. Noth- ing, not even murder itself, would stand in the way of many of them to regain it. And yet they seldom attempt it, rarely ac- complish it. But why not? The answer is summed up in the fact that these men are insane; but this re- quires explanation. These men can play cards and other games, read and enjoy newspapers, perform many acts requiring complicated mental effort. To the casual 46 LAW AND ORDER observer many of them differ mentally very little from the average run of men in the common walks of life outside. But nevertheless they are different very dif- ferent. And one of the ways in which this obscure difference is shown is by the fact that as a rule they cannot act in concert, even for the short time necessary to ac- complish their dearest wish. To be sure the atmosphere of rigid dis- cipline is all about them, and this has a restraining effect; but this only explains the situation in part. Nor is it a lack of imagination or effort on their part, for in- dividually they frequently plan and exe- cute complicated and desperate means of escape. But when any number of them at- tempt to put their heads together and plan a general concerted movement, their in- sanity asserts itself and usually prevents success. There are of course instances of marked exceptions, as we shall see in an- 47 THE WALLED CITY other chapter, but as a general thing this condition of mind is usually dominant. The members of the Walled Cities, therefore, resemble the Powers in Europe, in that they cannot agree for any consider- able period upon any important point, and are too distrustful of each other to assert their full strength. It must not be understood that the mere moral effect of discipline will control all insane criminals; but it is certain that it influences each and every one in a general way, and governs their actions to a large extent. It frequently happens that when a new inmate arrives he has carefully planned means of fighting his way to lib- erty. Indeed many of them feign insanity in the prisons for this very purpose. But these visions usually vanish before any serious attempt is made to put them into effect. The new surroundings restrain them and distract their attention for a few 48 LAW AND ORDER days, and by that time they have discov- ered that unseen eyes and unknown influ- ences are acting all about them night and day to hold them to the usual routine of the institution. Possibly the newcomer confides to a fellow criminal his deep laid plans, asks his connivance perhaps. But as a rule he gets scant encouragement from this source; and gradually he falls into the prevailing habit of doing what he is told to do. Now and again the new man, eager to settle his scores at once, makes a desper- ate break for liberty almost as soon as he is brought in. More than likely he is in- cited to action by the apparent weakness of the stronghold five unarmed keepers, guarding some seventy odd criminals, each of whom he counts as a friend, because, like him, they are all prisoners. Under these circumstances he may attack his guards, possibly calling upon his comrades 49 THE WALLED CITY to assist. But here the lack of the power to act in concert asserts itself. In the mo- ment of indecision which determines the issue, five strong pairs of arms, guided by five normal minds that can act quickly and concertedly, overpower the newcomer, and the opportunity for his comrades to unite their strength is lost. Blows are seldom necessary and are sel- dom given; but the effect upon the crimi- nal is precisely the same as that of a pom- meling in the outside world. He would hesitate to attack a second time the man who has mastered him once outside; and he will have the same hesitation about again attacking his keepers in the City. It must not be understood that blows are never struck in the "Walled City. Blows must be struck sometimes even in the best organized communities, much as we may deplore the fact; but just as they are the exception in the outside world, so they are 50 LAW AND ORDER in asylums. The occasion arises from time to time, however, when desperate fights are absolutely unavoidable. For altho it is a, criminal act to strike an in- sane man in a hospital, no man is sup- posed to allow himself to be killed without offering every resistance in his power. It is these occasional cases that have led to the popular belief in the constant abuses of inmates in hospitals. It should be understood that punish- ment, as such, is not countenanced or al- lowed in any asylum. The man who is so insane that he must be confined in an asylum is not responsible for his actions and should not be punished for his mis- deeds. His restraint is not forced upon him as a punishment, but for the good of the general community. And the cases of occasional pommelings that occur in asy- lums are usually those where the attendant is obliged to act in self-defense. 51 THE WALLED CITY It cannot be denied that sometimes a man is afflicted with an unusual amount of "cussedness" as well as insanity. In cases where the cussedness developed first it requires a long training and a great amount of forbearance and self-control on the part of the keeper to excuse all the culprit's actions on the ground of his in- sanity. I have in mind a case in point, the peculiar outcome of which makes it worth relating. The man in question came into the criminal asylum charged with the crime of assaulting an officer. He was a large, raw-boned, surly fellow, who began mak- ing trouble almost as soon as he came into the ward. Before twenty-four hours had passed he had had three "set-tos" with other patients, winning all three, and proving himself a game fighter quite the unexpected with this type of man. When not wandering about "looking for trou- 52 DORMITORY AND LIBRARY IN THE DANNEMORA (N. Y.) STATE HOSPITAL Courtesy of Dr. Charles H. North DAY ROOM AND MACHINE SHOP IN THE HOSPITAL AT OVERBROOK. N. J. Courtesy of Dr. C. Payne LAW AND ORDER ble" as the attendant put it, he sat sul- lenly in a corner. So far he had confined his pugilistic at- tention to his fellow convicts, but it was evident that it would be only a matter of time until he would be reaching out and attacking his keepers. Indeed when I spoke to him about his actions he made no bones of it, assuring me that he would "do anyone he cared to," myself included. Such threats were not uncommon, even among really very harmless patients, who usually take out their spite entirely in talk; but this man had proved himself an actor as well as a talker; and what im- prest me most of all was the fact that the head attendant seemed to believe that the man meant what he said. As a head attendant in such a place usually under- stands the character of his charges, I gave the matter serious consideration, altho for the moment there was nothing that I could 53 THE WALLED CITY do but await developments, and hope the trouble would blow over. The following morning the attendant spoke to me again about the matter, and I could see that his patience was being sorely tried. "It's about come to this," he told me. "Either Carson (the patient) is going to run this ward, or else / am. Both of us thinks it's him that's going to do it, and I'm afraid there's going to be a lot of trouble. ' ' In my own mind I had no doubt as to who would run that ward. Carson was a powerful man and a good fighter; indeed he was practically "boss of the ward," as far as the patients went, at that moment. But I had faith in that particular head at- tendant quiet, pleasant, always kind to his men ; but square- jawed, well-knit, and quite able to take care of himself in any com- pany. I knew also that he would do noth- 54 LAW AND ORDER ing on the impulse of the moment, and would avoid trouble if possible. It was a difficult situation. I believed that nothing short of a good thrashing would do Carson any good, for his actions seemed more the result of " ugliness" than insanity. He was insane, but he was also a domineering bully, and had been one before he became insane. But, as I have said, punishment of any kind is discoun- tenanced, and very properly so, even in criminal asylums. So, after trying to show Carson the folly of his actions, I warned the keeper not to allow himself to get into a fight, which would mean discharge from the institution and possible arrest if he struck the man. The following afternoon, as I was pass- ing under Carson's window, he called to me and asked to speak with me in the ward. As soon as I came inside the door I could see that something had happened. 55 THE WALLED CITY Carson was no longer bully and cock-of- the-walk. He was a beaten man, or I never saw one. He said himself that he was was afraid that he was going to die, in fact, from the beating that the head at- tendant had given him. The charge against the attendant was of course a most serious one, and I there- fore summoned the man and questioned him. He admitted that he had had a "little tussle" with Carson but suggested that if there had really been the serious injury that Carson claimed, there would surely be some evidence of it in bruises and possibly broken bones. Acting on this suggestion I stript the patient and ex- amined him carefully, but I was unable to find any signs of injury except a small lump on the point of the jaw, which he might have received in any one of the numerous fights he had had with other pa- tients. The case against the attendant was 56 LAW AND ORDER not established, and was recorded as one of the numerous exaggerated charges con- stantly being made against the keepers by patients in these hospitals. One thing was certain, however: from that day on Carson was a changed man. He conducted himself properly at all times in the halls, grew more cheerful, became the best of friends with the head atten- dant, and was discharged six months later as cured. At the time of his leaving the institution he took particular pains to tell me how much he thought of the attendant, considering him "the best friend he ever had, " as he said. Some years later, when the affair had drifted out of my mind, I ran across Car- son on a street in New York. After the usual exchange of greetings he asked me if I had ever heard the true story of the al- leged beating he had once received. As I had not, he told me what I have no reason 57 THE WALLED CITY to doubt was an accurate account of the transaction. It seems that the attendant, driven to desperation by the exasperating conduct of Carson, had taken him upstairs into a small dormitory, locking the door from the inside and leaving the key in the lock. The beds had been pushed back, leaving a clear space, perhaps fifteen feet square, in the middle. In this space lay a pair of boxing gloves which the attendant proceeded to pull on, telling Carson to strip and get ready for a "good swift fight," as Carson put it. "Now young fellow/' the keeper con- tinued, * ' either you are going to get licked, or I am. Both of us can't run that ward, that 'sail." Carson jumped at the chance. He was bigger, and he believed stronger than the keeper, and until that time had never been whipt in his life. Furthermore he was 58 LAW AND ORDER bare fisted while the keeper wore the box- ing gloves for what reason Carson did not find out until later. But when the fight began the scales fell from his eyes. For the attendant, it seems, was a crack boxer. Rush and swing, jab, upper-cut, bite, or butt, as Carson would, he could not reach his man. And meanwhile he was receiving a steady pommeling over the solar plexus and on the neck in places that counted, but where the blows left no mark. In five minutes he had been knocked down as many times, and a final swing on the "point" put him down and out. The next thing he remembered was the attendant standing over him, smiling and asking if he had had enough. He had. It was that evening that he had com- plained to me about his beating. And when he had attempted to prove his case by showing his bruises he realized why the attendant had worn gloves, and why he had 59 THE WALLED CITY aimed his blows so persistently at his stomach and neck. Soft gloves against soft tissues left no tell-tale marks. From Carson's point of view his posi- tion was hopeless. Here was a man who could whip him any time he pleased, and from whom there was no getting redress. But the general effect, curiously enough, was to be most beneficial. Now for the first time he was obliged to govern his heretofore uncontrollable temper that had been getting him into trouble all his life. As a result he grew better mentally day by day, and came to look upon his conqueror as a true benefactor. "I had been needing that licking all my life," he said, "and if someone had given it to me ten years before I got it I should never have been either a lunatic or a con- vict. ' ' In this particular instance I am in- clined to think that the man was right, and that remedy was a good one. 60 LAW AND ORDER But this entirely unusual case of Car- son 's must not be taken as illustrating the method of governing the inhabitants within our Walled City, any more than the occasional clubbing of a citizen by a po- liceman is the method of governing outside cities. Cases of clubbings do occur neces- sary cases, and absolutely unavoidable ones in the best governed cities: and cases of severe punishments, necessary and unavoidable, do occur in the Walled City. But most citizens of either com- munities never have to be clubbed. The influence of the law, felt and appreciated unconsciously, acts in practically the same manner in controlling the insane criminal as it does in controlling the average good citizen. The difference is that the one must know that there is a wall around him with the uniformed representatives of the law always in sight, whereas the other can do without these obtrusive evidences. 61 Chapter IV THE CITIZENS AT PLAY Chapter IV THE CITIZENS AT PLAY Those who do not believe in the bene- ficial effects of such forms of amusements as theaters, concerts, and stage entertain- ments in general, will find food for thought in the fact that such entertain- ments are considered among the most beneficial forms of treatment for insanity. Every institution for treating mental dis- eases has its hall for holding theatricals, some of these halls being good-sized the- aters, quite as completely equipped as the ordinary city opera houses. The Walled City has its amusement hall like the rest, and a well-patronized hall it is. The kinds of entertainments given in 65 THE WALLED CITY these asylum amusement halls range from the regular home-talent concerts, given at stated intervals, to complete plays, and even grand operas, given by professional troupes. Frequently the professionals give their performance for charity's sake, and for the novelty of acting before an audience of insane criminals. ' Usually they find, greatly to their surprise, that their audiences behave no differently from the average audience outside, except per- haps that they are a little more apprecia- tive and enthusiastic. Occasionally, how- ever startling things happen. At the time when moving pictures first came into popularity a vaudeville troupe having a picture machine gave an enter- tainment at a well-known criminal institu- tion. The orchestra at this institution was a large one of about fifteen instruments, most of the musicians being inmates of the place. Among them was a young man 66 THE CITIZENS AT PLAY named Martin who was serving a twenty- year sentence for arson. At the time of his trial an attempt had been made to prove that burning things was an insane ten- dency with Martin that since childhood he had always had an irresistible desire to play with fire. But the young man him- self had stoutly denied the allegation, altho he knew that an admission might save him from prison. Under the circum- stances, therefore, he was convicted and given a long-term sentence. But after be- ing in the prison for a few months he had developed unmistakable signs of insanity, and had been transferred to the Walled City, where he had proved useful, and obedient, as well as intelligent. At the time of the advent of the moving picture machine, he was playing first violin in the orchestra. It happened that among the other pic- tures shown by the operator on this oc- 67 THE WALLED CITY casion was the familiar one of a New York fire, with the engines rushing to the scene, the building with the flames bursting from the windows, and the exciting rescues by the firemen. To make the scene still more realistic some members of the troupe be- hind the scenes clanged gongs and shouted at the appropriate times, making the per- formance thrilling and realistic. While the earlier pictures were being shown Martin had sat with the other mem- bers of the orchestra, his violin on his knee, thoroughly enjoying the program. But when the fire-scene was flashed upon the canvas there was a transformation. The long-supprest fiend within him as- serted itself with overpowering mastery. As the horses and smoking engines dashed by, Martin started from his chair, letting his violin fall to the floor. For a moment he stood with eyes bulging and glittering with excitement and then as the scene 68 THE CITIZENS AT PLAY shifted to the burning building, with the alluring flames licking up from the win- dows, he gave a scream, leapt over the foot-light screen, and made a wild dash for the canvas. What might have followed can only be surmised, for at that instant the operator turned off the pictures, leav- ing poor Martin standing dazed before the empty curtain. For an instant he gazed helplessly about him, and then, as he re- alized what had happened, he collapsed completely. So, also, did several members of the troupe in the wings. This impromptu exhibition of Martin's set at rest any doubts that existed as to his pyre-maniac tendencies. And on his part he could no longer deny his peculi- arity. He confessed that it had been growing upon him since childhood, gradu- ally increasing until it was now entirely beyond his control. He was so ashamed of his abnormality that he would never admit 69 THE WALLED CITY it, although his parents had long suspected it. At first, as a child, the fire in the kitchen range had had a strange fascina- tion to him just as it has for most chil- dren only slightly exaggerated. This fascination increased, and with it the de- sire to set fire to everything about him, regardless of consequences, until at last it led him to commit the crime for which he was finally convicted. He knew very well at his trial that if he had chosen to tell his story he would probably escape severe punishment, for there was no motive in his crime. But he felt that, even if he did escape, his ungovernable impulse would eventually get him into prison perhaps even the death chamber and he had be- come tired of fighting against his peculiar mental obliquity. Martin's case was one of the most piti- able I have ever known. Here was a bright young man, honest, upright, and straight- 70 THE CITIZENS AT PLAY forward, whose only affliction took such a form as to make him perhaps the most dangerous enemy to society, and doomed him to eke out a miserable existence among creatures abhorrent to him in every way. But we are wandering far afield from our subject of entertainments within the Walled City. The most picturesque of these, of course, are those given by the Citizens themselves, where the various qualities of home talent are brought out. Most of these, in the na- ture of things, are commonplace, altho there is occasionally something that is strikingly good. And here let me pause and say a few brief words in behalf of the " manager" of the theatrical "talent" in the Walled City. Other managers of theatrical folk outside have no path of roses; but picture if you can the trials of the man who attempts to 71 THE WALLED CITY stage a production where the "talent" is composed of insane criminals. When in addition to all the whims and caprices common to stage people, vanity, pride, jealousies, you add delusions, hallucina- tions, and criminal instincts, some idea may be had of the martyrdom to which the unknown Walled City theatrical manager is condemned. His easiest task is when a home-talent "concert" is to be given. Then he has simply to go through his list of people who can (and will) sing or dance, those who can recite or tell stories, those who know some acrobatic or other "stunts," etc., make out his program, and await the time for the curtain. But even in this relatively simple task he must use discre- tion and tact. There are some time-hon- ored performers, even in the City, who cannot be lightly ignored. For example, in one institution with which I was fa- 72 THE CITIZENS AT PLAY miliar there was a well-known character who always appeared on the program of every entertainment and rendered a "piano solo." For years it had been the custom for Eddie Hawkins to play the piano once at every concert. Not only to play at each concert, but always to play the identical tune, "The Frolic of the Frogs Waltz," the only "concert tune" he knew. Had he been omitted by any chance from any program he would have started an open revolt among the "talent" that would have cleared the stage of every per- former in the place. For while Eddie's defects as a pianist were easily recognized by the audiences who, by the way, knew the "real thing" from "rot" as they called it Eddie was such a favorite personally with all the Citizens, and his peculiar pride in his one tune and his obtuseness to the true situation regarding it were such, that 73 THE WALLED CITY everyone would have rebelled at a pro- gram that omitted it. Eddie's "Frolic of the Frogs" came to be like the benediction after the sermon: nobody listened to it, but everyone would have missed it if it hadn't been there. At the proper point in the evening's per- formance the manager would solemnly an- nounce : "A piano solo, 'The Frolic of the Frogs,' by Mr. Eddie Hawkins. ' ' And then Eddie would appear from the flies, bow seriously, adjust the piano stool and play his "solo." He always received an encore, always returned and repeated the "trio" part of the waltz, and again solemnly bowed himself off the stage. Sometimes a new manager would try to remedy things by having Eddie learn a new "solo" from time to time, since he must be on the program. But herein lay the difficulty: Eddie couldn't learn new 74 THE CITIZENS AT PLAY pieces. Like the card players referred to a few pages back, he could remember pieces learned years before, but was no longer capable of committing new ones to memory. Usually the colored members of the Walled City community are about the most satisfactory and enthusiastic stage performers. The inordinate vanity of some of these men, and the means they will devise to get themselves before the footlights, are amazing. One man, named Sam Gilmore, who had once been a regu- lar performer, but whose single accom- plishment of dancing had at last worn out its attraction, on hearing that he had been omitted from the program of a special per- formance that was to be given two nights running for the benefit of some visitors in the neighboring town, came to the man- ager and asked to be allowed to do a "fire- eating act." He said that it was an old 75 THE WALLED CITY accomplishment of his and promised to create a sensation by his performance. All he required was some cotton, a candle, and a chance to get before the audience. As this act was a decided novelty, he was put on the program. When it came time for his act Sam ap- peared bowing and scraping with a wad of cotton as big as his fist in one hand, and a candle in the other. Tearing off a piece of cotton the size of his thumb he would light it at the candle, and then while in full blaze cram it into his mouth, and pretend to swallow it with great relish. His per- formance was received with proper en- thusiasm by the audience, which inspired the colored man to such a pitch of excite- ment that he tore off bigger and bigger pieces, thrusting them into his mouth with the flames curling about his lips and nose. When he finally finished his exhibition and came into the wings radiant with success, 76 THE CITIZENS AT PLAY his cheeks were bulging with charred cot- ton. When time came for the performance the following night Sam was on hand eager for his act. But one of the phy- sicians, happening to stop to speak to him in the wings, noticed that his speech was thick; and, taking him to a light, found that his nose, lips, tongue, and mouth were burned to a blister. He must have been in great pain, and, as was found later, had been unable to eat anything all day; and yet he was willing to go on and repeat his performance. Not only willing but so eager to do so that he wept and was in- consolable when it was forbidden him. No pain and suffering were too great when the reward was to be the coveted applause of his mates. It developed afterwards that Sam knew nothing whatever of the trick of ''fire eating." He had simply thought of 77 THE WALLED CITY this means of getting on the program, and was willing to sacrifice anything to ac- complish that end. Another colored performer in the same City was a clever buck-and-wing dancer, named Noah Roberts. Like Sam, he had been a regular performer for years, his good dancing and his grotesque contor- tions being a perennial source of amuse- ment. His exhibition was not of the stereotyped variety, as he always intro- duced some novel, startling, and amusing feature into each performance. The only thing that he insisted on as remaining fixt and unchangeable was the tune played by the orchestra. This he insisted should al- ways be the same old-time familiar jig, and without variations or flourishes. Fre- quently the orchestra leader remonstrated, pointing out that a new tune played in the same kind of time would answer quite as well, and lend variety. But Noah was ob- 78 THE CITIZENS AT PLAY durate ; it must be his own tune, or there would be no dance. As Noah was the antithesis of obstinacy in all other things the orchestra leader was puzzled over the matter. Finally he made the discovery that the colored man had become very deaf, an affliction that he would not acknowledge and strove to conceal. It seemed clear that his reason for insisting on having the one tune played had something definite to do with his deaf- ness, but in just what way was not appar- ent, since in any event he could not hear the music. By carefully watching the negro during the rehearsals, however, the leader discovered that while dancing Noah never took his eyes off the first violinist ; that, indeed he was not dancing to the music but to the time of the violinist's bow, which in case of the particular jig in question marked the time perfectly. Evi- dently if the violins stopped playing, al- 79 THE WALLED CITY lowing the air to be carried by such instru- ments as the clarionet or flute, Noah could not follow the time. The orchestra leader said nothing of his discovery, but he determined to have some fun at the negro's expense. He arranged the music so that the wind instruments should carry the air, and instructed the first violinist to play a special contralto part of long notes and rests that would give no indication of the time by the motions of the bow. When the next time came for Noah's dance the orchestra struck up the old fa- miliar tune, and the negro, gorgeously ar- rayed, took his place ready to dance, his face wreathed in an ebony smile. He poised on one foot watching the violinists for a moment, his smile relaxed a little, he waited a moment more but he did not begin dancing. Several times he nodded vigorously to the violinist, and when no 80 I THE CITIZENS AT PLAY response came he leaned over and said blandly : "Misto fiddler, will you please play, sahf" Since all this time the orchestra had been roaring out the tune, apparently the same as ever, the audience regarded this as one of Noah's variations to his regular performance, and began to laugh. Noah on his part was sorely puzzled. After re- peating his request a second time and waiting a moment for the response, he finally broke into his dance, regardless of time. It was a weird performance one of the most fetching he had ever done, had he but known it. Here was the negro furi- ously slap-slapping the boards in one kind of time, while the orchestra played an- other. To anyone but a deaf person it was a thing almost impossible to do, and the audience showed its appreciation of it by vigorous applause and peals of laughter. 81 THE WALLED CITY This was the last straw; for Noah sup- posed that they were jeering at him. With his face even a deeper ebony color with rage he stopped dancing, leaned over the foot-lights, and shouted at the violinist: "Look a heah, Misto fiddler, you play, or I stop dancin'!" And when the violinist kept serenely on with the timeless bowing, the enraged negro flounced off the stage. It was pronounced by the audience the best "take off" performance Noah had ever given, and they applauded it roundly. But poor Noah didn't know this. He was sulking in the dressing room, too deaf to hear what was happening outside. But it isn't always the performers who have the jokes played on them. Some- times it is the manager. Or again the actors play doubtful and sometimes dan- gerous practical jokes on each other, which must be winked at within certain 82 THE CITIZENS AT PLAY limits, particularly if the participants are star performers. A very popular form of entertainment is a play, or sketch, that has been written or "arranged" by some aspiring Citizen- playwright. Usually such plays are mod- eled on some of the familiar old-time dramas perverted to suit the taste of the playwright or the audience. Dramatic acts and situations are always at a pre- mium in these plays, but by all means the most popular of these acts is where some- body, hero or villain, it makes little differ- ence, gets a chance to shoot, stab, or slug a policeman. For be it said to the credit of the blue-coated city protectors that they are the most thoroughly hated of any class of persons in the world by the Walled City inhabitants. Whenever it is possible a policeman is introduced as one of the charaters in these home-made City plays; and in some part THE WALLED CITY of the performance lie is sure to come in for a drubbing, at least. The villain "lays for him" in some dark corner, or some other dire calamity happens to him, to the infinite delight of the audience. In one particular play, where the hero was to knock out the officer with a well aimed "left swing," the part was acted so vig- orously and realistically by the hero that the manager found great difficulty in find- ing anyone to take the part of the police- man. For the hated blue uniform inspired the hero with such real hatred that the "wallop" he gave was not the regulation 1 ' stage wallop ' ' at all, and no one cared to take chances on the probability of his for- getting himself at the final performance. In another of these home talent melo- dramatic performances arranged by a Cit- izen-playwright, the man who took the part of the hero had made himself par- ticularly disliked, not only by the rest of 84 THE CITIZENS AT PLAY the company, but by almost every other person in the place, although the manager did not know it. In one act of the play this hero was to fight a "duel" with box- ing gloves, to vindicate his own honor and that of the inevitable down-trodden fe- male. In the rehearsals his opponent had been the regulation villain of the plot, whom he knocked out according to precon- certed arrangement. On the night of the performance, however, some of the con- spirators secreted in the dressing room a bona fide pugilist, who was a patient on one of the wards, until the boxing act was to come. Then this real pugilist appeared in the extemporized ring in place of the regular villain. And the walloping that he gave the poor hero, who was supposed to be walloping him all the time, will go down in that Walled City's stage history as one of its most satisfactory events. All the scores that the troupe had against that 85 THE WALLED CITY hero were settled in full by the "pug" then and there. Afterward the pugilist had to settle with the manager, of course. But that was com- paratively easy. And the pleasure of lam- basting the hated hero before five hundred of his associates was sufficient compensa- tion for any punishment that might fol- low, which at most would be only the with- drawal of certain privileges. But such things as these are really the minor forms of difficulties with which the manager has to contend. His real diffi- culties come in when such things as sud- den attacks of epilepsy or maniacal excite- ment develop among the performers. Fortunately his audiences are lenient in their criticism of these particular things. The experience of one manager with an untried star performer illustrates the em- barrassing situations that sometimes arise. Because of the lack of local talent, the 86 THE CITIZENS AT PLAY season had been a particularly annoying one to the manager, who was one of the young doctors on the medical staff. The result was that most of the entertainments had been of a mediocre grade. But one day there came to the institution a young man who claimed to be a sleight-of-hand performer a former pupil of the only Hermann. He was a half-breed Indian, and altho he was obviously very insane, and had many delusions, he was still able to juggle in a most astonishing manner. The young doctor gave him a trial at once in a private room to see if he could really do all or even a small part of all the things that he claimed. It was hardly a fair test even for the very best of per- formers as there was no chance for prep- aration of any kind. But after the Indian had borrowed a handkerchief and made it do all sorts of disappearing and reappear- ing acts under the very noses of the on- 87 THE WALLED CITY lookers; had done the same things with coins and pocket knives; and had wound up the entertainment by exchanging the watches of two of the men without their discovering it, he was voted a success, and invited to act as star performer in an en- tertainment to be given the following eve- ning. This was a very unusual proceed- ing, for newcomers are seldom trusted before the footlights until their peculiari- ties are observed for some little time. But the case was so urgent, and the Indian was so obviously a veteran performer, that the usual rule was waived. He was told to make out a list of the things he needed and they would be forthcoming. After naming over a number of things he wished, the Indian said that if he was really to give a star performance he should need a dead cat a freshly killed kitten preferred. As a final act he said that he would bring the kitten back to life 88 THE CITIZENS AT PLAY and then eat it. As his talk had been of a rambling and boastful order all the time, this was interpreted as meaning that he would pretend to bring the cat back to life, possibly by substituting a live one, and then do the familiar trick of pretending to swallow it. Accordingly he was fur- nished with the dead kitten. In this institution it was customary when there was an unusually good pro- gram on the boards to invite some guests from the neighboring village to enjoy it. As the new Indian juggler promised to be a peculiarly attractive feature the invita- tions sent out were stretched to the limit of the seating capacity of the hall. In- deed, the Superintendent and several of the officers sent special invitations to some of their friends, who were invited also to remain after the entertainment and spend a social hour in the officers' quarters. It was a large and very select audience, 89 THE WALLED CITY therefore, that gathered to see the "In- dian wonder " when the time came for his closing performance. And he certainly "made good." He called dignified mem- bers of the audience to the stage, and re- lieved their pockets of all manner of undignified sausages and other things; and he managed to find whole handfuls of playing cards and poker chips in the pockets of a visiting clergyman, after get- ting from him the regulation denial that he ever indulged in the game. He made various objects float across the stage in a most mysterious manner, and shook flow- ers about the stage from an apparently empty funnel of paper in a manner that would have done credit to the wizard him- self. The young doctor standing in the wings and superintending things swelled with justifiable pride. His new acquisition was making the hit of the year. 90 THE CITIZENS AT PLAY The time had come at last for the cul- minating act of the performance, the bringing back to life and swallowing of the cat. The Indian stepped behind the scenes and secured the dead kitten, and then holding it up before the audience he announced gravely that he would close the performance by making a meal of it. And to the horror and disgust of everyone he started in to keep his word. The first bite that he took was supposed to be simply a clever, if not altogether a refined, trick. But there was no mistaking the second he was actually eating that cat. Before he could take a third bite the doctor in the wings hurriedly rang down the curtain; and what he may have said to that Indian has never been recorded. But quick curtain or hot words could not change the effect produced upon the audi- ence. From a crowd beaming with pleas- ure and expectation they were suddenly 91 THE WALLED CITY transformed into persons with distressed expressions very like those of the passen- gers on a Channel steamer when she be- gins her characteristic pitch and roll. The invited guests from the village were par- ticularly affected, and anxious to seek other quarters. But the most miserable creature of all was the young doctor who was responsible for the performance. He would gladly have sneaked to his room and locked him- self in with his troubles; but he was ex- pected to come to the informal reception in the Superintendent's quarters, and there was no escape. He dreaded most of all the meeting with the Superintendent himself, for in the few seconds that elapsed between the beginning of the In- dian's last act and the ringing down of the curtain he had caught a glimpse of the Superintendent's face pale, disgusted, wrathful. 92 THE CITIZENS AT PLAY The young man was not surprised, therefore, that his reception in the officers ' quarters was not in the nature of an ova- tion. And presently he was face to face with the Superintendent himself. "What did you mean?" that officer be- gan wrathfully, "What do you mean by perpetrating such a thing upon an audi- ence, Sir?" "What thing do you mean?" the culprit began, sparring for time and thinking fast. "What thing!" the outraged chief stormed. "Do you have the impertinence and bad taste to ask? You know well enough that I mean that last thing." It was now the young doctor's turn to be on his dignity. "If you mean that last imitation of pre- tending to swallow a rag doll made to look like a cat," he began "Well wasn't it a cat?" several people asked all at once. THE WALLED CITY The young man burst into peals of laughter forced, hysterical laughter. "Do you mean to tell me, seriously," he asked between gasps, "that any of you thought it was a real cat and that the In- dian really tried to eat it?" "Well we certainly did," everybody as- sured him; "but we're glad to know that we were wrong." And the expressions on their faces showed that they were telling the truth. "I can't understand it," the young man said to the Superintendent afterwards. "The thing was so obviously a fake, judged from where I stood in the wings, that I cut it out by ringing down the cur- tain on the fellow. If I had known how real it seemed to you people in the audi- ence, I wouldn't have stopped it." But to this day that Indian juggler has never appeared on another program. Chapter V THE LAW'S LONG ARM 95 Chapter V THE LAW'S LONG ARM If the much vaunted "honor among thieves" really existed to any such extent as is generally believed, if there was such a criminal's code of honor as sensational- ists would have us believe, the Walled City would have to strengthen its walls and double its guards. But it is the very lack of honor among the Citizens, the treachery to each other, that assists ma- terially in keeping them under control. It was said a moment ago that one of the great factors which aided in control- ling so large a number of lunatics was their mental peculiarity which prevented their making preconcerted attacks and assaults 97 THE WALLED CITY on a large scale. This is particularly true in the case of the more violent and usually more insane members of the community. But this factor is not so important in the case of dangerous, long-term convicts who are convalescent patients who are prac- tically recovered and are ready to go back to their prisons again. These men are able to plan together, can act in concert, and would be the most dangerous type of Citi- zens, if they could trust each other. It must be remembered that the thought uppermost in the mind of every member of the community, night and day, is how can he escape. But most of these men have discovered, through experience, that few of their fellows in crime are to be trusted, even with secrets concerning things of common interest. That there is, indeed, very little honor among thieves- far less, as would naturally be expected, than there is among honest people. And 98 THE LAW'S LONG ARM so when a member of the Walled City com- munity takes a confederate into his confi- dence, because he needs assistance, he knows that he lessens his chances of suc- cess, since his confederate may prove to be his undoing through treachery. If, for example, some inmate has found a means by which he thinks he can make his escape, he knows that if he has a confederate, and this confederate were to be put to a test where it was a case either of "squealing" on the whole thing or being punished, he would "squeal" nine times out of ten. In- deed, even without pressure being brought to bear upon him, the confederate would very likely tell of the entire plot and as- sist the officers in defeating it on the sly, if he thought he could gain some slight fa- vors from the officials. It is this flagrant dishonor among thieves, then, that is the salvation of the rulers of the Walled Cities. And at least 99 THE WALLED CITY ninety-five per cent, of the detections of plots that are being hatched in these crim- inal institutions, are made through the treachery of some of the plotters them- selves, or some of their intimate associ- ates. Knowing this, a cautious citizen guards his plans quite as carefully from his associates as he does from the officers of the institution. Perhaps an inmate has secured a piece of wire and is secretly making a skeleton key. He may be working only at night when his dormitory companions are asleep, and when he can keep an eye on the watch- man. Surely if the man on his left or right should detect him in his work, there would seem no good reason for this man wishing to defeat his entirely commend- able purpose of escaping, since every in- mate of the place would be glad to see any other escape, providing it did not impli- cate himself. But the great danger is that 100 THE LAW'S LONG ARM it may implicate Mm. Should the man who is working on the wire key fail in his attempt when the time comes to use it, or if he is detected in his work of making it, his nearest room-mates will naturally be suspected of being parties to the attempt. In this case they would forfeit their ''com- mutation time" for good behavior, and be blacklisted for all future favors of any kind. For attempting to escape, or aiding another to do so, is considered the very worst kind of behavior in the City. It be- comes a matter of self -protection, then, to "squeal"; and self -protection is a strongly developed trait among the members of a criminal community. Naturally this tattling is not done openly, and the victim may never even sus- pect who it was that "peached"; but by one means or another the officer in charge is pretty sure to find out that a wire key is being made, and who is making it. And 101 THE WALLED CITY while he carefully guards the secret of how he finds out about it, he is none the less able to frustrate the attempt. Thus the inmates of the City surreptitiously guard each other, and so, curiously enough, stand in their own way of escaping. Occasionally unforeseen and unexpected circumstances prevent the consummation of a well-laid plot. A providential attack of rheumatism once saved an institution from a wholesale "jail delivery" in a most unexpected manner. The victim of the at- tack of rheumatism, Jim Barnum by name, was a convalescent Citizen who was soon to be sent back to prison to serve out his sen- tence. A few days before the time for this transfer, however, he was attacked with acute inflammatory rheumatism which rendered him absolutely helpless, so that he was removed from his own ward and placed in the hospital ward. That night he sent an urgent message to the Superin- 102 THE LAW'S LONG ARM tendent, asking that he might see him privately. At this secret meeting he told the officer that in the bed of a certain patient, on the ward from which Barnum had just been removed, there were enough implements concealed to enable a man to " break out of the Bank of England." He told also how the tools had been smuggled in, and who did the smuggling. Acting on this information the Superin- tendent had the bed in question searched at once, with the result that a veritable * ' arsenal ' ' was discovered hack-saws, "jimmys," drills, and chisels. It was evi- dent from what was found that there was a confederate working on the outside who must have sent up the things on a string dangled from the window. Barnum 's motive in deciding to reveal the plot so suddenly is easily discerned: he was afraid that the other man's nerve would fail and cause him to backslide. 103 THE WALLED CITY Whichever told the story first could lay the blame on the other, and plead innocence himself. Barnum, of course, denied all complicity in the affair, claiming to have found out about it by mere chance, and only a few hours before. In all probability, however, he was at the bottom of the plot and had himself fished the things up from the out- side. But with the judgment born of long experience he had induced his companion to allow the tools to be secreted in his bed. Thus if they should be discovered or if the unexpected should happen (as it did), the blame could not be traced directly to Barnum. Had he delayed telling his story a few hours longer, it is probable that his accomplice would have transferred the "kit" to Barnum 7 s bed. By acting quickly, therefore, Barnum escaped with only a strong suspicion against him, while his companion was "caught with the goods." 104 THE LAW'S LONG ARM It is not always the convalescent pa- tients, however, that give trouble about attempting to escape. Occasionally a man who is so confused that he would not be able to find his way about the country if he were turned out has the genius for getting through locks. A newcomer of this kind, by the name of Barber, once picked the pocket of his attendant and secured a pass-key before he had been twenty-four hours in the building. He unlocked the door unobserved by anybody, and the first intimation anyone had of what he had done was when he was brought in by a stableman working in the barns, who had recognized Barber as a patient. After getting outside the door the patient had gone straight to the stable and asked the man to direct him how to get off the place, and even requested the loan of a horse. As soon as Barber was brought into the, ward again he was questioned about the 105 THE WALLED CITY key and what had become of it. He de- clared that he had thrown it away as soon as he had let himself out of the door ; and, as it could not be found anywhere about his clothing, a party of men were sent out to search the grounds for it. But they were unsuccessful, and after two hours gave up the search. An hour later the same stableman repeated his previous per- formance of bringing in the patient, who had again escaped, gone straight to the barns, as before, and asked directions, hav- ing apparently forgotten all about his pre- vious visit. It was now evident that the story of having thrown away the key was a fabrica- tion, as Barber had gone out of the same door as before and asked directions, as in the first instance. In all probability the key was concealed somewhere about the man's clothing, and had been there all the time; yet a careful search failed to reveal 106 THE LAW'S LONG ARM it now as before. The patient's clothing was removed and searched thoroughly piece by piece, even to the extent of tear- ing out linings and ripping up seams. But still no key was found. At last someone suggested that Barber had swallowed it, and this led to the suggestion that possibly he was "palming" it. And sure enough when his hands were examined the key was found between his fingers, where it had been all the time during two careful ex- aminations. The remarkable part of this case is the fact that, despite the man's confused men- tal condition, which was such that he could not make his way about when once he had escaped, he was still able to do such clever juggling. His years of doing tricks of palming had made that sort of thing sec- ond nature to him, although his mind was so confused about other things. Sometimes, after a man has successfully 107 THE WALLED CITY made the initial moves toward effecting his escape, the excitement produced will act in such a way upon his mental condi- tion as to prevent him carrying out his plans. Such a case was that of Jim Sher- man, who escaped from a road-building gang and was not found for a week, but who was finally captured only a few rods from the place at which he was last seen. Sherman was a man afflicted with epi- leptic insanity. During the intervals be- tween his epileptic seizures, which as a rule did not occur more than three or four times a year, he was practically in his right mind. But for several days follow- ing an epileptic attack, which might come on at any time, he was entirely irresponsi- ble, and very violent and dangerous. He was a man of great strength, and he spared neither persons nor property dur- ing his "spells." The only place where he could safely be kept, for the good of 108 THE LAW'S LONG ARM himself as well as the community at large, was in the Walled City. The life in the institution had a very beneficial effect upon his condition, as it does almost invariably in such cases, and his lucid intervals became extended until at last almost a year elapsed since his last attack of epilepsy. And as he was a vig- orous fellow, anxious to be at work, he was given a place with a gang of men working on the road about half a mile outside the walls of the institution. These men were under the supervision of several guards, of course, but most of them were trusty patients, and a good many little liberties were allowed them, although a keen watch was kept upon them most of the time. There was probably as little suspicion about the actions of Sherman, however, as any member of the working gang, because he had frequently made the statement that he had no desire to leave the City as he did 109 THE WALLED CITY not believe it would be safe for him to be at large. But his actions finally showed how little the word of a Citizen can be re- lied upon, where the matter of his liberty is concerned. For all the time that Sher- man was asserting that he wished to re- main in the City, he was planning to leave it. And one day when the road gang was working near a strip of dense woods, he slipt into them and disappeared. He had hardly reached cover before he was missed, and within half an hour a score of guards were scouring the country, watching roads, surrounding the piece of woodland, and beating it up carefully. Nevertheless no trace of the fugitive was found, and night came on before the woods had been thoroughly searched. This search was, to be sure, very much on the ' ' needle in the haystack" order, as the underbrush was thick and almost impenetrable ; but it was a simple matter to surround the woods 110 THE LAW'S LONG ARM with men and torchlights and thus hold the fugitive prisoner. The following morning all the available force from the City began searching the woods again, spending the entire day without success. From this it was con- cluded that Sherman had been able to make better time than was suspected at first, had gone through the woods before they could be surrounded, and was some- where at large about the country. But this possibility had been thought of from the very first, and bodies of men had been de- tailed to watch all the roads and fields in all directions about the country. Yet none of them had found any trace of the fugi- tive. A general council of men and officers was called, therefore, to decide upon the best plan of continuing the search system- atically. Generally speaking there are two types of fugitives among this class of citizens. Ill THE WALLED CITY One of these, known as "hiders," is made up of those who secrete themselves and remain hidden as long as they can until the searching parties have given up the chase; the other, known as "travelers," consist of men that make very little effort to secrete themselves, but who hurry away from the scene of their escape as rapidly as possible. The class to which a fugitive will belong can frequently be foretold by his general characteristics and the form of his insanity. Obviously this is an impor- tant thing to pre-determine as without it the searching parties may be working along precisely wrong lines. In the opinion of the majority of the of- ficers, Sherman came into the " traveler" class, and most of the searching parties scattered themselves over the country in- stead of sitting down and watching limited areas. As a precaution, however, a small force was left to guard the wood where 112 THE LAW'S LONG ARM the fugitive had disappeared, although this seemed very much like watching the barn after the horse is gone. For four days and nights these guards watched and smoked away the time, while the other parties scoured the country for miles around. The fifth morning, just as the word was being sent out recalling all the guards and giving up the chase on the supposition that Sherman had been able to catch a passing train and escape from the country, the fugitive appeared at the edge of the woods, and gave himself up. Pale, wild-eyed, bruised and torn, he begged to be taken back to the City and given something to eat. It was several days before he was able to tell his remark- able story. It seemed that the idea of making his escape had been recently developed, and was based upon the fact that such a long interval had elapsed since his last attack 113 THE WALLED CITY of epilepsy that he believed himself re- covered, although assured to the contrary by the physicians. Convinced that he had finally shaken off his enemy, therefore, and seeing no way of bringing the authorities to his belief, he determined to escape. He had noticed that at a certain time each day a regular freight train passed close to the opposite edge of the woods from where his gang was working. He laid his plans accordingly to slip into the woods unobserved a few minutes before train time, run as quickly as possible to the track, and catch the train possibly be- fore his escape was discovered. The first part of this plan of slipping into the woods was accomplished without difficulty. But the mental strain produced by the thought of what he was going to do the excite- ment of actually being on his way to lib- erty was so great that it brought on an attack of his long quiescent disease, and 114 THE LAWS LONG ARM he fell unconscious before he was half way through the woods. As this unconsciousness in his particular case was usually prolonged to hours, it is probable that he was lying somewhere in the thick underbrush at the time the woods were being beaten up by the searching party of the first day. Of this, naturally, Sherman knew nothing. The first thing he remembered was the sensation of being cold, and gradually becoming conscious of the fact that it was night and that he was lying in the woods. It was toward morn- ing before he could collect his thoughts enough to realize what had happened, and when he did realize it the effect was the same as the day before he was seized with another attack of epilepsy and top- pled over again. This thing was repeated time after time during the four days in the woods, until, completely dazed and wandering aimlessly about, he finally 115 THE WALLED CITY stumbled upon the guards at the edge of the woods. The fact that this patient was able to remain undetected in a relatively small patch of woods for such a long time, when a body of men were watching night and day, naturally raises the query as to the diligence of the watchers. But it is prob- able that they were not derelict in their duties, and that the explanation is the same as that of why it usually happens that careless and drunken persons seldom get hurt. Had Sherman been able to use his wits, and have been on the lookout for the guards, it is more than likely that they would have found him in the woods at first. Had he been skulking among the trees, try- ing to avoid detection, someone would al- most certainly have seen him, or heard him rustle the underbrush. Possibly the impression may have been given, from what has been said, that es- 116 THE LAW'S LONG ARM caping from the Walled City is compara- tively easy. This is far from the truth. Escaping from the building itself is a most difficult matter, and getting away from the immediate neighborhood is even more so. For the City rulers have regular and syste- matic methods of going about apprehend- ing fugitives, and are usually successful in capturing them. It is true, of course, that escape from a criminal hospital is easier than from a prison, not because the walls are thinner or lower, or the bars weaker, but because of the comparative leniency of the officers toward their charges. Prisons are for punishments; hospitals for the treatment of disease. And part of this treatment consists in allowing as much freedom to every inmate as is consistent with safety. It is in cases where this line of safety is just overstepped that escapes occur. On the other hand, anything that the 117 THE WALLED CITY City officers may lack in their methods of preventing escapes is easily compensated by their skill in recapturing fugitives. In each of these institutions a regular plan of procedure is laid out which is to be fol- lowed whenever there is an escape. This plan is based on the past experience of the institution, and no two of these plans are alike except in a general way. The method of covering the ground around an insti- tution located in a flat country, for ex- ample, would be entirely different from that of an institution in a hilly country. Most of these institutions are in hilly countries, and years of experience have shown that almost invariably the route taken by a fugitive will eventually lead him to pass one of a dozen points within three or four miles of the building. A pa- tient who is attempting to escape may be aware of this and may start out on a "bee line" across country, determined to avoid 118 THE LAW'S LONG ARM these fatal places; but almost invariably he is diverted into the vicinity of some of these " stands." Knowing this fact, the first step taken by the City officers when a patient is missed, no matter when or where, is to give an alarm which sends the requisite number of bicyclists scurrying along the roads, making for their respective stands. The duty of each is to get to his station as quickly as possible, and remain there on watch, night and day, until he gets his man, or is relieved. At the same time squads of men who are familiar with every foot of the ground within the now sur- rounded area begin beating up the coun- try. As a rule these squads are assigned to certain territories if the general direc- tion taken by the fugitive is not known definitely; but there are always a number of "free lances" men who have a verita- ble genius for guessing the probable 119 THE WALLED CITY whereabouts of the fugitive who are al- lowed to choose their own territory. The Sherlock Holmes qualities of some of these sleuths in running down clues and getting their men border on the marvelous. Every institution has a certain number of such men who have made reputations as " trailers, " and their presence about the place acts as a constant damper to would- be "elopers." "It's no use trying to get past Doyle," a returned fugitive said to me one day when brought in by the grizzled, hickory- limbed keeper of that name. "I was pretty sure of it, before, but I know it now. ' ' And in truth it seemed sometimes as if this particular trailer possessed some oc- cult means, some peculiarly developed in- stinct, for determining where to look for runaways. I remember one instance where there was fairly good evidence that 120 THE LAW'S LONG ARM the eloper had started toward the north, and every officer and man about the place, whose opinion was worth consideration, advised concentrating all efforts in a northerly direction. Doyle said nothing; but when the start was made he headed straight south. All day long and all the following night negative reports kept com- ing in from the searching parties in the north. Doyle sent in no reports. But just at dawn the next morning he telephoned simply : "Call in your men." Two hours later he stalked into the building bringing with him the very de- jected fugitive. "I thought I'd get him sooner," was Doyle's only comment. It was found later that the first clue as to the man starting toward the north was correct. He had done so, and then doubled back to the south to throw his pursuers 121 THE WALLED CITY off the trail. Doyle suspected this, but just why he couldn't tell himself. It suf- ficed, however, that he brought in his man. But of course even the great Doyle was outwitted at times, once, at least, by the simplest kind of a ruse. A certain long- term convict known as Jimmy Kyan one day stepped outside the gates with his keeper, as he had done a hundred times before, and disappeared as completely as if he had been spirited away. To this day he has never been apprehended, and it is only within a short time that the way he made his escape has become known, al- though at the time an eye-witness was sup- posed to have seen him run into a corn- field. Ryan had been in the City about two years at the time of his escape, and was considered too stupid a patient to attempt such a thing. As a matter of fact, most of his seeming stupidity was assumed THE LAW'S LONG ARM assumed for the very purpose of carrying out his deep-laid plan. He had come into the institution from prison, where he had become morbidly melancholy. There was no question of his insanity being genuine, and for several months after coming to the City he was a typical patient of his class. While he was still convalescent, however, he conceived the idea of pretend- ing to remain insane, hoping that when he had become a seemingly hopeless case, and a well-behaved patient, an opportunity would be given him to escape. For of course there is far less danger of a stupid and apparently demented patient making his escape than of an active-minded one; and for this reason these demented pa- tients are given many opportunities that are not put in the way of the brighter ones. Eyan's action in this matter was very unusual. It is a common thing for men 123 THE WALLED CITY to feign insanity to get into the City, and also for them to attempt to appear sane in order to get out when their terms of sentence expire. It is seldom, however, that a man who has actually been insane is keen enough to play the game of still seeming stupidly insane for some two years without detection. But Ryan was a remarkable man in many ways. He had been simulating insanity for at least eighteen months when the first steps leading to his escape were taken. This was when he was selected as one of the patients to help in working about the yards. Ordinarily a man with a long term of sentence hanging over him, as in the case of Eyan, would not have been al- lowed to do this work, as the opportunities for escape were too tempting. But Ryan's persistent stupidity had deceived the doc- tors into the belief that he was an incur- able patient. Such patients are frequently 124 THE LAW'S LONG ARM good workers; and Ryan had shown him- self to be one of these, despite his stu- pidity. The other patient who was working with Ryan was a convalescent named Davis, whose term of sentence would soon expire, and who would then be released. For ob- vious reasons this type of patient may usually be trusted absolutely. For, as is generally known, no prisoners except those sentenced to life imprisonment really serve their full term of sentence, a rebate, or commutation of a definite num- ber of months or years being allowed them for good behavior. A man sentenced to do ten years, for example, really serves only about six and a half, if he behaves himself. But one of the worst misdemean- ors possible one that cuts off the com- mutation time is that of attempting to escape. It is obvious, therefore, that a man having only three or four months of 125 THE WALLED CITY his "good time" to serve would not jeopardize his chances by running away. Before Kyan and Davis had been work- ing together many days, Eyan had taken Davis into his confidence and revealed his plan to him. Part of this plan necessi- tated the use of a confederate, and Davis finally consented to act in that capacity. Indeed, it was necessary for him to take a very active part, and make the initial moves. The first of these was to ask the keeper to allow him to carry a pocket comb, and let his closely cropped hair grow out. Neither of these requests are unusual, and are generally granted, so that when dis- charged the criminal may have hair of regulation length, and look as little like a "prison bird" as possible. And so the two plotters were soon equipped with the seemingly harmless implement that was finally to aid Kyan in escaping. 126 THE LAW'S LONG ARM There are no pockets in the clothing worn by the Citizens, so, in order to carry the comb about, Davis got permission from his keeper to make a sort of pocket in his coat just deep enough so that the end of the comb would protrude and show that it was a comb and nothing worse. For if any of the guards were to mistake it for anything else, they would be likely to take it out and examine it, and this was the very thing that Davis wished to avoid. So after he had carried it about for sev- eral days until all the keepers had become accustomed to seeing it, he and Ryan be- gan the work of turning one end of the comb into a key to duplicate the ones used in all the doors about the institution. To those not initiated a comb may seem to be a very poor implement from which to make a door key; but as a matter of fact it is almost an ideal one for certain kinds of keys. The back of the comb may 127 THE WALLED CITY be made to take the place of the shank, while the teeth can be fashioned into the points for moving the parts in the lock. There are usually only two or three of these points that are actually used in turn- ing, most of the rest of the key being sim- ply for strength or for "bluff." It is for this reason that a skeleton key will open locks, the keys to which are seemingly very unlike the skeleton; but if the two are compared the essential points will be found to be the same. This, of course, ap- plies only to the ordinary type of key, not to the fluted ones, the invention of which, by the way, put hundreds of "skeleton- key men" out of business. Davis and Eyan worked away on their comb key with bits of glass, tin, and iron, that they picked up in the yard, sometimes working in the daytime, one of them on the lookout while the other worked. It was a tedious process, but not such a diffi- 128 THE LAW'S LONG ARM cult one, as both Davis and Eyan had seen the keeper's key hundreds of times as he locked or unlocked the doors; and at the end of a week they had made a key that would turn a lock as nicely as the Super- intendent's own. When not working on the comb Davis carried it with the end protruding con- spicuously from his pocket, ostentatiously combing his hair many times every day, but keeping his fingers carefully over the key end of it. And of course Eyan kept up his part of being the same stupid ''dement" as ever. The chance they were waiting for came one day about a week after the key was finished, when the keeper took them to do some work just outside a gate in the six- teen-foot fence that formed the outer wall of the City yard. They had been at their task only a few minutes when their guard had to go inside the yard to the black- 129 THE WALLED CITY smith shop to have a little tinkering done on the handle of a shovel. As he would only require a minute or two he let the two men go on with their work while he stepped inside, leaving the gate open be- hind him, just as he had done a dozen times before. But he was hardly inside the shop, when Davis rushed in on his heels, hatless and excited, yelling that Eyan had made a break for liberty. Bush- ing back through the gate, the guard found that Ryan was already out of sight, and as a cornfield was only a hundred yards away from the gate, he supposed that the fugitive had run into that. It seemed a moral certainty that Ryan would be caught, as he had only a minute 's start, and as the cornfield was small and the nearest cover of woods two miles away. So instead of plunging into the corn, the keeper ran inside the yard and turned in an alarm. Five minutes later 130 THE LAW'S LONG ARM a squad of bicycle guards were scooting along the roads leading from the City to the various observation stands, while an- other squad beat up the cornfield. Of course Davis was suspected of being implicated in the affair, and he was haled before the Superintendent to give explana- tion ; but the story he told was so plausible that he cleared himself completely. He said that when he saw Ryan start to run he knew that the only thing that could save his own skin was either to catch him or to give the alarm as quickly as pos- sible. As Ryan had a start of several rods before Davis realized what was hap- pening, he made no attempt to chase him, but ran inside the yard and gave the alarm. This story seemed to be so per- fectly in accordance with other facts that the suspected man was exonerated and sent to his ward. But all this time Ryan was neither hid- 131 THE WALLED CITY ing in the cornfield nor running across the country, but was actually inside the City yards, with two strong locks turned be- tween himself and liberty. When the keeper started for the black- smith shop, Eyan had slipped into the yard behind him, unlocked the door of a little tool-house that stood just inside the gate, and wormed himself under some tools and rubbish in one corner. Davis had followed him into the yard, and as soon as he saw the tool-house door close, he rushed after the guard and gave the alarm. The very boldness of the scheme insured its success. For one would hardly expect a man to try to get out of prison by run- ning back into it, once he was outside. And if Eyan had really made a run for liberty across the fields, as he was sup- posed to have done, he would undoubtedly have been captured. By lying low in the 132 THE LAW'S LONG ARM tool house for several days until the men who were scouring the country should give up the search, Eyan could choose his night and slip out over the wall, with no one to fear but the outside watchman. Mean- while Davis was to keep him supplied with food which he was to steal from the mess table. They had picked out a place within a few feet of the tool-house door where Davis was to leave this daily supply. Up to this point everything in Eyan's plans had worked out perfectly, but here came a hitch. The country was being pa- troled night and day to prevent his es- cape, and as this required a large force of men, every spare keeper was taken off his regular work where possible, and sent out to watch. Among these men was the guard who had had charge of Davis and Eyan. So that instead of being out in the yards every day, as he had expected, Davis was left locked up in his ward, and 133 THE WALLED CITY thus foiled in his plans for smuggling out Eyan's supply of food. For a day or two this made little differ- ence, for men of Eyan's stamp could fast for that length of time without great in- convenience; but by the end of the third day Eyan was ready to collapse, and Davis was about the most miserable creature im- aginable. Locked up in the ward where he could look out and see Eyan's cage all the time, and knowing that it was only a ques- tion of time until starvation would drive the prisoner out, he was helpless to avert the calamity. And of course the discov- ery of Eyan meant a calamity to both. Meanwhile, Eyan had no means of know- ing what was happening outside. He did not come out of the tool house for the first twenty-four hours; but when he crawled out the second night to get a drink of wa- ter at the hydrant and some food, he was chagrined to find that there was none there 134 THE LAW'S LONG ARM for him. By the third night the gnawing in his stomach was making him desperate. He could not understand why Davis had failed him, and he about decided to climb the wall and make a break to get through the line of guards. It was an almost hope- less chance, he knew, but scarcely more so than staying in the tool house to starve to death like a caged rat, and he made up his mind to chance it the following night if the food did not come. By the following night he had become convinced that Davis had not brought the food simply because his "nerve" had failed him, and he determined to "get even. ' ' By coming out of the tool house in broad daylight and giving himself up, comb and all, there would be no question as to Davis being implicated; whereas if he should make a break across the fields and be caught, Davis might make up a story that 135 THE WALLED CITY would clear himself. As nothing could be done until the next morning, however, Eyan crawled out of his cage about mid- night and went prowling boldly about the yards, not caring much whether anyone saw him or not. He poked about into all the holes and corners, and finally came into the blacksmith shop. There he had an inspiration. He remembered that old John, the blacksmith, who was a ' l trusty, ' ' often smuggled out pieces of food to munch at between meals. Some scraps were probably concealed about his shop; and by rummaging through all the cup- boards and boxes Eyan managed to find quite a quantity of pieces of food, all hard and dry, but mighty toothsome to a starv- ing man. This find put new life into him, and he decided to stay in the tool house for at least another twenty-four hours. And the following night, as he was start- 136 THE LAW'S LONG ARM ing out for another prowl in the black- smith shop, he stumbled on a bundle of paper close to his door, and a piece of blue shirting tied in a peculiar bow knot. The bundle was Davis* long-delayed sup- ply of food, and the knot was the signal from him that the guards had been called in and that the coast was clear from that quarter. Davis had placed the things there that afternoon, when his keeper had taken him out of his ward for the first time since Ryan's escape. To bolt Davis ' supply of food, climb the high fence, and hurry "cross lots" out of the country, required only a few hours. The mystery surrounding his escape was not solved until five years later, when Davis, in a burst of confidence, described his own connection with it to an ex-officer of the City. Of course when there is an escape from the City the fact is soon known to every 137 THE WALLED CITY person about the place ; and while the fate of the fugitive hangs in the balance the nerves of the entire community are strung to the highest tension. Every hour that passes feeds the suppressed flame of hope among the Citizens, each of whom, with- out exception, secretly wishes the eloper success. As the days pass and still the fugitive remains at liberty, the tension re- laxes; men talk louder and play more games, and a suppressed feeling of exalta- tion is apparent among them. And if the guards are finally called in and the chase given up, a veritable epidemic of schemes for escaping is sure to follow. For a suc- cessful "elopement" is infectious. On the other hand, if the culprit is cap- tured, and brought back a bedraggled, ex- hausted, dejected, and altogether pitiable object, the entire city is thrown into the deepest gloom. For this ignominious re- turn is closely akin to a personal matter 138 THE LAW'S LONG ARM with most of the Citizens. This is the way each one of them may look some day should his pet scheme fail, just as this man's has done. And many well-rounded plans for escape that would be put into active operation if one fugitive had suc- ceeded are nipped in the bud by his re- turn. The older officials about the City know that for a few days at least, until the first discouraging effects of the failure have worn off, they can relax their vigi- lance a little. 139 Chapter VI THE SHORTCOMINGS OF THE CITY RULERS 141 Chapter VI THE SHORTCOMINGS OF THE CITY RULERS One of the most striking lessons of the Walled Cities is the fact that no such thing as " eternal vigilance" is possible. There are unaccountable moments of lax- ity on the part of every one about every institution, from the most trusted officer to the newest cub attendant. Not only moments, but days, and even weeks, of apparent obtuseness to the most glaring lapses of discipline passing under the very noses of a dozen persons. Then "some- thing happens," the looseness in one par- ticular quarter is corrected, and things run along smoothly as before until an- other "something" occurs. 143 THE WALLED CITY In the nature of things the most com- mon of these oversights are in connection with attempts to escape, which may be tragic enough in the end; but occasionally there is an element of the ludicrous to re- lieve the situation. The finding of a mini- ature distillery a few years ago, running in full blast in the very center of one of the Cities, where very effective, if not very palatable, rum was produced and doled out to the friends of the "trusty" Citizen- distiller, is an instance where the "eternal vigilance" of an institution was caught napping. Curiously enough the still itself was not discovered, or its existence sus- pected, until the reckless tippling of some Citizens who were being returned to prison from the City made it evident that there must be some kind of an alcohol- producing apparatus somewhere about the place. The trouble began when the warden of 144 SHORTCOMINGS OF THE CITY RULERS the prison, to whom two criminals who had recovered from their mental derangement had been returned from the Walled City, reported to the superintendent of the City that the men were delivered to him * ' roar- ing drunk. ' ' The supposition was that the two officers who were in charge of the men in transit had given them liquor, for some reason best known to themselves. But this seemed unlikely, and was practi- cally disproved by the testimony of re- liable and disinterested witnesses. Then the warden, presumably by some of those methods of discipline common to prisons, finally dragged from the two prisoners a confession that cleared matters completely to the great discomfiture of the City au- thorities. For, guided by the statements of the two men, the officers of the City found a miniature distillery in an out-of- the-way corner of the basement of their building. Not only found it, but found it 145 THE WALLED CITY running full blast, with the old " trusty" who had constructed it and kept it running for months calmly engaged in making his "moonshine," quite indifferent to the fact that he was breaking a civil, as well as a federal, law. The still itself was a curious crea- tion. The main part of the appa- ratus was constructed of an old coffee pot, connecting with the spout of which were tin and glass tubes, fastened to- gether with pieces of rubber, string and canvas, presenting a most grotesque ap- pearance, but capable of producing a dis- tilled liquor, drop by drop, quite as deadly as the most approved Tennessee moon- shine. The substance used for the dis- tillation was the drippings from the mo- lasses barrels in a neighboring room of the basement. Indeed it was these drippings that first suggested to the "trusty," who had seen rum made in the West Indies, 146 SHORTCOMINGS OF THE CITY RULERS the possibility of making a still. A little premeditated carelessness on the part of another "trusty," whose duty was to draw the molasses for the cook, supplied the still bountifully with material, with the result that illicit liquor of home manufac- ture became a medium of traffic among the City's elect, for several months. A tea- spoonful of "moonshine" was worth a good chew of tobacco (the usual basis of City traffic) at any time ; and a good busi- ness had been carried on in all kinds of articles of exchange. The Citizen-distiller had become a power in the community, like many of his prototypes outside, and his downfall came as a public calamity. But laxity in vigilance is a fault, not a sin. There is one abiding sin common to every Walled City, however, the tend- ency of certain members of the commun- ity, from the head officer down to the smallest bell-boy, at times to "take 147 THE WALLED CITY chances," as railroad men say. Indeed, if this sinful tendency among the keepers of the City could be eliminated it is doubt- ful if any inmate would ever be able to make his escape, or any of the numerous City tragedies be recorded. One unfamiliar with the routine life in the Walled Cities would naturally suppose that the instinct of self-protection would be asserting itself so constantly to every official and employe that there would be little danger of this chance-taking. Know- ing as they do that it is the ambition of every active member of the community to escape that there is nothing, not even murder, that would restrain many of them from seizing an opportunity to try to get out if there was even a reasonable chance of success one would think that there would be little probability of laxity in vigi- lance, even for a moment. But in point of fact it requires constant spurring and 148 SHORTCOMINGS OF THE CITY RULERS ceaseless watching on the part of the chief officers to keep the men closest in touch with the prisoners from becoming almost criminally careless. The proximity of danger makes them hold it in contempt; or better, perhaps, they forget its pres- ence. One of the most desperate attempts to escape ever recorded came about through gross carelessness in the kitchen of one of the Walled Cities. In this institution the kitchen knives, some of them long, deadly, dagger-like weapons, which were supposed to be chained in place at all times, were detached from their chains and allowed to lie around the rooms, be- cause the cooks found it more convenient to have them so. And, strange as it may seem, this particular form of carelessness as regards kitchen knives is not peculiar to any one particular City, but is the abid- ing sin of many of the criminal hospitals, 149 THE WALLED CITY In this particular instance this care- lessness led to a blood-curdling tragedy. But nevertheless by the time a year had passed the knives were again to be seen lying about detached from their chains, in- viting a disaster, as before. The convict who played the leading role in the tragedy in question was a man named Barker, who had been detailed to help in the kitchen. Like most of the work about the "Walled Cities, a good part of the kitchen duties are done by the inmates, despite the fact that dangerous weapons must be used in preparing the meals. The kitchen of a City having a thousand in- habitants is ordinarily under the manage- ment of perhaps three paid cooks and keepers, assisted by a dozen or more in- mates. Naturally these inmates are care- fully selected, and presumably are "trusty" patients; but it is easy to under- stand how mistakes may be made, since 150 SHORTCOMINGS OF THE CITY RULERS the men selected are not only convicts and prisoners, but insane. Although a long-term prisoner, Barker was given a position in the kitchen at the request of the chef, because of the man's reputation as a good cook and general worker. Closely watched at first, this new man gradually gained the confidence of the chef and the other cooks by diligence and good behavior, until finally he was given practically as much liberty about the kitchen as the keepers themselves. Almost everything about the kitchen was under lock and key a great incon- venience at times during the rush hours of getting out the meals. And it fre- quently happened that, just when the chef or his assistants were elbows deep in some important culinary operation, something would be needed from the carefully locked refrigerators or store rooms. To stop and wash the hands^ get the keys from the 151 THE WALLED CITY pocket, and open the doors was incon- venient. And so many times Barker was asked to fish out the bunch of keys from the chef's pocket and do the errand for him. Such a thing as this would not be coun- tenanced for a moment by the Superin- tendent had he known about it. Yet on the face of it there would seem to be little danger, even if Barker had been a danger- ous patient. For most of the keys on the ring were of the small, fluted kind, that defy the skeleton-key maker unless he can have a very exact pattern of them. No man simply by looking at any one of them for a very little time could fashion a du- plicate, even if he had the tools and the blank key to work upon. Furthermore the keys opened only the doors to the refrig- erators and store rooms, or at least this was true of all but one. But this one, Bar- ker had observed, opened the door lead- 152 SHORTCOMINGS OF THE CITY RULERS ing into the basement; and as there were doors leading from the basement to the outside world, he drew the very natural conclusion that this same key would un- lock them also. One day while he was busy scrubbing some pans he was given the bunch of keys and asked to do an errand in the refrig- erator. At that time, in the dish he was washing, was a cake of the brick-like hos- pital soap, which had become softened by lying in the water. Picking up the cake of soap, Barker took the keys and started for the refrigerator, as usual. On the way, however, he selected the key to the base- ment, and as he walked along he pressed it firmly into the surface of the softened soap. The result was a perfect impres- sion of the coveted key. The next step was to allow the soap to harden, which Barker managed without being detected, and later he cut out the portion of the 153 THE WALLED CITY cake around the model of the key, and hid the impression in his clothing. Two weeks later Barker's wife paid him a visit, as she was permitted to do at stated intervals. At these visits between patients and friends a guard is usually stationed within a few feet of the couples to see that nothing is passed from one to the other without close inspection. As an additional precaution the patient is always searched before being returned to the wards to see that nothing contraband has been given him. The possibility of the inmate passing out anything is usually ig- nored, as he usually has nothing to pass out. And so while Barker was holding the trim little woman in his arms for the mo- mentary caress that even the most hard- ened guard would have hesitated to deny him, the little piece of soap bearing the key impression was transferred into her keeping. Later when she was telling her 154 SHORTCOMINGS OF THE CITY RULERS husband all about the friends outside and the little ones at home, asking and answer- ing eager questions, he managed to tell what he wished her to do with the piece of soap. One month later Mrs. Barker came again to see her husband, and there was exchanged the same affectionate caress as before. There was also transferred from between the fingers of the little woman's hand a new brass key, made by the best key-maker on the Bowery from the im- pression taken in the soap six weeks be- fore. As a thousand other daughters of Eve would have done, the woman had spent almost her last penny, and was even then jeopardizing her liberty to help her man in distress. Fortunately for her, the examination of her husband's clothing be- fore he returned to the ward was not a rigorous one. With the key fairly in his possession, 155 THE WALLED CITY Barker bided his time. It came one day when the work in the kitchen was finished, and when he was supposed to have gone out into the yards as usual, but had in reality lingered behind. An assistant cook was the only person about the place, and he was busy giving the finishing touches, among other things counting the knives before locking them up. While he was thus engaged something called him into another room for a moment, detaining him just long enough to give Barker time to steal over and secure a long, deadly carv- ing knife. The next minute the criminal was in the short passageway leading to the basement, had slipped his key into the lock, and pushed open the door. As he closed it the cook returned, just in time to see the movement of the door. Barker had heard the man's footsteps, and did not attempt to turn the lock for the moment, simply holding it with his 156 a 1 z * **- * O W .2 ^ o O a SHORTCOMINGS OF THE CITY RULERS shoulder, and trusting that the movement had not been seen. But, unfortunately for himself, the cook had seen it, and made a dash for the door, knowing instinctively that something was wrong. The next thing he knew he was lying on the base- ment floor stunned from the effects of a blow, with Barker standing over him hold- ing the long knife at his throat, and whis- pering that if he made a sound it would be his last. A moment later the cook found his white apron twisted about his face and tied tightly into a gag so that he could not make a sound even if he had dared to try. Next his trousers were re- moved and torn into convenient strips, with which Barker tied his captive 's hands and feet, finally dragging him into a dark corner and leaving him, with a whispered warning that any movement on his part meant death. With his prisoner secured so that he 157 THE WALLED CITY could leave him safely, Barker now ex- amined the basement carefully. He soon found the door leading to the outside ; but although his key turned the lock, the door would not open; there was a second lock that worked only from the outside, placed there by a wise designer to defeat just such attempts as the one Barker was mak- ing. No outside door in the institution could be opened except by two entirely dif- ferent keys worked from opposite sides. Barker was foiled and trapped. In all probability the cook and he would be missed from their usual places within a few hours at most. Once discovered, it was little short of madness to resist; but Barker was not the man to surrender meekly. He knew that he could expect little mercy from the searching party, as his assault upon the cook and the fact that he was armed with a deadly weapon would warrant the officers in taking desperate 158 SHORTCOMINGS OF THE CITY RULERS measures. His only hope lay in being able to modify his terms of surrender to a cer- tain extent by holding the cook as a hos- tage. With this in mind, he selected a little room used for storage in one corner of the basement as best suited to his pur- pose. The room was empty, and the heavy door of rough boards that closed the en- trance was not locked. Into this room Barker dragged his captive, carefully bar- ring and bracing the door on the inside with pieces of boards, penning himself in to await the coming of the inevitable search party. The details of how he held the officers at bay for several hours before he was finally overcome need not be told here. But the ultimate effect of this episode upon the existing carelessness about the knives in the kitchen is interesting. The following day every knife was securely 159 THE WALLED CITY chained in its proper place. A month later they were still chained, but the chains were looked upon as intolerable nuisances by the cooks. Within a year every chain had disappeared. Some day there will be another tragedy in that kitchen. And then the temporary chaining will be repeated for a few months. 160 Chapter VII WITS VERSUS THE LONG ARM 161 Anyone who has seen the attempt made to use a chair as a weapon by "clubbing" it in the usual way must have been im- prest with the fact that it was a poor weapon indeed. Heavy and clumsy, it can be easily avoided, either by dodging, or by guarding with the hands. But there are methods of using a chair which make it one of the best of weapons for disabling a man temporarily. For this reason the chairs about the halls of the Walled Cities are all made so heavy and so strong that they can neither be lifted about easily, nor pulled apart to be used as clubs. In a western City a few years ago a des- 163 THE WALLED CITY perate criminal succeeded in wrenching a pocket knife from an attendant's hand and stabbing him into insensibility before as- sistance arrived. When the other attend- ants did reach the scene the criminal backed into a corner waving his bloody knife, keeping them at a safe distance. To rush upon the man barehanded meant cer- tain injury, perhaps death, to some of their number. At that moment the chief physician, a man of unusual strength and courage, who had grown gray in the service, came into the ward. Taking in the situation at a glance, he unlocked the door of an attend- ant's room that connected with the hall, seized a light bent-wood chair, and grasp- ing the back and holding it in front of him with the four legs pointing at the culprit, he rushed upon him, pinning him to the wall, where he was quickly disarmed. TJsed in this manner a chair becomes an 164 WITS VERSUS THE LONG ARM effective weapon, particularly in defense against a knife. The length of the legs and back places the user beyond the reach of the blade, while the four points pre- sented simultaneously by the legs make guarding almost impossible. And no mat- ter how or where these points happen to strike they are certain either to injure or pin their victim. In most of the attempted escapes from the various Walled Cities there is nothing to elicit sympathy for the offender, except the very natural human tendency to favor the under dog. But occasionally such clever attempts are made under such pe- culiar circumstances that one feels them deserving of success. When an inmate whose insanity is questioned, and whose reputation for cleverness is such that he has special guards watching him day and night, and is kept in a building without windows except in the roof, thirty feet 165 THE WALLED CITY from the floor when such a criminal es- capes and actually gets outside the walls, one cannot suppress the hope that he will not be captured, much as he may deserve to be. Such an escape was made a few years ago by a man who was known in the East at the time by the name of Dan Hicks, but who is known to the police of most of the cities from New York to San Francisco by a dozen other aliases. He was a man only about thirty years of age at that time, but most of those thirty years had been spent in dodging officers and "doing time. ' ' He had many of those qualities which make the criminal of fiction interesting. He was good-natured, generous when he had money, a good fighter, and endowed with an abiding sense of humor. But all these excellent qualities did not prevent the judge who presided at one of his trials 166 WITS VERSUS THE LONG ARM for "second-story work" from sentencing him to fifteen years' imprisonment. Like every other convict under similar circumstances, Hicks had no intention of spending any such amount of time in prison. He felt confident that by using his unusually sharp wits in the right direction he could cut down that sentence by a large margin. In the end he succeeded, but not until he had run the entire gamut of tricks and subterfuges known to the members of his fraternity. For the first few months in prison Hicks did nothing out of the ordinary. Then he gradually became insane, or else he did one of the cleverest pieces of pro- tracted feigning on record. Indeed, to the very last, when he finally left the Walled City with a governor's pardon in his pocket, the medical experts were about equally divided as to whether he had ever been insane at all, or whether he was not 167 THE WALLED CITY insane still, but cleverly covering up Ms delusions. Be that as it may, he had the prison offi- cials suspecting him of insanity within a year after going to the prison. He cer- tainly showed many symptoms of insanity, such as mumbling to himself, refusing to eat most of the time, and a dozen other things that are strongly characteristic of certain mental aberrations. After a month of this sort of thing he was placed in a cell where he could be observed se- cretly night and day. But if he was sham- ming he was never caught napping or off his guard, and at the end of another month he was transferred from prison to the Walled City. As he was still under suspicion, he was placed in what is known as an "isolation" ward, a building having the position and all the characteristics of the "keep" or "donjon" of medieval castles and walled 168 WITS VERSUS THE LONG ARM cities. It was in the form of a tower per- haps fifty feet square, and about forty feet high, and there were no windows except a huge skylight at the top. The only open- ing in the structure was a heavily arched doorway, guarded by two double-locked doors. The interior was therefore light and airy, but as the walls were thick and the skylight some thirty feet from the floors, it seemed a hopeless place from which to make an escape. And even if escape were made from this building itself, the task would be only half completed, since it was surrounded completely by other buildings whose walls would have to be scaled. These last did not constitute such an ob- stacle as might be supposed, as there were water pipes leading from the roof of these buildings to the ground at that time, al- tho shortly after Hicks' escape these were removed. 169 THE WALLED CITY In this isolation ward there were never more than a dozen Citizens, but these were always the most dangerous ones, fre- quently men who had attempted to escape or were violent and needed special watch- ing. Special guards watched this ward by day and a special night watchman guarded it at night. When Hicks reached this place of con- finement, his hope of escaping must have taken a violent slump. But nevertheless he set to work, and by being obedient and always willing to assist in the work about the ward, which is considered a very com- mendable trait with all keepers, he soon got into the good graces of his guardians. Within three months he had made a record for scrubbing, sweeping, and keeping things clean generally, and was given the entire charge of caring for his own room and several others. One morning while sweeping his own 170 WITS VERSUS THE LONG ARM room he discovered that one of the slates in the baseboard was loose. The slate was about fourteen inches long and eleven inches high, and so loose that by a little turning and forcing it could be pulled out, exposing the brick wall behind it. Fortu- nately the position of this loosened slate was behind the bed, so that nobody would notice it unless the bed was moved out of its place. With a nail or a piece of iron it would be possible to scrape the mortar out between the bricks, little by little, and finally make a hole large enough for a man's body. Hicks knew he could find a piece of iron or tin about the courtyard in which the inmates spend several hours each day, but he knew also that it would not be an easy matter to get it into his room. His cloth- ing had no pockets, and besides, like all the other inmates, he was searched as he came in from the court each day, a guard 171 THE WALLED CITY running his hand over his clothing to de- tect any suspicious lumps. As he expected, Hicks at last found a rusty nail in the courtyard, and he de- cided to try to smuggle it in by putting it into his shoe on the under side of his foot. It was a comparatively easy matter to get the nail into his shoe without being seen, for the court is large and the prisoners are allowed a great deal of liberty ; but getting by the guard at the door might not be so easy. Fortune favored him, however, and he carried the nail safely to his room, the guard letting him pass after hastily pull- ing open his coat, and running his hand over his shirt front. That night Hicks cautiously pushed his bed out about a foot from the wall. Then, lying on his side, and without leaving the bed, he carefully forced out the slate, and began scratching softly at the mortar be- tween the bricks, keeping part of the 172 WITS VERSUS THE LONG ARM blanket wrapt about his hands and prest against the wall to deaden the sound, and spreading the corner of the sheets on the floor beneath the hole so that there could be no sound from dropping bits of mortar. The ceaseless snoring about him helped greatly, but he had to work with heart-breaking slowness, and every movement of the guard made him lie as if petrified. All night long he scratched out and col- lected bits of mortar, but when dawn be- gan to break he carefully replaced the slate, gathered up the little pile of mortar, and slept until rising time. The tiny load of mortar (about as much as would coat a twenty-five-cent piece) was easily slipped down the drain pipe in the wash room next morning. Every night following he con- tinued his work, and every night the risk of detection increased. For the more bricks he loosened the more he had to re- 173 THE WALLED CITY place, and the greater was the probability of his making a noise. It was four full months before he had loosened the inner layers, and another be- fore he had reached the last course of brick. When this was reached he waited for a favorable night, one in which there was a pounding rainstorm that would make a continuous roar on the skylights above, so that his movements would not be detected easily. The night came at last with wind and a downpour of rain, and as soon as it was well on toward midnight Hicks removed the bricks softly, one by one, and gradu- ally worked loose and removed the last layer. Then he took off his shirt and be- gan to worm his way out through the hole, head first, keeping one arm held down close to his side and the other straight out above his head. It took him a full half hour to struggle 174 WITS VERSUS THE LONG ARM out, bricks and mortar gouging his flesh as he went, but he squeezed through at last and fell in a heap in the mud four feet be- low. Then he discovered that he had laid his shirt just out of his reach, but he suc- ceeded in catching hold of a corner of the blanket and pulled it out. He tied this about him securely, and running across the court to a corner where an iron leader came down to the ground, went up it hand over hand, and climbed over the eaves on the roof. He found a rain pipe on the opposite side, and, after waiting a minute to look up and down for the watchman, he swung over the eaves, gript the pipe with his feet, and slid down until he could rest one foot on the window cap, and then slid rapidly to the ground, and ran into a hollow, where he was hidden from the building. There he made his blanket into a kind of toga, to protect him in a measure until 175 THE WALLED CITY he could reach the neighboring village, where by plying his "trade" a little he hoped to secure more comfortable and less conspicuous wearing apparel from some of the houses. Before morning he had suc- ceeded, and by the following evening he was safely in New York. The fact that he had escaped was not discovered until several hours after he had gone, the watchman's suspicions being first aroused by hearing the rain spatter- ing through the hole in the brick wall. Even then he could scarcely believe that Hicks had escaped, as the hole was so small. It seemed absolutely impossible that any man could have gone through it. But the sizes of holes that criminals have squeezed themselves through at various times seem to defy the very laws of an- atomy. If other evidence had been wanting, however, there were Hicks' tell-tale tracks 176 WITS VERSUS THE LONG ARM across the yard, and through the fields to the railroad tracks. But as they could be traced no farther than this a general search was instigated, with very little hope of success, and the police of New York notified. When a criminal from any large city escapes from prison and makes his way to his old haunts, he is almost sure of speedy recapture. Most fugitives know this, but they can seldom resist the allure- ments of their old haunts. Here they are sure, sooner or later, to be seen by the officers who are on the lookout for them, and taken into custody. This happens so frequently that when a fugitive is known to have gone back to the city from which he comes there is a feeling of relief in the Walled City official circle, as in all proba- bility it will be only a matter of days until he is returned to them. When a city con- vict remains in the country or hangs about 177 THE WALLED CITY small villages he is less likely to be recap- tured. Hicks, as we have seen, was no ordinary convict. He returned to the city, to be sure, but he did not seek out his old asso- ciates or visit his familiar haunts. Instead he went into a neighborhood where he had never lived before. Here he secured a small room in a house opposite a police station, where he could be seen by the offi- cers at almost any time by raising their eyes to his window. There was a certain guarantee of safety, he figured, in being so close to the officers' noses that they would look over him. His boldness even ex- tended to doing little jobs about the sta- tion house from time to time, and he came to be well acquainted with many of the officers. His greatest fear was that some of the officers from his old haunts would be trans- ferred to his new precinct. But he knew 178 WITS VERSUS THE LONG ARM every blue-coat in his old walks, and was prepared to move suddenly should any of them put in an appearance at the station house. He had been out several months, and had come to look upon his continued lib- erty as assured, altho he had not al- lowed himself to become careless, when one day the inevitable happened. He had just boarded a street car in one of the re- spectable neighborhoods, when some one tapt him on the shoulder. He looked around into the faces of two of the officers from the City who had thus stumbled upon him accidentally. His first impulse, of course, was to fight; and if there had seemed even a ghost of a chance he would have fought to a finish. But he was unarmed and taken by surprise, and outnumbered two to one. So he adopted what seemed to be the next best course. He asked to be al- 179 THE WALLED CITY lowed to speak with them in private, and a three-cornered conference took place at the next street corner. He begged for his liberty, since he could not fight for it, swearing to the officers that he was then living an honest life, and promising to con- tinue doing so. He pictured the horrors of what a return to captivity meant to him, and used his arguments so well that he came near winning his case. But in the end the best terms he could make was a promise from his captors that they would "say a good word" for him to the Super- intendent, telling how meekly he had sur- rendered. When Hicks arrived at the City he was clapped into the isolation ward again ; and this time it seemed as if he was there to stay. At least there was little fear of his picking his way out through the walls with a rusty nail, since the rooms had all been freshly lined, floors, walls and ceilings, 180 WITS VERSUS THE LONG ARM with thin sheet steel thanks to the lesson taught by Hicks* handiwork a few months before. But Hicks was by no means through with the game. He had played what seemed to be his best card, to be sure, but he still held others that were worth playing. To all appearances he was indeed a changed man from the one that had been in the City a few months before. He him- self earnestly asserted that there had been an entire change in his life; that he had turned from evil ways, and had not done a dishonest act since escaping. While his punishment and imprisonment were irk- some to him, he said that he knew they were just, and that he should serve out his term without any further trouble to anyone. When it was completed he would go outside and lead an honest life. He had become a Christian, in proof of which he referred to a certain Salvation Army 181 THE WALLED CITY leader with whom he claimed he had been working while in the city. All that he asked was that he be given an opportunity to work, and permission to read his Bible at times. This, coming from Jim Hicks, was looked upon as a huge joke by most of the officials in the city, who are prone to become skeptical about the actual refor- mation of the "reformed criminal." But to all external appearances, at least, Hicks was no longer the Hicks of old. He worked and said his prayers and read his Bible regularly, refusing to play cards, and stopt using tobacco. In short, he was simply the meek and humble lamb, still wearing the external appearance of the erstwhile lion Hicks. For several months this had no ap- parent effect upon any of the officials. It was looked upon simply as another of Hicks' long-headed games. But one day 182 WITS VERSUS THE LONG ARM he asked to see the Superintendent, and in private revealed to that officer a plot to escape that some of the men on another ward were planning. Coming from Hicks, this was a surprise, for he was no tattler, and, as he was not implicated or concerned directly in this plot in any way, his rea- sons for telling were inquired. His reply was the one that he had been giving for six months that he had really reformed, and wished to prove it. Whatever may have been the opinion of the Superintendent at the time as to Hicks ' sincerity, it is certain that his story of the plot was most useful, and helped in de- feating an attempt that otherwise would in all probability have been successful. As a reward, Hicks was transferred from the isolation ward to a more cheerful one. Here his piety and good behavior contin- ued, and gradually he gained the confi- dence of many of the officials, who believed 183 THE WALLED CITY that lie had really changed for the better. Among these was the kind-hearted and somewhat too susceptible Superintendent himself. Almost another year passed without anything of importance occurring, and then Hicks was given another opportunity of showing his colors. Another great plot to escape was in progress, unsuspected by the officials. Here again there was no rea- son for Hicks concerning himself in the matter, but nevertheless he kept the Su- perintendent informed until the thing was ripe for crushing, when it was cut short, as the one had been before. The Superintendent was now convinced that Hicks had really reformed; and in the end he signed an application to the governor of the state requesting that Hicks be granted a full pardon. And so just two years after his return to the City the second time, Hicks walked out into the 184 WITS VERSUS THE LONG ARM world a free man, pardoned for all past offenses. Had Hicks really reformed! Or was all this meekness and goodness well-directed hypocrisy? The Superintendent believed he was entirely sincere in his actions, and that he would live an honest life outside. Most of the other officials thought differ- ently. They believed that their superior officer's sense of gratitude for the good Hicks had done him in revealing the plots had prejudiced his good judgment. Among the keepers on the wards there was no difference in opinion on the mat- ter. Doyle, the old sleuth who knew con- victs as well as he knew his own fingers, exprest the general sentiment of his as- sociates : "Yes," he said, "Jim Hicks may have reformed; but if that's the case he'll not be botherin' us any, 'cause he's dead. He'd never reform in this world." 185 Chapter VIII THE SHOT 187 Chapter VIII THE SHOT The Japanese are credited with origi- nating the much-heralded art of "jiu jitsu." But long before the word that stands for joint twisting, nerve-squeezing, and muscle-pulling was known in this country, a system of similar, if less elab- orate, disabling methods was known to practically every veteran keeper in all the Walled Cities of the country. Without some such effective system some system of self-defense that gave them a distinct advantage over their charges it would have been difficult for the attendants of half a century ago to have kept some of the more violent cases 189 THE WALLED CITY within bounds, since striking with the closed hand was forbidden the attendants, altho no such restriction was placed upon their charges. And so ingenious keepers, some time early in the history of asylums, studied out an elaborate system of what we should now call "jiu jitsu," and this was surreptitiously communi- cated to colleagues all over the country from Atlantic to Pacific. Surreptitiously, since if it had been made public it would have been vigorously supprest by the authorities, no matter how useful it might be, in deference to public opinion already hypersensitive to the subject of "asylum abuses. " But in point of fact, this same system of "American jiu jitsu," if it may be so called, was sometimes a merciful as well as an effective way of handling ex- cited and ungovernable patients. One of its chief merits, from the at- tendant's point of view, was the fact that 190 THE SHOT it could be used without detection by any but an initiated onlooker. This was of inestimable value when patients were be- ing escorted through places outside the walls of the City. At such times Citizens are likely to become excited, or take ad- vantage of their surroundings and the sympathy of the gaping crowds, which is almost invariably with the captive, no matter how black a criminal he may be. Under these circumstances, should he be- come unruly, and be handled roughly by the attendant, even in self-defense, that officer would more than likely be set upon and mobbed by the onlookers. On the other hand, no one would be likely to offer more than verbal interference if the officer seemed merely to be holding his charge firmly. Knowing this, the attendant, orientated in "jiu jitsu," could take his patient by the arm, to all appearances simply holding 191 THE WALLED CITY his wrist with one hand and grasping his upper arm just above the elbow with the other, and guide him where he pleased without much trouble. For unknown to the spectators, the keeper's fingers, rest- ing apparently innocently upon his charge's elbow, really covered a large nerve trunk on the inner side of the elbow joint, where the slightest contraction of his fingers could be made to produce a sen- sation that would bring any but the most unruly Citizen under control. This was simply one of the multiform methods of controlling patients, a score of other "jiu jitsu" twists and locks being known and used on occasion. None of these methods were countenanced by any of the officers in control of any institu- tion; and, in truth, a large number of the officers never even suspected their exist- ence, although the attendants sometimes used them under the very noses of their 192 THE SHOT superior officers, without detection, or without injury to the patient. And when the much advertised Japanese jiu jitsu took the country by storm as a novelty a few years ago these veteran attendants had their little laugh all to themselves. It wasn't so much of a novelty to them as to the generality of people. In former times, however, there were patients, particularly those coming from certain localities, who could not be sub- dued by any kind of physical force. I say certain localities advisedly, as every alien- ist knows that the characteristics of the patients of any hospital vary with the lo- cality from which they come. A maniac is a maniac, and a melancholiac a melan- choliac, of course, whether he comes from Boston, Massachusetts, or Butte, Mon- tana. But the maniac from Boston usu- ally exhibits more of the characteristics of the Yankee than his far-western proto- 193 THE WALLED CITY type, and vice versa; and this difference has to be taken into consideration in the treatment qf the two otherwise similar cases. This difference in patients of the same class was particularly striking a quarter of a century ago, when the west was still "uncivilized," and many a skilled eastern attendant or physician, ac- customed to handling eastern patients, found that there were still new things to learn when he entered a western hospital. The explanation of the different charac- teristics of insane persons afflicted with the same type of insanity, but coming from different environments, lies in the fact that the tendency of the insane mind is to follow the channels of thought long established, rather than to seek new ones. There are marked exceptions, of course, but this is the rule. Thus we find that a patient coming from a well-governed city, where he has been 194 THE SHOT accustomed to granting authority to blue- coats and brass buttons, a resident of the Bowery, for example, is much less likely to challenge the authority of the brass-but- toned attendants in charge of his ward, than a "wild westerner" unaccustomed to any authority other than his own sweet will. The Bowery man may hate the brass buttons, but he respects them intuitively; whereas the westerner, being less familiar with such things, is less likely to be simi- larly imprest. As a result, the western cities in the early days, and indeed until the older citi- zens had passed away, were far more diffi- cult to govern than the eastern ones. The men of the west were accustomed to take the law into their own hands to a great extent, while those of the east depended upon officials and law-makers. So that when the unfortunate westerner became an unwilling citizen, he had little idea of 195 THE WALLED CITY obeying any one, brass-buttoned or other- wise, without making a hard fight against it. As a result, more attendants and stronger attendants were necessary to govern western Cities than corresponding institutions in the east; and it cannot be denied that some of the wards of these earlier western Cities were governed for many years largely by "the strength of the good right arms" of the keepers in charge. How chemistry and materia med- ica came finally to the aid of "the good right arm" we shall see in a moment. It should not be understood that it was the criminal inmate of these early western institutions who made the most trouble for his keepers. On the contrary, the most troublesome man was likely to be the one who had been an honest, law-abiding citi- zen all his life until overtaken by his men- tal affliction. 196 RECREATION HALL AT THE DANNEMORA (N.Y.) STATE HOSPITAL Lower picture; A stairway in the Dannemora State Hospital, and an old trusty who has been a ' ' citizen ' ' for many years. Courtesy of Dr. Charles H. North C ? "~^ j~ C 9 THE SHOT This man, not realizing his condition, and considering himself unjustly detained as a prisoner, would fight for liberty with persistent ferocity quite beyond that of the habitual criminal. It was this feature of such cases the fact that the Citizen really believed that he was fighting a just fight that made the spectacle more de- plorable. ' Yet of course the unfortunate had to be controlled at any cost, little as he was able to appreciate this necessity. And there are many gray-haired attend- ants still living who carry scars, broken bones, and permanent internal injuries as evidence of these early fights, before the hypodermic syringe and the tiny alkaloid tablet the "shot," as it was known in the vernacular came to the rescue of themselves and their charges. A most striking example of what the "shot" sometimes did in a desperate case was shown in its effect upon a -former 197 THE WALLED CITY sheriff who was an inmate of one of the western cities. This man, a respected citi- zen and public officer for several years in his community, became insane in the prime of life, and was brought to one of the state hospitals for restraint. The details of how he was finally taken into custody and transported to the hospital by half a dozen stout deputies how he "stood off " an en- tire neighborhood with a Winchester, wounded several men, and was finally cap- tured by a cowboy with a lariat after his ammunition was exhausted these are in- teresting details that need not detain us. Suffice it that this desperate man a one- armed man at that was finally landed in the hospital and turned loose with a score of other patients under the care of three attendants. Realizing that in his excited condition the sheriff was likely to make no end of trouble, the medical officers of the institu- 198 THE SHOT tion attempted to administer narcotics; but at that time hypodermic medication was little known, and it was impossible to force drugs down the man's throat. The only course left open to the keepers of the ward was to use force, as gently as pos- sible, of course, but to any necessary de- gree in the last extremity. And the first encounter between them and the sheriff convinced everyone that "last extremity" measures were the first and only appro- priate ones when dealing with the ex-offi- cer. As was said a moment ago, the sheriff was a one-armed man, or, rather, a one- handed man, his left hand having been amputated at the wrist; but this seeming disadvantage was really a very decided advantage in a rough-and-tumble fight. For a blow given with this stump was very like that of a wooden mallet; and at close quarters the sheriff could jerk loose his 199 THE WALLED CITY shortened arm and deliver a blow from an unexpected quarter with telling effect. For years he had been the best fighter in his community, and in his first battle in the Walled City he sustained his reputa- tion fully. In less than five minutes he had put three attendants completely out of action. More attendants came crowd- ing from other wards, only to be bruised and battered before the sheriff was finally overpowered. Any one familiar with the enormous strength of a Jeffries, a Gotch, or a Hack- enschmidt will appreciate the fact that if any one of these men were to be attacked by almost any number of unarmed men, it would be practically impossible for the crowd to overpower him until he had ex- hausted himself; and, furthermore, that this exhaustion would not come until many heads had been broken. The only way to overpower such a man would be for the 200 THE SHOT attacking party to work in systematic re- lays, each taking its punishment until re- lieved by the supports. This was the course finally adopted to conquer the doughty sheriff. But altho he was finally subdued enough so that he could be strapt into security, he was by no means conquered, and was ready to be up and fighting the moment his bonds were loosened. What to do with the man was a prob- lem. By the use of straps with locking buckles, judiciously applied so that he could move about like a hobbled horse, he could be allowed some liberty; and there were times when he was quiet enough so that his restraining bonds were removed; but each time that this experiment was protracted for any length of time a des- perate fight resulted. For the sheriff was absolutely unconquerable, and his spirit unbreakable by any such means as brute 201 THE WALLED CITY force. But one day medical science pro- duced the hypodermic syringe, and a little later the hospital doctors discovered the "shot," and the sheriff's fighting spirit finally succumbed to the tiny hollow needle of science. For many centuries possibly since the very dawn of civilization a medicinal herb popularly called "henbane," and officially "hyoscyamus," has been known. The ancients were familiar with several of its peculiar properties, as they knew of that closely allied herb, the poison hem- lock, that caused the death of Socrates. Later generations of physicians found that this drug had practically the same ef- fect as the deadly, but indispensable, bel- ladonna, being a sedative to the nervous system. It was used, therefore, for vari- ous disorders, sometimes as a tincture or as a decoction, and at times even as an ap- plication to painful swellings, the leaves 202 THE SHOT of the plant being made into a kind of poultice. But at last chemists discovered that the leaves and flowering tops of all these plants contained minute quantities of substances called alkaloids, which were largely responsible for the medicinal and poisonous action of each plant. The hun- dredth part of a grain of these alkaloids, or "active principles," would produce more pronounced and definite effects than a handful of the leaves; and if injected under the skin hypodermically acted with magic rapidity. Here was a means of giving medicines to refractory patients who refused to swal- low them ; and the use and abuse, in some instances of the hypodermic syringe be- came very general in the medical world, particularly in the "Walled Cities. Stimu- lants and sedatives could be administered at will, and there was naturally a general search for hypodermic medicines to meet 203 THE WALLED CITY all conditions. In this search some one discovered a wonderful, and not com- monly known or credited action of hyoscy- amine, the active principle of the long- known henbane. As was said a moment ago, the action of this drug is much the same as that of atropine, or belladonna; and many of the text-books at the present time fail to say anything about an altogether different and remarkable effect produced by large doses of this terrible alkaloid. This effect can be described technically so as to be in- telligible; but no description can convey even approximately the terrible sensation produced in many insane patients by large doses. In a general way this condition may be said to be a paralysis of the body without a corresponding paralysis of the mind, although this is not quite correct, technically speaking. The victim lies in an absolutely helpless condition, some- 204, THE SHOT times with his muscles so completely para- lyzed that he cannot so much as move a finger cannot close his lips, or move his tongue to moisten them. This feeling of helplessness is usually followed by unconsciousness, and then by a period of terrible depression. The com- bined feeling of helplessness and depres- sion is absolutely unlike any other feeling imaginable, if we may judge from the ac- counts of those who have experienced it. Other sensations such as pain may be judged in a measure by comparison with other painful sensations of somewhat sim- ilar character ; but with the sensation pro- duced by hyoscyamine in large doses there seems to be no basis for comparison. There is no kindred feeling. I have known young physicians in Walled Cities to take a "shot" of hyoscyamine experimentally to experience the effects, just as young physicians are wont to do with all kinds of 205 THE WALLED CITY medicines. I have known them to do this once with hyoscyamine; but I never knew one who would willingly repeat the experi- ment. It was while the sheriff was in one of his terrible fighting moods that the knowl- edge of the newly discovered "shot" reached the City in which he was confined. A new physician from the east had brought the knowledge with him, and sug- gested using it. A quartet of attendants accordingly overpowered the fighter, and held him long enough for the physician to prick the skin and administer the "hyos" a process requiring only a matter of three or four seconds. Then the attend- ants released their hold, and the sheriff sprang to his feet again ready to continue the fight, absolutely unconscious that he had in his system at that moment a more powerful opponent than the combined strength of those around him one that 206 THE SHOT dealt its blow swiftly and surely, and without chance of a return. For five minutes he paced back and forth in a corner, tiger-like, waiting for the attack of his enemies, and apparently puzzled by their hesitancy. Suddenly he stopt, put his hand to his head and stared about him wildly for a moment, staggering against the wall, but quickly jerking himself back into balance by a powerful effort. A moment later his knees bent under him, his head slowly drooped forward, and he collapsed in a heap on the floor. The attendants carried the limp figure into a room, and arranged the fighter com- fortably on a bed. For hours he lay as they had left him. Then gradually the effects of the drug wore away, his muscu- lar control returned, and he was able to crawl out to his accustomed place on the ward again. But what a different man 207 THE WALLED CITY from the dauntless fighter of the day be- fore! The unconquerable, unquenchable spirit of yesterday had gone forever. And in place of the defiant fighting man, chal- lenging everyone about him, and ready to battle against all odds at any moment, was a groveling creature, who begged and reiterated his plea, that he might be spared another experience such as that he had just passed through. Nor was this merely a passing fancy, conceived when the memory of his sufferings was still acute. Days and weeks passed, and still he did not forget. Indeed he never again raised his hand in resistance to any one in authority in the City. What the terrible sensation produced by the "shot" is, while inconceivable, may be vaguely understood by the fact that an un- conquerable spirit like that of the Sher- iff's could be broken completely by a sin- gle administration. There are many cases 208 THE SHOT where a single administration did not suf- fice, it is true ; but in many instances it did, and the others always succumbed eventu- ally. Practically every institution in the world adopted it; and for several years it was considered one of the most hopeful agents ever devised for the purpose of con- trolling obstreperous Citizens. Then other perfected methods were introduced for governing the Walled Cities more attend- ants, more room, better classification of the inmates, prolonged sedative baths, etc. and the dreaded "shot" passed into his- tory not, however, until it had left an in- delible mark upon the story of the Walled Cities of the world. Like the "jiu jitsu," it had its uses and abuses. It represented a transitory phase in the development of the asylum systems of this country; and there are still instances where, used in a modified form, it is both necessary and beneficial. But the day of its abuse has 209 THE WALLED CITY long since departed. It is now only a rem- iniscence, to be recalled by the older vet- eran members of the Cities, in talking over the "old days." 210 Chapter IX CONTENTED CITIZENS 211 Chapter IX CONTENTED CITIZENS Possibly the impression has been con- veyed from what has been said that the Walled City might just as appropriately be called the City of Gloom. If so, this should be corrected. There are many gloom sides to the City, to be sure, just as there are in all cities ; but on the other hand, there is probably a larger percent- age of persons who are happy in every Walled City than in any city of the same size, or, for that matter, ten times the size, outside. For those unfamiliar with the usual course of insanity this statement re- quires an explanation. Like almost every other disease affect- 213 THE WALLED CITY ing certain definite organs of the body, in- sanity passes through various stages, and terminates in one of three ways by the recovery or death of the patient, or by the disease assuming a chronic form. A large majority of cases pass on into this chronic state, the afflicted ones becoming the per- manent members of the Walled City com- munities. It is among these that the happy and contented individuals are found. The lives of such individuals, to be sure, are frequently more like those of pampered animals than those of human beings; but if finding pleasure and amusement in one 's surroundings, having all one requires no worries or troubles to-day and no thought of the possibility of any to-morrow if this is what is meant by "happiness," then the Walled Cities have more than their share of happy people. For the first few months, or even for a year or two, after entering the Walled CONTENTED CITIZENS City the newcomer may be the very anti- thesis of happy; but it is not necessarily his surroundings that cause this, as is shown by the fact that ordinarily his con- dition improves on reaching the institu- tion. It is usually the nature of his dis- ease that makes him unhappy. If he be- gins to improve he becomes happier al- most invariably ; but, on the other hand, if he grows no better, gradually lapsing into the incurable stage of his disease known as "dementia," he is even more likely to be satisfied and contented with his lot. It is true that he rarely forgets that he is a prisoner, and he may ask frequently to be allowed to leave the City. But with a great number of the chronic cases this asking is really only a meaningless habit. To these it means no more than the usual "good morning" greeting given by outsid- ers, when in reality the morning may be anything but ' ' good. ' ' 215 THE WALLED CITY If some day the gates of the City were to be thrown open and the Citizens told they were free to leave, many would de- cline the offer. Many others, impelled by habit, would take advantage of the oppor- tunity they had been seeking so long. But by nightfall a very large number of these older Citizens would have returned to the City (if they could find the way), glad to be safely back in their familiar surround- ings, where they were sure of a warm room, a warm bed, and plenty of food. And yet the first Citizens to come trooping back would probably be the very ones who had been most persistent in their requests to be allowed to leave. The experiment of actually opening the gates and giving per- mission to leave has, of course, never been tried ; but on a small scale it has been done often enough to make it certain what would happen if it were to be tried. In one City of my acquaintance there 216 CONTENTED CITIZENS was an old patient known to everyone as "Fred," who had been a Citizen for a score of years, and who was one of the characters of the place. He had become a simple, childish, but apparently perfectly happy old man. And yet he never allowed a day to pass that he did not stop some of- ficer and ask to be given his liberty. Fre- quently he would not even wait to receive an answer, but pass on, smiling as always, satisfied apparently with having asked his usual question. But one day the superin- tendent, as an amusing experiment, sur- prised the old man by granting his request. "You can go if you wish, Fred," he said, "but mind you you must go immediately, and never come back." Fred's countenance fell at once, and he began to "hedge." "But how can I go without money!" he asked. The superintendent took a bill from his 217 THE WALLED CITY pocket and handed it to him, telling him to hurry off the grounds before he recalled his offer. The old fellow, unable to think of any more excuses for not going, shuffled to the door, went slowly down the steps, and started along the road in the direction of the town, walking slowly with his head drooping, apparently regretting every step that was taking him further from the building. Nothing more was heard of him until al- most supper time that evening, when a very sheepish old figure was seen hanging around the entrance to the building. He was told by the gatekeeper who pretended not to know him, that "nobody but Citi- zens were allowed to remain about the place." Then the old man asked meekly if he might be allowed to see the superin- tendent; and after more waiting the re- quest was granted. But that officer was obdurate: he had granted Fred's request 218 CONTENTED CITIZENS in good faith, he said, and had given him money. The City was altogether too crowded at any rate, and another man had been found already to fill his place. As all this seemed to be in perfect seri- ousness, Fred was in abject misery. He begged, entreated, and promised, all to no purpose. Then he took another tack, ceased imploring and became indignant. What right had the superintendent to re- fuse him admission he, Fred Wolfing, who had worked for years without pay in the City? He would see if all his years of labor were to count for nothing. He would go to the town, hunt up a judge, and com- pel the superintendent to take him back! The picture drawn by the old man of going before a judge and demanding ad- mission to the Walled City was a severe strain on the assumed gravity of the offi- cer. At last, with seeming reluctance, he agreed to let Fred return on "probation," 219 THE WALLED CITY with the understanding that the first time he was heard to mention anything about "getting out" to any one he was to be turned out of the place forever. And so a very humble and contrite old man shuf- fled into his accustomed place at the sup- per table, glad to be safe at "home" again. As in the case of scores of others of his class, the City had become a very dear home to him without his realizing it. Cases of this type represent a very large class about all Walled Cities. Usually they are "trusties" men who are paroled and allowed to go about where they please without being watched. Frequently they are intelligent enough to have certain work which they perform, and take great pride in doing it well. The nature of crime that is responsible for their coming to the City usually has little bearing upon their con- duct once they have reached the happy stage of dementia. In one of the largest 220 CONTENTED CITIZENS Cities of the United States every "trusty" having the liberty of the grounds was a murderer. Indeed in the Walled City the inmates who are to be most depended upon, and who give the least trouble, are frequently the murderers. There are con- spicuous exceptions, to be sure, but in gen- eral the rule holds good. Unless something is known of the pe- culiarities of insanity, and something also of the criminal's nature and characteris- tics, this is difficult to understand; and in certain cases no satisfactory explanation is possible. Many insane persons have been "peculiar" and eccentric all their lives, and in the main these eccentricities continue, possibly in modified forms, when they become insane. Dishonesty and theft may be as repugnant to an insane mur- derer as to the model citizen. His crime is against a certain individual, and is often the result of passion ; whereas the attitude THE WALLED CITY of such a criminal as a burglar, for ex- ample, is a general animosity against any property, and is a passionless business transaction. With the one, crime is a means of making a living; with the other the pecuniary consideration has no part. Murders are committed, to be sure, purely for financial gain; and this type of mur- derer is the worst of all criminals. But few of such men are ever fortunate enough to reach the Walled City, the rope or the "chair" cutting short their careers. The unfortunate murderer who has com- mitted his crime in the heat of passion, or what is quite as frequent, as the result of some imaginary wrong, is likely to be a very different type of individual from the ordinary criminal. Stealing is not instinc- tive with him, and if he gives his word that he will not attempt to escape there is little danger of his breaking it. In short, his in- stincts are not "criminal" in the usual 222 CONTENTED CITIZENS sense of the term. And while it is possible that if he were to be returned to his old surroundings in the outside world, and given the same environment as when he committed his crime, he might repeat it, it is almost certain that he will be a harm- less patient in the City. Of course for a time he will not be trusted too far, and the general course of his insanity will be pretty definitely de- termined before any positions of trust are given him. But once his case is thoroughly understood, he may usually be trusted im- plicitly. This is proved by the fact that such a large percentage of Walled City "trusties" belong to this class. But altho filling positions of trust, and where considerable judgment in a small way is necessary on their part, these " trusties " frequently have most peculiar delusions. One happy and contented Ger- man Citizen of this type, named Charlie 223 THE WALLED CITY Beaman, had spent twenty years in the daily task of taking care of the garbage of his City, and incidentally in shooting millions of imaginary rabbits. While working away happily at his garbage cans, the white haired old fellow talked and laughed continually to himself at the sport he was having. Now and again he would pause in his work, raise his arms as if holding a gun, aim carefully, and then shout, "Bang!" If an officer happened to be passing at the time Charlie would run up to him and exclaim gleefully: "I shoot ten t'ousand rabbits!" "Only ten thousand?" the officer in- quires, surprised at so small a bag. "Ten t'ousand million," Charlie hastens to correct, "Ten t'ousand million at one shoot!" So all day long the old man enjoys him- self working and killing countless numbers 224 cd H < S w .^ < t CONTENTED CITIZENS of rabbits. Always he kills ten thousand at the first shot ; but if there are any doubt- ing Thomases about, he is willing to raise the number glibly to "fifty hundred t'ou- sand million" as occasion may demand. His ideas of numbers are apparently com- pletely perverted. But let one garbage can less than the regular number be sent out, or let any other mistake occur in the line of his regular work, and it will soon be discovered that Charlie's perverted ideas apply only to imaginary objects, par- ticularly rabbits. He can count such mun- dane things as garbage cans correctly, and if there is a shortage he will see that there is no peace for the supervising officers un- til the missing cans are forthcoming. He will follow them about alternately scolding them and shooting rabbits until his wrongs are righted. A boon companion of Charlie, a man of about the same age who had spent years 225 THE WALLED CITY in the City and was a ' * trusty, ' ' was Tom Walker, a good natured old Irishman who believed that he was the great Creator. His particular duty, in which he took the greatest pride, was caring for the small porch and the stone steps at the entrance to one of the buildings. But never for one moment, not even during the somewhat lowly task of scrubbing the stones, did Tom forget that he was the Creator. ''Tom, who are you?" someone would ask him. "I'm God, Sor," he always replied promptly. "And did you make this world?" they would ask. Tom would always pause and smile at the ignorance of the questioner. "This world?" he would say, scornfully; "Huh, Mon! This is one of the smaller worlds! It's nuthin'." And then becoming confi- dential and putting on his most persuasive 226 CONTENTED CITIZENS smile he would come closer and whisper, "Have you a bit o' 'baccy?" And when the coveted morsel was given him he would go back to his scrubbing, chuckling to him- self, a happy and contented deity. 227 Chapter X WHEN DANGER THREATENS THE CITY 229 Chapter X WHEN DANGER THREATENS THE CITY Particular stress has been laid on the fact that most of the more active Citizens are constantly planning to escape, and this has not been overdrawn, and cannot be em- phasized too strongly, particularly in the case of certain classes of Citizens. But one of the most curious paradoxes in the life of the community is the fact that in times of danger, when the City itself or some of its rulers are suddenly threatened, these very Citizens are the most active in averting the calamity. A few years ago a fire broke out in the basement of one of the largest institutions THE WALLED CITY in the country, kindled by a pyromaniac who had made his way beneath the build- ing. He had done his work so well that when the flames were discovered it seemed as if there was no chance of saving the building. This meant that the eight hun- dred inmates would have to be turned loose into the fields, from which any of the ac- tive ones could escape, since the mere handful of guards could not control such a number. The volunteer firemen of the institution could make no headway against the flames, partly because the fires had been started in so many places that there were not enough men to man the hose and bucket lines. In this emergency scores of the more active- minded men, some of them the most des- perate characters in the place, offered their services; offered to fight the flames that were helping them to freedom. In sheer desperation their services were accepted; 232 WHEN DANGER THREATENS and never did heroes acquit themselves better than some of these volunteers. Time and again men with life sentences staring them in the face rushed through smoke and fire, fighting until overcome, to be dragged out and resuscitated, only to return again to the fight. Men who only a few hours before would not have been trusted with even such a comparatively harmless weapon as a piece of tin or a nail now swung axes and sledges. And those that could not get to the actual scene of activ- ity shouted their encouragements to the workers who were blocking their way to liberty. On one ward a newcomer, recog- nizing that the chance of a lifetime was at hand, proposed to his companions that they make a break for liberty. But when he attempted to lead the way himself he was blocked by his companions, some of whom used him so roughly that only time- ly interference of an officer saved 233 THE WALLED CITY One muscular old blacksmith who was serving a life sentence particularly distin- guished himself. He beat down heavy doors and partitions that had resisted the sledge when wielded by weaker hands, and for full three hours stood ankle deep in the freezing cold water, until the last ves- tige of the fire was stamped out. Then he rolled himself up in his blanket and went to sleep as if nothing unusual had hap- pened. Thus these Citizens fought and saved their City fought against their own chances of liberty as eagerly as they would have fought for it under other circum- stances. The common danger stirred with- in them irresistibly their better selves, sentiments all but completely supprest in many cases, and responsive only to some sudden and extraordinary stimulus. Given a few hours to think the matter over, and many a Citizen who worked 234 WHEN DANGER THREATENS faithfully that day would have acted dif- ferently ; but the sudden call to action gave little time for reasoning, and allowed the natural instinct for good, which is inhe- rent in almost every man, to dominate for the moment. But while unusual events like this fire call out the better instincts of the Citizens occasionally, scarcely a month goes by in the City when some member of the com- munity is not given a chance to show that, on some grounds at least, he may claim kinship to the best of men. Many a keeper or attendant, caught at a disadvantage by some violent Citizen owes his life to the friendly assistance of some of his charges. So that while the Citizens are the cause of most of the tragedies, they are also the means of preventing many others. In the very nature of the case a bond very closely akin to friendship must be formed between men who spend hours 235 THE WALLED CITY every day for many years in the same room, no matter what their relative social status may be. Many of the Citizens, even some of the desperate characters, have been for years under the care of the same attendant, and in many instances have be- come very much attached to him. They realize that the attendant is not directly responsible for their incarceration, and that he is simply doing his duty in keeping them in bondage. If it were not that par- ticular keeper it would be some other. And if this keeper treats them well, as he usu- ally does, they are likely to come to regard him in the light of an old friend. They would not hesitate to elude him and escape from him if possible, probably would beat his brains out if necessary to their plans for escape should he chance to be in the way; but let another patient on the ward attack this same keeper let a violent pa- tient attempt to injure him and almost 236 WHEN DANGER THREATENS invariably lie can rely upon some of the older patients coming to his rescue. This is one of the peculiar phases of Walled City life; and yet it is common to all Walled Cities. In one of the Eastern Cities a Citizen who went by the name of Buck Con- way had a peculiar record in his attitude toward those about him. He was a "high class" criminal, a bank robber by pref- erence but aside from this peculiar defect in his moral makeup, he was in every way a very likeable, and a very manly man. Like most of the men of his class he held the ordinary thief in contempt, and indeed seemed to have very few of the elements and instincts of the criminal. He was strictly the "gentleman burglar," only his attentions were always confined to safes and bank vaults. One day when he had been in the City for about six months he was left with two 237 THE WALLED CITY other patients on the ward with a single attendant, who was busy doing some work, and paying very little attention to his charges. Seeing a good opportunity when the attendant's back was turned, one of the patients knocked the keeper down, and in an instant had him by the throat. Con- way, who had been reading a newspaper, seeing what was going on, jumped across the room, pulled off the patient, and gave him a drubbing that would have done credit to a pugilist. A month later another row occurred on the ward, two attendants handling a pa- tient with unnecessary violence. This time Conway interfered in the patient's behalf a thing that few inmates ever have the temerity to do. The result was a three- cornered fight, in which the attendants got all the worst of it. Such a thing is very unusual and under ordinary circumstances would demoralize the necessary discipline 238 WHEN DANGER THREATENS of the ward. But Conway was known to be no bully ; and when the affair was finally investigated by the officials, his account was taken in preference to that of the two attendants, both of whom were summarily dismissed. Under the circumstances Conway should naturally have been hated by both Citizens and employes, since he had taken equally active parts against both; but curiously enough he remained a universal favorite. Everybody was forced to admire his cour- age, and the impartiality of his attitude, and he had a peculiarly attractive person- ality. Most of the keepers associated with him were sturdy sons of Erin who admire a good fighter and a fair fight. The most despicable person to them was a tattler. And as Conway was a fair fighter and no tattler, never having been known to open his lips against friend or foe, he remained on the best of terms with all of them. 239 THE WALLED CITY Among the Citizens his record as a daring safe-blower was sufficient to inspire ad- miration, and his record as a fighter in- sured their respect. 240 Chapter XI INJUSTICE WITHIN THE WALLS 241 Chapter XI INJUSTICE WITHIN THE WALLS Perhaps the most terrible thing to con- template is the thought of being punished unjustly to be imprisoned or sentenced to death for a crime committed by another. If anything would destroy the reason, surely false imprisonment would do so. Yet if a person had been guilty of many crimes and had escaped punishment, and then were to be convicted falsely, it would seem that he should be little affected by it, since he was simply getting his just de- serts, only on a little different technicality. But this is not the case. The hardened criminal who is falsely convicted fre- quently takes it to heart quite as much as an innocent person. 343 THE WALLED CITY In the Walled Cities there are always a certain number of persons who claim that they have been falsely convicted; indeed, most of the Citizens are likely to claim in- nocence on general principles. But many of them, when they have become ac- quainted with the officials, admit their guilt freely enough; and with the others there is always a moral certainty that they are guilty. The men most likely to complain are old offenders against the law at any rate, so that the ends of justice are not being perverted even if they did not com- mit the particular crime of which they are accused; and in point of fact, false con- victions are rare. When, therefore, a Citizen comes to one of the officers with his tale of false con- viction, his complaints are not likely to be taken too seriously, unless there is some unusual reason for it. The case of Jim Murphy, a hardened criminal who came INJUSTICE WITHIN THE WALLS into one of the Eastern Cities a few years ago, proved an exception, however, and the final outcome was most instructive as to the nature of the habitual criminal. When Murphy came into the City from prison, he was one of the most dejected, deprest, and altogether miserable objects imaginable. He had served only one year of a fifteen year sentence, but during the last three months of his imprisonment he had become so melancholy and completely unbalanced that he was finally transferred to the Walled City. For several days after his arrival there he was so stupid that he had to be led about, and fed with a spoon at meal time. He moaned and wrung his hands continu- ally, mumbling to himself an unintelligible jumble of words. In two weeks ' time, how- ever, he began to brighten up a little, and later began to talk more rationally. All of this talk had the same import he was 245 THE WALLED CITY being falsely imprisoned. At first little attention was paid to this most common subject of conversation, but as the man regained more nearly his normal mentality his statements began to carry some weight. What strengthened his case was the fact that he acknowledged being an habitual criminal who had served four terms in prison, and asserted frankly that there were numerous important crimes to his credit of which he was not even suspected. But of this one particular crime for which he and an associate had been convicted, he insisted that he was innocent, and that not being able to establish the fact had driven him insane. There is usually something about an in- nocent person that bespeaks his innocence. Just what that particular something may be psychologists have not as yet deter- mined; but frequently it does not require the special psychologist to detect it. And 246 INJUSTICE WITHIN THE WALLS so while a score of other prisoners were making the same complaint as Murphy, with apparently just as good grounds for their assertions, his was the only one that carried much weight. Several of the offi- cials and attendants were convinced be- fore they cared to acknowledge it; for none of them like to be " taken in" by their charges. But one day the medical officer had the temerity to announce his be- lief that Murphy was telling the truth. He did not announce this openly, but he took occasion to call an old and skilled attend- ant, whose opinion in such cases he had learned to respect, and confided his opin- ion to him. Somewhat to his surprise the attendant acknowledged that he had formed the same opinion; and by further inquiry it was found that this was the con- census of opinion of all those connected with the case. There was nothing to be done in the 247 THE WALLED CITY matter for the moment, altho Murphy wrote a series of letters to the governor, the judge who sentenced him, and various other persons, as is the privilege of every Citizen. Meanwhile he was rapidly recov- ering his normal mental condition. One day he received a large envelop bearing the seal of the prosecuting attorney who had secured his conviction. In this was a letter stating that the attorney had abso- lute proof that the conviction of Murphy was a miscarriage of justice ; that the real culprit had been apprehended a short time before, and had made a full confession. That he, the attorney, had taken the nec- essary steps not only to have Murphy par- doned, but had set the machinery at work to have the Legislature recompense him for his eighteen months of imprisonment. Two weeks later the pardon from the Governor arrived, and with it an official letter to the effect that the Legislature 248 INJUSTICE WITHIN THE WALLS would in all probability grant the sum of fifteen thousand dollars to be divided equally between Murphy and the man con- victed with him. At the same time a let- ter came to the Superintendent of the Walled City, directing him to buy Murphy a ticket to the Capital, give him the usual allowance of spending money (ten dollars) and discharge him. And now for the remarkable sequel. Murphy was driven to the station in the neighboring town to take his train. Un- luckily for him the train happened to be half an hour late that day. So to pass the time away Murphy, a free American citi- zen, strolled about the town. As luck would have it he passed a house where there was nobody in sight, and where a cellar door had been left temptingly ajar. Murphy was not hungry ; he had money in his pocket; he had the assurance that un- dreamed of wealth awaited him at the 249 THE WALLED CITY Capital. But that unguarded open door appealed to him irresistibly. He was a criminal at heart despite the Governor's pardon in his pocket. And so he slipt into the open door, was detected in the act, and half an hour after leaving the City a free man was again a fugitive from justice. Murphy's is a remarkable case, altho by no means unprecedented. Here was an habitual criminal, so steeped in criminal instincts that he could not resist the oppor- tunity to steal, even with the certainty of having more money by remaining honest a few hours than he could ever hope to gain in any other way. And yet when this man was falsely convicted, the fact so preyed upon his mind as to wreck it completely for the time being. 250 Chapter XII THE EFFECTS OF GOOD GOVERN- MENT 251 Chapter XII THE EFFECTS OF GOOD GOVERN- MENT In the Walled City practically every of- ficer and employe for at least several hours each day is in immediate contact with the peculiar inhabitants. Indeed, except as they go away from the institution a few times each week, officials and keepers are never really out of the atmosphere of de- lusions and hallucinations. What is the effect of such a peculiar life? Does it tend to produce a similar condition? Some general facts will help us in answering these questions. When institutions for caring for the in- sane were first established they were in- tended simply as places where the unfor- tunates could be kept safely and conven- 253 THE WALLED CITY iently asylums for restraining the insane rather than hospitals for curing them. As insanity was not recognized as a dis- ease, but as a "possession by demons," the unfortunates were huddled together in barn-like structures, chained in stalls, fed like animals, and frequently subjected to the brutal treatment that would be given unruly cattle. As a result few of those who were condemned to these "asylums" ever recovered. But about a century back, when diseases and the causes of disease began to be better understood, two wise physicians in Europe, and our own Dr. Eush of Philadelphia, prompted by hu- mane motives, and perceiving that insan- ity was a disease in the generally accepted sense of the term, inaugurated some revo- lutionary changes in the treatment of such cases. They struck off the shackles and allowed the poor creatures the freedom of the halls and yards. 254 EFFECTS OF GOOD GOVERNMENT At the time the act was considered lit- tle less than madness. It seemed like un- chaining wild animals. But greatly to the surprise of everyone except a few of the wiser physicians, no untoward results oc- curred. Indeed, from the very first there was a marked improvement in the condi- tion of the inmates, and a few even re- gained their normal minds completely. Gradually as these asylums grew in pop- ularity and were improved in details it became evident that they acted beneficially on the minds of the inmates that they were indeed hospitals as well as asylums. And finally, after long years of ceaseless struggle for recognition as places of cura- tive treatment similar in scope to general hospitals, they came to be accepted by members of the medical profession, at least, not merely as "mad houses," but as places where patients are given special fa- cilities for recovery. 255 THE WALLED CITY If the effect upon the patient of being shut up in the Walled City is to improve his mental balance, then a somewhat sim- ilar effect must be exerted upon the offi- cials and employes who live in the institu- tion. At least it would scarcely be possi- ble for it to have the opposite effect, as many suppose. Yet this fact is probably as difficult of comprehension to the casual observer who has had no practical experi- ence as any other single thing about the City. The first sensation of the novice in visit- ing an institution is to feel that "if he were to remain there for a few days he would go crazy." The peculiar people, sights, and sounds, so entirely different from anything he has ever encountered be- fore give him a "queer" feeling. But in point of fact the sensation is quite analo- gous to the feeling of a man accustomed to the quiet of his room, when he first en- 256 EFFECTS OF GOOD GOVERNMENT counters a typical city business office, with the clatter of typewriters, the jangle of tongues, and the interruptions of people hurrying in and out. For a day or two he feels that he could never collect his thoughts in such a place. But before the end of the first week he has forgotten all about the clatter, and can collect his thoughts quite as well as in his quiet room at home. In the same manner the newcomer is affected by the unusual and unnatural things going on about him in the Walled City. But added to this, and so differing from a city office, is the dread of a mysteri- ous "something." These people moving about him, and seeming so very like ordi- nary people, he knows are insane a word that conveys such an entirely differ- ent meaning to him at first from what it will a few days later. He is expectant and apprehensive. When he walks through the 257 THE WALLED CITY halls he cannot resist glancing furtively over his shoulder now and again, and the expression of his face is one of astonish- ment or timidity. He may be an ex- ceptionally brave man under ordinary cir- cumstances a man who would lead a for- lorn hope into any ordinary danger; and yet he will be quite the exception if he does not feel something quite akin to fear dur- ing his first day on the halls of the Walled City. There is something seemingly oc- cult, something so completely out of the range of his ordinary experiences in the new surroundings that a hitherto un- known nervous strain is produced. It is this that makes him feel that he would * ' go crazy" if he remained in the place. Frequently the actions of many of the citizens themselves add to the newcomer 's discomfiture. He may be clothed in the regulation uniform like the other attend- ants, but this does not disguise the fact 258 EFFECTS OF GOOD GOVERNMENT from the inhabitants that he is a novice; and sometimes the wags among them play pranks of a surprising nature upon him. The Walled City must have its amusement ; and while these pranks are always harm- less, they are none the less disconcerting and harrowing to the nerves of the new- comer. He must pay the penalty of being a "tenderfoot"; and no Western towns- men ever took greater delight in "initiat- ing" a greenhorn than do the Citizens of the Walled City. Natural pride usually restrains the nov- ice from admitting the state of his feel- ings ; but at the end of the first day many a new man has been known to obtain per- mission to leave the City, ostensibly for the purpose of doing some necessary er- rands, and has never returned. Knowing what the experience of the new employe is likely to be, and knowing also how soon this peculiar feeling will pass away, the 259 THE WALLED CITY officer of the City who employs the attend- ants sometimes makes a rigid compact with the novice that he shall remain at least three days in the City no matter how much he may wish to leave it, or what his decision may be later. For the officer knows that, little as the "tenderfoot" would have believed it at the end of the first day, his peculiar sensations will have entirely disappeared by the end of the third day. No more pranks can be played upon him, and he can look forward glee- fully to participating as a veteran in the " initiation " of the next newcomer. Fur- thermore, he will never again, under any circumstances, experience the sensations of his first day. Once he has shaken off this initial "queer" feeling, which every per- son, practically without exception, experi- ences, he may leave the City, and not see it or any similar institution for many years; yet at the end of that time if he 260 EFFECTS OF GOOD GOVERNMENT were to go into any Walled City he would feel " perfectly at home." No one will need to be told that he is a veteran. He looks it, acts it, feels it, quite as markedly as he looked and acted the "tenderfoot" before. The initial sensations of the newcomer to the City, then, correspond to the "blue funk" of the volunteer on entering his first battle, or the stage fright of the cub actor. But it is obviously quite as unreasonable to judge the general effect of life in the Walled City by this, as it would be to judge the effect of army life by the feelings of a man at his baptism of fire, or by the sen- sations of a novice stammering his first lines. All must be judged by their veter- ans, not by their novices. And the stand- ard of normal mentality is quite as high among the officials and employes in the Walled Cities as it is in outside cities. In- deed it is said to be much higher; and 261 THE WALLED CITY there are certain reasons why this should be so. Every person has more or less pro- nounced insane tendencies. Probably he is not conscious that they are so, and whether he is or is not, he usually restrains or overcomes them. If they are pronounced, and he is not aware of them or only vaguely so, they may grow upon him until they produce actual insanity. Had he been warned of these tendencies in their incip- iency it is possible that he might have over- come them; and it is the constant task of alienists and neurologists to seek out these incipient tendencies and to warn their pa- tients against them. By pointing out the dangers in time by showing that they are dangers their patients may be able to avert them. Those in charge of the Walled Cities have constantly before them the warning of striking examples. They see all about 262 EFFECTS OF GOOD GOVERNMENT them men who have paid the penalty of failing to correct their insane tendencies. This must necessarily call vividly to their minds the existence of certain similar ten- dencies of their own, should they have any, tendencies that in the ordinary course of events in the outside world might have es- caped attention. Here they see the Citizen whose ungoverned temper has brought him to mental ruin ; a second whose protracted broodings have blighted his reason ; a third who is " paying the wages of sin"; and so on. And it is a thoughtless person indeed who gives no heed to these warnings thrust upon him. This, then, answers the question as to what the mental effect may be upon the dwellers in the Walled Cities. That its effects are not demoralizing is attested by the hundreds of clear-headed veteran rul- ers and their assistants who have grown gray at their life-work within the walls. 263 A 000661 623 9