I was broke. I had not eaten for three days. I had walked the streets for three nights. Every fibre of my being, every precept of my home training protested against and would not permit my begging. I saw persons all about me spending money for trifles, or luxuries. I envied the ragged street urchin as he took a nickel in exchange for a newspaper and ran expectantly to the next pedestrian. But I was broke and utterly miserable. Have you ever been broke? Have you ever been hungry and miserable, not knowing when or where you ...
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I was broke. I had not eaten for three days. I had walked the streets for three nights. Every fibre of my being, every precept of my home training protested against and would not permit my begging. I saw persons all about me spending money for trifles, or luxuries. I envied the ragged street urchin as he took a nickel in exchange for a newspaper and ran expectantly to the next pedestrian. But I was broke and utterly miserable. Have you ever been broke? Have you ever been hungry and miserable, not knowing when or where you were going to get your next meal, nor where you were going to spend your next night? Have you ever tramped holes in your shoes in a tiresome, discouraging effort to get work, meeting rebuff and insults in return for your earnestness and sincerity, and encountering an utter lack of an understanding of your crying necessity in those with whom you have pleaded for a chance? Have you ever felt as though the world itself were against you and that a mistake had been made by Nature in inflicting you with life? If you have not felt each and all of these things it will, perhaps, be futile for you to read what they brought to one who has felt them, and it will be difficult for you to tolerate any thought of extenuation for what happened. Thousands of persons have felt these thoughts, have suffered these experiences, but very few have done what I did; at all events, very few have done what I did and then told about it, as I am going to tell. Few crimes are committed from choice. The number of professional criminals is small, amazingly small, in comparison with the number who are criminals of circumstance. But society makes no distinction; the man who steals because he is hungry, and too proud or squeamish to beg, is classed with the thug who waylays you at night and takes your money by persuasion of an ugly .44-caliber "smoke-wagon" held within an inch of your brain, and with money jingling in his own pocket at the moment. The first is an unfortunate human being driven to commit an act which he abhors; the second a dangerous menace to humankind and organized society. I belonged to the unprofessional class. And despite a long term in prison, I am not yet a criminal. Every atom of my body, each vibration of my mind, revolts at the thought of crime. Yet I committed burglary; also I have a big, warm tolerance for other men who have committed burglary, or other crimes, no matter who they may be. Do not mistake me-I am not seeking to apotheosize the offender against the law; far from it. But I know that all men are human-even the men in convict stripes and shaven heads. Why shouldn't I know? Haven't I been one of them? Didn't I violate the sacredness of a home in the dead of night, and didn't I spend long years in the penitentiary? Who knows if I don't? As I look back I wonder what has been accomplished by my imprisonment. Perhaps before this series of sketches is done some of you may discover what has been accomplished in my individual case. But what is being accomplished in the thousands of other and more unconscionable cases? Perhaps you do not care; possibly you may feel that it is none of your concern; that you pay taxes for protection, and that you cannot be held accountable for the shortcomings of others or for the inhuman and illogical system that enhances the certainty of still greater violation of man-made laws. Be that as it may, you are still responsible; and you are not protected. I was broke and utterly miserable. True, there were thousands of others just as miserable-I realized that -but I was myself, I was no one else save myself, and I had a nickel with a hole in it in my pocket. Never mutilate a coin of the realm. It may fall into the hands of a starving man or woman and prove the last argument in favor of crime-or suicide. It was nearing midnight and the possibility of escaping another night in the streets growing slimmer with each passing moment. Somehow I felt that something....
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Add this copy of My Life in Prison to cart. $20.12, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 1912 by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform.
Add this copy of My Life in Prison to cart. $47.79, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 1912 by CreateSpace Independent Publis.
Written by Bernie Weisz Historian July 8th, 2010 Pembroke Pines, Florida contact: BernWei1@aol.com
Donald Lowrie's book "My Life In Prison" gives a fascinating account of the injustices witnessed by an inmate who served his time at "San Quentin State Prison" in the early 1900's. San Quentin State Prison is located on 432 acres on Point Quentin in Marin County, California, and is north of San Francisco. It was opened in July, 1852 and is the oldest prison in California. The state's male death row is located at San Quentin, as well as it's only gas chamber. In recent years, however, the gas chamber has been used to carry out lethel injections. Donald Lowrie, a down and out young man, started out the book by asking several questions to the reader, showing why he committed a crime of which he would be sentenced to 15 years! Lowrie asks the reader: "Have you ever been broke? Have you ever been hungry and miserable, not knowing when or where you were going to get your next meal, nor where you were going to spend your next night? Have you ever made holes in your shoes trying to get work, meeting rebuff and insults in return for your earnestness and sincerity, and encountering an utter lack of an understanding of your crying necessity in those with whom you have pleaded for a chance? Thousands of persons have felt these thoughts, have suffered these experiences, but very few have done what I did and then told about it, as I am going to tell". So what did Lowrie do? Lowrie starts out by explaining that when he was a little boy, some unknown prowler went into his house at night and stole his father's watch. Lowrie claims that since he was jobless, homeless and futureless, "that childhood incident came back to me, and the fact that I decided to emulate the unknown gentleman who had appropriated my father's watch tends to stregnthen the claim that man is a simon-pure imitative animal". Lowrie takes a coin and decides if it comes up heads, he would rob a house, if tails, he would do nothing. Doing the coin flip under a gas lamp, it came down "heads". Lowrie relates: "the head of "Liberty" stared me in the face. I flung the coin into the gutter and buttoned my coat. I had suddenly become a criminal". Next, Lowrie breaks into a house at night and discovers someone else in the house with him. Everytime he moves, someone moves simultaneously. Lowrie writes: "I must get to the window, and quickly. As I moved, I noticed a glare on my right. The next instant I realized what had occurred. I had been dodging my own reflection in the hall mirror". Lowrie got out of the house with an 18 karat Swiss jewelled watch and three $20 gold pieces. Eating his first breakfast in 84 hours and reflecting on what he just did, he writes: "somehow I felt that there should be a reaction, that I ought to be horrified at the thought that I committed a crime:but the food tasted natural and I was happy, actually and unqualifiedly happy. I actually felt absolutely no qualms of conscience". Proud of his heist, he pawns the watch for $80 and realizes he needs sleep. Right before Lowrie goes to a rooming house, the pawn shop owner alerts the authorities of his suspicious customer and Lowrie is arrested. Lowrie explains next: "Against the advice of counsel, I pleaded not guilty and stood trial before the Superior Court. Before the trial was half over, however, I regretted my decision". Lowrie goes in front of a jury and is sentenced to 15 years in San Quentin State Prison. Lowrie states: "I was taken to San Quentin on the 24th day of July, 1901". Although this book predates both World War One and Two, it's antiquity doesn't tarnish it's message:"Imprisonment only makes bad criminals worse criminals". Although Lowrie tries to impress the reader with words that even I, with a fairly vast knowledge of esoteric vocabulary had to frequently search deeply and laboriously into a dictionary to keep up with his story, he presented a very clear and lucid journey into the hell of incarceration one faced back in 1901. It doesn't seem, although judged vicariously, that things have changed much even today. Lowrie detailed multiple instances of torture (several grueling instances are expounded upon in the book, especially in conjunction with the use of a straight jacket in an unlit dungeon for minor infractions) that the reader of this book will definately conclude is unhumane and barbaric. Here is Lowrie's description of his encounters with "The Jacket": "They took me down to the dungeon and onto one of the dark cells. There was an old mattress on the floor and they told me to lay down on it, and they put the jacket on me. It held my arms so I couldn't move them, but that wasn't enough. They turned me over on my stomach and laced me up. R....(name intentionally ommitted) put his foot in the middle of my back so as to pull the ropes up tight, and when I hollered he laughed. After they had me laced up so I could hardly breathe they went out and shut the door. It was about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, but when the door was shut it was just like night. For half an hour or so I didn't suffer much, but gradually I began to feel smothered, and my heart hurt me when it beat. I got scared and began to holler, but that only made my heart hurt more, and I was afraid I might die if I didn't lie still. Pretty soon my arms and hands began to tingle, just like pins and needles sticking in them, and this got so bad that I couldn't stand it and I began yelling again". Lowrie also comments further on the effects of a straight jacket's barbaric use as a means of maintaining order. Lowrie asserts:"I saw scores of cases and I talked with dozens of victims immediately after their punishment. The marks of the ropes, the red stripes around the torso and limbs, were always visible and the skin irritated in between. Quite often a man was unable to walk without assistance, and those who could walk did so uncertainly and feebly, somewhat like a man who is drunk". Is this how society corrected a wayward citizen in the early 20th century, or did this foster incorrigibility? This book's copyright is 1915. One wonder's how strict the laws must have been at the turn of the century for a first time offender to get 15 years for simple burglary with no weapon involved in an unoccupied dwelling. To get a feel of San Quentin and it's inmates attitudes, Lowrie wrote: "Like the public in general, I had imagined that men in prison went around with elongated countences and an expression of chronic gloom. Instead I found smiles and indifference-or feigned indifference. Every man realizes that self-pity, or a bid for sympathy, is dispicable. The jocular sarcasm I learned was merely an effort to delude themselves and each other that they didn't mind (being incarcerated). It was the innate, manly trait of "gameness". Many a smiling face in prison, just as in the world at large, conceals a tortured, dispairing soul". There are numerous stories Lowrie covers, e.g. the problem of tuberculosis (then called "consumption"), escape attempts that ended in guards committing cold blooded murder of inmates, how everything in the penetentiary is done "fast" (bathing, shaving, even an execution was done in less than three minutes), the problems of morphine, opium and heroin smuggled inth San Quentin. Regardless, if you can find this book, there are priceless lessons of man's inhumanity and the faults of our systems of criminal correction that exist even today! Find this book! (less)
