Years of Experience

by Georgiana Bruce Kirby

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1887 edition. ... X. PRISON REFORM. At the suggestion of Margaret Fuller, who was about to take up her residence in the family of Horace Greeley, I called on our old friend, Mrs. Greeley, for the purpose of meeting a lady by the name of Farnham (Eliza W.), who had lately been appointed to take charge of the Female State Prison at Sing Sing. Mrs. F. was said to be a woman of remarkable intellectual powers, with great firmness and courage, qualities which were necessary in dealing with criminals. She was now looking for suitable assistants, who would enter into her plans and be able to carry them out. It appeared that of late there had been a sort of rebellion among the convicts, or among some of the most daring, who had deliberately refused to conform to the rules of the prison, or to perform the duties assigned them. They tyrannized over and maltreated the weaker and more docile of their fellows, and made night hideous by singing blasphemous and obscene songs. The matron, a respectable, but incompetent person, had finally been attacked and the clothes torn from her body. A well-meaning, tight-skulled little chaplain had prayed frantically for the rebels,--prayed to them also. They made a feint of yielding, then turned the prison into a pandemonium again. Gov. Young, the last great man to sit in New York's gubernatorial chair, had his attention called to the institution, and he forthwith appointed one or two able directors, dismissing the most incompetent of the five in office. Judge Edmunds, the wellknown Democrat, was the most capable and earnest of the new members of the Board. The Board, on making a visit to the prison, had been met by shouts of derision and insolent defiance, and they had to make a hasty exit to escape the kids flung at them by the...

315 pages, Paperback

First published September 12, 2013

Reviews

[Kathrina · Rating 5 out of 5]

The edition I read was the 1971 re-issue of the 1887 edition, now out of print.
In doing research on the history of prison libraries, I discovered a woman named Eliza Farnham who was the women's warden at Sing Sing in New York in the 1840's. She was the first documented prison authority to encourage her wards to read books that weren't specifically religious in content. She had the audacity to read Charles Dickens aloud, unheard of in her day, and finally resigned her position when her methods caused too much of an uproar. She never wrote a memoir of her experiences at Sing Sing, but her assistant, Georgiana Bruce Kirby, did. In this book she devotes a chapter to her work at Sing Sing, one chapter among many of a fascinating woman devoted to social restructuring, the suffragette movement, prison reform,and abolition at a time when expressing your opinion was "unladylike." Born in 1818 in England, she emigrated to Canada employed as a nanny. For a time she lived at Brook Farm, a Unitarian commune near Boston. After Sing Sing she taught school to black children in Missouri and Ohio. When the gold rush hit, she pulled up stakes and became a nurse in California. A fascinating first-hand account of a bold life. I found this in the dark recesses of our university library, amongst aisles and aisles of more forgotten and out-of-print autobiographies. I can't wait for some free time to go back and plunder...