The idea of the solitary cell as an integral part of the American prison system arose during the Early Republic, the specific vision of Philadelphia physician and Founding Father Benjamin Rush, who advocated for time in solitude and silence— the active, searching silence of Quakerism— as an alternative to the bodily pain, injury, and humiliation of public hangings and whippings. He saw it as a means not only of punishment but of reformation for housebreakers, forgers, highway robbers, horse thieves, and even murderers. His vision of justice eventually led to the construction of the world’ s first penitentiary, Eastern State, designed by architect John Haviland, and raised on the grounds of an old cherry orchard three miles outside of Philadelphia’ s city limits.
When Cherry Hill— as it was sometimes called— admitted its first prisoners in 1829, it stood in stark contrast to traditional jails, where debtors and those awaiting trial were housed in filthy, noisy, and disorderly common rooms. In the penitentiary, not only were the confined to remain in their individual cells for the duration of their sentence, according to the board of inspectors for Philadelphia’ s prisons, there was to be“ such an entire seclusion of convicts from society and from one another, as that during the period of their confinement, no one shall see or hear, or be seen or heard by any human being, except the jailer, the inspectors, or such other persons, as for highly urgent reasons may be permitted to enter the walls of the prison.”
Rush began to articulate his ideas concerning justice more than 40 years prior to Eastern State’ s opening. During the winter of 1787, in Benjamin Franklin’ s Philadelphia home, he addressed the newly formed Society for Promoting Political Inquiries, which was comprised of a dozen or more
men— Thomas Paine among them— who’ d begun to routinely gather to discuss ideas meant to foster social and economic improvements in Pennsylvania and throughout the young Republic.“ I cannot help entertaining a hope, that the time is not very distant, when the gallows, the pillory, the stocks, the whipping-post … will be connected with the history of the rack and the stake, as marks of the barbarity of the ages and countries, and as melancholy proofs of the feeble operation of reason and religion upon the human mind,” he declared.
At the time, Philadelphia had already begun to search for alternatives to the public, provocative blood punishments, and the notorious chaos of its overcrowded jails. Most notably, city officials were experimenting with having felons undertake public works projects such as building, maintaining, and cleaning the streets. The felons, known as“ wheelbarrow men,” wore brightly colored or boldly striped uniforms, which were meant both to humiliate them and to help identify them should they escape. They attracted crowds— some taunting them, others throwing coins in support and solidarity. Some felons escaped, and some escapees attacked citizens. Both their perceived threat to the public and their degradation created unease, for the wheelbarrow men made punishment publicly apparent in an even more emphatic way than had felons held in stocks or tied to whipping posts:“ They were encumbered with iron collars and chains, to which bomb-shells were attached, to be dragged along while they performed their degrading service, under the eye of keepers armed with swords, blunderbusses, and other weapons of destruction,” noted Roberts Vaux, one of the city’ s most dedicated promulgators of penal reform.
98 The Trial Lawyer