building was erected on the prison grounds, with sixteen eightby-six-foot cells designated for the solitary confinement of serious and repeat offenders. This was in keeping with Rush’ s proposal, first articulated in Franklin’ s living room, that cells be“ provided for the solitary confinement of such persons as are of a refractory temper.” The Walnut Street Jail eventually came to be known as“ the cradle of the penitentiary.”
In general, by the late 18th century, the country’ s attitude toward the blood punishments was changing, and many states were shifting from brandings and whippings to extended confinements for convicts, but no solitude in these prisons was complete. At Auburn, in New York, for example, inmates were housed in solitary cells, but they ate meals together and worked together in enforced silence. Nor was redemption the aim in these houses of incarceration. In fact, the conditions were often entirely brutish. For instance, at New-Gate, Connecticut’ s first prison, the incarcerated were housed underground in the tunnels of a depleted copper mine. They were brought to the surface every day to work in shops, forging nails or building barrels and casks.
Although Rush would always emphasize the idea of the prison cell as a means of reformation, there was little consensus, even in Philadelphia, as to the purpose of incarceration.“ There have been many opinions about the mode of treating the convicts,” remarked Caleb Lownes, the first administrator of the reconceptualized Walnut Street.
Some seem to forget that the prisoner is a rational being, of like feeling and passions with themselves. Some think he is placed there to be perpetually tormented and punished. Some prescribe a certain time as necessary to his cure. One will not allow him the light of heaven, or the refreshment of the breeze; the comforts of society, or even the voice of his keeper: while another considers a seclusion from his friends and connexions, as a ground for accusation of inhumanity.
At Walnut Street, he noted, they“ adopted a plan, which upon full consideration was deemed best, though not perfect.” Lownes further remarked that the prisoners knew that a“ second conviction would consign them to the solitary cells, and deprive them of the most distant hopes of pardon. These cells are an object of real terror to them all.” The solitary cells weren’ t only distinguished in prisoners’ minds. As sociologist Orlando Lewis has noted, they were“ at the outset branded in the public mind as punishment cells for the protection of society and the
infliction of the hardest possible sentences.”
Eastern State Penitentiary certainly appeared to be designed for punishment. Its aspect was nothing if not forbidding. The ranges of solitary cells radiating out from a central rotunda were surrounded by a thirty-foot-high wall built of hewn Schuylkill stone. The original entryway stood twenty-seven feet high and fifteen feet wide, and its oaken double doors, studded with iron rivets, weighed several tons. A massive wrought-iron portcullis fronted them. Benjamin Rush did not live to see his vision fully play out: he died in 1813, a decade before construction of Eastern State began. Yet within those walls of stone, his concept of the silent, solitary cell as a means of reformation for all prisoners— be it a first-time petty thief or an intransigent and violent perpetrator of assaults— survived, at least in theory.
Prisoner No. 1, Charles Williams, passed through the portal of the still-to-becompleted penitentiary on October 22, 1829. The eighteen-year-old Black farmer was sentenced to two years of solitary and silent confinement for breaking into a house and stealing a silver watch, a gold seal, and a gold key worth, in total, $ 25.00( about $ 830.00 in today’ s money). His entry ritual in the penitentiary’ s central rotunda was meant to be a kind of baptism. After he had his hair cut, he was issued two handkerchiefs, two pairs of socks, a pair of shoes, woolen trousers, a jacket, and a shirt. His identity as Prisoner No. 1 was sewn into his clothing and hung above the entrance to his cell. He would not be called Charles again for the duration of his stay.
He was meant never to know where in the penitentiary his cell was located— while being ushered to it, Williams was hooded. All he was to comprehend of his physical world was the twelve-by-eight-foot whitewashed cell he inhabited: its stone floor; the bed, which could be folded against the wall for more room, with its sheet, blanket, and straw mattress; some scrubbing and sweeping brushes; a clothes rail; a wash basin; a mirror; a crude flush toilet; a tin cup; a victuals pan; a stool; and a workbench where he was to spend his time making shoes. Light from a small ocular window cut into the ceiling was deemed sufficient for his work and for reading the Bible. The window was known as the Eye of God, although architect John Haviland referred to it as a Dead Eye, which could be darkened by placing a half keg over it should a prisoner need to be disciplined. Charles Williams’ individual exercise yard adjoining his cell, and, nearly identical in size to it, was walled in stone.
100 The Trial Lawyer