Today’s Penitent Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
Designed in 1821 by Philadelphia architect John Haviland, Eastern State Penitentiary was born from the fusion of Quaker social conscience with the Enlightenment’s faith in reason. Its innovative form arose from humanitarian concern for the treatment of prisoners and from philosophical speculation about the cause and cure of crime. Traditionally, prisons were squalid places, where people were thrown together in common rooms, often regardless of sex, age or the severity of their offenses. They were places of disorder and social neglect. By contrast, “penitentiaries” like Eastern State were places of discipline. They were built on the theory that criminals are psychological slobs, people who failed to acquire discipline early in life. Within the penitentiary’s controlled environment criminals would reform themselves through penance – hence the name. The Pennsyvlania Plan, as solitary confinement was called, took the theory a step further: Criminals would acquire discipline more readily if they were isolated from other undisciplined souls.
Instead of constant surveillance, Eastern State relied on the power of the invisible. On arriving at the prison, prisoners were hooded before being led to their cells, to prevent them from seeing where they were going. Each cell measured 8 by 12 feet and was equipped with a flush toilet and running water. A walled yard outside the cell permitted solitary exercise. An 1831 report explained: “No prisoner is seen by another, after he enters the wall. When the years of his confinement have passed, his old associates in crime will be scattered over the earth, or in the grave… and the prisoner can go forth into a new and industrious life, where his previous deeds are unknown.”
The roots of the Pennsyvlania Plan lay in monastic architecture and in the solitary life of Carthusian monks. Inmates at Eastern State were provided with Bibles and were expected to work at weaving and other crafts. They received regular visits from members of the Philadelphia Prison Society, the Quaker organization that had championed the creation of Eastern State. It is as if, by emulating a monastic structure, the prison could convert a criminal calling into a religious one, sinners into saints.
But to Charles Dickens, who visited the prison in 1842, the system was infernal, precisely because of its reliance on the unseen. Prisoners were invisible to the world as well as to one another, and their punishment left no visible scars. Society did not have to witness the consequences of confining people here. Dickens thought public flogging preferable to this “slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain.”
Culled from: Hope Abandoned
What do you suppose it says about me that I think this type of prison sounds infinitely preferable to modern prisons, where you actually have to interact with other people. Incidentally, I visited this marvelous treasure back in 2001 and wrote a travelogue on it. I can’t wait to go back again one of these days… I highly recommend you add it to your morbid bucket list immediately!
Facts, Sightseer
