Sing Sing: Difference between revisions

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Warden T. M. Osborne in older facility.

For the music group, see Sing-Sing (band).

For a cultural event in Papua New Guinea, see Sing-sing.

Sing Sing Correctional Facility is a maximum security prison in Ossining, New York. Sing Sing “reaches back almost to the beginning of the state prison system in New York.” It is located in Westchester County approximately 30 miles north of New York City on the edge of the Hudson River. The name comes from the original name of the village of Ossining, though the penitentiary was first called "Mount Pleasant" when it opened in 1828.

Today Sing Sing houses more than 1,700 prisoners. There are plans to convert the original 1825 cell block, which still stands, into a museum.

Elam Lynds

Cell in older facility.

Sing Sing electric chair - Old Sparky

History

In March of 1796, legislation wanted to build two state prisons located in New York State; one in Albany and the other somewhere in downstate New York. In addition to the plan for the building of the two prisons the appointing of a "Board of inspectors" whose job was to “statedly visit the prisons, purchase clothing, bedding, raw materials for manufacturing purposes and to keep an account of the earnings and expenses of each prison, the law also provided that the Governor and Council were to appoint a "Keeper, who was to be of some mechanical profession." The supposed prison that was supposed to be located in Albany was never constructed but instead built the prison in Auburn on April of 1815 and was opened a year later.

In 1825, the New York state legislature gave Elam Lynds the task of constructing a new, more modern correctional facility. Lynds was both the warden of Auburn State Prison, and a former Army captain. He spent months researching possible locations for the prison, considering Staten Island, the Bronx, and Silver Mine Farm, an area in the town of Mount Pleasant, located on the banks of the Hudson River. By May, he had finally settled on the Mt. Pleasant location and selected 100 convicts from his own prison for transfer. When the state appropriated $20,100 to purchase the 130 acre site, Lynds transported the 100 prisoners by barge along the Erie Canal to freighters down the Hudson River. Since there was no place for the prisoners shipped from Auburn to stay on May 14, there were "temporary barracks, a cook house, carpenter and blacksmith’s shops" rushed to completion. When they arrived the phrase "without a place to receive them or a wall to enclose them" was used.

Lynds' plan was to use prisoner labor to excavate marble from a nearby quarry and use it to construct the prison, a practice Lynds had seen used in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Once the prison was built, the prisoners would continue excavating marble to be shipped down the Hudson to New York City. Beyond the initial sum required to purchase the land, the prison was to be self-supporting, not requiring taxpayer funding. Some of the marble went into the construction of New York University, the United States Treasury building, New York City's Grace Church, and the New York State Capitol building in Albany.

When it was completed, Sing Sing was considered a model prison because it turned a profit for the state. Lynds enforced the Auburn system, which imposed absolute silence on the prisoners. The system was enforced by whips and other brutal punishments. Visitors found the silence of the up to 900 prisoners, even as they worked, eerie. After Lynds left in the wake of a scandal involving the pregnancy of a female prisoner, conditions at the prison began to deteriorate. Fires and disease became common, and in 1861, the governor called in the army to quell a riot.

Another notable warden besides Lynds was Lewis E. Lawes. He was offered the position of warden—a position which had been filled by nine separate people in the last nine years, one only for three weeks—and accepted in 1920. What he found was a facility that had lost any semblance of order through decades of neglect and abuse. Records documented 795 male and 102 female prisoners at Sing Sing. A head count turned up only 762 and 82 actually present. "How these missing prisoners had left the prison or when, could not be ascertained," he said. Worse still, one prisoner, who had been incarcerated for five years, had no record of his admission or retention history. He was declared a "volunteer" and released on the spot. More than $30,000 in cash was missing from prison bank accounts when Lawes became warden, and there was no trace as to where the money went. Documented punishments were brutal and described a long history of abuse by both prison guards and wardens.

Punishments

Punishments for the prisoners were often at times very harsh and merciless. Punishments included freezing showers that consisted of a prisoner having a tight hollow basin around his neck that catches water around his mouth and chin area and that is very uncomfortable, and then a burst freezing water would drop from the ceiling onto his head. The amount of water that was poured onto the inmates head depended on the thing the prisoner did wrong. The ball and chain, the yoke, an iron gag, and whipping with a cat of nine tails (often followed by a sponge, soaked in salt water, being dragged across the open wound).

Throughout the century one of the most common and regularly used forms of punishment was solitary confinement. This was where a prisoner would be locked in a dark cell with a highly limited supply of food for a certain amount of time. Certain changes were made during the end of the century ("1880's") that took away the "solid steel doors and replaced them with barred cell doors and a bathroom", due to the time they served in the cell without coming out. Another regularly used form of punishment was the paddle. Prisoners would receive three to four hits with a hickory or leather paddle. The beatings would only cease if the prisoner would promise to behave. This type was overly used since a prisoner would "receive hits from minor complaints such as poor or short work on contact". Also, the beatings would be administered by "individual keepers" rather than the principle keeper himself ("up until 1876 where only the principle keeper" was allowed to do such a thing).

From 1914 until 1971, only the electric chair at Sing Sing was used for executions. The last execution at Sing Sing was in August 1963, two years before New York first abolished capital punishment.

On January 8, 1983, a riot began with 600-plus inmates in B-block taking 17 correction officers hostage. The riot ended after 53 hours. In addition to an end of the brutality, the facility was slowly modernized. In the 1920s, several new buildings were built, including a chapel, a mess hall, two administration centers, a hospital and a library.

Inmate Life

During the inmates stay at the prison their lives wer constanly filled will hardships and sometimes no rest. A normal day consisted of working for "ten hours and fourty-five minutes starting at six in the morning and ending at six" in the evening. The other hour and fifteen minutes were spent eating and walkin to and from work. "This work schedule was set during the summer days from may 15th to september 15." As time progressed from the summer days to colder winter type days the work hours were cut down to "eight hours and fourty-five minutes or nine hours and fourty-seven minutes" approximately. The hours they were not working they were locked up in their cells for the most part. It was hard for inmates to develop good work habits since there was no incentives or rewards such as good behavior time given to them.

The inmates would march directly from work to the cells where they would receve bread and coffee. In the morning they would receive hash and coffee; the hash was made up of the left over meats from the previous day and potato. Time and time again the inmates would reveive this same food for breakfast and dinner unless instructed by a physician that it be changed for sick inmates to mush and molasses. Due to the type of food the men would get, during the winter many of the men would become sick. More than 100 men would suffer from scurvy and eleven died from Asiatic cholera and fifteen from tuberculosis in the year of 1854.

The weekends seems just as painful as the punishments they would receive when they behaved with misconduct. As soon as they would finish work on friday afternoon until monday morning they were locked in the cells.The only time that they would not be locked in the cells is when they would attend the chapel for a short amount of time. "In 1912 the first Sunday dinner was served in the mess hall. A year later soup or some other inexpensive dish was added to the daily supper of bread and coffee, and the meal served in the mess hall rather than in the cells, terminating at last a practice that had governed the evening meal for 90 years. Columbus Day, 1912, was the first holiday the men spent out of their cells."

Popular Culture

In 1997, author and journalist Ted Conover became a New York State correctional officer because he found it the only way he could write about being one. He was assigned to Sing Sing and worked there for about ten months. The resulting book, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, was published in 2000 to critical acclaim, winning the National Book Critics Circle Award and becoming a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The state's Department of Correctional Services soon declared it contraband, requiring that several pages be redacted from any version sent to inmates.

Gangster movies helped make the prison a legend far beyond New York; they included The Big House (1930), Castle on the Hudson (1940), and 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932), the latter based on a book by Warden Lawes. The expression "sent up the river" refers to Sing Sing. Other than Alcatraz, it is the most famous prison in American popular culture.

Pop/R&B singer Mariah Carey has referred to her home with ex-husband Tommy Mottola as "Sing Sing" in order to highlight the fact that she felt imprisoned and was forced to "sing" endlessly, often in a pop style she felt uncomfortable with. Carey lampooned Mottola and her married life in the 1997 video for the song "Honey."

In 2002, American punk-rock band The Distillers released an album entitled "Sing Sing Death House", referencing the prison.

Notable prisoners

• Lepke Buchalter, The head of Murder Inc. was executed there.
• Charles Becker, the first and to date only American policeman executed for murder.
• Albert Fish, a serial killer and cannibal (executed in 1936 and buried in the prison cemetery)
• James Larkin, Irish labour leader imprisoned from 1920 to 1923 for 'criminal anarchy' as a result of his left-wing writings.
• Charles Chapin, ("The Rose Man"), a former New York City newspaper editor doing life for murder.
• Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, convicted spies of the Soviet Union and two of the last people to be executed at the prison.
• Francis "Two-Gun" Crowley, who was convicted of the May 6, 1931 murder of Nassau County Police Officer Patrolman Fred Hirsch.
• Edwin Collins "Alabama" Pitts, star prison athlete.
• William H. Van Schaick, captain of the General Slocum, responsible for the worst maritime accident in New York's history.
• Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez, electrocuted there after being found guilty for the brutal murders of twelve people.
• Richard Whitney, president of the New York Stock Exchange.
• Ruth Snyder, convicted of killing her husband for insurance money.
• Willie Sutton, Bank robber
• Lucky Luciano, mobster

Fictional Prisoners of Sing Sing

• Leo Bloom (The Producers)
• Roger De Bris (The Producers)
• Ulla Inga Yansen Hansen Yallen Tallen Sweden Swanson (The Producers)
• Franz Liebkind (The Producers)
• Max Bialystock (The Producers)
• Paul Vitti (Analyze This/Analyze That)
• T.K. (Driver:Parallel Lines)
• Sally Tomato (Breakfast at Tiffany's)

See also

• Sing-Sing Prison Cemetery

Resources

• history of sing sing
• "All about Sing Sing Prison" by Mark Gado
• "The History of Sing Sing Prison"
• New York Corrections History Society

Further reading

• The Rose Man of Sing Sing: A True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism by James McGrath Morris (2003)
• Crash Out : The True Tale of a Hell's Kitchen Kid and the Bloodiest Escape in Sing Sing History by David Goewey (2005)
• Miracle at Sing Sing : How One Man Transformed the Lives of America's Most Dangerous Prisoners by Ralph Blumenthal (2005)
• Sing Sing: The Inside Story of a Notorious Prison by Denis Brian (2005)
• Condemned: Inside the Sing Sing Death House by Scott Christianson (2000)
• Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing by Ted Conover (2000), ISBN 0-375-50177-0