OSPITAL.]

[Picture: NEW YORK PENITENTIARY.]

No visitors are allowed on the Penitentiary grounds without a permit from
the Commissioners. Sentinels are stationed along the water fronts, and
guard-boats patrol the river to prevent the escape of the convicts. In
spite of these precautions, however, men have succeeded in making their
escape to the opposite shore.

[Picture: GUARD-BOATS.]

The convicts are clothed in a uniform of striped woollen garments, and
are supplied with a sufficient amount of bedding and with an abundance of
excellent but plain food. The allowance is about one pound of beef, and
a quart of vegetable soup at dinner, ten ounces of bread at each meal,
and one quart of coffee at breakfast and supper, to each man. In 1869,
the total number of prisoners confined here during the year was 2005. A
very large number of those sentenced to the Penitentiary are under the
age of twenty-five. The proportion of females is about one-fifth. The
foreigners are a little more than one-half of the whole number. A system
of evening schools, at which the attendance is voluntary, has been
instituted. The commutation system is also practised, by which the
prisoner by good conduct may receive a proportionate abridgment of his
term of confinement. Such conduct is reported every month by the Warden
to the Commissioners, who report it to the Governor of the State, who
alone has the power to shorten the terms in the manner mentioned.
Religious services are conducted every Sabbath by Protestant and Roman
Catholic clergymen.

[Picture: ALMSHOUSE.]

To the north of the Penitentiary are two handsome and similar structures
of stone, separated by a distance of 650 feet. These are the Almshouses.
Each consists of a central story, fifty feet square and fifty-seven feet
high, with a cupola thirty feet in height, and two wings, each ninety
feet long, sixty feet wide, and forty feet high. Each is three stories
in height. Each floor is provided with an outside iron verandah, with
stairways of iron, and each building will furnish comfortable quarters
for 600 people, adults only being admitted. One of these buildings is
devoted exclusively to men, the other to women. Both are kept
scrupulously clean, and it is said that they are kept by a daily brushing
of the beds, which are taken to pieces every morning, entirely free from
vermin. The grounds are wel