per, the punishment is exactly the same--varying only in
length. So far as I can learn, there is no specific term for any offense;
so that when a man goes to the jail, he never knows how long he may be
kept there. The official view, as I understand it, is that no matter what
the cause for which the man is sent to the jail, he had better stay there
until "his spirit is broken."

The jail is admirably situated for the purpose of performing the operation
of breaking a man's spirit; for it has on one side the death chamber, and
on the other the prison dynamo with its ceaseless grinding, night and day.
It is a vaulted stone dungeon about fifty feet long and twenty wide. It is
absolutely bare except for one wooden bench along the north end, a locker
where the jail clothes are kept, and eight cells arranged in a row along
the east wall and backing on the wall of the death chamber. The eight
cells are of solid sheet iron; floor, sides, back and roof. They are
studded with rivets, projecting about a quarter of an inch. At the time
that Warden Rattigan came into office there was no other floor; the
inmates slept on the bare iron--and the rivets! The cells are about four
and a half feet wide, eight feet deep and nine feet high. There is a
feeble attempt at ventilation--a small hole in the roof of the cell; which
hole communicates with an iron pipe. Where the pipe goes is of no
consequence for it does not ventilate. Practically there is no air in the
cell except what percolates in through the extra heavily grated door.

In the vaulted room outside there are two windows, one at either end,
north and south. But so little light comes through these windows that
except at midday on a bright, sunny day, if you wish to see the inside of
the cells after the doors are opened you must use the electric light.
There are two of these and each is fastened to a long cord, so that it can
be carried to the farthest of the eight cells. At the south end of the
room is a toilet seat, and a sink with running water where the supply for
the prisoners is drawn. Up to the time of Superintendent Riley's and
Warden Rattigan's coming into office, the supply of water for each
prisoner was limited to ONE GILL FOR TWENTY-FOUR HOURS!

The sink was not used for the prisoners to wash, for the simple reason
that the prisoners in the jail were _not allowed to wash_.

Other peculiarities of the jail system will be made clear in the next
chapter.

CHAPTER XII