#newspaper interview

John Church Hamilton on his father’s last days in an interview with The Times (Philadelphia) on July 11, 1878.

The questions she sent read more like she was under the impression that we are just a local group of nerds that hang out and play medieval times.

"ILLITERATE RUSSIAN QUITS 'PEN' A SCHOLAR," Toronto Star. May 4, 1935. Page 1 & 3. ---- Spends Lifetime in Kingston, Comes Out in Shoes He Made Himself ---- LEARNED ENGLISH ---- "I Feel I Can Compete With Cultured Men," He Declares ---- For three months in 1919 he lived in the shadow of the gallows - an illiterate Russian too ignorant of English to converse with his guards in the Peterboro jail.

Last night he stepped off the C.N.R. train from Kingston in a pair of shoes he made in the penitentiary in a single day. They were good looking shoes. Taken by Major Bunton of the Salvation Army to the Union Station restaurant, the ex-convict ordered a glass of milk for his first meal outside prison walls in more than 15 years. The major insisted on adding a piece of raisin pie and with slight demur the man, freed under the King's jubilee amnesty, accepted and ate the pastry.

"Except for my name I am not the man who was sent to prison," he told The Star. "I can see now that I shed my personality year by year behind those stone walls and took on something new and better. I have a new outlook on life. I feel I can compete with cultured and educated men. For me and I say it with all earnestness - life is beginning at 44."

The man was longer behind bars than any man in Portsmouth penitentiary with the exception of his two companions, who, like himself, were sentenced to death for murder in Oct., 1919 and who with him had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. Two other participants in the killing of a paymaster near Havelock paid on the scaffold.

"Of all the writers I enjoyed and admire H. G. Wells as much as any," Martinuque [sic: Martynuk] observed as the conversation turned to literature. "Some people no doubt will criticize him as being out of step with the church. But he has such a fertile imagination. I like the way he challenges life by looking into the future. Shaw is so shockingly brilliant, but he is like a trapeze artist -doing stunts with his ideas all the time.

Wants Open Air "More than anything else I want to work in the open air and away from the city," he declared earnestly.

"After 15 years in prison a man becomes something of an individualist. He doesn't feel like mixing with other people. I can say what I will feel to-morrow or the day after, but just now I want comparative solitude in the country - in the sun. I would like the work on a farm or buy a little farm of my own if I could."

For two years of his time in Portsmouth the man worked in the machine shop, he said. For another two years he was in the butcher shop. Other years were spent learning shoemaking.

"I feel I could work at any of those trades now," he stated. "I applied myself as best I could and learned them pretty thoroughly."

But the period of imprisonment that lifted this man "out of himself," as he expressed it, was his last few years as one of the attendants in the library.

"At first I read fiction and found it entertaining," he related. "Then I developed until I preferred biography, and lately I have been reading and studying sociological and philosophical works. They have opened up a new life."

"You went to church while you were in prison," Major Bunton reminded him.

"Oh, yes. Philosophically I am religious," the man replied. "I believe in a Creator. But I don't know whether my views coincide exactly with those of the church."

Curious About Talkies In all the 15 and one-half years at Portsmouth, the man said, he had heard a radio twice and had never seen a talking picture.

"I am looking forward to these things among others. I hardly know what to do first. You see, I am too con-fused even to eat. If I had been released sooner, when I was still young. I would like to have gone back to Russia. I think there is wonderful opportunity there. But now I might have difficulty. They would probably think I was too old and might soon become a public charge. So I intend to face life in Canada. All I want is a chance to make good."

Quite frankly he gave his analysis of the causes behind the riots at the penitentiary.

"I was there longer than any of the rest and the officials came to me to question me," he said. "I told them one of the main reasons was the inequality of sentences. Some fellows are sent there for long periods for comparatively petty crimes. One chap believed his wife had been unfaithful. He pointed a gun at her and said he would kill her if she didn't behave. He was sentenced to 12 years. A man like that gets restless when he realizes the terrible penalty for what he considers a minor offence. Then there is the great accumulation of energy in any human being confined for years at a time. This gets to the point where any grievance is apt to set it off like gunpowder."

Has Fair Stake This man left prison with $198 computed at the rate of 2½ cents a day for the time he had served and five cents for each day of remission he had earned by good conduct.

"There was a little over $200 coming to me," he explained, "but they deducted the railway fare from Kingston to Toronto.

"It's too wonderful," was all he could say when asked how it felt to be free. "What can I say except that I appreciate the King's kindness? Last Tuesday they came to measure me for clothes and I knew I was going to get out. I had always expected to get out some day. I have seen 20 'lifers' released while I was in prison. Mos of them had served less than 10 years. So I always hoped. When they told me, I asked to be transferred from the library to the shoe shop, and I made myself these shoes. As much as I expected it. it was a terrible shock when I knew for sure I was going to be freed. I'm not over the shock yet. I just want to be quiet for a few days."

One of the earliest joys the ex-convict experienced after release was the privilege of smoking as much as he liked.

"I smoked 20 cigarettes on the train," he said. "I am afraid it was too much."

"In Police Circles: REFORMATION CHIEF OBJECT." Edmonton Bulletin. March 18, 1913. Page 4. ---- With reference to the statement of Robert Mitchell, of the City Mission, that it is difficult for anybody in his position to interview prisoners at the police station, without the presence of a listening policeman, Chief Carpenter told the Bulletin last night that he has never placed any obstacle in the way of a clergyman or missionary talking to the prisoners privately, with a view to their reformation. On the contrary, should a recognized Christian worker approach him in his office and ask for an interview with a prisoner, he gives orders for the prisoner to be brought up from the cells so that the interview can take place in a private room, away from all demoralizing surroundings or officials interference of any kind.

"Of course," said the chief, "if a private individual wishes to see prisoner who is in custody on a criminal charge, the request is generally granted, but an officer is present at the interview, otherwise the ends of Justice might be frustrated. That is the universal practice, and it is the right one. But I want to distinctly state that I am at all times willing to further the interest which Christian workers may have in any of the prisoners, because reformation is after all one of the chief objects all have in view."

Asked for his opinion with regard to the suggestion that a police court missionary be appointed, the chief said he would be prepared to deal with that question should it come before him. He added, however, that the work that a police court missionary would be required to do seemed to be at present effectively covered by existing machinery, such as probation officers and aid societies.

"I do not want to condemn the suggestion, however," he said. "I will consider it."

STEP IN RIGHT DIRECTION Chief of Police Carpenter is anxiously looking forward to the establishment of the city prison farm. He believes it is a step in the right direction, and one that should have been taken long ago.

"I have been over the trail," he said to the Bulletin last night, "and with the exception of one or two hills it is a good one. The farm consists of over four hundred acres, with only sixty under, cultivation, so that for a long while the prisoners will be engaged in clearing the ground and making improvements."

The chief believes that as soon as the farm is in use, the number of convictions in the city for drunkenness will be materially reduced.

"I am not referring to the extreme cases," he said, "habitual drunkards will not be affected by a short term at the prison farm; at least, not to any extent. They will soon drift back to their old habits, because, I believe, as I have told you before, that drunkenness is a disease, and requires special treatment."

“MYSTERY MAN IS NOT MISSING MILLIONAIRE,” Toronto Star. April 23, 1921. Page 2. ---- But "George Cox" of Verona Cannot Be Interviewed To-day. ---- Where is "George Cox?" The mystery of the "mystery man," whom Constable Tallon, of Verona. claims to be Ambrose Small deepens, in that the whereabouts of Cox cannot be ascertained. He came to Toronto on Thursday, and he appears! to have disappeared yesterday, after spending a few hours with the constable's relatives at 1985. Dundas st.

The Star called at the house this morning to interview "Mr. Cox." 

"He is,not here," said one of the lady occupants of the house, "and we haven't anything to say concerning him." 

"He has been staying here with Fallon's relatives?" queried The Star. "He was here on a very short visit, but he has gone," was the reply.

"Can you tell me where he is?"

"No, I don't know."

"Does that mean that if you did know you would not tell?"

"That's just it; you've hit it exactly," was the reply. The lady spoken to refused to say when Cox and his policeman companion took their departure, but volunteered the information that a "story" in a morning newspaper to the effect that the Grand Opera House barber had seen Cox at the house, was untrue. 

"The man saw no one while he was here nor did he say anything about who he was or why he had come to Toronto."

See by The Star, George Howarth, proprietor of the opera house barber shop, Adelaide street, said he was telephoned to go to Dundas street on Wednesday night to see the man, but being satisfied from what he had heard that the man was not Small he declined to go.

“Dorchester Prison Conditions Return Gradually to Normal,” St. John Telegraph-Journal. January 10, 1933. Page 5. ---- Five Wounded Convicts Will Recover; Two Guards Slightly Hurt ---- /// “Giant Negro Had An Active Part in Rebellion,” St. John Telegraph-Journal. January 10, 1933. Page 5. --- Name of Tip-off Man and Cause of Riot Remain Mysteries ---

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“Charlie Chaplin Once Sent Film To Dorchester Prisoners With His Compliments,” St. John Telegraph-Journal. January 10, 1933. Page 5. --- Miss Alice Fairweather, Former N.B. Film Censor, Tells How Convicts Liked Comedies and of Warden Goad’s Interest in Meeting Men’s Wishes ////

“About 20 Local Men In Dorchester ‘Pen’,” St. John Telegraph-Journal. January 10, 1933. Page 5.

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“Emergency Force of Mounties Withdrawn From Dorchester,”  St. John Telegraph-Journal. January 10, 1933. Page 5.

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“Prison Hardens Criminals, Former Inmate Declares,” Toronto Star. October 22, 1932. Page 2. ---- Says Kingston Officials Aim at Destroying Convicts’ Self-Respect --- NEED MORE EXERCISE ---- ‘Month by month and year by year as the doors of Kingston penitentiary swing open, they have let forth into the world again men whose whole attitude towards life has changed, men desperately embittered, men who deep down in their souls are now enemies of society. These men are the result of the Canadian penitentiary system.

These words were spoken to The Star yesterday by a responsible cultured man, who still counts amongst his friends many people prominent in Toronto’s social life, who once in his life transgressed the law and paid the price by serving his term in the Portsmouth penitentiary at Kingston. The reporter found him in his garden and found him in his garden and though reticent at first, he finally agreed to speak, in the hopes that his statements might do something towards alleviating the lot of the unfortunates.

‘The penitentiary at Portsmouth is entirely punitive and never in the slightest degree reformatory in the way the men are treated. The attitude of the officers towards the prisoners from the moment of their entering the institution is to treat them as anything but human beings. Their aim appears to be to cow and brutalize the men. To destroy every vestige that they may have retained of self-respect. This is the worst feature of Kingston.

‘The men certainly do not get enough recreation; often it is only 15 minutes, generally 20 minutes, and never more than 30 minutes of silent marching in the air.

‘If anyone says they are out in the open all day and do not need longer then they are wrong. In the mail bag and tailoring shops, in the hospital, library, change room, laundry, barber shop, garage, broom-makers shop, cleaners department, and stone-cutting ship the men are inside all day. Is 20 minutes in the air sufficient? Of the 900 inmates of the penitentiary only about 100 work outside. The others get this brief recreation. When ex-Superintendent of Prisons General Hughes says the average mechanic or factory hand does not average this much recreation he is puerile. The mechanic and factory hand takes his recreation in the evening in the open air and gets his outings on Saturdays and Sundays; perhaps the general forgets that.

His lack of fresh air is another drastic fault of the penal system. The men should be allowed at least an hour and some form of healthy athletic sport to keep their bodies in condition and freshen their minds.’

‘Because the men are locked in their cells over week-ends, on holidays, during rain and snow and during election periods, and because they are totally devoid of any recreation their brains become atrophied and they develop a morbid complex that involves a hatred of mankind akin to the viciousness of a chained animal.

‘The warder who has first charge of the newcomers I do not exaggerate when I describe as a regular Simon Legree. This man is brutal and seems to take a delight in taking away the last vestige of self-respect a prisoner may have.

‘As for the dungeons they are rightly called the ‘hole’; it is a good name for them and they certainly do exist.’

‘When it is stated the prisoners in the dungeons are shackled because they would otherwise break up their cells – what absurd nonsense. Could they do not this during the time they are taken down for meals or at night. No, that is not the reason at all; to so describe it is the stupidest subterfuge.’

‘While it is true that a minority coming to Kingston penitentiary may be habitual criminals, it is equally true that a majority are sensible men capable of responding to humane, sane reformatory treatment. These men should not be herded indiscriminately with the lowest types. They should be all examined on entry by a properly qualified board of psycho-analysists. By men capable of signing them up. The hardened criminal and the first offender should be kept apart. In Kingston penitentiary, I should say 10 per cent are boys of under 20 and 20 per cent young men of under 30. Is it wise to herd these men with the confirmed unfortunate criminal. Can one wonder that in practically every case they come out bitter enemies of society.

The word honor or reform is never heard in Kingston Penitentiary.

‘I agree that discipline is needed – is essential – but discipline can be enforced so as to improve character rather than to destroy it.

Warden Lawes, I believe, of Sing Sing prison conducts the institution on an honor system and I believe his work would be well worth the study of some of our Ottawa officials. In the library they used to receive a mass of instructions regarding deletions from magazines and books that were so silly as to be incredible.