Wanted Man

by Tamsin Spargo

  Sometimes his protests were personal: on 1 January 1907 he dictated a mordant, and prophetic, acrostic spelling out 'Unhappy New Year'. But increasingly he attacked the asylum regime more formally. That same year he sent a letter via a local clergyman to the Reverend John Warren, Amelia Haswell's brother-in-law, who, he hoped, would in turn forward it to the new Governor, Charles Hughes. The elaborate chain was devised to overcome possible censorship. His complaints now were not only about brutality or cruelty, but about serious financial corruption, and, for a certified lunatic, he displayed inside knowledge of the institution as well as a keen understanding of the contemporary political context.

  He was clearly anxious about how he would be read - 'I shall try not to make a misstatement as I realize that it would reflect upon my sanity or veracity' - but adamant in his critique of conditions and corruption. Perry evidently hoped that Governor Hughes, in his opinion 'no machine man', would condemn the doctors who 'graft at the expense of their patients'. After cataloguing petty abuses and contrasting asylum conditions with those in the neighbouring prison, he turned to accusations of corruption, from 'petty graft' to serious allegations.

  He claimed that 'a summer residence at the lake' had been 'finished off with lumber from our new chapel and dining room' and 'provisioned from our store room to feed Supt. Collins, Dr Lamb and all their friends who wish to visit these mountains'. Hospital employees were too busy working on this camp to look after patients, he wrote, because 'Dr North's principal desire is to make a good showing before the Albany authorities and at the same time graft for himself.' Although the Adirondack forests were under pressure, because of the demand for newsprint, 'camps', lavish vacation homes that combined rural style and real luxury, were increasingly fashionable as retreats for Van-derbilts and Rockefellers. Some survive today as expensive hotels and restaurants serving local delicacies like wintergreen ice­cream. The irony of Perry's observations about the use of prison timber and labour to build such a 'residence' was, in the circumstances, remarkably understated.

  While the Dannemora doctors fed their horses on good oats, wrote Perry, their patients lived on 'mush' and 'like Oliver Twist the mush eaters are crying for more'. He offered a catalogue of petty actions by the doctors that seem trivial, but must have seemed unbearably cruel to men with little pleasure in life. One prohibited gifts or purchases of handkerchiefs or soap because he considered the official provision adequate, and of cheese, because 'he don't like the smell'. Another banned peanuts because 'once upon a time some unfortunate happened to drip a few peanut shells upon the floor'.

  Corruption and indifference, Perry insisted, had led to the neglect of patients. In the hospital the already basic bathroom facilities had been allowed to fall into disrepair, 'so now we have but two seats and one urinal for about a hundred men [in his section]. Sometimes a man will urinate in the sink where we must stand to wash.' One urinal had, he claimed, been removed and installed in the summer camp, while broken combs provided for general use were rarely replaced, a 'brush hung for over two years until the hairs wore down to the wood', and only 'two roller towels for so many men, some of whom are diseased, makes it seem very unsanitary'. While he dwelt at length on the degradations of poor hygiene, the terseness of the ex-reformatory boy's most serious allegation is perhaps telling: 'There is little classification and young fellows from Elmira reformatory are herded in dormitories with old-time criminals who frequently seduce the weaker ones under the promise of candy, etc. I know several who commit unnatural crimes in two and three ways during the day as well as at night.'

  Perry seemed genuinely concerned about the situation of all the men in Dannemora and his letter reads as a heartfelt protest about conditions and corruption rather than a calculated pretext for a private plea. He had clearly managed to follow what was happening in American politics and saw his situation as part of a greater picture. He was particularly impressed by President Roosevelt, who had made some moves against systematic corruption. His admiration for the President may have been increased by the many parallels in their lives. Roosevelt may have been born into affluence rather than poverty, but he was, like Perry, a puny child who made himself an athlete, an easterner with a taste for western adventure, and a man of charisma, courage and determination. He also happened to be a champion of simplified spelling.

  But the conclusion to Perry's protest letter was deeply personal and concerned with the psychological and physical torments of his daily life: 'O God, how much longer? I am harassed by day and haunted in my nightly dreams. I pace up and down and sing or chant in order to keep from talking to myself about my troubles.' His mental misery was exacerbated by his physical conditions: 'I have been not let out in God's sunshine for over four years yet Dr Macdonald will not leave my door open as he does that of others so that I can get some reading done [by allowing a patient to enter and read to him]. No warmth will reach me in this cold room and I feel the strain upon my mind.' He ended by begging his friend to send the letter to the Governor, but also with a more immediate request, to help him get a hot-water radiator that he could use to warm through the tube-feeding mixture and ease his aching stomach and kidneys. It is difficult to imagine what the Governor might have made of the letter. Hughes was a tough but progressive Republican, described by Roosevelt as 'the bearded iceberg'. But Perry's complaints would go unread. A year later John Warren was writing to Dr North for news of Perry, as he had heard nothing from him.

  Perry's writings, by and large, make depressing reading, in the topics and their tone. His complaints were usually justified but his own inflexible attitude and refusal to conform meant that he and his keepers were almost always at loggerheads and his harsh, self-imposed regime of near-starvation and nakedness took its toll. It is easy to believe that he was a broken man, old before his time, sustained only by a determination to beat the system. But two poems, still sealed up in small envelopes in his file nearly a hundred years later, reveal with almost shocking clarity that he was not always gloomy or hopeless. They were written not long after a visit by Amelia Haswell and some of her friends from Troy, and were confiscated and sealed by disapproving staff in Dannemora. The first was marked 'Obscene Poem, given to Dr R. S. Lepes, September 11 1907':

  There once was a pretty young miss

  Who thought it the acme of bliss

  To frig herself silly

  With the stem of a lily

  Then sit on a sunflower to piss.

  The records reveal nothing, but this tiny scrap of grubby humour suggests a side to Perry that would otherwise have been totally obscured. Was the poem specially designed to impress or offend Dr Lepes personally, was it about someone in particular or was it just a moment of fun? Whoever or whatever it was for, it shows that inside the damaged man, now approaching his forty-second birthday after fifteen years in prison, was a funny, rude teenager who had never quite grown up.

  The second poem, called 'Sweet Maiden', and dismissively marked 'Obscene "poetry"', was more romantic, the 'obscenity'

  that caused the doctors to confiscate it evident only in the hopeful request of the acrostic.

  My eye is on my charming dove

  Athwart the space between our love.

  You cannot dodge me now my dear,

  Indeed you are a warming cheer.

  So now be good and by your smile

  Light up my hopes for a little while.

  Either be good or by your glance

  End all my hope of one small chance.

  Pretty red lips have drawn me on,

  Why not be like the loving swan?

  I long to fold you in my arms

  That I may feel your inner charms.

  Hark! Now and hide this rhyme away,

  Yet do not fail to read each day

  Or you may quite forget to dwell

  Upon the love which I would swell.

  Composed by a Bug

  And

  Written by a Mug

  July 17th Nineteen hundred and in love.


  Again, there is no way of knowing to whom the poem was addressed. The 'sweet maiden' may have visited with Amelia Haswell, or have been another patient's visitor, a female employee, or even a figment of Perry's imagination. The poem suggests that, if only in his imaginings, he was still capable of passion, and that, in his imagination, he was not blind. Like the limerick it is cheeky, hinting at a brighter dimension to Perry's life in the period after Amelia Haswell's visit.

  In fact, Perry had started to try to conform to the asylum rules and there seemed to be some hope that he might settle down. He had been influenced by one of the young doctors who struggled to work with this most difficult of patients in an already tough job. Amos Baker was one of the few who showed Perry real kindness. Although Amelia Haswell was ever faithful, her repeated exhortations to trust in God did little to cheer Perry. And although he repeatedly asked for news of his father and sent messages begging him to visit, Perry's own family had effectively abandoned him. The only contact he had in all his years in Dannemora was a summons from his paternal grandmother's lawyer. His grandfather had died without leaving a will and his widow, Sarah Emily, Perry's step-grandmother and aunt, was issuing summonses against all other possible claimants to the small plot of land in the Irish Settlement, including Perry. The farm itself had burned down and the land was worth about $300 in total. Dr North was paid a fee of $1 for serving the writ that deprived Perry of his only inheritance. It was the last recorded contact Perry had with his family.

  So the impact of a thoughtful doctor was considerable. His were small gestures, but they meant everything to his patient, who wrote a jaunty 'Toast to St Patrick and Dr Baker' as a thank-you when the physician had got him some pie, a favourite food. Baker arranged for him to have a water glass, an attendant's urinal, much easier for a blind man to use than a regulation chamber pot, and even some old carpet for his cold room. He also promised that he might find him a small table, so that he could eat more easily.

  At last, Perry seemed to have found someone in authority he could trust. In letters to friends he wrote proudly of the 'confidence' Dr Baker reposed in him and it seemed possible that, with this encouragement, he might conform enough, by eating in his room and wearing clothes, to convince the authorities he deserved a second chance.

  In the spring of 1908 that chance seemed close at hand. A letter to Dr North from Cornelius V. Collins, Superintendent of Prisons, indicated that he was convinced that Perry deserved a trial return to prison, a possible step towards eventual freedom, 'I have received the letter enclosed with your communication from Oliver Curtis Perry and am pleased to know that he shows a disposition to continue obedience to the rules. I trust you will give Oliver such personal attention as it is possible because as soon as your judgment would permit I should like to give the fellow a trial once more in the prison, as I am inclined to think that the change might benefit him temporarily at least.' Collins favoured some prison reform, and had voiced his concern that 17 per cent of prisoners had become insane. He also, coincidentally, lived in Troy and had been collared on several occasions, including once when trying to board a train, by the indomitable Amelia Haswell.

  The letter that seemed to put Perry's vision of freedom within his grasp was sent on 1 April, and while it was undoubtedly genuine, it had no more effect than a cruel hoax. Two days later Collins wrote to North again: 'I have no doubt the statement relating to Perry is true in every respect. My only idea was to encourage him in every possible way to obey and respond to even a part of the institution discipline and this apparently is being done.' North had utterly rejected the idea that Perry was, or would be, fit to return to prison. Collins made another attempt to judge for himself but, as Perry commented, the doctors did little to enable their patient to make his case: 'My door was suddenly thrown open, I knew strangers were present, yet no word was spoken; so after an embarrassing silence I said, "Do you want to exhibit me like an animal or will you introduce me", Dr MacDonald then spoke but walked away with his visitors. I afterwards learned that they were two members of the Parole Board. Perhaps this circumstance has helped to check Mr. Collins but put yourself in my position. It is only common courtesy to speak to a convict when visitors are ushered into his presence. In my blindness I thought it was some Attendant letting a stranger steal a look at me.' The result of the 'interview' was not in Perry's favour. To add insult to injury, the bad news came in a letter from the Commissioner mistakenly addressed to the 'Hon. Curtis Perry'. The error wounded Perry, as he told his friend, because it 'puts me on a par with lunatics who are always proud of such distinctions'.

  Condemned to stay in Dannemora, he found his life increasingly unbearable, although, with Baker's support, he went on trying to conform. He continued writing and even had a poem published in the Star of Hope. This was a remarkable prison newspaper, founded in 1899 and published by prisoners in Sing-Sing, featuring the writing of convicts across the state, that served as a means of building a sense of community as well as giving individual prisoners a voice. Perry's acrostic poem on 'Independence Day' was identified only by his prison number 'DSH 216'. Few, if any, who read the conventional patriotic verses would have known that they were written by the notorious train robber.

  Perry's success encouraged him to submit another poem later the same year but his second submission, a more polemical piece, signed 'Mountain Bughouse 216', was not published. The Star of Hope was an invaluable voice for the prisoners of New York State, but it had to be diplomatic. Calls for reform had to be reasonable and the insane were risky allies. In the coming years they would reap little benefit from the growing efforts to treat their sane fellows with some respect.

  In 1909 Amos Baker left Dannemora to take up a post at Matteawan. The repercussions were dramatic. Perry felt abandoned once again and, when some of Baker's 'concessions' were rescinded, his battle with the authorities recommenced. He soon wrote to the Reverend Warren in evident distress: 'I am now in an isolated room with two doors so that no one can hear my cries or talk to me. I defecate ['deprecate' in his transcriber's version] upon the floor in one corner and lie in the other like a wild beast.' He had been moved to the isolation cell as a punishment for what might today be called a 'dirty protest', defecating on the floor of his cell.

  The protest began accidentally when the hospital sewer had become clogged and the water closets were out of use. A blind man's sense of smell is more acute than a sighted man's, so that night, rather than use his open urinal vessel, which he could not empty until the morning, Perry defecated on some paper that he wrapped into 'a neat appearing package', and asked the night watchman to place it in the water closet. The man agreed but instead, as a cruel trick or stupid joke, slipped it back into the room. Finding it later, Perry threw it out of his window.

  When he heard of the incident, a furious Dr MacDonald had Perry put in a 'north room upon the violent ward', isolated from the patients who sometimes helped him, and surrounded by a more 'irrational class of insane people'. When MacDonald also ordered that he be made to use a regulation pot, rather than the attendant's urinal Dr Baker had let him use, Perry snapped and smashed the cell window. From then on, his furniture removed as a precaution against his using it to make weapons, he defecated in his cell as a protest, as many other prisoners would do in the future, and refused to eat. He told John Warren that he was prepared to suffer any degradation rather than lose his hard-won privileges without a fight: 'I shall continue to exist just like a wild beast until they exhaust their animosity and terrorize the other patients, at which time I hope to be returned to my quarters and furnishings.'

  Perry's brief truce with his keepers was over.

  CHAPTER 2O

  'Out of His Living Tomb Speaks Oliver Curtis Perry'

  O UTSIDE DANNEMORA Perry seemed to take on an almost mythical status. In 1908 The Railroad Man's Magazine, favoured reading of trainmen and rail fans alike, had featured his story in the latest of

  its series on 'Great American Train Robberies', wr
itten by Burke Jenkins. After noting the exploits of 'our redoubtable gentlemen of the road and paperbacks, the James and Younger boys', the author insisted that it 'remained for the effete East to produce what was probably the boldest railway bandit that ever existed - Oliver Perry.' The author noted that Perry was living out his days in a pitiful condition but Perry's doctors insisted on his health, strength and difficult nature, leading to a new image in the popular press, 'the Samson of Dannemora'.

  Perry's poem in the Star of Hope.

  Perry in Dannemora.

  One reporter explained the new analogy: 'Like Samson he has been shorn of the things he had, like Samson he blinded himself in his remorse, like Samson he feels about him only prison walls, like Samson he is the strongest man inside those prison walls - a veritable giant in stature and but for his sightless eyes a perfect physical specimen of manhood.' The new name was attractive, flattering even, although the extraordinary exaggeration bore little relation toexaggeration bore little relation to Perry's actual physical stature and condition. The line-drawings in the press showed not a biblical giant but an almost classical figure, swathed in a sheet with a bandage across his eyes, looking more like blindfolded justice or Tiresias, staring blindly into a future only he could foretell.

  Inside the asylum Perry was increasingly isolated from meaningful contact with the real world. He kept appealing to state officials for his case to be reviewed. Each time they had to judge the word of a criminal lunatic against that of a respected doctor, and each time the review concluded with, at best, a request that he be given a reader. He did gain some concessions, including, eventually, a ruling that a doctor be given the task of reading to him so that he no longer had to bribe a fellow patient. But, although he kept battling, some of the ties that bound him to life and other people started to break.