by Bill Nye
A GUEST AT THE LUDLOW
I
We are stopping quietly here, taking our meals in our rooms mostly, andgoing out very little indeed. When I say we, I use the term editorially.
We notice first of all the great contrast between this and other hotels,and in several instances this one is superior. In the first place, thereis a sense of absolute security when one goes to sleep here that can notbe felt at a popular hotel, where burglars secrete themselves in thewardrobe during the day and steal one's pantaloons and contents atnight. This is one of the compensations of life in prison.
Here the burglars go to bed at the hour that the rest of us do. We allretire at the same time, and a murderer can not sit up any later atnight than the smaller or unknown criminal can.
You can get to Ludlow Street Jail by taking the Second avenue Elevatedtrain to Grand street, and then going east two blocks, or you can fire ashotgun into a Sabbath-school.
You can pay five cents to the Elevated Railroad and get here, or you canput some other man's nickel in your own slot and come here with anattendant.
William Marcy Tweed was the contractor of Ludlow Street Jail, and herealso he died. He was the son of a poor chair-maker, and was born April3, 1823. From the chair business in 1853 to congress was the first falsestep. Exhilarated by the delirium of official life, and the false joysof franking his linen home every week, and having cake and preservesfranked back to him at Washington, he resolved to still further tastethe delights of office, and in 1857 we find him as a schoolcommissioner.
In 1860 he became Grand Sachem of the Tammany Society, an association atthat time more purely political than politically pure. As president ofthe board of supervisors, head of the department of public works, statesenator, and Grand Sachem of Tammany, Tweed had a large and seductiveinfluence over the city and state. The story of how he earned a scantylivelihood by stealing a million of dollars at a pop, and thus, with themost rigid economy, scraped together $20,000,000 in a few years bypatient industry and smoking plug tobacco, has been frequently told.
Tweed was once placed here in Ludlow Street Jail in default of$3,000,000 bail. How few there are of us who could slap up that amountof bail if rudely gobbled on the street by the hand of the law. Whileriding out with the sheriff, in 1875, Tweed asked to see his wife, andsaid he would be back in a minute.
He came back by way of Spain, in the fall of '76, looking much improved.But the malaria and dissipation of Blackwell's Island afterwardsimpaired his health, and having done time there, and having beenarrested afterwards and placed in Ludlow Street Jail, he died hereApril 12, 1878, leaving behind him a large, vain world, and an equallyvain judgment for $6,537,117.38, to which he said he would give hisattention as soon as he could get a paving contract in the sweetultimately.
From the exterior Ludlow Street Jail looks somewhat like a conservatoryof music, but as soon as one enters he readily discovers his mistake.The structure has 100 feet frontage, and a court, which is sometimescalled the court of last resort. The guest can climb out of this courtby ascending a polished brick wall about 100 feet high, and then lettinghimself down in a similar way on the Ludlow street side.
That one thing is doing a great deal towards keeping quite a number ofpeople here who would otherwise, I think, go away.
James D. Fish and Ferdinand Ward both remained here prior to theirescape to Sing Sing. Red Leary, also, made his escape from this point,but did not succeed in reaching the penitentiary. Forty thousandprisoners have been confined in Ludlow Street Jail, mostly for civiloffenses. A man in New York runs a very short career if he tries to beoffensively civil.
As you enter Ludlow Street Jail the door is carefully closed after you,and locked by means of an iron lock about the size of a pictorial familyBible. You then remain on the inside for quite a spell. You do not hearthe prattle of soiled children any more. All the glad sunlight, andstench-condensing pavements, and the dark-haired inhabitants ofRivington street, are seen no longer, and the heavy iron storm-doorshuts out the wail of the combat from the alley near by. Ludlow StreetJail may be surrounded by a very miserable and dirty quarter of thecity, but when you get inside all is changed.
You register first. There is a good pen there that you can write with,and the clerk does not chew tolu and read a sporting paper while youwait for a room. He is there to attend to business, and he attends toit. He does not seem to care whether you have any baggage or not. Youcan stay here for days, even if you don't have any baggage. All youneed is a kind word and a mittimus from the court.
One enters this sanitarium either as a boarder or a felon. If you decideto come in as a boarder, you pay the warden $15 a week for the privilegeof sitting at his table and eating the luxuries of the market. You alsoget a better room than at many hotels, and you have a good strong door,with a padlock on it, which enables you to prevent the sudden andunlooked-for entrance of the chambermaid. It is a good-sized room, witha wonderful amount of seclusion, a plain bed, table, chairs, carpet andso forth. After a few weeks at the seaside, at $19 per day, I think theroom in which I am writing is not unreasonable at $2.
Still, of course, we miss the sea breeze.
You can pay $50 to $100 per week here if you wish, and get your money'sworth, too. For the latter sum one may live in the bridal chamber, so tospeak, and eat the very best food all the time.
Heavy iron bars keep the mosquitoes out, and at night the house isbrilliantly lighted by incandescent lights of one-candle power each.Neat snuffers, consisting of the thumb and forefinger polished on thehair, are to be found in each occupied room.
Bread is served to the Freshmen and Juniors in rectangular wads. It issuch bread as convicts' tears have moistened many thousand years. Inthat way it gets quite moist.
The most painful feature about life in Ludlow Street Jail is theconfinement. One can not avoid a feeling of being constantly hamperedand hemmed in.
One more disagreeable thing is the great social distinction here. Thepoor man who sleeps in a stone niche near the roof, and who isconstantly elbowed and hustled out of his bed by earnest and restlessvermin with a tendency toward insomnia, is harassed by meeting in thecourt-yard and corridors the paying boarders who wear good clothes, livewell, have their cigars, brandy and Kentucky Sec all the time.
The McAllister crowd here is just as exclusive as it is on the outside.
But, great Scott! what a comfort it is to a man like me, who has beennearly killed by a cyclone, to feel the firm, secure walls and solidtime lock when he goes to bed at night! Even if I can not belong to the400, I am almost happy.
We retire at 7:30 o'clock at night and arise at 6:30 in the morning, soas to get an early start. A man who has five or ten years to stay in aplace like this naturally likes to get at it as soon as possible eachday, and so he gets up at 6:30.
We dress by the gaudy light of the candle, and while we do so, weremember far away at home our wife and the little boy asleep in herarms. They do not get up at 6:30. It is at this hour we remember thefragrant drawer in the dresser at home where our clean shirts, andcollars and cuffs, and socks and handkerchiefs, are put every week byour wife. We also recall as we go about our stone den, with its odor offormer corned beef, and the ghost of some bloody-handed predecessor'ssnore still moaning in the walls, the picture of green grass by our owndoorway, and the apples that were just ripening, when the bench warrantcame.
The time from 6:30 to breakfast is occupied by the average, ornon-paying inmate, in doing the chamberwork and tidying up hisstate-room. I do not know how others feel about it, but I dislikechamberwork most heartily, especially when I am in jail. Nothing hasdone more to keep me out of jail, I guess, than the fact that whilethere I have to make up my bed and dust the piano.
Breakfast is generally table d'hote and consists of bread. A tin-cup ofcoffee takes the taste of the bread out of your mouth, and then if youhave some Limburger cheese in your pocket you can with that remove thetaste of the coffee.
Dinner is served at 12 o'clock, and consi
sts of more bread with soup.This soup has everything in it except nourishment. The bead on this soupis noticeable for quite a distance. It is disagreeable. Several days agoI heard that the Mayor was in the soup, but I didn't realize it before.I thought it was a newspaper yarn. There is everything in this soup,from shop-worn rice up to neat's-foot oil. Once I thought I detectedcuisine in it.
The dinner menu is changed on Fridays, Sundays and Thursdays, on whichdays you get the soup first and the bread afterwards. In this way thebread is saved.
Three days in a week each man gets at dinner a potato containing athousand-legged worm. At 6 o'clock comes supper with toast andresponses. Bread is served at supper time, together with a cup of tea.To those who dislike bread and never eat soup, or do not drink tea orcoffee, life at Ludlow Street Jail is indeed irksome.
I asked for kumiss and a pony of Benedictine, as my stone boudoir mademe feel rocky, but it has not yet been sent up.
Somehow, while here, I can not forget poor old man Dorrit, the Master ofthe Marshalsea, and how the Debtors' Prison preyed upon his mind till hedidn't enjoy anything except to stand off and admire himself. LudlowStreet Jail is a good deal like it in many ways, and I can see how intime the canker of unrest and the bitter memories of those who did uswrong but who are basking in the bright and bracing air, while we, tomeet their obligations, sacrifice our money, our health and at last ourminds, would kill hope and ambition.
In a few weeks I believe I should also get a preying on my mind. That isabout the last thing I would think of preying on, but a man must eatsomething.
Before closing this brief and incomplete account as a guest at LudlowStreet Jail I ought, in justice to my family, to say, perhaps, that Icame down this morning to see a friend of mine who is here because herefuses to pay alimony to his recreant and morbidly sociable wife. Hesays he is quite content to stay here, so long as his wife is on theoutside. He is writing a small ready-reference book on his side of thegreat problem, "Is Marriage a Failure?"
With this I shake him by the hand and in a moment the big ironstorm-door clangs behind me, the big lock clicks in its hoarse, blackthroat and I welcome even the air of Ludlow street so long as the bluesky is above it.