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History from the inside out: prison life in nineteenth-century Massachusetts
Journal of Social History, Fall, 1997 by Larry Goldsmith
31. Board Minutes, 12 April 1823.
32. Commissioners' Report (Senate No. 6, 1826); the manuscript report, dated 12 January 1827, is in the Unpassed Legislation File, Senate No. 8383. The position was established as full-time, with the recommended salary, by St. 1827, c. 118 (11 March 1828). On the views of the Prison Discipline Society regarding the need for a full-time chaplain, and an account of the early career of the Rev. Jared Curtis at the New York State Prison at Auburn, see PDSB 2 (1826), 91-95.
33. Report of Joint Standing Committee on Prisons, n.d., in Legislative Papers, Res. 1844, c. 98 (15 March 1844), MSA.
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34. Ibid. Additional testimony as to the extent of the prisoners' own book collections was given by Francis C. Gray, a member of the Charlestown Board of Inspectors from 1828 to 1833, in his book extolling the virtues of the Auburn system. Gray wrote that a chaplain from the Illinois State Prison, visiting Charlestown around 1846, admired the size of the library and lamented that prisoners in his own institution had no books at all. A Charlestown prisoner stepped forward to say that he and his shopmates had books to spare for the illinois prisoners. The visiting chaplain returned to Charlestown the next day, "and took with him a large silk handkerchief to carry off the books. What was his astonishment to find in the room adjoining the chapel more than four hundred bound volumes, besides tracts and pamphlets! The silk handkerchief would not do; and the prisoners requested permission to make boxes to pack the books in." Francis C. Gray, Prison Discipline in America (1847; Montclair, N.J., 1973), 53-54. Gray himself was sufficiently impressed with the prison library that he personally donated $50 for the purchase of books in 1847; see Wardens Report (1847), 15; Warden's Report (1848), 14-15, lists the books purchased with Gray's gift.
35. Res. 1845, c. 88 (18 March 1845); Annual Report (1845), 6-7. See also Warden's Report (1845), 22.
36. Annual Report (1845), 7.
37. Catalogue of the Library, of the Mass. State Prison (Charlestown, 1858). For a list of books in the prison library at a later date, see the invoices in Legislative Papers, Res. 1871, c. 35 (28 April 1871), MSA.
38. Board Minutes, 1 November 1849; Chaplain's Report (1858), 42-3; Catalogue of the Library (1858).
39. Report of the [Senate] Committee on Prisons, 19 March 1858 in Legislative Papers, St. 1858, c. 162 (27 March 1858), MSA.
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