Word: prisoners
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...hopeful young Lifer Whitsitt has been an exemplary prisoner. Three years ago his excellent behavior got him a break. He was allowed to sell a story he had written of life in prison. Then he began to talk prison officials into letting him ghostwrite crime articles for them. Last month he earned $145 that...
...young Lifer Whitsitt's chief pastime is broadcasting. For the last three years he has been Jackson prison's official newscaster, reporting daily prison news and gossip to 4,100 of the 5,440 inmates over the prison's elaborate cell-to-cell hookup...
...Good evening, men," Whitsitt may say, "tonight's feature story is headed: 'Thirteen incorrigibles shipped to Siberian stir.' " Siberia, in Michigan stir talk, is Marquette prison. Other items may have a warmer touch. Prisoner So-and-so lost a picture of his wife in the textile factory. Reward for its return: two packs of cigarets. Prisoner Such-and-such will swap a pair of $12 shoes, which don't fit him, for 16 packs of cigarets. Whitsitt used to broadcast complaints and comments on prison regimen, too, but nowadays he has to stick to straight news...
...newsgatherer, Whitsitt is trusted to go pretty much where he pleases in the prison, pesters the life out of turnkeys and wardens alike for items. But what buzzes along the prison grapevine, wise Lifer Whitsitt lets severely alone. One night last fortnight the grapevine crackled with details of an attempted jailbreak, in which six escaping prisoners killed a guard. Of this black-type story, the Radio Gazette has broadcast not a peep. Says young Lifer Whitsitt: "I'm no Walter Winchell...
...Prison-pallid Dr. James Monroe Smith, convicted ex-president of Louisiana State University, hunched up in a jail bathtub at Baton Rouge, La., tried to commit bloody suicide by slashing his right foot. (It was his second attempt: last July, in the Federal House of Detention at New Orleans, he tried to have bichloride of mercury smuggled to him in an ice cream carton.) Two days later an ambulance carried off ineffectual Convict Smith to Angola State Penitentiary, to begin serving eight to 24 years for forgery...