Word: prisons
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...sign appears on the right of the highway: STATEVILLE. Behind it rises a broad, bare hill across whose desolate skyline stretches a wall. Above the wall rise four great, drab cheeseboxes. These are the cell blocks of Illinois' model penitentiary. Here, last week, occurred the first major prison riot of the year...
Warden of Stateville is Henry C. Hill, who also is in charge of the old State prison at Joliet, five miles away. Last month three convicts were trapped and killed as they tried to escape from that institution (TIME, March 2). Later a man died of heart failure while shackled in solitary confinement. Fortnight ago the angry inmates rioted (TIME, March 23). Two died from wounds...
...church in bloody Herrin, Ill., "had fomented discontent, carried messages for convicts and, knowingly or not, had been instrumental in a jail delivery plot." Chaplain Whitmeyer resigned three days after the thwarted escape. Said he: "I resigned because I was the man who disclosed the plans for the attempted prison escape, only to have the guards deliberately trap and shoot these three men after they had been allowed to climb down the outer wall. It was such brutality that aroused the other prisoners and led to the demonstration...
Early last week it was evident that the foment had not quieted in the old prison. Three convicts tried to start another outburst in the mess hall. And when the convict band at Stateville, practicing unguarded, fought among themselves over the question of inciting similar disturbance, prison officials knew that the newer institution had also been infected with the virus of revolt. They announced: "Things are hot right now. Anything might hap- pen." It happened next...
...hundred men in the machine shop dropped their work, set fire to the place. Yelling, brandishing clubs, other inmates joined the riot, ignited the mess hall, two kitchens, laundry, paint shop, chair and shoe factories. The confusion increased. Eyes stinging with the yellow smoke, more than a thousand prisoners broke all the windows of the buildings which would not burn, destroyed their food supply, screamed, leaped, slipped, tumbled about in the thick mud left by melted snow. Finally Warden Hill walked out among them and ordered: "Go back to your cells or we'll fire." A Negro advanced threateningly...