Manchester High School - Somanhis Yearbook (Manchester, CT)

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26 SOMANHIS EVENTS their own officers from among the convicts. These officers have complete authority over their fellows. They are even allowed to go out in the yards with no guards other than these. The men are enthusiastic about it, and from time to time they have suggestions for improvement which are almost always adopted. The plan has been so successful that other prisons are imitating it. There is a very real danger of spoiling it, however, because the privileges are granted without giving the responsibility to the prisoners. A clever English-woman once said to Mr. Osborne, “As near as I can make it out, the present system aims to produce “good prisoners” while you aim to produce “good citizens.” If a man commits a crime he should, of course, be punished. But the imprisonment, the loss of liberty is in itself the greatest punishment that can be meted out to man. During the time of imprisonment, we should en- deavor to teach him that his ideas of life have been warped, twisted; we should educate him until he sees the value of “going straight.” And let us not forget these famous words of Shakespeare: “The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. ‘Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes The throned monarch better than his crown; His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, The attribute to awe and majesty, Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings; But mercy is above this sceptred sway; It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, It is an attribute to God himself; And earthly power doth then show likest God’s When mercy seasons justice.” A WOMAN’S CONFESSION. The day of the débutante is over. The modern girl leaves school cr college, not with the intention of becoming a social parasite, but with an inspiration to commence her career, to serve the community to wihch she owes her education. She wants something hard to do, something worth doing, that can only be done by skillful manipulation of the keen-edged tools known as education. The pain of effort cannot surprise people who have already done one kind of work. There are hundreds of positions now open to girls for public or personal service, but few that so happily combine the two as the recently developed profession of nursing. Florence Nightingale, during the Crimean War, awakened the civilized world to a realization of its great need, and, since then, the heroic army of nurses has built up the profession on her principles. The theory that the nursing instinct is so inherent in women that they do as well without training, is false. The fact that doctors invariably pre- fer the registered trained nurse to the hired attendant shows the value of those three years or more of severe training. In that time the earnest work- ers come through, and the sentimentalists are weeded out before the course

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SOMANHIS EVENTS 25 Even though none of the horrors or tortures of mediaeval times now exist, some of the punishments for prison offenses quite equal the brutaliy ot those times. Every so often the public is shocked at some prison scandal which leaks out, some new revelation of “Man’s inhumanity to man,” and laws are passed to restrain these brutalities. But the forbidden tortures are always replaced by new ones. This is because the old prison system is founded on the theory that the way to prevent and punish crime is to inflict punishment so dreadiul as to inculcate fear. The prison officials thought, and still think, that the only way to reform a criminal is to ‘break his spirit.” Such a thing has been done many times in our prison torture-chambers, as certain pathetic wrecks of humanity can testify. The old system left wholly out of consideration the fact that the beings who were to be punished were human—ordinary men and women, like you or me; and as such would respond more readily to kindness and fair treatment, than to being treated always with suspicion, and bullied and forced into obeying rules of conduct laid down by the authorities. A few weeks ago, I had an opportunity to visit Wethersfield Prison. From the information the warden gave me, I understood that an adaptation of the Auburn, or Silent System is being used there. The men work to- gether, and silence is enforced. At meals, however, they are allowed to con- verse with the ones next to them, if they do it quietly. A group of men were playing ball in the yard. We watched them for a few minutes from the window. They were young fellows, most of them, and it was hard to believe that they were dangerous criminals. Yet the law regards them as such, and day after day, they must go through the same deadening routine, they must waste the best years of their lives in prison. When their term is over, they have received nothing that will en- able them to change their ways, nothing that will convince them that it is for their own good to change. Year after year the prisons turn out men crippled in body and soul, the victims of a senseless) system. “Do you know how a man feels when he leaves an institution of this kind?” one of the Auburn prisoners, a third termer once asked; “I'll tell you how I felt at the end of my first term. I just hated everybody and every- thing; and I made up my mind I'd get even.” Our prisons are full of men serving their third, fourth, fifth, and even eleventh or twelfth term. If, when they had first started on their career of crime, they had been shown a little kindness, if they had been given a “square deal” instead of being clapped into prison with thousands of other “hardened criminals,” the majority of them would perhaps now be good American citizens. Thomas Mott Osborne is foremost among present-day reformers. He has spent a week in voluntary imprisonment in Auburn Prison in an effort to understand the effect of the prison system and routine on the men themselves, It has convinced him that the systems now used will never reform a criminal. Of course, there are many criminals who have reformed after serving one or more terms in prison, but by no stretch of the imagination can the credit be given to the prison system. In order to fit prisoners for taking up an honest life after their term has been served, they should be given some responsibility, a chance to exer- cise their initiative. Mr. Osborne, with the help of Jack Murphy, a “lifer” at Auburn Prison, started the Mutual Welfare League, a society which is based on this theory, and in which all the inmates of the prison are mem- bers. The society is really a form of self-government. The men appoint

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ca) SOMANHIS EVENTS 1s ended. A nurse’s true characteristics come to light after the novelty and excitement of hospital life have worn away. There is no other profession that trains a girl so well for her probable future as a homekeeper and mother. She learns household management, dietetics, sanitation and care of children; but above all, her social horizon is broadened, and she learns responsibility. From the beginning she is en- gaged in living problems, vital human affairs, and she cannot but profit by her experience. The girl who enrolls in the army of Florence Nightingale first finds herself, but in so doing, creates a place of real service in the world, and becomes a source of uplift in the community in which she lives. ELIZABETH CHENEY BAYNE, ’20. RK OR THE EARLY HISTORY OF MANCHESTER Manchester is one of the four towns whose territory at one time be- longed to the town of Hartford. The section extending eastward from the Connecticut River to the neighborhood of the present Hillstown Road in Manchester was known as the Three-mile Lots. From this point east to the Bolton Hills stretched a broad belt of woodland known as the Commons, and forming part of the hunting grounds of Joshua, Chief of the Western Niantic Indians. In 1673, Joshua sold to Major Talcott of Hartford a strip of this Common land extending from the Three-mile Lots five miles east to what is now the Bolton town line. This land became the property of the town of Hartford and was used at first as hunting grounds, but was in- tended for division later into individual holdings for the encouragement of settlement to the eastward, Later the large township of Hartford was divided into the townships of Hartford and East Hartford. The more populated section of the eastern township near the river, was usually referred to as East Hartford, whiie the eastern and less settled territory, which now forms the town of Man- chester, was called East Hartford Five Miles. By this time settlement had begun within the limits of the five mile lots, the first settlers apparently having established their farms at the western edge of the town, in what is now the Sixth School District. Later the settlers in this section adopted the name of Orford Parish. In 1745 the first school in town was established, which was located in the present sixth district. By 1772 Orford Parish had grown sufficiently in size to warrant the establishment of a separate church. A petition was forwarded to the legislature, and in spite of opposition from East Hartford permission was granted for the incorporation of the Eccelesistical Society of Orford Parish. The second paper mill in Connecticut was built in Manchester on the Hockanum River, and the “Connecticut Courant” printed the news of the battle of Lexington on paper supplied by that mill. Manchester Green was the business center of the town in its early days. The opening of the Middle Turnpike in 1794 between Boston and New York added to its importance. Two stages passed through here each day, one go- ing to Boston and one to New York. At that time the only stores in the town were at Manchester Green, and here the people from the country round came to do their shopping. Near the Green was located the Pitkin Glass Factory, built in 1783 by Rich- ard Pitkin. The chief products of the factory were large demijolins and