by Aaron Mahnke
The most famous prison break, though, was Willie Sutton. He was probably the second-most-famous inmate in Eastern State’s entire history. I’ll get to number one in a bit. But Willie, he was sort of a criminal celebrity. He’d been a bank robber before his time in Eastern State. They called him the Babe Ruth of bank robbing. Slick Willie. The Gentleman Bandit. But he got caught, didn’t he?
He checked into Eastern State in 1934. During his eleven-year stay there, he tried escaping five times. But it was his last attempt that was an affair to remember. Sutton, along with eleven other men, dug a tunnel twelve feet down from cell 68, then another hundred feet straight out to breach the wall. They removed the dirt from their excavations just like The Shawshank Redemption showed us: hiding it in their pockets and then dropping it in the yard. The tunnels had ventilation and support beams. It was a production like none other.
It took them months, but on April 3, 1945, all twelve men slipped into the tunnel and crawled to freedom. Some of the men actually evaded the authorities for a couple of months. Slick Willie, though, was caught within three minutes. There’s a joke in there somewhere, I think.
Over the century and a half that Eastern State Penitentiary was in operation, more than one hundred prisoners managed to break out. Only one of them managed to never be recaptured. I think we get it: people want to escape prison. It happens all over the world. Certainly there are prisons with higher escape numbers, even here in the United States. But why the rush to leave?
Eastern State, it turns out, was originally designed to house a maximum of three hundred criminals. But that was the 1830s, and society was changing. In the beginning, most of the inmates were horse thieves. By the 1920s, though, inmates were being sent in with darker crimes. Rape, violence, even murder. As a result, numbers swelled to an astounding two thousand. That’s nearly seven times the original capacity.
With the shift in prisoner population came adjustments to the philosophy behind the penitentiary itself. Gone were the notions of hard work, solitude, and meditation. In the minds of those who ran the overcrowded prison, only one corrective method would actually work: torture.
CREATURE COMFORTS
Aside from the straitjacket, which was used often as a way of containing unruly prisoners, one of the more frightening methods of punishment was a seat called, affectionately, the “mad chair.” It resembled an old dentist’s chair, and prisoners would be strapped into it as tightly as possible and left for days without food. There are rumors that extended time spent in the chair resulted in amputations.
Some inmates found themselves placed in “the hole,” a small, confining cell that had been dug out of the foundation of the building. With only a tiny slot for food and air, prisoners in the hole would share their space with rats and insects for weeks at a time. There was no bathroom there, no contact with other humans, and no light to see by.
Then there was the room where inmates were taken during the winter. They would be stripped naked, plunged into a bath of cold water, and then strapped to the wall to freeze throughout the night. Oftentimes the guards would return to find a layer of ice on the skin of the man being punished.
None of those methods could hold a candle to what was known as the “iron gag.” To reinforce the no-talking policy in the prison, this punishment brought the consequences directly to the offender’s mouth. It’s hard to describe with words, but stick with me and I’ll do my best.
An inmate’s wrists would be locked behind his back with crude manacles, and then a short chain would be connected to the wrists. On the other end of that chain would be a small iron clamp.
And that clamp was fastened to the tongue. Talking, movement, or struggling would all result in the tongue being torn, and it was said that extreme blood loss even led to death in some cases.
But as hard as it is to believe, some prisoners even managed to rise above all of that. Some, in fact, managed to enjoy a fairly luxurious life inside Eastern State. Inside one of the seven cellblocks that radiated off the central hub was a string of cells known as “Park Avenue.” The inmates there enjoyed a bit more freedom. And none took advantage of that more than Al Capone.
Today Capone is remembered as a mob boss of near mythic proportions, and Eastern State was his first experience with prison life. Just months after his men brutally murdered members of a rival gang in an event now referred to as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, Capone was picked up in Philadelphia and convicted for carrying a concealed weapon. For the eight months that spanned the summer of 1929 to the spring of 1930, Capone called Park Avenue his home.
Here’s what an August 1929 article in a Philadelphia newspaper had to say:
The whole room was suffused in the glow of a desk lamp which stood on a polished desk….On the once-grim walls of the penal chamber hung tasteful paintings, and the strains of a waltz were being emitted by a powerful cabinet radio receiver of handsome design and fine finish.
Even with his better-than-average accommodations, Capone still complained. But it wasn’t about the food or room temperature. No, Capone—bold and brazen mob boss that he was—appears to have been haunted by ghosts of his past. Literally.
One night shortly after arriving at Eastern State, Capone was heard screaming in his cell. It wasn’t anger or disobedience that drove him to it, though; Capone was apparently scared. When asked, he told the guards that he just wanted Jimmy to leave him alone and go away. Jimmy was attacking him, it seems, and he wanted it to stop.
At first, the guards and other inmates were confused. There was no one else in Capone’s cell, and no Jimmy on the cellblock. But then the dots were connected. Jimmy, they guessed, was really James Clark, one of the men killed on Capone’s orders in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. And if that was true, then Capone was screaming because he felt that Jimmy had followed him into the prison, just to torment him.
Eastern State closed down in 1970 but was reopened in 1991 as a museum. Even without the inmates, something dark seems to have remained behind, and many who have stepped inside for a tour have come away with an experience that’s hard to forget.
The most common sightings occur in one of the guard towers that watches over the building and its perimeter, where a ghostly figure has been seen by many people. Others have reported the sounds of footsteps in the prison hallways and laughter that echoes down through the cellblocks. Soft, mournful wails have been heard there as well.
In cellblock 12, a shadowy figure has been seen darting from cell to cell, always noticed at the corner of the eye. Some have seen it rush away from a dark corner as a group of tourists pass by, while others have seen it moving up or down a wall like an enormous, shadowy spider.
A few years ago, a locksmith was called in to remove the lock on one of the original doors in cellblock 4—after 140 years, it was understandably stubborn, and so they needed the services of a professional. While there, though, he experienced something that haunts him to this day.
The locksmith said that moments after he unlocked the cell, an unseen force rushed out and pressed him against the wall of the hallway. For what felt like an eternity, he was pinned there and couldn’t move. Staring into the now-open cell, his heart froze. The walls inside, he said, were covered with faces. Dozens and dozens of faces, their expressions writhing with agony and horror.
Once free, the locksmith left, referring to the prison as a “giant haunted house.” He never returned.
SILENT GUILT
There’s a lot to be debated in the world of prison reform: how inmates deserve to be treated, what role imprisonment should play in the overall realm of consequences and due process. We could even explore how motives and methods transform over time, under pressure, and through human brokenness. It’s a can of worms, and I don’t have all the answers.
But there’s an overwhelming feeling of guilt in all of this. The prison reform
that Eastern State represented—at least originally—was born out of guilt about earlier, more barbaric methods. And each inmate, in their own way, was caught in a prison of their own personal guilt. It’s easy to see how anyone trapped inside might feel remorse and want desperately to escape.
Maybe Eastern State Penitentiary really is haunted. Maybe there are real ghosts that drift through the dark halls, and shadows that move at the corner of our vision. Considering all of the horrific things that have taken place there over the years, it seems only natural for there to be some sort of an echo still present.
Or maybe it’s nothing more than madness. Some think it’s crazy to believe there are spirits roaming the halls of a prison, or any building for that matter. It defies logic. It’s unprovable. Jimmy never really haunted Al Capone, they say. The man was haunted by guilt, nothing more.
It’s interesting to note that even after his release from Eastern State, Capone still complained of Jimmy’s presence. Back in Chicago and living at the Lexington Hotel, he still screamed for Jimmy to leave him alone. The screams would always bring his bodyguards running, and they would always find the man alone.
Even though everyone else thought he was losing his mind, that his guilt was the only real ghost haunting him night and day, Capone looked for help elsewhere. He hired a psychic named Alice Britt to conduct a séance for him, and she begged Jimmy—on Capone’s behalf—to leave the mob boss alone. And that, they hoped, was the end of it.
One day, a few weeks after the séance, Capone’s personal attendant, a man named Hymie Cornish, stepped into Capone’s quarters to retrieve something. When he entered the room, he immediately noticed a stranger standing near the window, facing out to look down on the street.
He glanced around the room for other visitors. No one was supposed to be in Mr. Capone’s room, after all, and the intruder would need to be dealt with. Turning back to the man, Cornish called out for his attention—and then stopped.
The man, whoever he was, had disappeared.
IN THE MIDDLE Ages, most people would go their entire life without ever experiencing surgery. Today we live in the age of preventative medical procedures and things like cosmetic surgery, but six hundred years ago, no one ever thought of going under the knife without a very good reason.
Why? Because it was difficult to manage the pain. Anesthetics were incredibly primitive in the early days of the Middle Ages. No, people didn’t undergo invasive procedures completely without pain relief, but the options available were limited and…well…potentially deadly.
In England, a common method for pain relief was a potion called dwale (pronounced DWALL-uh), which the patient drank prior to surgery. Dwale was a solution of wine mixed with a number of other ingredients. Some were pretty mild, like lettuce and boar bile. But the recipe also called for hemlock and belladonna, both known to be highly poisonous.
Everyone wanted dwale for their pain, but it was always a gamble. If it was prepared correctly, it worked. If it wasn’t, though—if you used a flawed recipe or bought your potion from a less savory individual—you ran the risk of horrible pain, even death.
Sometimes even the most honorable goals can lead to horrible results. As the old cliché says, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It’s a powerful glimpse into the core of the human mind: we’re really good at breaking the things we try to fix.
And in no other field has that been more true than the early days of the mental health profession. While there might not have been bottles of dwale lying around, the early practitioners of mental health had their own fair share of misguided intentions and flawed recipes.
They tried to help, but in the end they did more harm than good. And while most of the people who suffered through that pain are long gone, the aftereffects remain. And the stories they tell are more than horrifying.
BUILDING REFORM
The early decades of the nineteenth century were filled with reform movements. Abolitionism, education, women’s rights, and voting rights all featured prominently in the early 1800s. American culture was maturing, becoming more aware of what it was and what its flaws were.
And as it did, champions rose up to move those issues forward. Leaders like Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony. Progressive women. Persistent women. We wouldn’t have the culture we have today without them. And right there beside them was Dorothea Dix.
Dorothea’s area of passion was for the mentally ill. Inspired by the lunacy reform movement in England, she threw herself into an investigation of American methods for mental health care, and what she found was appalling. Many who suffered from mental illness were kept in cages or stalls. They were often restrained with chains and beaten into submission. The sick were treated as prisoners, not patients, and that needed to change.
Through the 1840s, she pushed state after state to do better, calling for humane treatment and housing. And that resulted in a new crop of facilities specifically designed to care for the mentally ill. Building a better home for these patients required a fresh approach, and the man who helped with that was Dr. Thomas Kirkbride.
As we discussed earlier, Kirkbride was a physician, but his passion for modern mental health care also led to a whole new architectural style. Buildings shouldn’t be large, square structures. They should stretch out and provide as much sunlight and fresh air as possible.
Two decades before his work in Danvers—in the mid-1850s, in fact—Kirkbride was consulting on a similar project in Westin, Virginia. It would be a modern, conscious approach to caring for the mentally ill, where people would be patients, not prisoners. And they would call it the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum.
After some hiccups caused by the outbreak of the American Civil War, the facility opened its doors in October 1864. By then, though, Westin was a city in the newly minted state of West Virginia, and so the asylum was renamed the West Virginia Hospital for the Insane. New building. New name. It was like a beacon fire had been ignited, and people flocked to it from far and wide.
Like a lot of the early mental health facilities in America, the West Virginia Hospital was built on a foundation of naiveté and hope. It was only designed to hold about 250 patients at a time, which should have been enough, but as we all know, expectations are meant to be broken, right? As you can imagine, things quickly got out of hand.
See, the problem was the mid-nineteenth-century view of mental illness. It was a massive catchall category, so patients suffering from all manner of “disorders” were sent there. And I’m using large, exaggerated air quotes when I say “disorders” because, well…just listen to some of these.
You could be committed to the asylum for superstition, for sexual deviance, for deserting your husband, for having fits of anger, or for being lazy. Women were routinely admitted because of what people then called “menstrual derangement.” It’s well beyond the limits of irony, isn’t it? In the pursuit of caring for the insane, the caretakers went crazy.
Within sixteen years, the facility was caring for over seven hundred patients in a space designed for 250, so new wings were added to the original structure. One was devoted solely to the elderly and those suffering from dementia. Another was set up for tuberculosis patients, giving them plenty of fresh air and sunlight—and, of course, keeping them isolated from the rest of the patients.
Other facilities were built nearby on the property. Things like a large home for patients whom the courts declared to be criminally insane. They even built their own morgue, but because many of the patients would become upset when the hearse pulled up to the front door, they built a new entrance at the back, away from prying eyes.
The hospital grew from seven hundred to sixteen hundred patients by the 1930s. A decade later, there were eighteen hundred people there, and by the early 1950s there were twenty-six hundred. The West Virginia Hospital for the Insane was growing like a weed, but insi
de such a cramped facility, all of that growth was beginning to choke off the lives they were trying to save.
It was a time bomb, quietly ticking away behind a hauntingly beautiful Gothic Revival façade. And that bomb was about to explode.
PEELING BACK THE SKIN
If you grab a tomato and squeeze it slowly, the insides will eventually start to leak out—and that’s what began to happen to the Westin State Hospital, as it was called in the late 1940s. Reports of overcrowding began to spread, and people were alarmed by what they heard.
In January 1949, a newspaper in Charleston, West Virginia, the Gazette, ran an investigative series on the facility. What it discovered was horrifying. One reporter described how disabled children were left naked and alone, chained to their chairs for hours.
When he visited, there was a portion of the cafeteria ceiling that had begun to collapse in on itself because of a septic problem with the toilets on the floor above. Rather than fix it, they had simply propped up the collapsed area with spare lumber.
Some of the rooms were so crowded with beds that you couldn’t access the floor or run a hand between the mattresses. Another report noted how poorly the facility was heated in the winter, and how little light there was.
And darkness, as we all know, can be a breeding ground for terrible things.
Looking back, some historians and mental health professionals blame the conditions on how poorly the staff was treated. They worked incredibly long hours for very little money, which contributed to a high turnover rate. And it’s hard to offer consistency and quality in care when the people managing the patients are constantly changing and have varying levels of experience.
So with limited, unskilled staff and very few resources to make it better, the facility did the only thing it could—it tightened its grip. Patients rarely had contact with the outside world. Even letters in and out were prohibited. Once you stepped through the door of the Westin State Hospital, you would never see the outside world again.
