Dickens, Charles

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Charles Dickens

Excerpt from American Notes

Reprinted from Charles Dickens: American Notes for General Circulation, edited by Patricia Ingham

Originally published in 1842; excerpt taken from 2000 reprint

With the U.S. Constitution protecting American citizens from cruel and unusual punishment, a search for more humane forms of punishment began in the late 1800s. The idea of incarceration had been in use since the late 1700s, but by the early 1800s two different types of prison systems were being tried in the United States. One was known as the "Philadelphia" plan and the other, the "Auburn" plan. They were named after the cities where two new state prisons were located—in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Auburn, New York.

"The system here, is rigid, strict, and hopeless solitary confinement. I believe it, in its effects, to be cruel and wrong."

Under the Philadelphia plan, also known as the Separate System, prisoners were kept isolated in their cells both day and night. They were allowed certain books, especially the Bible, and sometimes allowed to perform certain handcrafts. Most of all they were left to think about their crimes. Food was pushed into the cell through hatches. Prisoners never saw or spoke with anyone except the prison guards who did not know their names or why they were there. Prisoners exercised in their own individual yards, and very few visitors were allowed. Critics called this prolonged solitary confinement cruel and unusual punishment, especially for those serving sentences of many years.

In January 1842 thirty-year-old Charles Dickens and his wife Catherine set sail from Liverpool, England, to begin a tour of America. Internationally famous for his novels, Dickens was well received upon his arrival in the port of Boston. Given his personal interest in criminal law and prisons, U.S. officials gave him tours of several modern American prisons.

Among the prisons was the world famous Eastern Penitentiary in Philadelphia known as Cherry Hill. Opened in 1830 Cherry Hill was an international showplace for using methods of prisoner isolation. Dickens visited Cherry Hill on March 8, 1842, and denounced the Separate System as intolerably cruel in American Notes, published in October 1842. He was convinced the prison inflicted far more harm on its victims than other prison systems.

Things to remember while reading excerpts from American Notes:

By the 1840s Charles Dickens was the most popular author in Britain and had achieved international fame. His recent novels included The Pickwick Papers (1837) and Oliver Twist (1838).
Books about America were very popular in England at the time. British citizens were intrigued with America's new democratic government and wanted to know more. Dickens' publishers provided him a contract to travel to America and write about his adventures. He was to compare American and British institutions.
In contrast to the system at Cherry Hill prisoners in the Auburn plan, known as the Silent System, were allowed to be among other inmates though only to work in groups during the day and under very strict supervision. They were able to make products sold in the outside world. Like the Philadelphia plan, inmates could not speak or communicate with one another and spent their nights sleeping in separate cells. Guards stayed with the prisoners night and day to make sure they obeyed the strict silence rules, requiring a large staff. The Philadelphia plan required a more expensive building but a much smaller staff.
Dickens strongly opposed slavery. His outspokenness on the trip met with increasing resistance from the American public. By June, when Dickens set sail back to England, his popularity in the United States had sharply declined.

Excerpt from American Notes

My stay in Philadelphia was very short, but what I saw of its society, I greatly liked. . . .

In the outskirts, stands a great prison, called the Eastern Penitentiary: conducted on a plan peculiar to the state of Pennsylvania. The system here, is rigid, strict, and hopeless solitary confinement. I believe it, in its effects, to be cruel and wrong.

In its intention, I am well convinced that it is kind, humane, and meant for reformation; but I am persuaded that those who devised this system of Prison Discipline, and those benevolent gentlemen who carry it into execution, do not know what it is that they are doing. I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony which this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers; and in guessing at it myself, and in reasoning from what I have seen written upon their faces, and what to my certain knowledge they feel within, I am only the more convinced that there is a depth of terrible endurance in it which none but the sufferers themselves can fathom , and which no man has a right to inflict upon his fellow creature. I hold this slow anddaily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably more than any torture of the body; and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh; because its wounds are not upon the surface, and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay. I hesitated once, debating with myself, whether, if I had the power of saying "Yes" or "No," I would allow it to be tried in certain cases, where the terms of imprisonment were short; but now, I solemnly declare, that with no rewards or honors could I walk a happy man beneath the open sky by day or lie me down upon my bed at night, with the consciousness that one human creature, for any length of time, no matter what, lay suffering this unknown punishment in his silent cell, and I the cause, or I consenting to it in the least degree.

I was accompanied to this prison by two gentlemen officially connected with its management, and passed the day in going from cell to cell, and talking with the inmates. Every facility was afforded me, that the utmost courtesy could suggest. Nothing was concealed or hidden from my view, and every piece of information that I sought was openly and frankly given. The perfect order of the building cannot be praised too highly, and of the excellent motives of all who are immediately concerned in the administration of the system, there can be no kind of question.

Between the body of the prison and the outer wall, there is a spacious garden. Entering it, by a wicket in the massive gate, we pursued the path before us to its other termination, and passed into a large chamber, from which seven long passages radiate . On either side of each, is a long, long row of low cell-doors, with a certain number over every one. Above, a gallery of cells like those below, except that they have no narrow yard attached (as those in the ground tier have), and are somewhat smaller. The possession of two of these, is supposed to compensate for the absence of so much air and exercise as can be had in the dull strip attached to each of the others, in an hour's time every day; and therefore every prisoner in this upper story has two cells, adjoining and communicating with, each other.

Standing at the central point, and looking down these dreary passages, the dull repose and quiet that prevails, is awful. Occasionally, there is a drowsy sound from some lone weaver's shuttle, or shoemaker's last , but it is stifled by the thick walls and heavy dungeon-door, and only serves to make the general stillness moreprofound. Over the head and face of every prisoner who comes into this melancholy house, a black hood is drawn; and in this dark shroud, an emblem of the curtain dropped between him and the living world, he is led to the cell from which he never again comes forth, until his whole term of imprisonment has expired. He never hears of wife or children; home or friends; the life or death of any single creature. He sees the prison-officers, but with that exception he never looks upon a human countenance , or hears a human voice. He is a man buried alive; to be dug out in the slow round of years; and in the mean time dead to everything but torturing anxieties and horrible despair.

His name, and crime, and term of suffering, are unknown, even to the officer who delivers him his daily food. There is a number over his cell-door, and in a book of which the governor of the prison has one copy, and the moral instructor another: this is the index to his history. Beyond these pages the prison has no record of his existence: and though he lives to be in the same cell ten weary years, he has no means of knowing, down to the very last hour, in what part of the building it is situated; what kind of men there are about him; whether in the long winter night there are living people near, or he is in some lonely corner of the great jail, with walls, and passages, and iron doors between him and the nearest sharer in its solitary horrors.

Every cell has double doors: the outer one of sturdy oak, the other of grated iron, wherein there is a trap through which his food is handed. He has a Bible, and a slate and pencil, and, under certain restrictions, has sometimes other books, provided for the purpose, and pen and ink and paper. His razor, plate, and can, and basin, hang upon the wall, or shine upon the little shelf. Fresh water is laid on in every cell, and he can draw it at his pleasure. During the day, his bed-stead turns up against the wall, and leaves more space for him to work in. His loom, or bench, or wheel, is there; and there he labors, sleeps and wakes, and counts the seasons as they change, and grows old.

The first man I saw, was seated at his loom, at work. He had been there, six years, and was to remain, I think, three more. He had been convicted as a receiver of stolen goods, but even after this long imprisonment, denied his guilt, and said he had been hardly dealt by [ignored]. It was his second offence. . . .

In another cell, there was a German, sentenced to five years' imprisonment for larceny, two of which had just expired. With colors procured in the same manner, he had painted every inch of the walls and ceiling quite beautifully. He had laid out the few feet of ground, behind,with exquisite neatness, and had made a little bed in the center, that looked by the bye like a grave. The taste and ingenuity he had displayed in everything were most extraordinary; and yet a more dejected, heart-broken, wretched creature, it would be difficult to imagine. I never saw such a picture of forlorn affliction and distress of mind. My heart bled for him; and when the tears ran down his cheeks, and he took one of the visitors aside, to ask, with his trembling hands nervously clutching at his coat to detain him, whether there was no hope of his dismal sentence being commuted , the spectacle was really too painful to witness. I never saw or heard of any kind of misery that impressed me more than the wretchedness of this man.

There was one man who was allowed, as an indulgence , to keep rabbits. His room having rather a close smell in consequence, they called to him at the door to come out into the passage. He complied of course, and stood shading his haggard face in the unwonted sunlight of the great window, looking as wane and unearthly as if he had been summoned from the grave. He had a white rabbit in his breast, and when the little creature, getting down upon the ground, stole back into the cell, and he, being dismissed, crept timidly after it, I thought it would have been very hard to say in what respect the man was the nobler animal of the two. . . .

I went from cell to cell that day; and every face I saw, or word I heard, or incident I noted, is present to my mind in all its painfulness. . . .

I took that opportunity of inquiring how they conducted themselves immediately before going out; adding that I presumed they trembled very much.

"Well, it's not so much a trembling," was the answer—"though they do quiver—as a complete derangement of the nervous system. They can't sign their names to the book; sometimes can't even hold the pen; look about 'em without appearing to know why, or where they are; and sometimes get up and sit down again, twenty times in a minute. This is when they're in the office, where they are taken with the hood on, as they were brought in. When they get outside the gate, they stop, and look first one way and then the other: not knowing which to take. Sometimes they stagger as if they were drunk, and sometimes are forced to lean against the fence, they're so bad:—but they clear off in course of time.". . .

My firm convictions, that independent of the mental anguish it occasions—an anguish so acute and so tremendous, that all imagination of it must fall far short of the reality—it wears the mind into
a morbid state, which renders it unfit for the rough contact and busy action of the world. It is my fixed opinion that those who have undergone this punishment, must pass into society again morally unhealthy and diseased. There are many instances on record, of men who have chosen, or have been condemned, to lives of perfect solitude, but I scarcely remember one, even among sages of strong and vigorous intellect, where its effect has not become apparent, in some disordered train of thought, or some gloomy hallucination. What monstrous phantoms, bed of despondency and doubt, and born and reared in solitude, have stalked upon the earth, making creation ugly, and darkening the face of Heaven!. . .

It seems to me that the objection that nothing wholesome or good has ever had its growth in such unnatural solitude, and thateven a dog or any of the more intelligent among beasts, would pine, and mope, and rust away, beneath its influence, would be in itself a sufficient argument against this system . . . there is surely more than sufficient reason for abandoning a mode of punishment attended by so little hope or promise, and fraught, beyond dispute, with such a host of evils.

What happened next . . .

After Dickens's 1842 journey the effectiveness of each of the two prison systems was hotly debated in the United States. Some emphasized inmate reform while others favored deterring crime through severe punishment. A major concern of the Separate System at Cherry Hill was the cost of solitary confinement. Each prisoner had to have his own cell and exercise yard, and food and other necessities were provided individually. At this time criminologists began investigating the psychological character of criminals. As a result, concern increased over the effects of such pronounced isolation on individuals, as expressed so vividly by Dickens.

Dickens remained active in social reform movements following his trip to America. He used some profits from his highly popular novels to publish a newspaper called the Daily News beginning in January 1846. With Dickens as editor, the newspaper promoted social issues including free public education for the poor, various forms of civil and religious liberty, low-cost housing, and equal rights legislation. The newspaper was a financial failure and lasted only until 1850.

Dickens also wrote several significant works after his trip, including A Christmas Carol (1843), David Copperfield (1850), A Tale of Two Cities (1859), and Great Expectations (1860).

Did you know . . .

Dickens's book American Notes was highly unpopular in the United States. Not only did he denounce the prison system at Cherry Hill, but he was also outspoken against slavery, corrupt American politics, and the slanderous press. The U.S. press blasted the book in reviews.
Dickens was also a strong opponent of the death penalty. He claimed justice was not fairly applied with much depending on a person's wealth. The poor and uneducated generally received harsher treatment in the criminal justice system, including punishment. In addition, he argued that judges and juries made mistakes that could not be corrected if the accused was dead.
Dickens returned to the United States twenty-five years later in November 1867. He received a grand welcome in Boston Harbor including a shower of rockets and flares. Dickens toured sixteen eastern cities using his own writings for public readings. It was highly successful and past hard feelings over his previous trip had been forgotten.
Dickens died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage at home in Kent, England, in 1870. He was buried in the Poet's Corner of London's Westminster Abbey.

Consider the following . . .

Divide the class into two groups and debate the benefits and drawbacks of the two prison systems being tested in America at the time of Dickens's trip—the Philadelphia and the Auburn plans.
Write an essay describing what it would be like in the Cherry Hill prison, seeing no one, hearing no one, not receiving any news from the outside. What would your thoughts be if you were mistakenly convicted of a crime and sentenced to years at Cherry Hill? Imagine the hood taken from your head after being escorted to your cell for the first time.
Is solitary confinement still used in U.S. prisons? Under what conditions is it applied?

Benevolent: Having good intentions.

Fathom: Understand.

Palpable: Easily seen.

Extorts: Brings forth or causes, usually by pain.

Wicket: Small door within the larger entrance.

Radiate: Extend out from a central point.

Tier: Level.

Compensate: Make up for.

Communicating: Open passage.

Repose: Lack of movement.

Last: A wooden or metal model of a foot used to shape and repair shoes and boots.

Melancholy: Gloomy.