A Visit to the Ohio State Prison
in 1837
Edited by MERTON L. DILLON*
ONE OF THE MANY SOCIAL PROBLEMS that demanded so-
lution in the early nineteenth century
was how best to deal
with convicted criminals. The answer
provided by the system
inaugurated in 1823 at the state prison
at Auburn, New York,
enjoyed great vogue among penal
reformers and set the
fashion in American prison
administration for the next half
century. The Auburn system required the
isolation of prison-
ers in small, individual cells at
night, congregate work in
prison shops by day, enforced silence
at all times, and com-
plete isolation from contact with the
outer world. Advocates
of these arrangements urged in their
favor the prophylactic
effect of silence and isolation and the
economic utility of
communal labor. So attractive did the plan appear that
twenty-
three states followed it in
constructing their own state prisons.
When Ohio undertook the construction of
its new prison at
Columbus, the authorities decided to
follow the Auburn sys-
tem, which by that time had been
operating successfully for
a decade. The first group of two
hundred cells was ready for
occupancy in 1834 while work continued
on the remaining
five hundred units. Under the Auburn
plan the curious might
secure admission to the institution and
observe the inmates
without themselves being seen. Thus, in
1837 Clark Guernsey,
a young printer from Pennsylvania,
visited the still uncom-
pleted prison as a part of the
itinerary of his tour of the Ohio
River Valley. Guernsey's impressions of
conditions inside the
* Merton L. Dillon is associate
professor of history at Texas Technological
College.