Ohio History Journal

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A Visit to the Ohio State Prison in 1837

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.