Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 May 1895 — A REMARKABLE COLONY. [ARTICLE]

A REMARKABLE COLONY.

Sixty-Eight Bank Officers Confined in the One Penitentiary. There are now in the Kings County, N. Y., penitentiary sixty-eight prisoners, who, at one time or another, were officers of banks —some tellers, others presidents, and others still cashiers. The Kings County penitentiary is onetof five penal institutions which are under contract with the Federal Govcrnmeht to keep in confinement all prisoners- convicted of felonies by United States courts, and hence the large number of former bank officials, as these have been gathered from a wide extent of territory. .Speaking of his boarders, Warden Hayes of the penitentiary says: “I have here in my population as able financiers and expert accountants as ever lived. They came from all over the East and Southeast. We have them from Louisiana to Maine. If there should be a strike of tellers, cashiers and clerks in any one of-the banks of greater New York I could furnish a complete staff on one hour’s notice. Y’es, I could fit the bank out with a president and a full force down to, but not including, the janitor. It is a remarkable fact which I have verified by looking over the records, that although there have been confined in this prison since it began to receive United States prisoners, twelve or fifteen years ago, a total of 130 bank officers and clerks, we have never yet had a janitor or watchman or runaway messenger.”