Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 21, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 November 1899 — CARTER IN JAIL LIFE [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

CARTER IN JAIL LIFE

CONVICTED ARMY OFFICER'S FUTURE IN PRISON. Five Tear, of Hard Work—Rlatfd Die* cipline and Frugal Fare Will Be Hia Portion—A Number la Branded on Hia Clothea—The Dally Routine. Capt Oberlin M. Carter, the United States army officer recently convicted of immense frauds in connection with the improvement of Savannah harbor, Georgia, a work of which he had charge as the Government engineer, was sentenced to the Fort Leavenworth (Kansas) penitentiary for five years’ imprisonment at hard labor, deprivation of his rank in the army, and dismissal, and $5,000 fine. The contrast between Carter’s life for the next five years and his life for the preceding ones could not be more dissimilar. Carter’s rooms were always models of luxury. No society girl, nurtured in the lap of wealth, ever excelled this luxury-loving officer in the costly, artistic elegance of boudoir

and bedroom. Priceless tapestries, rare old furniture, toilet trappings in solid gold and silver, fine linens, dainty perfumes—all these and a'thousand other elegancies are as much a part of Oberlin M. Carter’s life as the air he beathes. At t~e Fort Leavenworth penitentiary he must manage -to survive for five long years without his wine suppers, his rapid friends, and his perfumed baths. Five changes of toilet a day are. not recognized aa.essential at the Fort Leavenworth prison. One suit is quite sufficient, according to the prison code—a stout suit of coarse gray, with a big straw hat in summer and a small blue denim cap in winter. The man who has played the highroller for years, who has beefa courted by pleasure-loving fashionables, admired by women, and envied by men, will for the next five years be kept under lock and key as a mere thing, duly ticketed and numbered. His number will be marked in glaring red. stenciled on his prison garments in four places—right across the broad of his back, over the right thigh, and on the calf of each leg. A more degrading thing this branding of the criminal more prominently than the government mule Is marked—could not be devised. Fort Leavenworth Is not a place where the tastes of prisqners are con-

suited. Discipline of the handcuffshotgun variety is promptly applied as the occasion demands. The prison is a collection of old buildings, entered, through a sallyport, guarded night and day by heavily armed men. Inside the sallyport a gloomy archway leads under the offices of the warden and bis subordinates, the printing shop, and photograph gallery, to the prison buildings where the convicts are housed, fed, and bathed. At Fort Leavenwdrth hard labor means just what the term implies. Carter, with hands unused to labor harder than uncorking champagne bottles and throwing away money, 'will find the conditions far from enjoyable. He will sleep in a regulation prison cell behind a steel-barred door, watched by a guard armed with a shotgun. It is needless to say that the rare carpets and priceless tapestries which have heretofore contributed to his comfort will not figure in his Fort Leavenworth cell. The bill of fare is not an appetizing outlook for Carter, for this luxurious officer has fattened for years upon the choicest foods prepared by artist chefs. Nothing in the eating and drinking line has been quite good enough for the epicurean captain. Think what five years of Fort Leavenworth prison fare will mean to him—an eternity of gastronomic misery. The work which falls to the share of almost all new arrivals is with the pick and blasting drill in the quarries two miles from the prison. The stone is for use in the construction of the new penitentiary. Carter comes in for this backbreaking, band-blistering experience. Fort Leavenworth prison has a set of ~’ . ■

very severe rules, all rigidly enforced. Should Carter grow disobedient his prison allowance of tobacco will be shut off, be will be denied the privilege of writing or receiving letters, his diet may be restricted to bread and water, and in tbe event of persistent misconduct he would be handcuffed day and night to tbe bars of his cell. They stand no nonsense at Fort Leavenworth. Still they work no cruelties and the prisoner who behaves well, takes his medicine, as it were, unflinchingly, is treated as well as he could rightly expect. He can write to his friends and receive their letters; he may subscribe for any reputable newspaper or magazine, and may - have books from the prison library. Every Saturday afternoon Carter will be compelled not only to give himself a cold-water bath with common brown soap accompaniment but he will be forced to wash and scrub bis cell, depressing work -for the man who for years has been living in perfumed baths, and relying upon the services of a skilled valet for the simplest tasks of thp toilet

WHERE CAPT. CARTER WILL WORK.

CARTER IN CONVICT GARB.