A Visit to Eastern Penn

September 30, 2005

This is the first of my Video Diaries.  I had recently bought a digital camera and decided that I would shoot a little video every day and upload it to a Video Blog.  I couldn’t master the technology involved in creating a Vlog and quickly realized how impractical that was.  And now I’m 17 years behind!

Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia was completed in 1829 and designed along Quaker notions of repentance.  Each prisoner was to have a solitary cell with a small skylight and a tiny adjacent yard for exercise.  They were only allowed to read the Bible or do “honest work” such as shoemaking or weaving in order to promote regret and penitence for their crimes.  This, of course, only served to drive the prisoners insane.  Besides, before long the prison was way overcrowded and 2 prisoners were placed in cells designed for 1.  The prison was built around a large central circular building for the guards with the cells aligned along radial corridors so that the guards could see everything at once.

The prison soon became the most famous in the world.  It was visited by Alexis de Tocqueville and Charles Dickens, among many others.  Dickens wrote:

“In its intention I am well convinced that it is kind, humane, and meant for reformation; but I am persuaded that those who designed 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 hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body; and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye,...and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret punishment in which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay.”

The penitentiary is now largely in ruins and is a tourist attraction definitely worth visiting if you’re in Philadelphia.