Sing Sing
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Warden T. M. Osborne in older facility. |
For the music group, see Sing-Sing (band).Sing Sing Correctional Facility is a
maximum security prison in
Ossining,
New York. It is located in
Westchester County approximately 30 miles north of
New York City on the edge of the
Hudson River. The name comes from the original name of the village of Ossining, though the penitentiary was first called "Mount Pleasant" when it opened in 1828.
Today Sing Sing houses more than 1,700 prisoners. There are plans to convert the original 1825 cell block, which still stands, into a museum.
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Sing Sing electric chair - Old Sparky |
In 1825, the New York state legislature gave
Elam Lynds, then warden at
Auburn Prison the task of constructing a new, more modern correctional facility. Lynds spent months researching possible locations for the prison, considering
Staten Island, the
Bronx, and
Silver Mine Farm, an area in the town of
Mount Pleasant, located on the banks of the
Hudson River. By May, he had finally settled on the Mt. Pleasant location and selected 100 convicts from the
Auburn State Prison, where he was a warden. When the state appropriated $20,100 to purchase the 130
acre site, Lynds transported the 100 prisoners by barge along the
Erie Canal to freighters down the Hudson River. They arrived in Sing Sing on May 14, "without a place to receive them or a wall to enclose them." Lynds' plan was to use prisoner labor to excavate
marble from a nearby quarry and use it to construct the prison, a practice Lynds had seen used in
New Hampshire and
Massachusetts. Once the prison was built, the prisoners would continue excavating marble to be shipped down the Hudson to
New York City. Beyond the initial sum required to purchase the land, the prison was to be self-supporting, not requiring taxpayer funding. Some of the marble went into the construction of
New York University, the
United States Treasury building, New York City's
Grace Church, and the
New York State Capitol building in
Albany.
When it was built, Sing Sing was considered a model prison, not the least because it actually turned a profit for the state. Lynds enforced the
Auburn system, which imposed absolute silence on the prisoners, enforced by whips and other brutal punishments. Visitors found the silence of the up to 900 prisoners, even as they worked, eerie. After Lynds left, due to a scandal involving the pregnancy of a female prisoner, conditions at the prison began to deteriorate. Fires and disease became common, and in 1861, the governor called in the army to quell a riot.
Another notable warden besides Lynds was
Lewis E. Lawes. He was offered the position of warden—a position which had been filled by nine separate people in the last nine years, one only for three weeks—and accepted in 1920. What he found was a facility that had lost any semblance of order through decades of neglect and abuse. Records documented 795 male and 102 female prisoners at Sing Sing. A head count turned up only 762 and 82 actually present. "How these missing prisoners had left the prison or when, could not be ascertained," he said. Worse still, one prisoner, who had been incarcerated for five years, had no record of his admission or retention history. He was declared a "volunteer" and released on the spot. More than $30,000 in cash was missing from prison bank accounts when Lawes became warden, and there was no trace as to where the money went. Documented punishments were brutal and described a long history of abuse by both prison guards and wardens. Some punishments included freezing showers, the
ball and chain, the yoke, an iron gag, and whipping with a
cat of nine tails (often followed by a sponge, soaked in salt water, being dragged across the open wound). In addition to an end of the brutality, the facility was slowly modernized. In the 1920s, several new buildings were built, including a chapel, a mess hall, two administration centers, a hospital and a library.
Gangster movies helped make the prison a legend far beyond New York; they included
The Big House (1930),
Castle on the Hudson (1940), and
20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932), the latter based on a book by Warden Lawes. The expression "sent up the river" refers to Sing Sing. Other than
Alcatraz, it is the most famous prison in American popular culture.
From
1914 until
1971, only the
electric chair at Sing Sing was used for executions. The last execution at Sing Sing was in August 1963, two years before New York first abolished
capital punishment.
On
January 8,
1983, a riot began with 600-plus inmates in B-block taking 17
correction officers hostage. The riot ended after 53 hours.
In 1997, author and journalist
Ted Conover became a New York State correctional officer because he found it the only way he could write about being one. He was assigned to Sing Sing and worked there for about ten months. The resulting book,
Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, was published in 2000 to critical acclaim, winning the
National Book Critics Circle Award and becoming a finalist for the
Pulitzer Prize. The state's Department of Correctional Services soon declared it contraband, requiring that several pages be redacted from any version sent to inmates.
*
Lepke Buchalter, The head of
Murder Inc. was executed there.
*
Charles Becker, the first and to date only American policeman executed for murder.
*
Albert Fish, a
serial killer and
cannibal.
*
James Larkin, Irish labour leader imprisoned from
1920 to
1923 for 'criminal anarchy' as a result of his left-wing writings.
*
Charles Chapin, ("
The Rose Man"), a former New York City newspaper editor doing life for murder.
*
Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, convicted spies of the Soviet Union and two of the last people to be executed at the prison.
* Francis "Two-Gun" Crowley, cop killer.
* Edwin Collins "Alabama" Pitts, star prison athlete.
*
William H. Van Schaick, captain of the
General Slocum, responsible for the worst maritime accident in New York's history.
*
Martha Beck and
Raymond Fernandez, electrocuted there after being found guilty for the brutal murders of twelve people.
*
Richard Whitney, president of the
New York Stock Exchange.
*
Ruth Snyder, convicted of killing her husband for insurance money.
*
List of New York state prisons*
Sing-Sing Prison Cemetery*
Auburn State Prison*
"All about Sing Sing Prison" by Mark Gado*
"The History of Sing Sing Prison"*
New York Corrections History Society*
The Rose Man of Sing Sing: A True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism by James McGrath Morris (2003)
*
Crash Out : The True Tale of a Hell's Kitchen Kid and the Bloodiest Escape in Sing Sing History by David Goewey (2005)
*
Miracle at Sing Sing : How One Man Transformed the Lives of America's Most Dangerous Prisoners by Ralph Blumenthal (2005)
*
Sing Sing: The Inside Story of a Notorious Prison by Denis Brian (2005)
*
Condemned: Inside the Sing Sing Death House by Scott Christianson (2000)
*
Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing by
Ted Conover (2000), ISBN 0375501770
