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several times to take a rest. The doctor examined the old fellow carefully and said: "Well, Joe, what you need is an operation for appendicitis, you get ready for this, this afternoon." "Lawd, no, Doctor, ah feels much improved right this minute." The amount of potatoes that Joe has peeled since that day is something wonderful, and he walks around like a young man. No operation for Joe, well I guess not. At times it is hard to discriminate between those who are shamming and those who are really sick. The latter have indeed my sympathy, for their lot is a most unhappy one. The prison has had a hospital consisting of one large room, which resembled a dormitory in some cheap lodging house more than a hospital, and in here were housed those with tubercular and private diseases, together with those temporarily sick, and these were in constant danger of infection. However, this hospital is a thing of the past, it having been torn down to make room for

 

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a new one to be as modern as man and money can make it. The new one will be ready this fall.

In spite of the meager hospital facilities, there are nevertheless fewer deaths and less real sickness at the present time than in any other prison in the country. Looking in retrospect over the year of 1912, there were only two deaths. In the month of July there were only eight hundred and sixty calls at the dispensary for medicine as against one thousand three hundred and twenty during July 1911. This splendid record must be credited to the never tiring efforts of Doctor Stradling and also to the good and well prepared food and the splendid music furnished by Warden Melick, as well as the clean and sanitary condition in which the cells and factories are kept.

Acting upon the recommendation of Doctor Stradling, shower baths were installed and this serves much to promote better health and is far more pleasant than the

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old tub baths. There ought to be, and no doubt there will be before long, hot water installed in all the cells. But what is needed more than anything else and what will do more towards keeping the boys in good health, is a recreation park, which can be gotten by no other expense than extending the east and west walls and moving the south wall so to include the piece of land with the little lake to the south of the prison, which at the present serves no purpose except to give room for some old and readyto-tumble-down shanties.

Would it not be unpleasant to die behind the prison walls? And what becomes of the dead bodies? For years they have been buried in a little graveyard on the hillside to the south of the prison. No marble monument marks the convict's grave, not even a painted board. The coffin, a common pine box, is carried to the grave by convicts, and lowered into the grave by them; then the grave is filled, and just a little mound

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indicates that a human being is buried there. However, if the prisoner has money or friends, the body is turned over to them. Recently a new law was passed, that of turning over to medical colleges the bodies of those convicts who have no money. A few years ago a man was under sentence to be hanged for murder. He had neither money nor friends, and while he did not appear to be worried over having to hang, he was always brooding over them turning his body over to a medical college. On the day of his execution, he turned to Mr. Delahunty, at that time deputy warden, and with tears in his eyes, said, "Jim, there is one thing I wish to ask of you, I haven't a cent, but for mercy's sake, don't let the students get my body." The kindhearted deputy took up a collection among the officers, made up the balance himself and the boy had a Christian funeral and rests in a cemetery in Lincoln.