Warden Melick had become
not like that of a keeper - I mean a watchman, whose prime duty it is to stand
on guard to keep them from getting out - but that of a good true friend. At
the same time, these inmates were not a special run of men, but
just ordinary men, the same as you find in those prisons that
within the past months have become notorious for mutiny and revolt.
The warden did not happen to be of the ordinary run of wardens.
He was a man of sufficient moral weight to hold under easy control
those he was sent out to govern, and only in the rarest instances
was his confidence abused. In such cases the offender was punished
only by taking away his privileges to receive visitors, to receive
tobacco and to write letters.
On September the sixth, the warden
took into his personal charge the keys to the hole; and except
as to serve as a place for the keeping of condemned men, Hell was
Abandoned.
|
I have told my reader of several instances where
the warden depended upon the word of an outcast, and I could
tell you of scores of others who lived up to their word; but
there is an exception to most rules and also to this one. There
were altogether ten escapes during Warden Melick's administration,
all of whom were yardmen or gardeners; nobody sawed their way
out. Of these, ten, five were recaptured the same day, and five
were never recovered although we have a line on two of them.
Mr. Melick also recovered one prisoner, who escaped during another
administration, and located two more serving time in other penitentiaries.
One of those who escaped and was recovered, was a young man,
a relative of Morley, who had just been refused a parole and
was also an escape from a Kansas prison. It was unknown to the
warden that this boy had been placed on the outside of the walls
as a trusty, and the assistant deputy warden was blamed for having
done it; but while the
|