Sept 6 mid day - The Moundsville Penitentiary

After the Grave Creek Mound we took a tour of the Moundsville Penitentiary.  It was completed in 1876 and operated until 1995.

The first image is the front of the structure.  The building seems to have been designed to be similar to the Penitentiary at Joliet, Illinois, which was completed in 1858 (and closed in 2002). Although the Moundsville Penitentiary is huge, the one at Joliet was almost twice as large in covered ground level. Counting the exercise yard, work yard and other uncovered spaces, the Moundsville facility  covers about 19 acres.


It is is also called the West Virginia State Penitentiary (because it was, for many years, the only Penitentiary in West Virginia) or the Marshall County Penitentiary (because it is in Marshall County). 

The second image shows one of the cell blocks. It is just one of many and each of the blocks is several stories tall.  

At one time the facility held 2000 prisoners. In comparison, the population of Moundsville is about 8000 and Marshall county has about 32,000.

 

The third image shows a typical cell. They measured 7' by 5' and sometimes during the 2000 prisoner period, there were three people in a cell.

One of the famous people who were held at this penitentiary was Eugene Debs. Debs got about 6% of the vote for President in 1912 and ran for the Senate in Indiana in 1916. He was incarcerated for a few months in 1919 (he got about 3.5% of the Presidential vote in 1920).  

In 1983, Charles Manson wrote a letter to the Warden of the Moundsville Penitentiary asking to be transferred there.  The request was denied (the letter is displayed in the lobby near the gift shop). Also it's the fourth image.


The fifth image shows some  prisoner cell art.  

Many of the cells have gruesome and/or frightening art. 

Many others have various narratives or poetry or other writing.  These are also sometimes gruesome and/or frightening. Other inmate art (and some other images) are at this site.



The sixth image also shows some prisoner art but in this case the prisoner was commissioned by the prison to do the art. In this picture, there are some scenes from the Teenage Mutant Turtle. The figures in the scenes are off color because the artist was colorblind (as you can see, Ann wore orange for the occasion). However, he wanted to make something cheerful because there would sometimes be kids in the contact room (where well behaved inmates could meet people without thick glass between them).

 I've been behind bars in Venice (at the Doge's prison) and Alcatraz (I can't remember where I put the electronic images), so I took the tour guide's offer to spend a few moments in a cell there in Moundsville Penitentiary (seventh image).  Of course the tour guide pretended that the cell opening device had failed a few minutes after I was in - I think they do this every time.  The other people in the group took pictures of me in the cell so, who knows, there may be other blogs with this image floating around in cyber space.


The Moundsville Penitentiary used hanging as capital punishment from 1899 to 1949. In 1931 the public witnessed someone decapitated from hanging and subsequently, the hangings were not open to the public.  

West Virginia began using the electric chair in 1951 and continued to do so until 1959. It was called "Old Sparky" (the same name was given to electric chairs in other States) and was built by an inmate at Moundsville (named Paul Glenn). It's the eighth image.

There was a telephone next to the chair (just below the Y in 'SPARKY'). The phone was connected to the Governor's office. It only rang once in the years of electric chair use. 

A Youtube tour of the Penitentiary by someone named Greg Cox is here. 

West Virginia abolished the death penalty in 1965. 

More than 80 executions were carried out. However, the number of people murdered (mostly inmates but some guards and civilians) or who died of disease in the penitentiary was over 800.

The ninth and tenth image are mug shots of myself and Ann. I'm appropriately wearing stripes, Ann is in prison orange.

There are some other interesting things about this penitentiary.  There were several riots and quite a few escapes and escape attempts.

One of the most interesting of the escapes is similar to the plot of "The Great Escape".  The prisoners, who were working at a green house. The green house was constructed by prisoners and run by prisoners. The prisoners in the green house, dug a tunnel down 8 feet and under the outside wall (which only went down 6 feet).  

As in "The Great Escape", a big problem was where to hide the excavated dirt. 

In the movie, the prisoners surreptitiously mix excavated dirt with dirt from the compound. In the Moundsville Penitentiary escape, the inmates placed excavated dirt in bags and gave it away to people buying plants as free potting soil.
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