Bitter Humour: About Dope, Safe Cracking and Prisons

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Bitter Humour

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Bitter Humour

Bitter Humour About Dope, Safe Cracking and Prisons Harvey Blackstock with a Foreword by J. Alex. Edmison Member of the National Parole Board

Toronto Burns 8c MacEachern Limited

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Id.

© 1967

Burns & MacEachem Limited Printed in Canada

To Ann

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Acknowledgements

The author is indebted to former co-worker Bob John¬ stone, of the Toronto Star, whose idea it was for him to write this book; to J. Alex. Edmison, member of the National Parole Board, for many suggestions as well as reference material; and to Doug. Amaron, news editor of the Canadian Press in Toronto, for providing him with part-time work while he was writing Bitter Humour. The publisher wishes to make grateful acknowledge¬ ment for permission to use the following copyright ma¬ terial: to George Lilley in Kingston for the photographs on which the photographic essay between pages 240 and 241 is based; to the Toronto Daily Star for photograph #8 in the photographic essay; and to Howard Anderson for the photograph of the author used on the jacket cover and preliminary material.

Contents

Chapter I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII

First brush Lethbridge jail Back to Lethbridge The making of a junkie A stay in Siberia Life in the big house Turning professional A square deal in Prince Albert People of the big house Postgraduate course Further encounters with safes, drugs, and jails Shaking time On making a deal Fresh fields and pastures new Habitual criminal Life in the Don Life sentence

Page 1 7 23 37 49 65 93 99 117 129 141 165 177 185 199 213 233

Bitter Humour

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Illustrations

Between pages 248 and 249 there is a pictorial essay of the riot and the ensuing fire which took place in Kingston Penitentiary in August, 1954.

Foreword

Reading page proofs of Bitter Humour has revived for me many memories of personalities and events. The author takes us back in vivid fashion to the depression days of the early nineteen-thirties. Travelling, work-seeking youths like Harvey Blackstock were arrested as vagrants by the hundreds and thousands across Canada. As Honor¬ ary Counsel for the old Montreal Prisoners’ Aid & Wel¬ fare Association, and of the Protestant Bureau for Home¬ less Men, I had contact with many of these. Unable to pay fines, they were thrown into county and municipal jails, the traditional breeding places of crime. It is appalling to contemplate the number of criminal careers thus started. Segregation of young from hardened offenders was then rare and probation yet unpractised. Blackstock’s early conflicts with the law were in New Brunswick and Alberta. It is a pleasure to record that in recent years there has been noteworthy improvement in the penal institutions of both provinces, together with the addition of probation facilities. If the young Blackstock had then come under the influence of an understanding

Foreword counsellor or probation officer, the probability is that this revealing book would never have seen the light of day. I am not suggesting that the youthful Blackstock would have necessarily constituted an easy probationer, but he would have provided quite a challenge to any supervisor able to divine his good points and win his confidence. Once the latter was achieved, the relationship would cer¬ tainly have been rewarding. As appears in this volume, I have known the author for nearly twenty years. During half this time he was in prison and, since 1958, “on the outside.” Early on we became friends. Perhaps we first hit it off well because of a mutual interest in people and in books. His lengthy record was of no great consequence to me, because some of the best rehabilitation cases belong to men and women with such histories. With these folk there is no need to rake over the past; it is the future that is all-important. This was especially true when dealing with Harvey Blackstock. Here was a man with inward strengths which became apparent on growing acquaintanceship. He took no pride in his misadventures with the law. (In this book he says, “My whole life had been a mistake.”) He made no unctu¬ ous protestations of reform, but his quiet resolve of “come what may, no more drugs and no more thievery” was all some of us required in helping his post-release planning. Books by ex-inmates on prisons and prisoners rarely achieve objectivity. Usually they tend to be either “all black or all white.” In my opinion. Bitter Humour is more objective than any such volume I have encountered in Canada, the United Kingdom, or the United States. This is even true when the author is describing his dealings with the criminals’ ancient enemy, the police. For in¬ stance, he names two members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who at different times arrested him on narcotics charges, yet for whose integrity and efficiency he indicates much respect. He condemned the bad faith of his criminal accomplice towards one of these Mounties and says in this book, “I always figured if you gave your word it should be good, whether it was to a policeman or

Foreword anyone else.” He is perhaps not so impartial toward cer¬ tain prison officials and institutional techniques he en¬ countered, although his criticisms are mild compared with those of the Archambault Royal Commission (1938). I am not too happy, however, about his references to the two Kingston Penitentiary Wardens under whom he served his term during the nineteen-fifties. Messrs. Allan and Johnstone had the exceedingly difficult task of trying to make the transformation from the old punitive system in an institution greatly overcrowded, and lacking in pro¬ fessional staff and adequate training facilities. I have a high respect for both these men. During the operational troubles on the Telescope (the inmate magazine), and on the Inmate Welfare Committee, on more than one occa¬ sion I acted as intermediary between the inmates and the administration, I found the Wardens most understanding and cooperative within the limits of their authority. In¬ cidentally, for the Telescope Harvey Blackstock did some excellent writing. I sent samples of his articles and editorials to Pierre Berton, who afterwards was to take such a constructive and continuing interest in Harvey’s career. I should correct here Harvey’s ‘‘prison grapevine” rumour that his editorials on the Telescope were causing delay in his being granted a ticket-of-leave by the Remis¬ sions Branch of the Department of Justice (the predeces¬ sor of the National Parole Board). I have checked the Blackstock file and there is nothing therein to substantiate this. He was released on ticket-of-leave on 16th Septem¬ ber 1958. The National Parole Board commenced opera¬ tions on 1st January 1959. The Criminal Code of Canada at Section 666 defines Preventative Detention relating to habitual criminals. It is still somewhat controversial legislation. (Preventative detention, as it was also called in England, has been dis¬ carded in recent years.) In some areas in Canada it is used frequently, in others rarely or never. Harvey Blackstock was among the first to be convicted under its provisions. With his long drug addiction background, it is not sur¬ prising that prison and remission officials were not con-

Foreword vinced easily by his expressed reform intentions. Little enough was known then about drug addiction. Some pro¬ gress has been made in recent years, especially in Ontario and British Columbia. Noteworthy experiments are going on under federal and some provincial auspices, but as yet we know not all the answers. However, today, institutional classification officers are in a relatively better position to understand and counsel inmates like Blackstock. In Can¬ ada, it is the responsibility of the National Parole Board to review every year the cases of those serving indeter¬ minate sentences. We explore carefully their progress and attitudes. Psychiatric and/or psychological advice is fre¬ quently obtained. Community investigations are always undertaken before release. Under life parole there are now “habituals” for whom practically all parole restric¬ tions have been removed. It is encouraging to note their progress in the community. Included among them are former drug addicts like Harvey Blacktock who, in street parlance, have “shook the habit!” Bitter Humour is an informative book. It will introduce readers to phases of life which are little known and even less understood. The jargon and sometimes “ripe” lan¬ guage are authentic. In its pages we become acquainted with Runyon-like characters such as “The Unholy Three”, “The Grave Digger”, “The Fire Bug”, and “No Word from the Firm.” This by no means is a volume to attract people to crime. In fact, it bears graphic testimony that underworld and prison life is drab, hazardous, and frus¬ trating. It could be required reading for misguided youths who contemplate the alleged delights of narcotics. It may be appropriate here to reveal a confidence vouchsafed me by Harvey Blackstock many years ago. He was wondering how he could ever fit into the world out¬ side the prison walls. He was worried whether he could ever make up for wasted years. He said then what he has somewhere said in this book: “Actually the only thing I am expert in is getting into trouble.” We then discussed the inspiration he could be to others who had fallen by the wayside in life. He could demonstrate the falsity of

Foreword the widely held theory that drug addicts can never reform. This he has been doing from the moment of his release from prison. To my certain knowledge he has given prac¬ tical help and encouragement to other reformed ex¬ addicts. May the success of Bitter Humour afford him wider opportunities in this commendable public service. J. Alex. Edmison, Ottawa, July, 1967

First brush My first encounter with the law was in 1931 in Moncton, New Brunswick. I had beaten my way there on freights from the prairies, and having decided there were no jobs to be had, thought I would see a little of the country, then head back to the prairies for the harvest work. Another guy I had met on the freights and I were walking down the street, when a police car pulled up and the policemen told us to get in. We asked them what they were arresting us for, and I guess they could see I was scared, for they told us it was for a pretty serious crime. When they got to the station though, they booked us on a charge of vagrancy, and we found that was the serious crime. The other fellow was relieved but I didn’t feel so good about it. I knew that you could get six months for vagrancy; and to a person about twenty, who had only recently heard about jail and its horrors, this prospect can look like a lifetime. We were booked in and I was too scared to remember much about it. But I recall spending a sleepless night in the cell, and wondering what would happen in the morning.

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Bitter Humour When we came to court it seemed to me that everyone stared as we came in. Most of the spectators were likely there to hear a certain case, and probably looked up as we came in to see if we were the ones they were interested in. The magistrate read the charge out which went some¬ thing like our being loose, idle characters, and wandering abroad with no visible means of support. The other fellow pleaded guilty and I did the same. If he had pleaded not guilty I probably would have too. The magistrate didn't ask any questions or make any comments. He just passed the sentence: two months in Dorchester County Jail. We talked to other fellows in the cells in Moncton and they gave us a rough idea of what it was like in Dorchester. What irked me the most was their taking our finger¬ prints and mug shots. This meant I had a criminal record — and for walking down the street. In the county jail at Dorchester, we were put into a corridor with sixteen or so other fellows, all two to a cell; but the cells were only locked at night. On the other side of the jail was a similar corridor with about an equal number of prisoners, and upstairs was the women’s jail. A few of the men were in for debt and they had to stay a certain number of days. Others, who had money to pay the sheriff, could “swear themselves out,’’ that is, swear an oath that they did not have any money or property, then they were released. I never fully understood it, but I knew that some fellows who didn’t have enough to pay the sheriff or justice of the peace stayed a considerable length of time, while those who had the money had only to spend, I think it was twenty-four hours, and then swear themselves out. Most of the guys didn’t see any injustice in that. One fellow told me, “Kid, the man with the money gets out and the man without stays in. It’s that way in everything whether it’s debt or a serious crime. That’s the way it has always been, that’s the way it is, and that’s the way it will always be. “Look at yourself. If you had had ten dollars to give a

First Brush lawyer, you wouldn’t be here. But since you are here, if you had twenty-five dollars to pay your fine you’d be out.” He was right. We had been fined twenty-five dollars or two months. But it might as well have been $2,500 as far as we were concerned. The food was cooked good, but there wasn’t enough of it. I was nearly always hungry. Everything was rationed, even the bread. However, the baker came once a day, and if you had money you could buy a loaf of bread. Then a trustee went to the store twice a day and you could order things to eat — if you had money. What actually happened in our corridor was that a bootlegger, and a couple of other guys with money, kept the rest of us from starving to death by buying a loaf of bread for us once in a while. Then some of the fellows with relatives close by would get food parcels brought in and share them up a bit; so that all in all those that had money kept those that didn’t and the jailer must have got rich on what he saved on the prisoners. There were no guards, just the jailer and his wife and a trustee. One of the girls from the women’s prison might have helped in the kitchen; but there was no outside help. My two months seemed like a lifetime and each day dragged. I felt sorry for one fellow about my age who was doing a year. Of course, most of these fellows had relatives who visited them and brought them things to eat and magazines and so on, and it wasn’t quite so bad for them. By the time my sentence was up I was bitter. To add insult to injury, they let us out at night a half an hour before the passenger train was going through to Moncton. The jailer said, “You had better see that you get on the head-end of that passenger, because if you are caught around here they’ll sentence you to six months.” This seemed ironic to me. We were in for vagrancy — just being broke. Now, in order to get out of town, we had to steal a ride and break the law. Not that I hadn’t beaten my way on the head-end lots of times, but I never before had had an official tell me to.

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Bitter Humour When we got to Moncton I left the fellow I was arrested with and walked out of town. It was dark and late but I felt good. I was out. A few miles out of town I crawled into a farmer’s bam and slept till morning, when I con¬ tinued on to St. John where I got some work and stayed for a few months. In St. John I got in with a family of seven grown brothers, two of whom had been in Dorchester County Jail. They were longshoremen, and told me they could get me the odd day’s work unloading the boats. When I worked, I paid half of what I made to them for board and room, and also gave them what I stole. They showed me all the tricks of “scrounging” as they called it. It seemed to me that everyone working on the boats was stealing; and the loot was everything from bananas to sardines. The only thing the dock cops really watched was liquor. When we were unloading banana boats, they didn’t mind you taking the stalks of ripe bananas, as they’d have to throw them away anyway; they couldn’t be shipped. On the other hand, you couldn’t sell them either, so we used to steal the green ones. Sometimes at night the longshoremen would sit around discussing the various things they had stolen and how they’d done it. But it was never referred to as stealing — always scrounging. I could see that if this kept up, it wouldn’t be too long before I'd be back in jail again. On talking it over with an older and wiser man, he pointed out to me that if I got caught I’d probably get a pretty fair rap. He said, “Most of these fellows are local, and the authorities know it’s hard times, and if they do get caught they go kind of easy on them. But you are not, and you can’t say you stole to feed your family or that you were hungry. And to make up for going easy on the home-towners, the magistrate will likely throw the book at you.” So I decided to leave while I could. After a couple of days’ more work I left with a few dollars in my pocket, and beat my way back West. From Winnipeg, I rode in the caboose of a cattle-train deadheading back. The three

First Brush

farmers in the caboose had come East with a load of cattle and got a free ride back. One of them, a farmer out of Moose Jaw, asked me to come and stay with him and his family till Spring. He said he didn’t have any work but would be glad to have me stay for a while till the weather got a little milder. I took him up on it and spent an enjoyable couple of months. He liked listening to my experiences, and I got an insight into his plight. He used to say, “You are better off than me because you don’t owe anybody anything, and I couldn’t pay off what I owe if I got three good crops.’’ He introduced me to other farmers and to people he knew in Moose jaw. Occasionally, a friend of his would give me a day’s work. But I got the impression that they didn’t really need anyone that bad; they just wanted to help me out. They always treated me good and paid me well. The favourite pastime with all of them was criticizing the government, and especially its treatment of farmers and unemployed. When the weather got warm, I decided to leave, and the farmer drove me to Moose Jaw where I caught a freight. For the rest of the summer I worked a little and rode freights from one place to another, and didn’t really care what happened. No matter what happened, the worst they could do was put me in jail and I’d already survived that experience once. I certainly didn’t want to go back to jail but the thought of it didn’t frighten me any more. I figured I’d done two months for nothing, and if I got a chance to make a buck by stealing I wouldn’t hesitate. I had nothing to lose, like getting a record, because I already had one. At this stage, had I got a steady job at which I could have made a decent living, I probably would have con¬ tinued to work and not got into any more trouble. But in these days people used to laugh when anyone mentioned a steady job. It just didn’t exist unless you had one or knew someone with a lot of pull. On the freights and in the jungle I met fellows who

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Bitter Humour had had to quit university because they didn’t have enough to continue, professional men, salesmen, and men from nearly every walk of life. During the harvest I got a few weeks’ work, and earned the first money, more than five dollars, that I'd seen in a long time. In Calgary, I met a young fellow who had been in Lethbridge and who thought the only way to get by was stealing. Since I didn’t have much money, and there was the long cold winter ahead, I agreed to join him. We broke into several small places, and in most of them it probably cost more to repair the glass in the doors or windows than the amount of money in the till. Sometimes we took mer¬ chandise if my partner knew where to sell it. For this we usually got about ten per cent of the value. One night my partner was arrested; a few hours later they picked me up and charged me with breaking and entering a service station and stealing whatever silver was in the till. The police told me they had found my finger¬ prints and they would go easy with me if I pleaded guilty. But if they had to go to the trouble of getting the finger¬ print expert down, I’d likely go to the penitentiary. It’s not likely that they bothered taking fingerprints for such a petty crime, but I pleaded guilty and was sentenced to six months. The magistrate observed he could have given me less, but six months would let me out in good weather.

Lethbridge jail Six of us got out of the Mounted Police paddy-wagon at the front door of Lethbridge Provincial Jail. I was serving six months and the others from two to eighteen months. All sentences were definite. When one of the Mounties rang the bell, a guard in khaki uniform opened the door, shoved a huge key in the lock of the gate, and swung it open. We walked up the steps to the main office where another guard barked out each of our names and then told us to take a seat on the bench. He added that there would be no talking. After the papers were signed, and our personal belong¬ ings checked, the Mounties left. They had brought us down on the train from Calgary and were glad to get away. A guard took us into the office one at a time. Here he asked questions regarding our race, education, birth, pre¬ vious convictions, and so on. Then each of us signed for his belongings. Prisoners who had served previous sentences in Leth¬ bridge merely signed for their belongings and were through. Each one, as he was finished, had to sit on a bench and wait for the rest.

8

Bitter Humour

The Mounties had told us to “smoke it up before you get there, because they’ll take all your tobacco and there’s no smoking there.’’ As we sat on the bench waiting our turn to go into the office, a guard came up, looked at us, put a cigarette in his mouth, lit it, inhaled, took it out with a flourish, and then blew the smoke at us. When we had been duly processed, a little guard with an English accent came up and barked, "All right, stand up, left turn, quick march — come now, shake a leg, we haven’t all day, I say, quick march, left right, left right.” He marched us down to the change-room where we were told to strip. We had our hair cut off with clippers; I had never realized clippers could cut so close. Following this, we signed a paper on which our clothes were itemized; these were then put into bags, and the bags numbered. We had to get into a tub of water with disinfectant in it, and then have a shower. As each came out of the shower, the change-room guard asked, “What size clothes do you want; too big or too small?” If one said, “Too small,” the guard would turn to the prisoner handing out the clothes and say, “One bundle of too big; we’re fresh out of too small.” The prisoners in the change-room would laugh and one of them would throw out a bundle of clothes. For anyone with venereal disease, the clothes were marked vd. They were laundered separately. There was a separate bathroom where the vd’s took treatment. Our prison wardrobe consisted of a heavy wool twopiece underwear suit, a cotton shirt, blue dungaree over¬ alls, heavy socks, shoes, a black pullover sweater, a denim coat to match the overalls and big enough to go on over the sweater, two pairs of mitts, one leather and one woollen to go inside the leather, and a handkerchief. When we were through in the change-room, the guard marched us to the cell block where another guard opened the steel gate, told us to line up, and wait. He barked my name. I said, “Yes.” He said, “Look here, lad, you are getting off on the wrong foot and you’re hardly in here yet. When I speak

Lethbridge jail

to you, you say, ‘Yes, sir,’ and be quick about it. Do you understand that?” I said, “Yes sir, you have made yourself quite clear. Your facility with the language is remarkable.” One of the prisoners snickered, and the guard barked, “Young man, don’t you get cheeky with me. We tame lions here. Any more of your blasted lip and you’ll go before the warden, and then you’ll go to the hole. Now pick up that bundle and get going.” I picked up “that bundle” which consisted of three or four blankets, two sheets, and a pillowcase and towel. .Another prisoner showed me to my cell and put a card with my name on it in the holder over the cell gate. In the cell was a toilet bowl, a sink, a shelf, and an iron cot fastened to the wall with hinges and suspended by a chain on each end. A straw mattress completed the furnishings. Our meals were brought to us in our cells that night; we were told we’d eat in the dining-room the next morn¬ ing. A prisoner, called a runner or trustee, told us what the routine was and what we’d have to do. I don’t recall what the supper was, but I remember it was a pleasant surprise. I had thought maybe it would be bread and soup: but it was a full-course meal. Apart from the enamel dishes, and the way it was put up, the food in quality and quantity was the equivalent of what I could have got for twenty-five cents in a restaurant; and that was the average price of a meal in most restaurants in those days. After supper, a prisoner came around with an armful of magazines and stuck a couple between the bars. We had no choice; we took just what he gave us. The jail had no library and the only reading material was what relatives had sent in to prisoners. These were passed back and forth until they fell apart. Each gate was locked with a key. There was a running bar at the top with a flange at each cell. This bar worked from a lever at the end of the corridor. When the lever was shoved in, all the cell gates were held shut with the flanges. Then the lever was locked with a padlock at

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Bitter Humour nights. When the lever was pulled out, all the cell gates could be opened if they weren't locked with the key. When the kitchen crew had finished the dishes and gone to the dormitory after supper, an official count of the inmates was taken to see that everyone was there. The chief keeper, the guard in charge of the cell block, and the deputy-warden or warden would make the rounds of the cell block and all the dormitories to take the count. In dormitories, each man had to stand by his bed. Every half hour through the night, the night guard would make his rounds, and punch a clock at the end of each corridor. Lights stayed on all night and it took a while to get used to sleeping with them on. We couldn’t cover up our heads. The authorities discouraged this practice in case some smart alec put a dummy in the bed as a prelude to escaping. The straw mattresses took a little getting accustomed to also. But it was warm in the cell block and it was thirty below zero outside. At 6 a.m. the big gong sounded and we had to get up and make our beds, fold the bedclothes, hook the iron cot up to the wall, and place the sheets, blanket, and night-gown on top. The night-gown had to be folded and rolled up into a cylindrical shape about nine inches high and four inches in diameter. It held the place of honour on top of the neatly folded bedclothes. Some prisoners had to spend as much as an hour learn¬ ing how to roll up the night-gown. Some slept without it just so they wouldn’t have to roll it up. Some got two night-gowns; one they kept rolled up, and the other they hid and used for sleeping. As soon as the big gong sounded, the guard on night duty would start unlocking the cells. When he came to one where the prisoner wasn’t out of bed, he’d yell, “All right there, up now, do you want to sleep your life away? Out of the boar’s nest before I come in there and drag you out.’’ Then he’d rake the keys across the bars. About 6:30 the kitchen crew would come with the trays and feed those who ate in their cells. Among this select band were men with venereal disease, with long sentences.

Lethbridge jail cripples, and men who were locked up for refusing to work. The guards referred to them as the sick, the lame, and the lazy. When this group had been fed, the bell rang again and those who ate in the dining-room went in and sat at bench tables all facing the front. Each folding seat was attached to the table behind. Prisoners with trays of bread went up and down the aisles, handing extra bread to anyone who wanted it. Breakfast was the poorest meal of the day. A guard, who stood facing the prisoners, enforced the strict silence rule. He would open the door after the chef gave the signal that everyone was through eating. Usually everyone wasn’t through; those who weren’t, had to go without finishing. After I was cut short and had had to leave part of my meal a couple of times, I learned to eat faster and forget what manners I had entered jail with. There were enamel jugs of coffee or tea — we couldn’t tell the difference — at the ends of each table. When we wanted more coffee (or tea), we were allowed to say, “Coffee down,” and the jug would be passed. This was later changed to the more appropriate “Jug down.” After breakfast we’d go back to our cells. There was a full hour before the work bell rang at 8 a.m. Then we’d file out into a wide corridor where the deputy would start calling out names of prisoners for different gangs. Some gangs had sixteen men, and some had only eight. When all the men on one gang had lined up, the guard in charge would take the gang to wherever the work was. After all the gangs were called out, the prisoners remain¬ ing would go out the back door into the “bull-pen” for exercise. Here we walked double file around the small yard enclosed by a wall about sixteen feet high. The grave of a man who had been hanged was in the comer, and on the wall above his grave was black scraggly printing giving his name, age, and date of death. Years later, a new warden took one look at the printing and had it removed immediately. We were allowed to talk in the bull-pen but had to

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Bitter Humour keep walking. We could change the partners we were walking with as long as we didn’t slow up the line. There was a cement circular-shaped ring to walk on. When it snowed, the snow was shovelled by a work-gang before we went out. The guy I walked with told me he had come in the day before me, and was doing nine months. He had been in before. He told me they’d probably send me to work cutting ice as soon as my record was checked, and they found I had no escapes against me, or wasn’t wanted for something some other place. He told me he worked at cutting ice for a while, but quit because it was too cold. He said, “You get a few smokes, but it’s not worth it. I’d sooner go without smoking.” He was right. A day or two later my name was called for the ice-gang. I was taken to the change-room where I was fitted out with heavy clothes for the thirty below zero weather. The jail had an artificial lake filled, in the fall, with water from the irrigation system. Here ice was cut and loaded. Besides filling the jail ice-house for the use of guards and their families, the jail sold ice for fifty cents a load to surrounding farms. The ice-gang would saw blocks of ice, and these would be fished out and loaded on the trucks. If a farmer didn’t pay off, that is with tobacco, he would get chunks with the corners broken off, and other mediocre blocks. The truckers who made a business of selling ice were the best pay. They would pay about five packages of tobacco a day to be split up among all the gangs. A package of tobacco cost ten cents. There were cigarette papers in the side of the package. The guards probably knew this trade was going on, but they turned a blind eye to it, and some even gave out tobacco themselves. Because of the no-smoking rule, tobacco, its use, and how to obtain it, filled a great part of our thoughts. A certain amount of smuggling went on, especially when

Lethbridge jail new prisoners — or fish, as they were called, — came in. This took the form of slipping a package of tobacco to one of the fellows who worked in the change-room, an almost impossible feat unless the newcomer had been in before, and knew the ropes. Then, sometimes, he would have a chance to slip it to the man in the change-room who would return half of it. Sometimes a third man had to run inter¬ ference, that is, walk between the guard and the fish, and in the instant that the guard’s vision was blocked, the fish would toss the tobacco to the fellow in the change-room. Smuggling was only one way of getting tobacco. Some of the farmers or truckers bought jail clothes from the inmates. A black heavy pullover sweater would go for a ten-cent package of tobacco. One guard, a heavy smoker, used to save his cigarette butts. At the end of the day he would divide them up among his gang. By guards and inmates alike he was called Butts behind his back. On my first day on the ice-gang, it was thirty below zero and a strong wind swept across the artificial lake. After the first half hour, I began to get curious as to what happened to a guy who refused to work. One fellow told me, “Oh, they put you in the hole for three days on bread and water, and then they lock you up in a cell, and leave you locked up until your time is up.’’ So I decided if it was that cold the next day I would refuse to work, do my three days in the hole, then spend the rest of my time in a warm cell. The next morning I walked up to the guard and told him I was refusing to work. He talked it over with me, and said, “You know I’ve been here twenty years and nobody refused to work on my gang yet. I don’t like to have anyone quit. How about sticking it out till noon, and then I’ll get you transferred to another gang and you can quit on somebody else?” He had the name of being the best guard in the jail, as far as being fair with prisoners was concerned, so I agreed. At noon he got me transferred to another gang that was

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Bitter Humour shovelling snow. Butts was in charge of this gang. He remarked to a prisoner, “When the others can’t handle them, they send them to me.” About two minutes later, I quit. Butts had to march the whole gang half a mile to take me in. I was taken before the warden and charged with refusing to work. I pleaded guilty. My sentence was three days on bread and water in the hole. The hole was like an ordinary cell, but had no bed or toilet facilities, and no blankets. A steam-pipe ran through the end of it; there was no other heat. A bucket with lid on was used for toilet facilities. I slept on the cement floor when I could sleep. I was brought two half slices of bread, and a bowl of water, twice a day. I didn’t eat the bread. It was so cold I had to keep walking up and down to keep warm. When I was exhausted I’d lie down on the cement. In a few moments I’d be shivering and have to get up and start walking again. Sometimes I sang as I walked, to cheer myself up. When a guard came in to feed me or take the count, he would shut the outer door, and turn on a small dirty light that cast only shadows on my cell. When my three days and three nights were up, the Snake — that is the deputy-warden — came down to the hole, turned on the light, and told me to stand up. I did and he said, “I’m sentencing you to three more days in the hole for singing while you were in here.” I had thought the place was sound-proof, but apparently not. The next three days were similar to the first, only worse. I was tired and could not walk as much, and so froze more. At the end of six days and six nights, they took me out. My eyes had become accustomed to the darkness in the hole and, when I faced the bright lights in the cell block, they nearly staggered me. They gave me a quarter of a bowl of soup. I looked at it and asked what had happened to the rest of it. The guard said, “You didn’t eat your bread in the hole, and when you start again after going that long without

Lethbridge jail eating, you must take only a little at a time, so you don’t get cramps. It’s doctor’s orders. You can have as much as you like to eat, but only a little at a time for a few hours, until your stomach gets used to it.” I said, “After trying to freeze me to death, this sudden concern for my health is quite touching.” He said, “Well, don’t worry! Now that they’ve found out they can’t scare you with the hole, they won’t bother you. You may not know it, but you did the smartest thing. We are all glad you quit on Butts instead of old Bruce, and you’ll find that will give you a little edge with most of the guards.” He laid a cigarette on the bars and walked away. Several guards won the battle with their consciences this way. It was against the rules to give a prisoner tobacco; but there was no rule stating a guard could not lay a cigarette on the cross bars of a cell. I got a light from a runner that came around and he showed me how to use a punk outfit. What was called punk was tinder made from cotton rags. We lit the rag, let it bum until the flame burned low, and then placed it in a magazine and closed the pages to put it out. Thereafter, punk just needed a spark to light it. It didn’t flame, it only glowed. The punk was kept in an air-tight box, so that when the lid was put back on it, after use, the punk was extinguished. For a spark we had a piece of steel and a stone. We hit the stone against the steel and made a spark that hit the punk and lit it. The elite punk outfit was a small piece of emery stone and a razor blade. Others used pieces of hack-saw blades, or pieces of file. When no emery stone was available, ordinary rocks were used. It took a while to learn how to use one of these. The first time anyone used a razor-blade outfit, he was likely to cut his finger to the bone. Then he learned to dull the blade before using it. Punk outfits were against the rule, of course, but the guards just took them away from anyone caught using

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Bitter Humour them. I could hear them at night on the ranges. Clang! clang! clang! and then a fellow would upset the tin box and I’d hear it clatter to the floor followed by a string of oaths, then laughs from other prisoners. The guards didn’t try to catch prisoners with punk outfits except when they had noisy ones. One guard, when he heard an extra loud punk outfit going, would sneak along the range and stop at the cell beside where the noise was coming from. Then he’d spring quickly in front of the cell, hold out his hand, and say, “Give me that god¬ damned blacksmith shop.” One night he caught a guy who had a rock so big he couldn’t get it through the bars. The guard said, “Jesus Christ! What in the name of blazes are you doing with that. I’ve been here twelve years and I thought I’d seen everything, but that takes the cake.” The prisoner said, “Well, I work outside and I’ve got to have something I can use with my mitts on.” He lost his punk outfit in the morning when they opened the cells, but that’s all that happened. Cigarette papers were another problem. When we had tobacco and no cigarette papers, we used toilet paper. The paper had to be rolled around the tobacco several times, and then wet thoroughly with the tongue, or it would suck air. If we didn’t put enough paper around it, it wouldn’t draw. If we did, we could taste the paper. We had our choice. But toilet paper was a last resort. Usually there was some white paper available that came in such things as shoe boxes. I learned to make horse-hair watch chains, and could make a couple a week after I got on to it. It was easy to sell these for five packages of tobacco each; these cost fifty cents and the guards could sell the chains for from a dollar to two dollars downtown. I was never out of tobacco after this. The guards never searched us for tobacco, or for any¬ thing else for that matter, unless we got into trouble. Their philosophy seemed to be that if a prisoner had tobacco he had earned it somehow or other, or some guard had given it to him for a favour.

Lethbridge jail Now that I was off the work-gang, and snug in my warm cell for the winter, I had more time to myself, and could observe the manners and morals of the inmates, and their way of life. Most of the guards, I suppose, were about as decent fellows as a tough job would let them be. Their attitude to the prisoners varied. Usually the guards could tell if a fish was scared, or if he was what they called hard and didn’t give a damn. Sometimes as many as fifty or seventyfive a week were in for riding freights, and they would usu¬ ally have seven days. Most of them had never been in jail before, and the guards could scare them by shouting. Occasionally they made a mistake and barked at some guy who had done a long bit in the pen, or maybe several bits. The hard guy would bark right back at the guards, or screws, as we called them. The guards would usually ease off the hard guy, and take it out on some fish who was scared. Once in a while a guard would get fired. These were depression days and discharged guards seldom got another job. Usually they would wind up on the bread line. Unless he had been a mean guard, the prisoners wouldn’t be happy over his firing. The discharged man was usually a good guard from our point of view. There was an experimental farm across the road from the jail and, when they needed help, a gang from the jail would go over and work there. The men at the experi¬ mental farm were good to the prisoners, and got along well with them. The jail raised cattle, wheat, oats, barlev, hay, vege¬ tables, and hogs. No meat, milk, vegetables, or grain were bought. There were several teams of horses, and the teamsters were mostly half-breeds or Indians, although some were white farmers. There was a blacksmith shop where horses were shod and other blacksmith work done. Work, and hard work, was essential to the economy of the jail. That’s why, after a man refused to work and did his time in the hole, they left him alone. If the refusal to work ever spread, it could cripple the operation. Crops

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Bitter Humour have to be harvested, cows have to be milked, hogs fed, and butchered, and so on. If they tried to make a man who had already refused to work go out again, he might bring two or three others in with him the next time, and the work stoppage could spread. There was only one more serious crime one could com¬ mit. That was striking a guard. For that offence a prisoner would be tried downtown in an outside court. His sentence was automatically two years in the penitentiary. Sometimes a man with eighteen months, or two years less one day, would think he’d be better off in the peni¬ tentiary. He would hit a guard to get there, but he wouldn’t hit him too hard; there was a sort of mutual understanding. The magistrate probably had some under¬ standing of the matter too, because he would impose the two-year sentence to run concurrently; that is the man would just have to serve the two years. If it had been consecutively he would also have had to serve the re¬ mainder of the sentence he was serving when he struck the guard. There were always a few men in Lethbridge who had been in Prince Albert Penitentiary. That was the "pen” for Alberta and Saskatchewan. They told us about the good things in the big house, the library, the tobacco ration, the better food, eating in your cell, working in different shops, and so on. On the other hand, some who had been in the pen were happy to get two years less a day in Lethbridge, rather than go back; this despite the fact they would do more time in Lethbridge, because of the remission system. I got the idea that the pen would be a good place to stay away from, regardless of what the sentence was. In jail, the prisoners, according to their crimes, fall into two general classes: thieves and square Johns. The thieves include everyone in for stealing, fraud, safe-cracking, hold¬ up, as well as pickpockets, con men, and forgers. This class is broken down into two divisions: the one who stole, or followed this pursuit for a living; and the

Lethbridge jail one who made a mistake once and would probably never be in jail again. The prisoners refer to all those in for sex crimes as rapos. It doesn’t matter whether the charge is actually rape, or contributing to juvenile delinquency by having intercourse with a girl under age, indecent exposure, or indecent assault. Other prisoners lump them all together as rapos. Those serving a sentence for incest or having intercourse with animals have the lowest rung on the sexfiend ladder, along with those who attack small girls. Guards, too, especially after they have been on the job a long time, make the same classification as the prisoners do and, in fact, use the same prison language in referring to the convicts. Pimps and thieves usually get along well. Pimps are not ashamed of being pimps and are often rather proud of it. They are usually intelligent, and interesting story tellers. Most of the pimps are part-time thieves too, but they don’t usually commit crimes that will bring stiff sentences if they are caught. Some shoplift, some cheat at cards, some do a little bootlegging, or maybe buy stolen goods. For every full-time pimp, there are probably a dozen who are also thieves. In some cases they make more money than the whores they are living with. There was probably a minimum of homosexuality in Lethbridge, largely due to lack of opportunity. The jail is divided into two sections, with a cell block on one side and dormitories on the other side. In the cell block it was virtually impossible for two prisoners to be in one cell, and, of course, this would have been necessary if they were not to carry on their amusements in the open. In the dormitories, there were some incidents, but there was a stool-pigeon in each dormitory so it couldn’t last too long. If they were caught, or suspected, they were transferred to a cell, and usually put on a work-gang. The dull days of my time dragged on, with little happen¬ ing to relieve the boredom. Letter-writing day was one bright spot. This rolled around once a month, and all

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Bitter Humour letters had to be written that day; extra letters could be written only by special request to the warden in case of death or extreme illness. On letter-writing day, a guard and a prisoner would start out with the letter forms, and the prisoner handed out one letter to each, while the guard marked the name on a pad. If the letter wasn’t written, the paper had to be handed back. Writing day was always Sunday. There were available only about ten pieces of pencil from three to four inches long. When the first ten prisoners were finished, the pencils went to the next ten. It took all day for the more than hundred prisoners in the cell block to get their letters written. Some who couldn’t write English could get permission for another prisoner to write their letters. Since I was locked up and not doing anything anyway, the guard often used to ask me to write their letters for them during the week. It helped me pass the time, and some of them who worked outside would give me a few cigarettes for doing it. I remember one Polish or Ukrainian farmer I wrote a letter for. (We called all middle-European immigrants hunkies, and meant nothing derogatory by it.) The guard said, “He can’t write English or speak it very good either, so write his letter for him.” After I got the spelling of his name straight and had addressed the letter, I asked him what he wanted to say. He was doing only ten days and just wanted to write. He didn’t really have anything to say. The letter came out something like this: Dear Wife and One Children: You feed cows. I be home soon. You no worry. That’s all. Good-bye now. John The guard came to me and said, “Is this the best kind of letter you can write?” I said, “No, but that’s all he wanted to say; he’s only doing ten days and he goes home Wednesday.” “Well, we’ll send it, but it’s a hell of a letter,” he said.

Lethbridge jail I said, “His wife can’t read English anyway, and by the time she gets it translated, he’ll be home.’’ The Christmas season was another occasion that eased the boredom. At Christmas time the prison put on three special meals, whose menus were published in the Leth¬ bridge Herald. In addition to that, parcels of food from outside were allowed in, but no tobacco or cigarettes. The jail gave each prisoner a pack of ten cigarettes, and sent a man around with a lighter to light them. The jail also gave out a bag containing candy, nuts, and fruit. This may have been supplied by the Salvation Army. Those who ate in the dining-room were given more time to eat the three meals at Christmas. Those of us in the cells, of course, took all the time we wanted, as usual. The Salvation Army held a service, mostly hymn¬ singing, Christmas afternoon. New Year’s day, a male choir came out to entertain, and some of them told jokes, mainly on the guards or on the warden. They were familiar with the jail rules and routine, and their jokes caricatured many of the rules and practices. Most of the fellows went to hear the Sally Ann — the Salvation Army — on Sundays just to break up the day and get out of the cell. I gathered from conversations that not many of the prisoners went to any church when they were outside. Occasionally the Sally Ann would bring out a woman singer who sang popular songs. This made a hit with the congregation and attracted some to the services, as you didn’t know whether she was going to be there or not until you got in. Finally came the day to be released. As soon as the work-gangs had gone out in the morning, they called us to go to the change-room, where we bathed, got into our own clothes, signed for our belongings, got our bus tickets (most of us were going back to Calgary), and were started on the walk down the lane to the highway, and back to town. It was a three-and-a-half mile walk to Lethbridge. They released the long-timers first. Anyone doing more than three months was a long-timer, so that made me one.

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Bitter Humour The guy who went out with me had done nine months, so he and I were released first. There were about seven more to be released after us. As my going-out pal had also refused to work, we were old buddies. The Snake took us to the front door where he bade us good-bye in these terms: “That’s a god-damned good pair to draw to, if I ever saw one. Now, get down that lane and turn to your left. Keep going and don’t come back.” We were out of the front door by that time, and my pal said, “You know, I don’t believe he likes us.” I said, “Ah, he’s probably only kidding.” The Snake blew up. “You’re still on jail property,” he said. “You can be brought back.” By this time we were too far down the lane to shout back, so we just kept going. At the time we had gone to the hole, we had also lost all our remissions or time off for good behaviour, as it is known outside. So there just wasn’t anything more he could do to us. We knew it, and he knew we knew it, but he went down trying anyway. Apart from going back to Calgary, I didn’t have the foggiest idea what I was going to do. I was out, the weather was good, and I wasn’t worried.

Back to Lethbridge I stayed in Calgary till the harvest season rolled around. During the harvest I made a few dollars. Many of the fellows working in the harvest hadn’t worked since the previous harvest. Some intended to head for Vancouver, and the milder climate for the winter. When the harvest was over, I teamed up with another fellow who had been in jail several times, mostly for riding freights, begging, and vagrancy. He had done some boost¬ ing, or shoplifting, but hadn’t been caught at it yet. We rented rooms in a cheap rooming-house in Calgary, and settled down for we didn’t know what and didn’t care too much. But we didn’t intend to starve or freeze. One thing, I wasn’t frightened any more. Jail had taken that out of me. We did quite a bit of petty stealing, and since our rooms in the flop-house cost only about $1.50 a week we didn’t need too much money. Restaurant meals were twenty-five cents for an average three-course meal, but we usually bought grub and jungled up on the community stove in the flop-house, because it was cheaper, and we helped each other out.

24

Bitter Humour Sometimes it was a tight pinch, and at others we were fairly stakey for those days. Sometimes, when we had more money than usual, we’d go to the line for a change of oil. The line was about four blocks of whore-houses on Ninth Ave. East, and the houses operated more or less openly with only the occasional raid and small fine. The “prosties” were good hearted, and used to buy stolen articles from us, paying a good price. We would do each other favours and, when we got to know them, we could always borrow five dollars when we were stuck. We didn’t bother looking for work, because we didn’t want any, and there wasn’t any to be had anyway. As my partner put it, “Only horses and fools work, and horses turn their asses to it.’’ Most of the detectives got to know us by our first names. Although they probably knew we weren’t committing any serious crimes, they knew, as one detective with a Scottish accent put it, “The pair o’ ye air oop tae nae goddommed gude.” Being seen associating with prostitutes, other thieves, and fences, didn’t show us in a good light to the police. But we didn’t care. We had to steal to survive, we thought. And when we did get caught, as we knew we inevitably would, we would go to jail whether the police liked us or not. Anyway, our records would cancel out anything good we might have done. So why worry about the police, except to keep them from catching you for as long a spell as possible. Up till this time, I had never done any drinking except to have a couple of beers, which I didn’t like the taste of, when a harvesting crew went to town on a Saturday night. My partner seldom drank, either, but did go on a onenight tear once in a while. So we decided to get a gallon of wine and whoop it up for one night. We called our friends in the flop-house in, and gave them a drink, and that prompted a couple of them to go down and get a gallon each. I drank, as I remember, about two water-glasses of the

Back to Lethbridge grape and didn’t want any more, but wanted to go out and make some money. My partner was enjoying himself and didn t want to leave, so I decided to go by myself. I didn’t have the foggiest notion where I was going, but as I stepped out the front door of the flop-house I noticed the freight sheds across the street, and decided to break into a box-car and see what that had to offer. I broke the seal, opened the door, and jumped in. The car was about half full of crates and cartons of various kinds, mostly groceries. I took a couple of cartons of cofFee and went back to the flop-house. I was still drunk, but knew enough to go around the back way, get up on the roof, and hide the cartons where we mostly used to hide stolen articles. Then I went into the flop-house and got another half a glass of wine. By this time half the roomers were stiff, and even old Joe, the proprietor, was feeling so good he was telling new customers, “It’s hard times; don’t pay now, pay later when you got more money.” I returned to the box-car a couple of times, and each time brought something back. On my last trip, — it prob¬ ably wouldn’t have been my last trip if I hadn’t got pinched — a railroad policeman was waiting for me. He and another fellow waited until I got in the car and got out with a box of crabapples. Then they nailed me and asked me about the other stuff. I wouldn’t admit anything except the box of crabapples they caught me with. However, after they put me in jail they went to the flophouse and searched until they found the rest of the stuff on the roof. In the morning, they grilled me about it, but I wouldn’t admit anything only what they caught me with. They arrested my partner and told him I had told them he was with me. They probably figured he was, and they told me that one man couldn’t have moved all that stuff without being seen. I pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year while my partner pleaded not guilty, and his case was dismissed. My time would be up about the following September with remission off, but I couldn’t count on that.

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Bitter Humour In the police cells, were the usual type of offenders and there was a well-dressed guy up for passing bum cheques. He was an encyclopedia salesman working on commission. Never having been in jail before he became panicky, explaining his predicament to everyone who would listen. He had the police wire to his firm, some place in the States, to see if they would help him. Every time a policeman came into the cells, he would say, “Any word from the firm?” The policeman would usually answer, “No word from the firm.” When we were out of the cells for exercise or meals, he would explain his predicament all over again, shake his head sadly, and say, “Good heavens! No word from the firm.” Finally word came from the firm and it was to the effect that the firm would be willing to pay a percentage of the commission on future sales to make restitution for his bad cheques. But he had to make the sales first. This took all the hope out of “No word from the firm,” as we were beginning to call him now. He shook his head sadly, and said, “Good heavens! What will my sister think? What will my friends think? What will Moose think?” Moose was a gambler that “No word from the firm” had met the night before he was arrested. We cheered him up by telling him there’s nothing Moose hated as much as a cheque artist. He shook his head and said, “I’ve done it this time; I never should have started drinking.” When he came downstairs, after getting seven months, he said, “Good heavens! They sure slapped it at me.” Realizing that he was going to Lethbridge, he wanted to know what it was like. Did the guards beat you? Did they make any allowances for an old man in poor health? Do you get anything besides bread and water? Do many people die in there? And what are my chances of getting out? One of the fellows said, “No, they don’t beat you too often, about once a week on the average. And then they

Back to Lethbridge take a swat at you with the billy once in a while if you don’t move fast enough when they tell you.” Another told him, “You had better get a little practice moving around here before you go down; you might save yourself a lot of beatings.” “No word from the firm” thought this was an excellent idea and would give him a little edge when he got to Lethbridge. One fellow offered to act as guard, while the rest would tell him what he was doing wrong. The fellow who was acting as guard started. “What’s your name?” “No word from the firm,” gave his name. “Say sir when you talk to me, and straighten up those shoulders. What do you think you are, a sack of potatoes?” “Yes, sir.” “Yes, sir! Well god-dammit if you think you are a sack of potatoes, why the hell aren’t you in a root house?” “Well, sir, I’m sorry, sir.” “Sorry what? Sorry you are not a sack of potatoes?” “No word from the firm” said, “It’s no use, gentlemen. I’ll never make it. I’ll never get out alive, I might just as well give up right now.” By now I was feeling sorry for the old fellow, and later, when we were talking by ourselves, I told him it wasn’t quite that bad and the fellows were just having a little fun. This seemed to cheer him a little, but not for long. He told one of the other fellows what I’d said and this guy told him, “He’s a fine one to talk; he did six days in the black hole and laughed at them. If you had got that, you would never have got out alive. He’s young and he's tough and he just don’t care. If you think I’m lying, just ask him if he didn’t do six days at once in the black hole, and lose all his remission. “No sir, boy, don’t you let anyone tell you it’s not rough. You just go and ask him about the black hole.” Before anyone else got a chance to talk to me, “No word from the firm” asked me if I had been in the black hole.

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Bitter Humour I said, “Yes, but you don’t need to worry about that. They won’t put you in the hole.” He persisted. “How many days did you do there at one time?” I said, “Six, but it was for refusing to work. If I hadn’t refused to work I wouldn’t have got the hole.” "Why did you refuse to work?” “Well, I’d rather go to the hole than work outside on the ice-gang when it’s forty below zero.” “Oh! Good heavens above! They never told me any¬ thing about that. I just couldn’t take it. My health won’t stand it. Will you go to the hole when you go back this time?” “Yes, if they try to make me work outside in the winter.” “And how long will you stay in the hole?” “Until they decide to leave me alone.” I had tried to calm his fears a little, as I felt a little sorry for him, but this conversation about the hole just increased them. We were taken up to the rcmp barracks to await escort to Lethbridge. Up there, the cells were never locked in the daytime, and it was brighter. “No word from the firm” asked the Mountie at the desk what Lethbridge was like, and the Mountie said, “You’ll find out tomorrow because that’s where you are going; but from what I’ve heard about it you won’t like it.” In the morning, two Mounties went with four of us handcuffed two together. I was handcuffed to “No word from the firm,” and when they took us out of the car at the station, he was afraid someone might recognize him and tried to plunge his hand deep into his overcoat pocket to hide the handcuffs. The handcuffs tightened up when you pulled on them, and he let out a howl of pain as it bit into his wrist. Having experienced this before, I had hold of the chain joining the handcuffs or mine would have tightened up too. People who never would have noticed us on the freight-loading platform looked up when he yelled.

Back to Lethbridge I said, “You didn’t want anyone to see us; now you’ve drawn every body’s attention to us.” “I can’t help it,” he said. “I’ve done things wrong all my life, and that’s what’s worrying me about Lethbridge.” When we were standing in line waiting to be checked in, one of the guards came up to me, and said, “Back again, eh? Why the hell didn’t you go to some other province?” “Oh, I wanted to give you a break,” I said. "I can imagine,” he retorted. Then he turned to “No word from the firm” and said, “First time, eh? Well, the further you keep away from this character the better off you’ll be.” “Yes, sir,” he said. The guard smiled. He could tell by the tone of his voice he was scared. The next time I saw “No word from the firm” was when we went up for a blood test. He was still bewildered and nervous but much of the fright had left him. He was beginning to realize that the fellows would pull his leg every7 chance they got, but he was relieved to find that things weren’t as bad as he had thought. After our blood tests came back, the Snake came around to my cell and said, “Well, how do you want to do your time this time? Do you want to work, or do you want to stay in your cell?” I said, “Well, I don’t want to work outside in the winter. If I get a job inside, I’ll work. When the weather gets warm I don’t care whether I work inside or outside.” He said, “Well, I’ll give you a job inside and later on outside if you promise me that you won’t refuse to work. If you don’t like it, or want a change, come and see me and I’ll look after it; but I don’t want you refusing to work. It’s bad for the morale of the others when they see someone refuse to work.” I said, “All right. I’d like to stay in my cell a couple of months, then take an inside job for a couple of months, and then, maybe. I’ll go on an outside gang in the good weather.”

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Bitter Humour

He said, “Fine! And in the meantime will you behave yourself?’’ I said, "Well, if anybody starts pushing me around I’ll tell them off.” He said, “I don’t think you’ll have any trouble that way,” and he left. At least the Snake and I understood each other, and I wouldn’t have to go to the hole for refusing to work. The idea hadn’t worried me, but it was a relief to know that I was going to have things a little my own way without any punishment. After a couple of months in the cell, I worked for a while sweeping the floor and dusting the bars and one thing and another, until the weather got warm. Then I worked on various outside gangs until I wound up on a gang putting in cement fence-posts around the jail farm. Meantime, “No word from the firm” had wound up as a cleaner on one of the ranges and was an altogether different man. He was using all the slang terms that thieves used; he worked his punk outfit like an expert; and entertained the fellows with interesting stories about the encyclopedia business. As one guy said, “When he came in here he was so frightened he couldn’t stop shaking; and inside of two months, time run off him like water off a duck’s back.” Nothing eventful happened on the gang setting fenceposts until an escape was planned. Two young fellows, one doing eighteen months and the other two years less one day, the longest single sentence you can do in Lethbridge, decided to take it on the lam. Those of us who were in on it agreed to bring food out and what clothes they needed, and any extra tobacco we could get. These preparations and plans took about a week. Since another guy and I had the job of lining up the posts before they were tamped in, and the guard was always with us, it was our job to keep him distracted with stories and so on. It wasn’t hard because he was quite a windbag, and once he got started on a story he was usually

Back to Lethbridge good for at least half an hour. We kept working it around so that the two fellows who were going to escape were the farthest away from the gang. Since they worked like beavers for two or three days, digging post holes, the guard was satisfied with them. The day came for the escape and it was planned for after dinner. I got the guard started on a story, one of his favourites, about when two men were hanged at the jail. The two men left about 1.30, and only those of us who were in on it knew they had left. Among the stories the guard told us was one about an escape. He ridiculed another guard for letting one of his men get away. By this time it was 3.30, and the boys had a good start. I told one of the fellows, “I wonder what he’ll say when he knows.” He said, ‘‘Yes, his escape story may not seem so funny to him then.” We had thought if the boys could get from threequarters’ to an hour’s start, they’d have a good chance. However, after the story-telling, the guard said, ‘‘Well, we’ve got to get back to work.” We were working to make up time for what was lost in story-telling, and the guard was so busy he didn’t notice the two men missing. It was about a mile and a half to the jail, and we used to leave to go in about 4.30, or at least start to pick up the tools about 4.30 to arrive at the jail at 5 p.m. for supper. It was time to start picking up the tools and he still hadn’t noticed anyone was missing. Then he lined us all up and took the count. “Holy Jesus!” he said. “There’s a man missing. Who is it?” Nobody answered and he consulted his list. He went down his list and spotted one of the men who was missing. “That dirty son-of-a-bitch,” he said. “I knew I shouldn’t have trusted him.” Then he counted us again. This time he let out a real

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Bitter Humour screech of anguish. “God Almighty Christ! There’s two of the dirty bastards gone. Who’s the other one?’’ And he knew right away who it was. He marched us into the jail and we got there later than usual. The chief keeper was waiting at the back gate to let us in for the final count. As we went through the gate, the guard told the chief keeper, “Two men missing. They jumped on a green truck going west.’’ The chief keeper said, “Well, well, isn’t it a corker!’’ This was as excited as he ever got about anything. This was a further break for the boys because they had gone east, and towards the railway tracks down in the valley. But now all the search would be centred around the city of Lethbridge which is west of the jail. Jail officials and police questioned everyone on the gang the next day, except me and one other guy. The Snake probably told them not to bother as we were likely in on it. However, through their interrogation they did find out that nobody had seen the two men jump on a truck, and that the guard hadn’t missed them until he took the count. But by the time they had found this out it was too late to direct their search in the other direction. The only thing that saved the guard’s job, other guards told me, was that he had sixteen men on his gang, and there were only supposed to be twelve men on a gang, unless there was more than one guard. I think the two fellows were away for a month or so before they got picked up. When they were, they had a string of charges against them for car theft, breaking and entering, possession of firearms, and kidnapping. The kid¬ napping charge was dropped as it was a girl-friend of one of the fellows, and she went willingly. The guard who had lost the two men wouldn’t have me on his gang any more. He said he couldn’t stand the sight of me. So they put me on the gang with the first guard I had worked for before I changed, and quit on the ice-gang on my previous bit. I worked on this gang until my time was up. On this

Back to Lethbridge gang everyone who went out brought back tobacco, and hid it where the fellows could pick it up. They had been doing this for two or three months and only one guy had failed to come back. Most of them went out broke so it meant they had to steal the money or the tobacco. Since I had smoked tobacco the others had brought back, it meant that I was under obligation to bring some back. And since I didn’t have any money it meant I would have to steal it. However, this didn’t worry me as I figured I wouldn’t have too much trouble stealing tobacco. It was money that was hard to find. The morning I got out I looked up a guy who had been in jail and who lived in Lethbridge. I asked him if he knew of any place where I could get tobacco without taking too much chance. He did, and we walked out to the jail with all the tobacco, cigarettes, flints, gum, and so on that each of us could carry. In addition to that we got a little cash which we split. Although I had a ticket to Calgary that they gave me at the jail, I walked out of town and caught a freight train up a few towns, then got on the bus the next morning. I decided that I didn’t want to spend another winter in Calgary, so I planned to go to Vancouver. I got arrested in Calgary for something, but the case was dismissed for lack of evidence. When I got out, I decided not to wait but to head for Vancouver immedi¬ ately. I beat my way on freights and passenger trains and got the odd day’s work along the way. I didn’t have much money, but was never completely broke. In Princeton, two or three of us were pulled off the headend of a passenger train and the Provincial Police locked us up. The next morning we were sentenced to five days’ hard labour. The Provincial told us we’d have to cut wood, since we were sentenced to hard labour. The wood was for the jail and police offices and I told him I wasn’t cutting any wood because that’s all they pinched us for. There were ten other guys on the train and they’d just pinched three of us. So he said I didn’t have to

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Bitter Humour work, and he took the other guys out and put them to work. At night they were complaining and I told them if they refused to work the next day we’d all get out. The police bought our meals from the restaurant and wouldn’t want to feed us all if they weren’t getting anything out of it. The next day they refused and, of course, I got the blame for it. However, that night the Provincial let us all out, and told us to catch the freight out. He warned the other guys that I was a bad egg, and on top of not being any good, was probably a communist. Whether he phoned ahead or not I don’t know, but we were pinched on the head-end of a passenger train at Hope the next morning, as the train pulled in. They took us before the magistrate and he gave us thirty days each. This was to be served in Okalla. The Provincials drove us to Okalla and one of them remarked to us, “You guys just got a bad break. We wanted to go to Vancouver, and this way we get paid for the trip.” I said, “It isn’t the first time we got pinched because a policeman wanted something for himself.” We told him about Princeton and he seemed to think it was quite a joke. Okalla was a much more civilized jail than Lethbridge. They took the tobacco out of the packages to see there was no contraband, and wrapped it in newspaper and gave it back to us. They let us keep our lighters, too. It was a completely different atmosphere from Lethbridge. Guards called most of the prisoners by their first names. Several of the fellows I had known from Lethbridge were here and some of them came to my range to see me and see what I needed. One of them said he’d get the guard to move me to his range the next day, and he did. When I got out, I had messages to deliver that took me two days to look after; but I did look after all of them. In the course of that, I ran into a couple of guys that I would steal with later on.

Back to Lethbridge Having discharged my obligations, I spent another couple of days getting on relief. The relief was in vouchers and there was a two-week room voucher which paid the room for two weeks all but fifty cents. You could take the vouchers for either meal-tickets for certain restaurants on skid row, or you could get it in groceries. If you weren’t on relief, and weren’t working, they could convict you for vagrancy. Hence, nearly all the thieves who weren’t working were on relief, unless they had a business or property. Well, this would look after the basic needs; now for a little light stealing to look after the comforts and luxuries. There were two guys I stole with. One only broke into places, and we used to go out at night. The other broke into cars and boosted. I used to work with the one early at night from dark till about ten o’clock, and go out with the other fellow at about eleven. Sometimes, we’d get home about 12.S0, and at other times we wouldn’t get home till three in the morning. We had places to sell just about anything we could lay our hands on, but the prices we got were about ten per cent of the actual value. We stole two typewriters once, and packed them through back alleys for about four miles, and got fifteen dollars for the big one with the large carriage and seven dollars for the standard size. Some of the people we sold stuff to would ask us to get certain things and offer a good price. When we got it, they’d say it wasn’t what they wanted, but would take it off our hands for a considerably reduced price. But we were stuck because if we walked out of a fence’s store with something he’d call the police.

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The making of a junkie The wet weather, and the hiding at night waiting for things to get just right to break into some place, brought back rheumatic fever from which I had suffered as a child. I got crippled up so that I could hardly walk. One night, a junkie asked me what was wrong and I told him. He said, “Here you are in a lot of pain. I’ll give you a shot and that will fix that up.” I watched him open a white paper package, skim some white powder off with a fingernail file, and put it into a spoon. Then he drew some water up in a syringe and squirted it onto the powder, which was codeine phosphate. He lit a match and held it under the spoon until the powder dissolved. Then he placed a tiny bit of cotton in the spoon and drew the water up into the syringe. “All right, roll up your sleeve,” he said. Then he tied a handkerchief around my right arm and told me to hold the ends with my left hand. He shoved the needle into the vein and then forced the solution slowly out of the syringe into my vein. He pulled the needle out and said, “Do you feel it yet?”

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Bitter Humour I said, “No,” and he said, “Don’t worry, you will.” Just then I began to feel it; I felt warm and prickly. He said, “Well that’s it. Now we’ll have a cup of coffee and let that settle, and then I’ll give you a couple of belts in the skin.” As we were drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, I suddenly realized the pain was all gone. I walked across the room just to make sure. There was no more pain in my legs. I asked him how much that stuff cost. He said, “It costs me about six dollars a week but you’ll get enough to last you for a week or ten days for $1.25.” I said, “I’ll never be without it again.” I gave him money to get me $1.25 worth, sixty grains, and a “works,” hypodermic needle and medicine dropper instead of syringe. He showed me how to use it, and the next night I was stealing again. During the next two weeks, any time I felt the least twinge of pain I would take a shot of codeine. You could buy it in any drug store and the price varied slightly. One drug store on Hastings Street charged a few cents less than most, and would sell amounts as low as fifteen cents worth. I went to the counter where the scales were, and where they sold it, and asked for a dram of codeine phosphate. The clerk said, “You are new in town, aren’t you?” I said, “Yes, why?” He said, “That’s all we sell at this counter. You don’t need to say what you want; just say how much.” I noticed as I picked up my package the next guy said, “Seventy-five cents, please.” There was an all-night drug store that used to raise its prices after the other drug stores closed, but during regular store hours it became competitive. All the junkies admitted that codeine was a poor sub¬ stitute for opium, but at least it was legal, and some of them had switched just for that reason. One of the fellows who used to buy some of our loot was married and had a child, and he and his wife both

The making of a junkie used codeine. One day, when we were fixing at his place, another junkie said, “You know the baby’s hooked too.” The woman was breast-feeding the baby and he said, “You watch him when he gets through eating.” She put the baby in the crib and the guy said, “See how he coos and giggles and wiggles his toes.” I said, “Well, doesn’t every baby do that after it’s fed?” “There you go and spoil it,” he said. “There’s one in every crowd.” Constant taking of opiates uses up the sugar in the system, and it wasn’t long before I was eating a lot of sweets, something I was never strong on before. Four or five spoons of sugar in a cup of coffee was a common thing for most of us. Another effect was constipation. An enema once or twice a week became a common thing. A third effect on me, probably because of the rheumatic fever as the others didn’t have it, was night sweats that would actually soak the bed sheets. The sexual appetite was decreased to practically nil. If the opportunity was ever present, you might indulge once in a while, but if not you never gave it a thought. Once when we had a couple of hundred pairs of women’s shoes, and were selling them, most of the women wanted us to take part payment out in trade. This was the furthest thing from our minds when we were trying to make a buck. One woman in a house of six prostitutes, where they bought about thirty pairs of shoes, bought eight pairs herself. She wanted to give us horizontal refreshments for another pair. Instead we just gave her a pair. She shook her head sadly and said, “I must be getting old.” Certain items that could be boosted sold for about half the retail price if there was a demand. One of these was a soup-making preparation. Retail price was two dollars and it could be sold for one dollar. One of my partners had sold about twrelve bottles and said it was an easy boost since it was in the grocery department. He urged me to go and pick up two bottles.

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Bitter Humour I didn’t care for this boosting business, but agreed to pick them up. Almost every night I did something I could go to the penitentiary for and wasn’t nervous; but when it came to boosting a small item, something I couldn’t get more than six months for, I was nervous. Sure enough, I dropped one bottle on the floor and got nailed walking away with the other one. I knew enough to tell the court I was hungry and stole it to eat, so I got off with a month as they didn’t have my record. In the city jail, the doctor ordered morphine pills for me; I think they were half grains. This helped a little, and that night in Okalla they gave me a swig of suey, a laudanum preparation they kept on hand for sick junkies. I was talking to another junkie the next morning when a guard came by and said, “Any of you new men can milk cows?” I told the other guy, “I can milk, but I’m not going to tell him that as I can’t work kicking this habit.” “Jesus Christ! If you can milk, get on that gang,” he said. “That’s where the connection is and we’ll both have skid (codeine). Can you milk?” “Sure.” He bellowed the guard’s name. “Here’s a man who can milk.” The guard talked to me a couple of minutes then said, “All right, pick up your things and come with me.” He took me to a cell on the corridor where his gang slept, then right out to the bam. I was relieved to find I had to milk only one cow as I was perspiring and getting stomach cramps. I looked over the other guys on the cow-gang and talked to a couple of them, and I couldn’t imagine any of them knowing any¬ thing about junk; so I wondered what my friend had meant. When we got back to the corridor I wasn’t long finding out. A junkie came down to my cell and said, “You’re going to be our connection, eh?”

The making of a junkie I said, “With these cramps I don’t think I’ll be able to go to work tomorrow.” He said, “Oh you’re sick, eh? Just hang on for five minutes and I’ll get you a fix.” Sure enough, he was back in a few minutes with a works and some skid. He told another guy on the corridor to keep jiggers — watch out for the guard — and we each cooked up two fixes. He promised to give me a fix in the morning so I’d be able to go to work. He also rustled me up another shot of suey, and explained to me that they could get all kinds of skid left out where the cow-gang went to cut wood; but they needed someone they could trust to pick it up. This bit of aid kept me out of the hospital, where I probably would have been better off, even though I would have suffered more. Next morning, we went out to milk at five o’clock, and were back in the corridor about six. Just before breakfast, my friend came down and gave me a fix and another shot of suey. He said, “The stuff won’t be there today, but it will be left tonight. You can pick it up tomorrow, and we’ll have it by dinner time.” All the junkies kept their fingers crossed when I went out to work the next afternoon. Several of them had given me dozens of instructions. However, we hadn’t even picked up our tools when I spotted the mark for the plant. I had recovered it before we were there fifteen minutes. That was one of the longest afternoons I ever put in. We always got a superficial frisk as we went into the jail but I wasn’t worried about that. As the Limey guard said, “I daount hawve to worry about you bloody farmers; it’s these blarsted thieves and dope-fiends as I daount trust. Ain’t that right, mate?” Someone would always say, “Yes.” No sooner was I on my corridor, when a junkie came

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Bitter Humour down to find out how I had made out. After checking to see everything was clear, I took the parcel out of my shirt and gave it to him. He ripped it open after he took it out of the waterproof covering; it was full of small envelopes each with a dif¬ ferent person’s name on it. One without a name on he gave to me, and said he’d be back. In the next three minutes there was scurrying to and fro and then all the junkies were in cells taking fixes. How anything could be so obvious and the guards not know amazed me. I learned, though, that the guards didn’t care too much as long as there was no trouble. So instead of kicking my habit, I had codeine all the time I was in Okalla and only managed to decrease my habit. It was an easy thirty days. When I went out I had plenty of obligations. Besides several messages, I had to make some money and bring back some codeine. I promised to deliver the messages first, because I had to go and kick some place in to steal money to buy the codeine. If I did that first, I might get pinched, and the messages would never get delivered. It was a week before I was able to send back a fair¬ sized bundle of codeine, but once that was over I was back in business again right where I left off. This time, though, there wouldn’t be any boosting. The rheumatic fever still continued to bother me when I wasn’t loaded with codeine. However, the big habit I went into Okalla with scared me and I tried to keep it down a little now, as I knew I’d have to kick it in jail some day. I even tried to kick it once outside, but it’s pretty tough to kick a habit when you are never more than ten minutes away from a fix, especially when you are in pain. Even¬ tually I began to think there was something to the junkies’ philosophy that “You kick all your habits but the first one, and that one you never kick.” By now, though, I realized that the day would come when I’d have to kick it, so I tried to keep it more or less

The making of a junkie under control. One night I did what every junker has probably done at one time or another. I said, “This is it. I’m going to kick it.” I threw away my works. About five or six hours later, I started to get a little yen, a kind of craving. I wasn’t really sick because that much time hadn’t elapsed since my last fix. But I was getting an itchy feeling and was wide awake and alert. My sense of smell, dulled by months of using codeine, suddenly awakened. I could smell the sulphur from a match and the gas from a cigarette lighter. I couldn’t stay in the room so I thought I’d go out and get a little fresh air. That might help. Like a piece of metal drawn by a magnet, I was drawn to the all-night drug store where I knew I could get codeine. But I didn’t have a works. Just as though it was planned, a couple of junkies were waiting around the all-night drug store. They had no money but they had a works. I had money, but no works, so we soon got together on that and, after I bought a couple of drams of skid, we all went up to a room and fixed, and then down for coffee. These guys weren’t thieves in the true sense of the term. They were leeches who waited around to get free fixes when someone else made a score, or had money. My senses were a lot keener than theirs by reason of my having gone without a fix for so long, and I decided to get rid of them and get my own works in the morning. So back to the same old grind again — stealing $100 worth of merchandise and selling it for ten or twelve dollars. Working with a couple of partners, I sometimes helped kick in as many as four places in one night. It was often a two-shift operation — till twelve or one o’clock with one partner, and from 2 a.m. till 5 a.m. with the other. Neither of my partners were junkers. Most junkers didn’t go in for breaking and entering because of the time involved if they were caught. It was mostly boosting or theft from cars, but the odd one would sometimes kick in a joint.

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Bitter Humour Detectives knew we weren’t going hungry and sometimes used to kid us when they met us on the street. Once a couple of them stopped us, and said, “I wouldn’t want to do you guys’ good time when we or someone else catches up to you.” My partner said, “We are as pure as the driven snow.” They laughed, and one of them said, “We’ll give you driven snow when we catch up to you, believe me.” My rheumatic fever got worse and worse, especially on nights when we’d lie in the wet grass, or hide waiting until it was just right to kick some place in. One night we were waiting to kick in a fur store. It had to be done fast and clean because it was bugged. The fence had told us what he wanted and we could get it in a smash-and-grab in thirty seconds. This would give us, we figured, three to four minutes to hide the stuff and get away. The prowler-car came around about every half hour and we wanted to make it just after it had gone by. We were just about to kick it in when a couple of lovers came by, and stopped right in front of the fur store. They smooched and giggled, and he felt her up, and she told him to stop it, and then giggled some more, and this went on for an hour. Meanwhile, the prowler-car made two rounds. It was getting cold, my partner was shivering, and I needed a fix. He said in disgust, “Why the hell doesn’t the silly bastard take her some place, and drive it into her, and get it over with. Of all the places in Vancouver, they’ve got to feel each other up outside the one where we want to make a score.” Finally, they took off slowly up the street. We decided to let them get three-quarters of a block away and then kick the place in. If they were on the street when the prowler-car came they would be questioned, and that would give us an extra two minutes at least. We shattered the window, picked up the coats we had decided on, and were off the street in less than forty-five

The making of a junkie seconds. We had hidden the coats in a previously planned hiding-place and were well concealed ourselves before we heard the sirens of the police and protective-agency cars. We hid until it got daylight and people started going to work. Then we got a street-car and went home. This was one of the nights it paid off pretty good, but there were plenty of similar nights that we got very little out of it. I was using more and more codeine to stop the pain of my rheumatic fever. The cost was negligible in comparison with what I was making; but it wasn’t doing my health any good. One of our fences said he would give us a good price for bolts of suit cloth if we could get them. We thought about it, and decided on a store on Hastings Street, one of the main streets of Vancouver. By this time, kicking in stores had become as natural to me as brushing my teeth. We removed one of the large panes and took out fortyeight bolts of suit cloth by the official count. We sold most of it before the roof fell in. A fellow who said he had a buyer, and could get me a better price, asked me to bring the cloth to his room. I took what I had left, about a dozen bolts. Then two detectives walked in. There were three guys in the room and they charged the four of us with receiving stolen goods. I knew that one of them had probably put the finger on me, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. The police offered to see that I didn’t get more than six months if I would plead not guilty. That would have meant that they could convict not only me but the three others as well. I wouldn’t agree to this, and they said, “Well, it’s your choice, but it’ll be the penitentiary.” Meantime, in the cells, I got sick as the codeine wore off. I got into a hassle with a Scottish policeman and cast some reflections on his ancestors. He decided to punish me by putting me on a range all by myself. God bless his soul, it’s the nicest thing he ever did. During the night six or seven Chinamen were arrested for smuggling opium. In the morning, I got my codeine

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Bitter Humour pills from the doctor. I could see that one of the China¬ men, an old man, was real sick. I asked the only one who could speak English if he was sick from pen yen (opium). He said, “Yes, you savvy pen yen.’' I offered to give the old man one of my codeine pills and the Chinamen watched curiously as I cooked up my fix. As they watched, they started talking Chinese as fast as six Chinamen can talk it all at once. I knew they were talking about me and felt uncomfortable. Finally, the one who talked English said, “You likee pen yen, we give you.” Then the old man pulled out an Old Chum sack con¬ taining opium. He was sick, but they wouldn’t take a chance on using it until they were sure I was all right — that I wouldn’t squawk. He gave me enough for four good fixes and they flinched as I inserted the needle into my arm. Very few Chinese use the needle. They take it by mouth. This helped me over the hump; and what was supposed to be punishment turned out to be just what I wanted. When it was time for me to be sentenced, the magistrate said that since I had been caught with goods from three different places, and since I had so much of the cloth so shortly after it was stolen, I must have been very close to those who stole it, if I were not actually one of them. The police said that I had not given them any cooperation whatsoever, although they had questioned me several times. So the magistrate gave me two years in the peni¬ tentiary. I had figured I wouldn’t get less than that so I wasn’t too worked up about it; but I knew it was going to be rough kicking my habit. Now, thanks to my Chinese friends, I went into New Westminster Penitentiary high on opium. I wanted to get to my cell before the opium wore off and it seemed I’d never make it. They took my picture again, my finger prints, and all the particulars of my personal history and gave me a creoline bath dip. The creoline bath was in case I had lice or crabs and

The making of a junkie everyone coming in had to get into it. Then I had to take a shower. My hair was clipped as close as clippers would clip it and then I got into clothes with my number on each piece, right down to the red polka dot handkerchief. The number was on a white tag about one by four inches, and it was sewn onto each garment. When I finally got to the cell, it was in what they called Siberia, and fish had to spend six or seven days here in segregation. Meals were brought up, as were magazines and anything else I got. After my blood test came back, and it was decided that I didn’t have scabies or rabies or what have you, I was moved to another corridor. I got pretty sick when I was in Siberia. One of the fellows told me, “You are losing pounds by the day. You’ll never make it out of this joint.” About that time I didn’t care too much.

A stay in Siberia In Siberia, I was introduced to the buzzer type punk out¬ fit, a primitive sort of cigarette lighter, called a works. These were legitimate and were made in the penitentiary machine-shop. The buzzer was a steel wheel with four holes placed near the centre as in a button. A string was threaded through each pair of holes and tied at the end. You held one of the ends in your mouth or tied it to the button of your shirt. You held the copper punk-box in your left hand, hold¬ ing the emery stone directly over it with the thumb and forefinger of the same hand. With your right hand you wound the string with a twirling motion. Then you pulled back and forth causing the button to spin, and at the same time you pressed the stone against it making sparks that hit the punk, and caused it to start smouldering. Fine-cut tobacco and cigarette papers had just become legitimate, and rules informing inmates of the additional regulations accompanying them were still in the cells, in addition to the regular “Thou shalt not do it” card. After my time in Siberia was up, I went to one of the

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Bitter Humour ranges, and became a cleaner. This consisted of sweeping and mopping the floor on the corridor, and then dusting the bars and crossbars, and shining them with emery cloth. The steel bars would rust overnight when there was a little dampness. I had heard about the locking system but wasn’t pre¬ pared for the metallic clatter with machine-gun staccato caused by tapping out. When I had booked in to the prison, I had signed myself in as an atheist, because I had heard of the difficulty in getting a white card which distinguishes the atheists from the not so evil, if you didn’t get it when you first went in. A card with your number on was placed above your cell gate. For atheists it was white, Protestants, red, and Catholics, blue. This was so that on Sunday morning, when the guard was checking the cells for church-parade, he could just look at your card and tell whether you were supposed to be at church or not. One noon, they sent me up to see the priest so he could examine me and see if I was a Catholic or not. He appar¬ ently found no evidence. He seemed not a bad sort and didn’t try to convince me of anything. Not so with the Protestant minister, whom I had to see the next noon-hour. He coaxed, cajoled, and pleaded, and when he didn’t get any place, he said, “Oh, I guess you are too smart to go to church." I said, “No! I haven’t killed anybody — yet, either; but it’s not because I’m too smart. It’s probably that I’ve never had the desire." He said, “Well, you’ve been using dope and it won't hurt you to go to church once, so I'm not going to sign this till next week. You’ll have to come this Sunday.” I said, “Well, if you want to be responsible for my going to the hole because you don’t see fit to do what you are getting paid to do, it convinces me that I don’t want any¬ thing to do with your type of religion. I’m not coming to your church and you can do what you like about it. It couldn’t matter less to me.”

A stay in Siberia He stiffened in his chair and said, “You may go.” That night there was a white card above my gate when I went in. About the time I should have been getting over the worst of my habit, I became worse. My breath became shorter and shorter, and I had an almost constant pain in the region of my left shoulder-blade as well as, sometimes, a stabbing pain in the region of my heart. A tall, male nurse with a Scottish accent manned the medicine-wagon, which was wheeled to the dome floor every night just before the line started going through for supper, and in the morning at breakfast time. Other cons told me to go to the medicine-wagon and see if I couldn’t get something. Finally, I went and tried to tell the nurse I was sick. He reached into his watch-pocket and pulled out a box of aspirins; he didn’t trust this to the medicinewagon with the place full of dope-fiends. He grimaced as he broke the aspirin tablet in half and handed one half to me. “Here ye air, take the hawf o’ this the noo, ond take the ither hawf jist a wee bit afore bedtime. Mind ye, it’s five grains o’ awspirin, ye hae there.” No matter what a con said he had, the male nurse would always ask, “Ond hoo doe ye ken ye hae a heedache,” or whatever the complaint was. One of the guards told me this story about him. One of the Sons of Freedom Doukhobors was in the hospital in bad shape. The male nurse told the hospital orderly to look in on him every half hour. One day the orderly came out and shouted excitedly, “Oh the Duke is dead, the Duke is dead.” The male nurse looked down over his glasses and said, “Aye, and hoo doe ye ken he’s daid?” Despite the five grains of aspirin, my health continued to get worse. I quit eating because I wasn’t hungry and it was too much effort to go through the line and pick up the metal tray at the kitchen wicket. The guards, checking the ranges, reported to the nurse

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Bitter Humour that I wasn’t eating and appeared to be sick. He came up to my cell a couple of times and said the aspirin should have done me some good. He put me down for the doctor, and the doctor examined me three or four times, and told me not to work, but just to stay in my cell until I felt better. The regular doctor went on holidays, and another doctor came. By this time my breath was just gasps, and I could hardly walk; and the pain in the region of my heart was worse. The new doctor questioned me, and I answered by nodding or shaking my head. After tapping my chest and back with his fingers, he said, “It sounds to me as though there’s fluid on the pleural cavity. We’ll just see.” He put a needle on a syringe and inserted it between my ribs at the back where the pain was. When he pulled it out the syringe was full of fluid the colour of urine. “Just as I thought,” he said. “We’ll leave it for a day or two, and then if it isn’t going to drain by itself, we’ll have to take him to the hospital and tap him.” Now that they finally realized I was sick, the male nurse and orderlies couldn’t do enough for me. The orderlies even ate my meals which I couldn’t eat myself. They were mostly custard and jello and things they didn’t get on the line. A day or two later, the doctor examined me again, and told the nurse, “It’s not going away. We’ll have to take him to the hospital and tap him.” The nurse said, “Aye? Then we’ll hae tae get pairmission frae Uttawa.” Judging by the length of time it took them to get “pairmission,” it was done by mail. Although I needed help to walk, they handcuffed me before they put me in the car to take me to the Royal Columbia Hospital, a short distance from the peniten¬ tiary. When we were in the private ward in the hospital, one of the guards opened a brief-case and took out a piece of logging-chain about three feet long, and two

A stay in Siberia huge padlocks weighing about a pound. He wrapped one end of the chain around my ankle, put the top part of the padlock through two links, and snapped it shut. Then he secured the other end to the bottom of the bed with a similar padlock. One of them fished in his watch-pocket, got the key, and opened and removed the handcuffs. Smil¬ ing, he said, “I guess that feels better.” Just then the nurse came in and said, ‘‘He can’t lie in bed like that. He has to put on hospital clothes.” The guard who was to stay with me said to the other one, “You had better wait until he gets changed into hospital clothes and we get him locked up again." They took “all due precautions” as required by peni¬ tentiary rules until the change was made and I was once again secured to the bed. The doctor examined me but said he wouldn’t tap me that day as I had had too much exertion coming from the prison. About three o’clock in the afternoon, the chief keeper, known to the cons as Joe Gee, came down to see that everything was in order. He asked the guard if everything was all right, and he asked me how I felt. Then he got down to the business he had come for. He went to the foot of the bed, lifted up the quilt, and inspected the locks on the logging-chain to see that prison regulations were being carried out. At night they gave me a sedative. The guard fell asleep in the chair a couple of times and he was asleep once when the nurse came in. She said, “He seems to be comfortable; how are you feeling?” I still didn’t have enough breath to talk, so I just nodded. She went and got me another sedative, but I didn’t get much sleep. When it came time to tap me, they turned me over on my stomach and the nurse pumped the air out of a jar. To this jar was attached a rubber hose of the hot-water-bottle type, and at the end of the hose was a large hypodermic needle. The doctor inserted the needle into my pleural cavity and released the clamp on the hose so that the

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Bitter Humour vacuum drew the fluid into the jar. They shut the clamp and pumped the air out of the jar two or three times till finally the jar was about half full of fluid. The doctor said that would do and the rest would drain away by itself. When this was over, the doctor told me to take a little breath but not too deep to start with. I took about half a normal breath — the longest breath I had taken in weeks. There was no more pain, and I craved to fill my lungs with air, but restrained myself. I started to recover immediately and began to eat a little. It felt so good that I couldn’t get to sleep and the nurse kept bringing me sedatives. About 3 a.m., the nurse came in with the head nurse. The guard was sound asleep in the chair, snoring softly. The head nurse asked me if I was in pain. I told her I wasn’t, except that the chain and padlocks were hurting my ankle. She went to the foot of the bed, lifted up the bed clothes, and said, “No wonder.” She pulled the chain up a little so that it didn’t pull so much with the heavy padlock. When the padlock clanked the guard woke up with a start. He stood up and said, “Here! here! What’s going on here?” The head nurse said, “Oh, we’re just trying to make him comfortable, but it’s not easy with this beastly chain. But you can go back to sleep.” He said defensively, “I wasn’t sleeping. I just had my eyes closed.” She said, “And do you always snore when you just have your eyes closed?” He didn’t answer. When they took me back to the penitentiary hospital, I was on a soft diet which consisted of jello, custard, soup, and milk. The male nurse was pretty good now that he knew I had really been sick. Before, he thought it was just the dope. Most prison officials don’t believe that a dope-

A stay in Siberia

fiend can get sick. If he appears to be sick, he’s just trying to get dope. The orderlies called the male nurse Doc and he liked it. They told me to call him Doc too, and I’d get along better if I needed anything. The doctor came into the cell in the prison hospital, put his stethoscope over the region of my heart, and then tapped with his fingers over my lungs. The male nurse watched this and got ideas. Later he came into the cell with an old stethoscope, which had broken and come apart at the metal piece that joins the two hoses. Some previous doctor had discarded it. He said, “I’d just like tae listen tae yer hairt. Do ye mind?” I said, “No, of course not, Doc. In fact I’ll be glad to know what kind of shape it’s in.” He listened to my heart, moved the stethoscope around a few times, and looked over his glasses with a serious look. I said, “And how does she sound. Doc?” “Aye, she’s no bawd, she’s no bawd, but ye’ll hae tae lie pairfectly still and get plenty o’ rest.” The orderly winked at me and formed a circle with his thumb and forefinger, signifying I had the old boy in the palm of my hand. I knew it for sure when Doc came into the cell before he went home and offered me a whole aspirin tablet. I de¬ clined it and that put me in still better with him. I ordered exactly what I wanted from the kitchen, and he saw that I got it. As I recovered rapidly, I became tired of the soft diet and began to crave some good, solid food. Before the doctor released me from the hospital, he put me on light duty and told me not to lift anything over twenty pounds for the rest of my sentence. I said, “Well, how can I argue if they say it doesn’t weigh twenty pounds?” “Make them weigh it,” he said, and then he turned to the male nurse and said, “You see that these orders are

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Bitter Humour carried out. And there’s to be no exercise more strenuous than walking.” I went back to work on the cleaners, shining bars and sweeping a corridor, but there were orders that I wasn’t to lift any buckets of water. They had to send someone else to carry the pails of water that are left in front of a cell each week, so the cell can be scrubbed out. When I got feeling good, I went on the court to play volley-ball at exercise period one day, and the guard spotted me immediately and wouldn’t let me play. There was a medicine ball, and weights to lift, and quoits. All I was permitted to play was quoits, and since I didn’t care for that I spent my exercise walking. One of the Chinamen I’d met in the city jail, the only one who could speak English, got a job in the library. One day, when he was putting books out on the range, he told me to write down what I liked to read, and he’d get it for me. He used to get me extra books and magazines. There was no school except for illiterates, and there were no courses one could study. However, there were textbooks in the library and after you squared with the school-teacher, you were allowed a textbook and a scrib¬ bler. The cons, and some of the guards, referred to the school¬ teacher as Lucy. Lucy talked, walked, and acted more like a woman than many women do. He was always referred to as “she.” If you had any questions, you wrote a note to the library and Lucy would come and stand in front of the cell gate at noon to discuss them. After I applied for a high-school grammar book, Lucy came to my cell gate one noon hour to decide whether I was the type of convict who should be permitted to have a grammar book. She said she would let me know later. As she walked away, one of the cons said, “Hasn’t she got a timid, mincing gait!” There was a roar of laughter and Lucy sputtered, “Beasts!”

A stay in Siberia That probably didn’t do my request any good, as I didn’t hear from Lucy again. Meanwhile, I got my Chinese friend to get me a gram¬ mar textbook. I also got a scribbler. A rebel, one of the mainmost men in the riot that took place before I went in, undertook to correct my grammar for me. Every time there was a cell frisk, I lost my grammar and scribbler and was going to give up a couple of times; but my friend said, “That’s just what they want. Are you going to let them win, or are you going to win?” So I got another grammar book and scribbler and con¬ tinued on. I lost them several times, but I always got my Chinese friend to get me another. Before my friend who was teaching me was released I had done every exercise in Lang’s Advanced Grammar. My friend advised me to go on to composition when he left. I started, but didn’t get too far with it as no con, who was capable of helping me, wanted to risk getting crimed for passing books to another convict. The guys were still talking about the riot when I went in. It had taken place about eight months before. The rebels had been chained to the bars in the hole for eight hours every day, for whatever length of time they were sentenced to; that is, their wrists were chained to the bars over their head so that they had to remain in a standing position for eight hours at a time. Several of them had got the paddle, that is, a long, thick, rubber strap with holes down the centre that suck up the flesh on the buttocks, when the strap descends. Then, as it is ripped away, the flesh in the holes comes with it. As one con put it, “It left my poor little ass like a raw beef steak.” One fellow had reported sick repeatedly, in order to see the doctor. The doctor couldn’t find anything wrong with him, but he kept putting his name down for every sickparade. Finally, the doctor asked him, “Do you masturbate?” “No, of course not,” he snapped.

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Bitter Humour “Well, give it a little pull once in a while. It won’t hurt you,” the doctor said. The fellow announced proudly he had permission to pull his wire. This was one of the things a con could get crimed for, if he was caught. One noon hour, the fellow was sitting on his toilet bowl reading a book with one hand, and pulling his wire with the other. This was probably for Lucy’s benefit, as he could hear her on the range. When Lucy got in front of his cell she screamed, “Stop it! Stop it! What are you doing, you beast?” He said, “What does it look like I’m doing, I’m flogging my duff, and what’s more I have the doctor’s permission to do it.” Lucy went off in a huff, and no more was heard of that, except that this character used to announce every time he was going to the post. After several months, he began to lose weight. Then he made regular visits to the doctor at every opportunity. After he had lost about thirty pounds, the doctor asked him if he pulled his wire. “Sure!” he said. “Five or six times a day.” "Why do you do that?” the doctor asked. “Well, you told me to,” he said. The doctor said, “Oh did I? Well you can quit now.” “I’ve got used to it, and I don’t know if I can quit now.” “Give it the old college try,” the doctor said, “and see what happens.” After about three months on the cleaners, they trans¬ ferred me to the change-room and laundry. I did various jobs there, from putting clothes in boxes, to darning socks and sewing. Each con has a box in the change-room with his number on it. His clothes for change when he came to bath were put in his box, as all the clothes were num¬ bered too. There was a sock machine for making socks, and once it was started by putting the yarn through the proper needles, you just turned the handle and it turned out a

A stay in Siberia sock down to the heel. Then it required more manipulat¬ ing of the needles, and when it was completed, the toe was left open and had to be done by hand. The old guy who ran the sock machine was what we called a bull lover. He never had a good word about any con, but the bulls were all right as far as he was concerned. This didn’t sit too well with some of us young fellows. We hadn’t learned yet that there is this type in every prison and they are not always old men. One day when he was suck-holing to the hack, we started to turn the crank on his sock machine and ground out a leg fifteen feet long for him. Then we all went back to our places of work with innocent looks. When he returned to the machine he flew into a rage. Then he shouted for the hack. “Oh Mr.-, come and see what they’ve done, the dirty vandal bastards. They should be horsewhipped. They should be put in the hole. They should lose all their good time. Oh the dirty, treacherous sons-o’-bitches.” The guard was used to these outbursts and had a hard time to keep from smiling. When he got into the corner where the sock machine was and saw our sock, he burst out laughing. This only made matters worse and the sock-machine man lit into him. To placate him, the guard said, “All right, I’ll investi¬ gate. I’ll question each one of them.’’ He would ask one of us the question, “Did you make the long sock?’’ and then he would burst out laughing. So the sock man went and reported him to the head guard in the change-room. He came out of the office, looked at the long sock, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “Well, no harm has been done. Just rewind the yarn from the sock back onto the spool.’’ With the machine for doing this it was about two min¬ utes’ work, but that didn’t placate the old fink. He still kept beefing to the bull. Some of the guys in the barber shop, which was part of

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Bitter Humour the change-room, wanted me to come in and be a barber. They went to the instructor and he asked me if I’d like to try it. I said I’d give it a whirl. Actually I was having quite a bit of fun in the change-room, as there were about four other guys my own age there, and we always had some¬ thing going. So they gave me three razors, a chair, and a strap, and told me to be careful not to cut the strap. It didn’t seem to matter if I sliced up one of the customers. In the barber shop, there was a fellow doing three years who had heaved an auto jack through a jewellery-store window, and made off with a tray of diamond rings. When he took them to the fence to sell them, the fence told him to bring them back the next night and he’d buy them. He went back earlier than he was supposed to with the rings, and the fence told him he didn’t want them. Then he walked downstairs from his gambling joint, and put his hand on the fellow’s shoulder as a sign to the police. The police stepped out and arrested him as he crossed the street; but he had spotted the police before he stepped off the curb and thrown the rings under a parked car which blocked their vision from him. They arrested him and searched him but were so sure he had the rings they wouldn’t let him go. Finally, they found the rings and charged him with the smash-and-grab. He beat that charge because the fence, who was one of the vice overlords at that time, didn’t dare put the finger on him openly. During a crime probe that followed, it came out that the fence charged prostitutes to walk the street. If they didn’t pay off, he had them picked up and sent to Okalla. He had his finger in just about every crooked deal, and had enough police on his payroll to control about everything that wasn’t legal. Finally his world tumbled. A new mayor was elected who promised to clean up the city. The fence fell and wound up with ten years. Plenty of the boys in the pen were waiting for him to come in so they could provide him with the little extras

A stay in Siberia that are reserved for particularly nauseating stool-pigeons. The guy he put the finger on for the rings was a barber. So we arranged it, by slowing up on one and speeding up on another, that he would have to get into a certain chair. The victim smiled, and stropped his razor slowly and methodically, never taking his eyes off the fink. The fink told the guard, “I feel sick. I don’t want a shave.” The guard said, ‘‘You have to have a shave, or you’ll go to the hole. Now get in that chair or you will be crimed.” The fink got in the chair after lathering himself up at the sink outside the barber shop. As he sat in the chair he started blubbering to the guy he had fingered, “Oh I’m so glad to see you. It’s so nice in here to see someone you know. I have lots of money. If I can help you. I’ll be glad to do it. Just tell me. If you need money, I can make the arrangements.” The guy kept slowly stropping his razor. Then he reached over to the sink where he had left a trickle of hot water running. He held the razor under it; then put¬ ting his left hand on the fink’s forehead, he laid the back of the razor on the fink’s throat. By now the fink was so scared he thought it was the sharp edge. Then the barber said, “All right now, you dirty wop stool-pigeon, start praying to your dago Pope, because I’m going to give you fifteen seconds to say your prayers, then I’m going to slash your dirty stool-pigeon throat.” The wop froze. Not a muscle flickered. Then the barber drew the back of the razor across his throat and the warm water trickled down. The wop passed out completely. The barber then went to his own chair, and I went to the one with the wop in it. I couldn’t shave him as I wasn’t that good a barber, and he had a tough beard as they only gave a shave once a week. Another barber stepped over and shaved him while he was passed out. Then I went to the guard and told him a guy had passed

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Bitter Humour out in my chair. He looked at me and said, “What did you do to him?” I said, “Nothing. I just finished shaving him and put my brush in the cup. When I looked around he was flaked , >> out. All the other barbers kept shaving away as though nothing had happened. The guard put cold water on his face and he finally started to move and looked as though he would probably live. He immediately accused the barber he had fingered outside of threatening to kill him, and making him pass out. The barber just laughed and said, “He’s delirious. I didn’t shave him.” The guard said, “Who shaved him?” I said, “I did,” and the other barbers all backed me up. The guard looked at the six of us, each one individually. He knew that something went on that he would probably never know about, at least for several years. The outcome of it all was that they took me out of the barber shop and put me back in the change-room, where I wanted to be anyway. Shortly after they found ground glass in the wop’s salt shaker, they moved him to the kitchen. Here he accident¬ ally got scalded when someone spilled a pot of hot water. Bad luck just seemed to follow him around. They had a bunch of wooden things with handles on and shaped somewhat like a cup at the end to put in socks when they darned them. When the guard wasn’t around we used to set up five of them in the aisle between tables and play five pins. We used a ball of yam with a cloth cover for a ball. One of us would always keep jiggers, — an eye out for the screw, — and a couple of us would gamble cigarettes on the game. After we had been caught at this a couple of times and warned, we painted a cardboard cover to place over the extractor in the laundry. Then we painted an arrow on

A stay in Siberia the revolving part inside and made a roulette wheel. We would place our bets on different numbers and a guy would flick the switch and count to five and turn it off. The number where the arrow stopped was winner if any¬ one was on it. If not, there was another spin, until there was a winner.

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Life in the big house Several Sons of Freedom Doukhobors had been sentenced to the penitentiary for three-year terms, and did their time on an island off the coast. But they had to return to the penitentiary at New Westminster to be released. They had quite a time bringing them in, as they wouldn’t sign their names. The guard had to hold the pen in each one’s hand and make an “X”, or some kind of a mark. They moved the fish out of Siberia and put the Douks there, so they could have them all together. There weren’t enough cells, so they let the overflow sleep in the corridor. Since they didn’t want them going through the line for meals until they saw how they were going to react, meals for them were made up in the kitchen. The food was carried up to them and put on a table in Siberia. One of the cons who carried the meals up had a reputation of going for the young fellows. The Douks were singing hymns and putting their arms around each other. This con went to a young Douk, and put his arms around him.

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Bitter Humour The young Douk responded affectionately, and mur¬ mured, “Brother, brother.” When the guard saw this he said, “Here, get the hell out of here. Haven’t we got enough trouble with these Douks without your shenanigans.” The Douks refused to eat; they wanted their own kind of food. The authorities promptly split them up and put half of them in the hole, and left the other half in Siberia. What they intended to do was let half of them keep on a hunger strike after the other half had started eating. Each day they packed the meals down to the hole and also up to Siberia. After leaving them there an hour, they would pack them away again. One of the Douks in Siberia asked a guy who helped take the meals up if he’d get someone to give them the sign when the Douks in the hole began to eat. This was agreed on. One day, after about eight days of refusing to eat, the Douks in the hole ate their dinners when they were fed about three-quarters of an hour before the line went through. Fellows in the dome could see the empty trays going back to the kitchen, but the Douks in Siberia couldn’t see them from the gate. However, a cleaner on the second range gave the highsign to a Douk standing at the gate. When they brought the meals to Siberia ten minutes later, the Douks all helped themselves, each taking his tray slowly and deliberately with no indication that they had been eight days without meals. The guards were dumbfounded and one of them later told me, “You know there may be something to that religion of theirs. Now there was no possible way they could have known that the Douks in the hole ate their dinners. They couldn’t see the trays going back, and nobody was allowed up to the gate to talk even one word to them. “There is something spiritual about them knowing that

Life in the big house and being so sure of it. When we asked them how they knew, they just shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘You trust in God, brother, you be all right.’ ” But the pay-off came when the Douks were let out for exercise. They just spread out like a bunch of sheep, wandering aimlessly in every possible direction except up. Some walked down one range, some down another, and they wandered across the dome. Each one headed for a cleaner, as there was a cleaner on each range. A Douk walked up to one cleaner and said, “Hello, brother, have you heard of Jesus Christ?” “No, I haven’t. Is he with you guys, too?” Brother, he is with everybody. Let me tell you about him.” Meanwhile, the guards were going crazy trying to get them rounded up. They weren’t afraid of what the Douks would do as much as they were what the cleaners would do. In all the confusion, they couldn’t watch us and watch the Douks too; and they knew the Douks wouldn’t talk no matter what they saw. After this, when they let the Douks out for exercise, they brought out reinforcements, and had enough guards so that they could herd them to the exercise yard, and the same when they brought them back. The Douks were on a hunger strike because they wanted their own cooks in the kitchen so they could have their meals prepared the way they wanted them. They didn’t eat meat, and the authorities were going to let them eat what they liked of the regular meals, and leave the rest. But the Douks didn’t see it that way. The meals they got after they had their own cooks in the kitchen consisted mostly of raw vegetables, raw prunes, and Doukhobor soup made out of milk and vegetables. These Douks had stuck together for three years. Over on the island, they were no trouble, as there was only a wire fence between the men and the women, and the

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Bitter Humour authorities let them live pretty much as they lived at home. That is, they did their own washing, cooking, gardening, knitting, rug making, and house cleaning. They were a headache for the authorities at the pen, though. But the authorities aren’t good losers in any argument. Their final plot was to split the Douks up by a day, when they let them out. They were all supposed to go out the same day, as they had all been sentenced to three years, and had all lost all their remission. In a final effort to split them up, the authorities let half of them out a day early. They told them to get on the train and go home because the others wouldn’t be out till the next day. One of them said, “We shall wait.” And wait they did, all night, on the lawn in front of the penitentiary, until their “brothers” were released the next morning. They all went off together singing hymns. A little Chinaman who got life for killing his wife used to think every morning he was getting out that day. As soon as the cleaners broke off the line after being counted, anyone who was being released would go to the gate lead¬ ing into the chief keeper’s office. The Chinaman had seen this for many years. Each day, with two or three letters in his hand that he had got sometime during his sentence, he would walk up and ring the bell to the gate. The guard would come out and say, “No, not this morning, Charlie; maybe tomorrow.” The Chinaman would say, “All lite, maybe tomollow.” I heard the story about him. He had had a wife and house, and all the money he got he converted into gold coins which he hid in the bottom of a rocking chair. His wife didn’t know about it and used to sit on the rocking chair, knitting. One day, for some reason or other, she took the chair apart, and when Charlie came into the house there were gold coins spread all over the floor. Charlie went out of his mind, ran to the wood shed, grabbed his hatchet, and made a widower out of himself on the spot.

Life in the big house It was not likely that he would ever get out, unless he became \iolent and went to an institution for the crimin¬ ally insane, and there was no indication he would do that. But it was pathetic his going up every morning with his three letters, and pressing the button on the bell at the gate. My Chinese friend in the library told me he had talked to him, and he didn’t know what he was in for, or how long he was doing, or how long he had been in. All he knew was he was going home tomorrow. In the laundry there was “The Little Black Book.” In this was each convict’s number, name, crime, length of sentence, and release date. Usually we knew what a guy was in for, without looking at the “Little Black Book;” but we often used to look at it to see what the specific charge was. A fellow got two years for digging up graves. He was a grave digger, and in the daytime he used to dig graves and fill them in after funerals. At night, he would get over¬ time by digging up the graves, stripping the corpses of clothes, to sell later at a second hand store. A body was ordered dug up for further investigation and when the box was opened the corpse was naked. So they laid for the grave digger and caught him red-handed one night. He was always referred to as “the Grave Digger” both by cons and screws. Many of the screws were referred to by nicknames. This nickname usually indicated some characteristic and usually it wasn’t complimentary. Cons weren’t supposed to take anything out of the garden down by the front gate. One day a con took a cabbage, and started up the hill towards the exercise yard with it. He saw the guard following him so he stripped off a leaf and dropped one every few feet. In between times, he was eating away on another leaf. The guard coming along behind picked up all the leaves that had been dropped. Instead of yelling at the con to stop, and saving

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Bitter Humour the rest of the cabbage, the screw was gathering evidence. When the con got to the dome, the screw ran up to him with a handful of cabbage leaves and said, “I saw you, I followed you; I have the evidence; you are crimed for stealing a cabbage.” The con said, “Oh, I saw you with your magnifying glass, Sherlock, but anyway I got a good feed of cabbage.” The con got three days in the hole and the screw got the nickname of Sherlock Holmes. Cons were always supposed to address the hacks as, “Sir,” or “Mr.” whatever the name was. Whenever a fish would ask someone what Sherlock’s name was, he would be told, “Mr. Holmes.” Then when the poor fish would say, “Mr. Holmes,” Sherlock would fly into a rage and say, “Who told you my name was Mr. Holmes?” Shortly before I went into New Westminster, the talking-period had been instituted in the penitentiaries. I think it was an hour talking-period a day. The bell would ring to start talking and at the end of the hour it would ring to stop. Prior to this innovation, no talking had been permitted at any time in the cells. But when the bell rang to stop talking, it meant stop. If you were in the middle of a sentence, you had better break it off right there, because if a guard caught you after the bell you were crimed. The old-time guards resented anything that would make it more pleasant for the cons, and therefore resented the talking-period, as they resented the issuing of punk outfits and fine-cut tobacco. One night two cons got into a discussion on the range. One was a con man with a fair sense of humour, and the other had been convicted on such charges as living on the avails of prostitution. He was always bragging about his stealing. The con man said, “How are you coming along with that book you are writing. Mushroom?” “Oh, it’s all right for you guys to laugh about my book, but I’ll be the one who gets the money for it.”

Life in the big house Another fellow, a few cells away, said, “You can bullshit these guys, maybe Mushroom, but you can’t bullshit me. I was in the reform school with you and it took you three bits to learn to write your own name. From there you went to Okalla, and from Okalla you came here. Now you are going to write a book. Jesus Christ! What an imagination!” That s what it takes, imagination,” Mushroom said. If it does then you should be a success,” someone else chipped in. Mushroom said, “You guys all talk, and none of you know what you are talking about. Probably none of you have ever been in a newspaper office.” Someone else said, “Well I’ve been in a few newspaper offices.” Mushroom said, “You mean to tell me you have been in the editorial room of a newspaper office?” “Certainly.” “Well, what’s the first thing you saw when you walked in the door.” “I certainly didn’t see you there, that’s a cinch.” “All right now, be serious for a minute. If you’ve been in a newspaper office what sign do you see as you walk in?” “No sign at all.” “There you go. You’ve never been in one. Anyone who has ever been in an editorial office can tell you that there is a big sign that says, ‘Don’t use any hackneyed phrases.’ ” There were several laughs and someone said, “Go to sleep, Mushroom; you’re nuts.” Then Mushroom said, “Well, anyway, I’m not helpless like some of you guys outside. Even if my book don’t sell I can make more money boosting than most of you have ever seen.” Someone said, “What do you boost mostly, Mushroom?” “Oh! high class stuff. I don’t touch anything unless it’s worth $100. And then I’ve made plenty of boosts for a $250 article, and a few for $500. I don’t bar anything as long as I can carry it, and it’s worth more than $100.”

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Bitter Humour The con man then came back into the argument just to get Mushroom’s goat. “You guys make me sick with your petty boosts. I’d be ashamed to tell anyone if I were such a chicken-shit thief. Now when I was prowling around Hollywood, Mary Pickford had an ermine coat that was on display in a fur store. Well, I boosted that god-damned thing. It was worth $30,000. Now that’s what I call an average boost.” The bell rang to quit talking. Mushroom muttered loud enough you could hear him about four cells away, “Thirty thousand dollars, shit!” The guard said loud and clear, “Mushroom, you are crimed.” There were several muffled laughs. The next day Mushroom went to court and lost ten days “good-time” remission, for talking after the bell went. A sheet of paper was left in each cell for the cons to sign if they were willing to put some of their ten cents a day towards a radio. The majority signed it, and soon the loud¬ speakers were set up two to one side of a block, that is five tiers high and about twenty cells long depending on the block. It was a tinny sound as though it was being piped into a big tub. When it was loud, the sounds reverberated around the block, and it was impossible to understand any of the talking. The music wasn’t much better. The triumvirate that selected the programs was com¬ posed of Lucy, the Protestant minister, and the priest; but it was known that Lucy dominated it. She liked symphonic and classical music and most of the cons didn’t, but when there was symphonic or classical music to be had, it was on. On a blackboard above the kitchen door, where the line went through for meals, there was written the pro¬ grams for each night. One night, as we were going through, one of the programs listed was the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. The guys were cursing and saying, “Lucy’s been at it again, that queer son-of-a-bitch.”

Life in the big house A guy about six feet three stood on his tip-toes, and erased the Sym with his fingers, and a couple of guys murmured approval. A guard was about eight feet away, but he didn’t see it, as it happened in a second. A few guys started to beef that they couldn’t stand the radio and so the authorities started a silent range. There was not supposed to be any talking on the silent range at any time. I was one of the first to get on it and stayed there until my time was up. Some fellows came over and stayed for a few days, but couldn’t stand the silence and got moved back again. Most of the guys on the silent range were long-timers. There were a couple of lifers among the eight or ten on the range. I think I was the only one doing as little as two years. There were peep-holes in the back of the cells, as there are in all penitentiaries. If he wanted to spy on the con without the con seeing him, a guard could walk along in the duct behind the cell, pull back the cover, and look through the peep-hole. It was strictly forbidden to plug this peep-hole. Usually, what they tried to catch the cons at was “fish¬ ing.” As guards made their rounds, they had to punch a clock. Hence when the guard made his round you could be reasonably sure he wouldn’t be back until it was time to punch the clock again — about forty minutes. If you wanted to pass something to the guy in the next cell, you had to fish because you could get your hand through the bars only to your wrist, and the abutment on the side went out quite a bit farther than that. So you had a fishing line, a piece of cotton cord, probably stolen from the butcher shop, where they used it for tying meat to be roasted. You tied the fishing line to the end of your whisk-broom, toilet brush, ruler, or T-square if you had one. You put a weight on the other end, usually rubber so it wouldn’t make any noise. The sink plug made a good weight. Then, with the weight balanced on the end of the ruler, or what-

74

Bitter Humour ever you used, you shoved it through the bars and out as far as your wrist would go and still leave room for move¬ ment. Then, with a flick of the wrist, you tried to put the weight as near as possible to the other guy’s cell. If it was a good throw he’d whisper, “O.K.” and you’d wait until he fished it in. If he whispered, “No good,’’ you’d pull it back quickly, and make another throw. When he got it, if you were getting something from him he’d tug on the string to let you know it was tied on, and you’d pull it in as fast as you could. If you were send¬ ing something to him, you tied it on and then tugged the fishing line a couple of times. Most of the fishing was an exchange of magazines or books and this was strictly forbidden. Both parties were always crimed when caught fishing. It usually called for loss of three days’ remission. But it was a calculated risk nearly everyone took. Few fellows that I knew didn’t lose some remission. Often it would be for blowing up at a guard. In the pens, the cons have an expression that the hack is “riding” them. This was much worse in the days of the twelve-hour shifts than it is today on the eight-hour shift and five-day week. If a hack got it in for you, he could ride you, and nobody but you would know he was riding you. You might be going through with the line and there would be a space of four feet in front of you, and the same behind you between you and two other cons. The hack would step up and say quietly, “Now quit talking in line; I’m not warning you again.” If you answered him back you’d be crimed for insolence. If you didn’t, he’d watch his chance until there was nobody around again, and then he’d maybe say, “Now, put your hat on straight; I’m not warning you again.” If you went through the motion, you were all right. But if you talked back, or told him your hat was on straight, you would be crimed. Once in a while you’d see a bull do this a couple of

Life in the big house times to some con and you’d know he was riding him. But usually they were shrewd enough to hide it from everyone except the guys they were riding. There were probably two motives for this riding. One, of course, was a sadistic desire to make it miserable for someone they didn’t like; and the other was a desire for promotion. It was felt that the guards who crimed the most cons were the most efficient, and the ones best suited to be promoted to keepers. This called for higher pay, I believe. It was a fair assumption, too, because, with the rules as they were at that time, it was absolutely impossible for a con to get through the day without breaking them if he went out of his cell at all. Of course there were rules they enforced and rules they didn’t enforce unless they were riding a guy. When there was a heavy fog, the outside gangs had to stay in their cells. But there were some shops almost ad¬ jacent to the dome door and they included the mail bags, change-room, carpenter-shop, and machine-shop. There were concrete steps up a few feet from the dome door to the level of the shop dome which was only a few feet beyond the steps. On foggy mornings, when the shopgangs were going to work, hacks would line up shoulder to shoulder from the dome door to the shop-dome door in two lines. We would walk between them when we went to work in the change-room. One morning, as they were lined up like this, the guy in front of me looked at me and sort of smiled, and I smiled too. We were both crimed for “smiling at the fog,” and went to court at dinner-time. I forget what we got, but it was punishment of some kind. Nobody ever beat charges in the warden’s court. But most of us always pleaded not guilty anyway, whether we were or not, just to let the warden know our heart was in the right place. One day a guard came to the change-room for me and the fellow who was crimed with me for smiling at the fog. It was probably to take us to sick-parade or some-

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Bitter Humour thing. As soon as we got out of the shop-dome door, he gave us his customary spiel. “All right, coats buttoned up to the top, no talking, and keep in a straight line.” I said, “Who do you want us to keep in a straight line with?” He said, “I want you two to keep in a straight line and no talking.” I said, “But it is physically impossible for us to be in anything but a straight line. Don’t you know that it was discovered more than 2,000 years ago that the shortest distance between any two points is a straight line?” He said, “God-dammit, that’s what comes from educat¬ ing convicts. Well, you are crimed and we’ll see how you like that.” The other fellow laughed at my explanation, and the guard was so infuriated he crimed him for insolence. When we went before the warden, the bull told his tale of woe but didn’t repeat what I had said. He said he couldn’t remember. The warden asked me if I could remember what I had said. I said, “Yes,” and repeated it. He looked at me with a sort of amused look and said, “Yes, you are perfectly right. However, let me draw your attention to the fact that the shortest distance between here and the hole is a straight line, and that is where you will spend the next three days on Number 1 diet.” Number 1 diet was bread and water. In the hole were a few boards, nailed together to sleep on, and there was no plumbing. A toilet-bucket was emp¬ tied once a day, and there was a bowl for water. Although it was beneath the level of the dome, it was not dark as the hole in Lethbridge was. On the other hand, men did weeks down here, whereas in Lethbridge not many did more than three days at a stretch. You were not allowed any reading except the Bible. Everyone took a Bible to the hole, because if you hap¬ pened to get tobacco, you could use the pages for cigarette papers.

Life in the big house One guy who had done months in the hole after the strike said, “I smoked my way halfway through Genesis, and read the Bible clean through twice. There are some fair yams in it.” Shortly after the Douks went home, rumours spread that some of the women Douks had got pregnant on the island and had babies. The question was, had the guards been lax in their duty and let the men and women get together or had the guards dipped the wick a little themselves? In either case, there were some fair rumours flying around. Somone invented a punk-box that worked with the stem and wheel from a bullet lighter. The first ones were made of wood, and then the cons began making them in the machine shop out of metal. These metal ones were about an inch and a half square, had hinges on, and the stem and lighter wheel were soldered or brazed on the top of the lid. These became more or less legitimate and some of the fellows got punk-boxes made with their initials in brass on the lid. About ninety-five percent of the cons would steal ma¬ terial for other cons from where they worked. A few would charge a package of tobacco or more for what they stole, and these we called merchants; but the majority would do it as a favour, or an exchange of favours. Most of us would buy what we wanted from the kitchen from a merchant, rather than have a friend stick his neck out to get it. To get the extra tobacco, we used to gamble on fights, or just about anything. As long as you gambled with guys that were sure to pay it was easy to keep ahead, either by betting on sure things, or by making the odds work for you. For instance, on one of the Louis-Schmelling fights, the odds in prison were two to one when the cons first started betting. By the height of the fight interest, they had gone up to about twelve to one. By betting both ways, and watching the odds, you could win no matter which way the fight went.

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Bitter Humour There was always someone who would bet that Los Angeles was farther west than Reno, Nevada. Someone could always be found to bet that Brigham Young was the founder of the Mormon religion. The authority for settling most bets was the Encyclo¬ paedia Britannica. Anyone who didn’t pay gambling debts was likely to get his head beaten in, or have some¬ thing heavy dropped on him from one of the top ranges. Some fellows could borrow from one guy to pay off a debt, and then later borrow from someone else to pay off what they owed, and keep going so that they were never out of debt. Still, by this method they always paid off by the time promised. Gambling was strictly forbidden, but, like a lot of other things that were strictly forbidden, cons didn’t pay too much attention to the regulation. Once, going through the line, I saw a guy I thought I knew. He spoke to me and I found he had been a police¬ man in my home town. He asked me not to tell anyone he had been a policeman. I told him I wouldn’t, but not to talk to me any more, and he agreed to that. According to con philosophy, it’s a kind of a disgrace to be hobnobbing with a policeman or ex-policeman, either inside or outside; and the cons usually make it a little rough for an ex-policeman. This they usually do with jibes, and by discriminating against him with library books, clothes, and other little luxuries, so that he is always just a little uncomfortable. Had I disliked him outside I probably wouldn’t have kept quiet, but he was a big good-natured guy, more the type of a town watchman, and I don’t think he ever arrested anyone. So he finished his time without anyone else finding out he had been a policeman. I never bothered to find out what he was in for, but I knew he was doing two years. Some cons used to say, “Never trust a lifer.” The rea¬ soning behind this was that the only way a lifer could get out was on parole, and the only way he could get a

Life in the big house parole was to be a stool-pigeon. Like much con reasoning, it was false. But not trusting a lifer referred only to serious matters such as escapes, poisonings, plotting against the guards, and sabotage of penitentiary property. At Christmas, there were better meals and a bag of candy, most of it made in the kitchen, and some of it almost as hard as diamonds. During the Christmas sea¬ son, there was a concert when outside performers came in. In the rest of the prison it was pretty noisy as the hacks slackened up a little on Christmas Eve. On the silent range, however, it was fairly quiet. The depression gave rise to some strange partnerships. One such was The Unholy Three. This trio had been convicted of attempted bank robbery and were sentenced, so it looked, according to their sizes. One was a coloured guy and quite short, another was a French Canadian about four inches taller, and the third was an Englishman, tall and on the Slim Summerville build. They were doing five, seven, and nine years with the Negro doing five, and the Englishman doing nine. They had conceived the idea of tunnelling under a bank, going up through the floor, and cutting through the vault with an acetylene torch. Accordingly, they rented a house next door or close to the bank. When they started to tunnel, disposing of the dirt be¬ came a problem. One of them got the idea they should pose as gardeners, putting the dirt out back in boxes, and telling people it was to grow seedlings which would be later transplanted. Neighbours became suspicious because nothing they knew of would grow in the gumbo clay and rocks they put in some of the boxes. And then when they got crowded for room and started piling the boxes of clay one on top of the other, this gave rise to further curiosity. They weren’t too many feet from the vault when they were arrested. Whether they would have got into it with¬ out burning the building down, or burning the money up.

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Bitter Humour

is another question, as none of them had ever used an acetylene torch. I talked to two of them, the Englishman and the French¬ man. The Frenchman was taking Grade IV in school and told me his father had a small farm in Quebec. But he hastened to add, “He’s not nearly as smart as I am. He can’t read and write English, he’s never ridden on freight trains, and he’s never even been in jail. I don’t think he’s ever had any excitement in his whole life.” The Englishman was the best educated and the most intelligent of the Unholy Three. I asked him, once, how he had come to agree to go along with a plot like that. He said, “Well I never did anything like that in Eng¬ land and didn’t know anything about it. I was out of work and getting a job looked hopeless. The Frenchman approached me and told me the Darky was a bit of an expert on this sort of thing, so it seemed like a way to make a spot of cash without taking too much risk. “Trouble is none of us knew anything about gardening and that gave us away; those boxes of clay in our back yard.” The Unholy Three were all together going through with the line one night, and a con commented, “There’s the Unholy Three, probably plotting the next bank job.” Another guy said, “Yeah! The Spook is doing all the talking; he’s the brains of the mob.” Just then Sherlock Holmes stepped up and tapped the coloured fellow on the shoulder. The guy behind me said, “Sherlock has nailed him for talking in line. That should be good for at least three days copper, (meaning remission or good time.) Another interesting character in New Westminster was a Ukrainian, doing seven years for selling a money-mak¬ ing machine for $7,000. He spoke several languages and uesd to sell his machine to Ukrainian and Polish farmers. Just to keep his hand in while he was in prison he drew diagrams, made models, and gave instructions to cons

Life in the big house who wanted to learn the business. For these things, he used to charge them tobacco. He always had eager students willing to buy his exper¬ ience and knowledge. He was well aware that this know¬ ledge would be as useless to most of them as his money¬ making machine was for making money. But it was in his blood and he had to do it. A month or two before my time was up, they took me to the store-room to try on a suit. If you were doing a long stretch, you got measured, and they made a suit for you in the prison tailor shop. But anyone doing only two years had to take one of the stock suits out of the store¬ room. You had a choice of about six. Usually three of them wouldn’t fit, and the other three were of colours that shrieked. I took one that didn’t fit. The coat wasn’t too bad but the pants were about five inches too big around the waist. The guard said the tailor would take them in a little, but that never happened. The cons used to say if you got out on a rainy day, they supplied you with a jackknife. When anyone asked what the knife was for, someone would say, “So the suit doesn’t shrink up and choke you to death when the water hits it. You cut it with the jackknife.” Cons got five cents a day for days they worked, and on a two year bit their pay usually amounted to about eleven dollars. If you earned less than ten dollars the authorites had to make the rest up to ten dollars. I knew that if I stayed in Vancouver I’d probably be back on drugs within a week, so I decided to go to Calgary as soon as I got out. I didn’t want to take a chance of coming back within a week, like some of the fellows I had seen, so I got a ticket to Calgary. One of my first desires was to get out of the gunny-sack suit and put my own suit on. My first disappointment came when I got my own suit back from the cleaners and pressers, and tried it on. It was about four inches too small

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Bitter Humour around the waist, and the coat wouldn’t even button in the front. Since I didn’t have enough money to buy a suit, I put a few dollars down on one that I picked up about six weeks later. Meantime, I had nothing to wear but the joint suit. So I went to a second-hand store and traded the suit for a pair of overalls and a work shirt. At least I wouldn't stand out so much in this outfit. Then, too, I thought I would go to work for the winter if I could get work. It was a bad time of the year to get work, and the depression was still on. Most people around Calgary were enthusiastic about Social Credit. I got a few odd jobs in small towns and finally wound up working in a lumbercamp and saw-mill west of Calgary. The pay when I started was one dollar a day, and board and room. After several months I got the job of driving the Caterpillar, hauling logs in to the sawmill from the woods, and for this my pay skyrocketed to a dollar fifty a day. For the first three months, I didn’t go to Calgary on week-ends when anyone who desired could go in. I stayed in camp and played poker. It was just a small game, but I always played to win, and did win enough that it wasn’t necessary for me to draw any of my wages. Among the fellows that came and went at the loggingcamp were a few who had been in jail, and talked freely about it. One of the fellows got the nickname of R.B. after he told us he had done six months for stealing the wheels and tires off a Bennett Buggy, and selling them to a junk-yard dealer. During the depression, when many Alberta farmers couldn’t afford to buy gas to run their cars, they stripped the cars down to the chassis, put a buggy body on, attached a pole and whipple trees, hitched a team of horses to it and called it a Bennett Buggy after the then Prime Minister, and leader of the Conservative party, R. B. Bennett. At one time, when six of us were playing poker, there was only one who hadn’t been in jail. We used to kid each

Life in the big house

other as we were playing. Once, when the fellow who hadn’t been in jail held up the game a little, before deciding whether to raise or call, someone said, “Well, Outcast, what are you going to do?’’ The nickname stuck, and from then on he was Outcast. After I had been at camp a few months, I occasionally went to Calgary with the bunch on Saturday afternoon. We’d all rent rooms in one hotel, and get in a bunch of booze, and then four or five would usually head for the notch-houses for a change of oil before getting plastered. These roaring drunks didn’t appeal to me much, so I looked up a couple of junkers and found out where I could get a fix. There were no pushers and most of the drugs were obtained from doctors. I used to get half a grain of morphine and the doctor would give it to me in his office. He would charge a couple of dollars. Some of them charged only a dollar for a half a grain. After getting a fix I’d usually head for a second-hand book store on Eighth Ave. and buy some books. There were a lot of books I’d heard about or read about when I was in New Westminster, but they were not available in the penitentiary library. Some of these were books by Oscar Wilde, especially The Ballad of Reading Gaol; The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam-, Karl Marx’s Das Kapital and the Communist Manifesto; several biographies including Clarence Darrow For The Defence, and the biography of Eugene Debs. After having a fix, I’d buy books and what other things I needed, and go to my room where I'd read and coast. I not only enjoyed myself more, but it cost me less than the other fellows. This was the longest stretch I was to be out of jail at one time for the next twenty-one years — a little over a year. Shortly before Christmas in 1937 the sawmill went broke and we were all out of jobs. I went to Calgary and met some fellows I had gone to school with. They had an old car, and were doing just about anything to make a

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Bitter Humour buck. None of them had been caught yet, but they all were later on. They were going to Pincher Creek, taking a fellow down to visit his parents, and asked me to come along for the ride. I agreed to go, not knowing what I was letting myself in for. At the first small town they stopped in, they started prowling cars, and taking out anything that had been left in them. The fellow who was going to visit his parents didn’t seem to mind, although he didn’t do any prowling himself. I protested that if I had known this was going to happen I wouldn’t have come. One of them said, “What the hell! You’ve been in the pen. We thought you could give us a few pointers. We’ve been making pretty good at this.” So there was nothing to do but go along with the play under the circumstances. The stuff we picked up wasn’t worth more than fifty dollars at hock-shop prices. But what bothered me was the number of cars broken into in each town. It seemed like deliberately leaving a trail. If we were caught with the goods, there would be several charges of breaking and entering. Moreover, I was the oldest and I was the only one with a record so that I would get most of the blame. This made me a little nervous; so when we got to Pincher Creek I suggested they box all this stuff up and express it to Calgary. They agreed to this and I was relieved. But on the way back, they just couldn’t resist a few more capers, some of them in towns where we had stopped on the way down. They had never been caught at anything and con¬ sidered it a remote possibility. One of the things we picked up from a car on the way back was a long sheepskin-lined coat with a fur collar. When we got back, one of the fellows decided to hock it, and asked me to come with him. I said, “The police know me and it won’t do you any good to be seen with me.” He said, “Well, you don’t need to come in with me. Just

Life in the big house

wait outside till I sell it, and then we’ll go and get some booze.” While I was waiting outside the hock-shop for him, two fuzz walked in, and spoke to me as they entered. I thought I’d better go in and see how he was doing, because I knew if they started questioning him he was a dead duck. Sure enough they were questioning him. One of them said, “Now, if this is your coat where did you get it?” He said, “Oh, I bought it.” They told him they were arresting him. I knew that both his parents and mine would probably blame me if he went to jail, so I told the bulls the coat was mine and that I had asked him to sell it for me. They arrested both of us and charged us with receiving stolen goods. I told him to plead not guilty. I pleaded guilty and got four months for receiving stolen property. I might as well have saved myself the trouble as he was in Lethbridge for something else before my four months were up. The old Bastille at Lethbridge had changed quite a bit from when I had last seen it. Fine-cut tobacco was issued with cigarette papers, and things had loosened up con¬ siderably. It was a pretty easy four months, as nobody bothered me, and I caught up on a lot of reading. When I got out in the spring, I went to work again as I hadn’t completely made up my mind yet whether I would go in for stealing as a profession, or whether I’d work for the rest of my life. During the summer I got married to a widow who had two children. This was an ill-fated arrangement almost from the start. I worked part of the time, and stole part of the time, and any time left over I spent arguing with my wife. The only times she was halfway congenial was when I’d make a sting and be able to give her a few dollars.

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Bitter Humour One night a couple of friends came up to our apart¬ ment and asked me if they could leave two guns with me. They said they were hot, both them and the guns, and that they’d pick them up later. I agreed to keep the guns for them as there wasn’t much chance of my place getting searched. I wasn’t using drugs and had never carried a gun. My wife and I got into a spat later on, and I suspect that she told the police about the guns. In any case, she went out before the two detectives came up, and they went right to where the guns were before looking any place else. What I didn’t know about the guns was that one of them belonged to the City Police Department. It had been stolen on a prowl from a policeman’s house. Then, too, there were strong suspicions that it had been used in a hold-up. All I needed to hear now was that someone had been shot in the hold-up. But this hadn’t happened. I was charged with robbery while armed, unlawfully retaining in my possession a stolen revolver, and posses¬ sion of an unregistered revolver. The armed robbery charge was the one that had me most worried as that was penitentiary material. When the police held the line-up, there were about a dozen of us in it. Four or five people came to see if they could pick out the hold-up men. I was plenty scared, as I didn’t have any proof of where I had been except the kids, and they would be too young to testify. With the guns, all it needed was one person to say, “That’s him,’’ and I would have had it. However, the people looked us all over carefully and a woman picked out a fellow with whom I had changed clothes. But he had been in the city police-station since before the hold-up. The bull in charge of the line-up said, “Are you sure?” She said, “Yes, I’m sure. He’s the one; I’d know him any place.”

Life in the big house

The bull said, “No, you’ve made a mistake. He was in jail when the store was held up.’’ She said, “But you said —” He cut in and fairly shouted at her, “Shut up. Now that’s all. Get out of here.” She was still protesting, “But you said, but you said.” Obviously, they had coached her to pick out the man in my clothes. One of the head detectives called me out a few minutes later, and said, “Why did you change clothes?” I said, “For the same god-damned reason you coached that woman to pick out my clothes.” He denied this but said he still thought I was guilty. I guess he did as with whatever my wife had told them and the other evidence, it looked pretty bad. And I couldn’t tell them how I got the guns, which made it look worse. However, I wasn’t worried now, as my lawyer told me they wouldn’t go ahead with the armed robbery charge. They gave me a stay of proceedings on that, which meant that I could not be charged with it again. However, it has always been read out when my record was read. When my lawyers have objected to it, the crown attorney has said, “Oh I’m sorry' about that; I should have taken that off. Just disregard that. Your Honour.” I’ve often wondered how when a judge is listening to a man’s record, he “just disregards” a stay of proceedings on an armed robbery charge, after he’s heard about it. So I got one year for possession of the stolen revolver, and three months concurrently for possession of an un¬ registered revolver. My wife came down to see me before I left for Leth¬ bridge, for the purpose, I think, of trying to find out whether I knew she had squealed on me. I didn’t keep her guessing but told her what I thought of her, and that I would square things up when I got out. This was not the shortest sentence I’d ever done but it

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Bitter Humour was the easiest. After coming so close to going to the penitentiary, it was a relief to get off with only a year. During this bit, there was a fellow in that I had done time with more than once in Lethbridge, and also in New Westminster. He and two other fellows were waiting trial on a charge of carrying safe-breaking tools. One was a big Ukrainian, who had done a couple of short stretches, and the other was a guy who had never been in jail before. The way they intended to beat this case was to put the fellow with no record on the stand and he was to explain what they were doing in that area, and what the tools they had were for. When they were coaching him in the bull-pen they told him, “You’ve got to be on your toes. This crown prosecutor is pretty sharp. You make one slip and he’ll make a mountain out of it, and we are dead.” The fellow with no record said, “Don’t worry, fellows, I’ll make the judge cry.” Nobody was very confident of him because he was too cock-sure. He said, “I’ll make a donkey out of the crown prosecutor.” So everyone was waiting to hear what happened when they came back from court. My friend had got eighteen months, the Ukrainian one year, and the other fellow six months. I asked the Ukrainian, “Well, did he make the judge cry?” “Make judge cry, son-of-a-bitch, he make me cry.” I asked my friend what had happened. He said, “It was pitiful. The prosecutor had him tied up in knots before he asked six questions. He had us swimming at three o’clock in the morning, and he had the sun shining at midnight, and it was just so pitiful that both the judge and prosecutor were laughing at some of his answers. We should have put the hunky on the stand despite his record. I’m sure he’d have done better than that.” During this bit I decided I would steal when I got out

Life in the big house

because if I went to work my wife might try to get some of my wages. I wasn’t going to let that happen. I learned a little about punching safes during this bit. I already knew a little about the law, and what you could get away with and what you couldn’t in the matter of carrying tools. Another fellow who had punched a few safes agreed to meet me, and we’d hook up when I got out. He explained as much as he could to me and drew diagrams and so on, and we even planned some of the safes we would take. The highlight of this bit was the riot. The first one I’d ever seen, it was quite an interesting affair. A fellow, known as a Communist and called the Commie, organized it. He came to me and I told him I didn t want any part of it, but wouldn’t do anything to hinder it. I wanted to get out as soon as I could and start stealing. I didn’t hold much hope for the success of his riot as most of the thieves didn’t want anything to do with it and, of course, the farmers didn’t either. Since most of a jail’s population is made up of habitual thieves and farmers, it didn’t leave him much to work with. But he got ten or twelve young guys eager for excite¬ ment lined up, and the plans for the riot were on. It was to take place in the dining-room. They were to lock the dining-room door, which locked automatically when you pulled it shut, barricade the door, rush the kitchen, and then negotiate. It sounded like a crazy idea but, with eight or ten of these young guys eager for excite¬ ment, it just might work. Had it been seven or eight years earlier, I might have been in on it but now I was interested in getting out as soon as possible and making money. The morning of the riot came. The cons filed into the dining-room, took their places as usual in their seats, and the first ones in started eating; but they ate slowly with every eye fixed on the front door waiting for the last man to come in. Then it happened. As the guard at the dining-room door signalled to the kitchen guard that everyone was in.

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Bitter Humour a con sitting in the front row jumped up. He pushed the guard aside, slammed the kitchen door, and yelled, “Let’s g°” At that instant about ten fellows picked up jugs of hot coffee and swirled it over the crowds sitting down. There were shouts of pain as guys were burned with the hot coffee. Then all the tables were tipped forward, sprawling the guys in front on the floor amid mush, hot coffee, and bread. Tables were piled up against the front door and stacked back about four feet making a formidable barricade. Someone had gone to the kitchen, and opened the tap on the coffee urn, and both the dining-room and kitchen floors were covered with milk, tea, bread, and mush. Several guys slipped and got up soaking wet. There were two guards in the kitchen, one who had been at the jail quite a number of years, and another who was fairly new. As one young fellow went to break the lock on the refrigerator door, the new guard stepped up and said, “Here here, you can’t do that.” At that moment a young fellow stepped up to him with a long butcher-knife, and grabbed him by the shoulder. A couple of fellows stopped the guy with the knife, but it looked like he was all for slitting a throat. I told the older guard, “Why don’t you straighten that new guy out. He’s likely to turn this place into a butchershop. If they stab one guard, someone else will want to make a name for himself, and you’ll get it too.” He said, “Yes, I can see that; the stupid son-of-a-bitch doesn’t seem to realize this is serious. I couldn’t care less what happens to him, but I’ve got a wife and kids.” He went over and told the other guard, “Just forget you are a guard and start realizing your life could be in danger if you make a wrong move or say a wrong thing.” After the refrigerator was broken into, some of the fellows appointed themselves as cooks, and steaks were on frying, toast was being made, and everybody who wasn’t too frightened was eating.

Life in the big house As time wore on, even the guards were hungry and were eating. By now the danger of the new guard getting his throat slit was over, and he was joking and talking to the cons as he ate. Outside, the guards were trying to get in, but both the front and back doors were barricaded. The Commie said we wouldn’t let anyone in until the Mounted Police came. He took a petition around for everyone to sign. I think one of the demands was for better food. I recall one of them was for “cell privacy,” that is that no guard would be allowed to search a cell. He was trying to negotiate through the barricade at the front door with the rcmp and the warden. For some reason or other, they weren’t in a mood to negotiate. They just wanted to get in, and threatened to use tear gas if the cons didn’t take away the barricade. At the rumour of tear gas, an old con who had been through riots where they used it told everyone to wet their handkerchiefs. I had a better idea. I went into the bake-shop which was in the corner of the kitchen and farthest away from the door. It was the only place that hadn’t been ransacked by the rioters, as the guys were baking bread and let only a few of us in. Finally, some kind of an agreement was reached at the front door, the barricade was pulled down, and the cons began to file out, escorted to their cells or dormitories by guards and Mounties. After everyone was safely locked up, the warden gave a speech: something about how tough he was going to get, and how he was only after the leaders, and was ignoring the petition because he knew most of the prisoners were forced to sign it. They took a few guys down to the dining-room to clean up the mess. Some of the guys who were selected as ring¬ leaders were kept locked up in their cells for a while, and I think that’s about all that ever came of it. I was eager to get out and start breaking into safes. Up until now I could have gone either way according to opportunity. If I had been able to get a job that paid a

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Bitter Humour living wage I might have stuck with it. Then, again, if a good opportunity to steal something had presented itself I might have done that. I wasn’t really decided and never gave it too much thought. But now I resolved to steal and to make a career out of it. Just before I got out war was declared, and there were rumours that there would soon be jobs for everyone who wasn’t in the army. But it was too late for me. I wasn't interested in jobs any more. I wasn’t trained or equipped to do anything that you could make any money at, so I decided to learn safe-cracking, thinking that that would supply me with all the money I’d ever need.

Turning professional The fellow who was to be my partner for the next few months met me on the bus when I got to Calgary. We went to his room and had a fix of morphine. He told me he had a few safes lined up. He said there wouldn’t be too much money in any of them, but they were in places where there was little danger of getting caught, and it would give me an idea how to do it. That night we opened three safes. The first one, he knocked the dial off with a heavy hammer. Then, with a screw-driver, he took off the little plate. After straighten¬ ing the spindle with a couple of whacks of the hammer, he drove it in flush. Next he placed a punch against the spindle and started driving it in. It took only a few whacks, and I could hear the guts fall inside. Then he turned the handle and opened the safe door. Inside there was a small door that opened with a key. He punched in the cylinder of the lock and opened the door. We took what money there was, and headed for the next place. The next one I opened myself, as there was nothing to

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Bitter Humour it, once you knew how. We made about $300 from the three safes we opened that night and, as he said, I got a thousand dollars’ worth of experience. We decided to take a tour around the country and make the safes in some of the small towns. I soon found that the most difficult thing about safe-cracking is locating the ones with money in. Previously, I had thought that all safes contained money, but I soon learned that some of them are used only to hold books, ledgers, mortgages, and other papers. However, I did learn what safes could be punched, and what ones couldn’t. My partner and I were both using drugs and we were seldom short, because we could always open a safe in a drug store and get our own drugs. Some places used to leave a sign on the door, “This safe is not locked.” Meantime my wife had gone to Edmonton, where she was living with somebody else. She sent word in a roundabout way that she would like a divorce, but wanted me to pay for it. I was much too busy to bother getting a divorce but I did obtain the evidence and place it with a lawyer, so that it wouldn’t present any problem if and when I did decide to take time out to get a divorce. There was lots of work, so, when the police bothered us too much, we’d go to work for a couple of days and then quit. A couple of times, the police came around on the job to see if we were working, and then we knew we were good for a couple of more weeks. Often we’d steal a car to make a score in some small town, then we’d leave it there and steal another one to come back in, just in case the first one was discovered missing. By now we knew, of course, that sooner or later we would get pinched and probably go to the pen. In the meantime, we were enjoying ourselves. We were in so many drug stores that we knew the layout of a dispensary almost as well as a druggist. Since they are all laid out practically the same it only took a few seconds to locate the drugs once we were in the dispensary. For

Turning Professional instance, the tinctures are all together and Tincture of Opium, which is Laudanum, is with the tinctures. The same applies to other drugs, except in cases where they are kept in the safe. We had morphine, laudanum, diacetyl-morphine, which is heroin, cocaine, codeine, and at one time had three different kinds of morphine, that is, made by three dif¬ ferent manufacturers. There was never too much fuss raised by the druggists, as we didn’t usually take anything but drugs, and they are not expensive as the druggist buys them. Our policy was not to take anything but drugs and money. This policy resulted in my throwing away thousands of dollars in war bonds later on. One night in a small town we had kicked in a drug store, opened the safe, and taken what money and drugs we could find. These we stuffed in our pockets, went out the back door, and were walking down the street where we intended to cross the tracks and go to our stolen car. At the corner we bumped into the town policeman, and before he could say anything I asked him if there was a restaurant open. "No,” he said. “There’s nothing open this time of night.” Then my partner said, “We are on our way to Calgary to try to join the army. We got a ride with a man who let us off at the edge of town, and we thought we’d see if we could get a cup of coffee; but I guess if there’s no place open — The bull said, “Oh, going to join the army eh? Yes, a lot of fellows joining the army these days. Wish I was twenty years younger. Say, if you fellows want a cup of coffee, come with me. I’ve got a pot on at the fire-hall, and I like someone to talk to. It gets damn lonesome.” We thanked him and went along. He poured us a cup of coffee and said, “This is quite a break for me, you know. I get pretty sick of wandering around here all night and nothing ever happens.”

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Bitter Humour I said, “Well, it’s quite a break for us, too. We really needed a good hot cup of coffee.” He said, “Well, drink up. There’s lots more in the pot. I wish more guys like you would come around.” My partner pretended to yawn and said, “Yes, it must get pretty dull in a small place like this.” We had to spend about an hour with him before we could get away without it looking like we were in a hurry. He decided to make his rounds again, and we told him we’d hit for the highway. He said good-bye, and wished us luck in joining the army, and we thanked him and told him we hoped some¬ thing would happen to liven things up for him. “Not much chance,” he said as we parted. This threw a kink in our plans as we should have been back in Calgary and in bed by now. So, instead of taking a car back we walked on the railroad tracks to the next town, and when the passenger train came through we climbed on the head-end and went in on it. My partner and I decided to take it easy for a while, but soon the idleness began to irk me and I started to steal with another partner. We kicked in quite a few places but didn’t make a great deal of money from any of them. One thing bothered me; that was the safes I couldn’t open. If I only knew how to make and use nitro-glycerine, I’d have it made I thought. I decided I would learn at the first opportunity. Meantime, I got caught trying to break into a ware¬ house in Calgary. My partner got away. The detectives made a deal with me that if I’d plead guilty to so many charges I wouldn’t get more than three years altogether. I agreed on the understanding that if I got more than three years I’d tell the magistrate they made a deal and ask to change my plea to not guilty. They agreed to this, and I pleaded guilty to several charges, including breaking and entering, and theft, possession of housebreaking instruments, and retaining stolen goods. I got three years on some of the charges, and lesser sen-

Ttiming Professional tences on the rest, all to run concurrently, so that I had to serve only three years. At that time they gave us morphine in the rcmp bar¬ racks. The morning we left they gave me a good fix, and the Provost told my escort to see that they got the doctor for me as soon as we got to Saskatoon. It took all night and until noon the next day to get to Saskatoon. My escort had just come down from spending several years in the Arctic. He told me about his experience with the Eskimos, and said he had to be pretty diplomatic when he stopped at one of their villages to rest after a long trip. He said they always wanted you to sleep with their wives, and if you weren’t diplomatic about not doing it, they would be offended. He said he used to tell them he was too tired, and had had a long journey, and had to save his strength. I said, “What would happen if you did sleep with one?” “Well,” he said, “If she wound up with a little package, she’d show it to all the others and say, ‘See what I got, a white one,’ and soon there’d be an investigation and that would be the beginning of the end of my career as a policeman.” He said he liked the North and was going to try to get back there if he could. He hadn’t put the leg-irons on me very tight and when he went to sleep I unlaced my shoes, slipped one leg-iron off and put them both on one ankle. Then I stretched out and went to sleep. We had a double seat and sat facing each other. When he woke up, I was asleep and he noticed the leg irons. He waited until I woke, and then asked me what I had done that for. I said, “Well, it’s more comfortable with them both on one leg.” He said, “Well, I guess if you were going to try to escape you would have tried while I was asleep, so we might as well put them in the briefcase.” The Mounties were allowed to use their own discretion, but were held responsible if anything happened, and also

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Bitter Humour advised to keep either the leg-irons or the handcuffs on at all times. It was a long ride for both of us, and for him it was quite a struggle to keep awake. For me, the effects of the morphine were wearing off, and I couldn’t have slept with¬ out a fix. I told him to go to sleep and I’d wake him up if the conductor came through. The conductor did come through, and I nudged him, and after this happened a couple of times he wasn’t worried any more. He was used to the cold and snow in the Arctic and he must have thought I was too if he believed I’d take out on the bald-headed prairie in below-zero weather. I was starting to get sick before we got to Saskatoon. He promised to get me a fix as soon as we got in. Another Mountie met us at the train and took us to the barracks. At the barracks, the Mountie in charge asked me what I wanted to eat, as they ordered the meals from a restaurant. I told him I wanted a fix first, and I didn’t care what I had to eat. In less than ten minutes he got the doctor in, who gave me a fix and promised to come back after supper, and again the next morning before we left for Prince Albert. The next day we landed in Prince Albert, where all the Mounties were wearing fur caps and coats. I stayed in the cells there for dinner and was taken out to the pen about one-thirty.

A square deal in Prince Albert In Prince Albert, the procedure was much the same as in New Westminster. The screws didn’t seem to be so stern or talk as tough. In the chief keeper’s office, I had my pic¬ ture and finger-prints taken, signed for my clothes and possessions, got a clipper-cut hair-cut, had a creoline bath, was issued prison clothes, and, of course, a number. By the time this was all finished, it was time to go through on the line and pick up supper. I was beginning to feel rough and took only a cup of coffee for supper. My first impressions of Prince Albert were that it was much cleaner than New Westminster, and that the hacks weren’t quite as officious, and didn’t try so hard to give the impression they were hard guys. One of the reasons for this was that quite a few of the hacks in Prince Albert wrere farmers. When their day at the penitentiary was over, they had to go home and do chores and other work. Their main interest was the farm, so that they were con¬ tent to put in the day or night at the penitentiary with as little effort as possible. There were, of course, a lot of rotten ones, trying to become warden in three easy lessons; but these were mostly keepers.

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Bitter Humour Another reason was that most of them hated and feared the warden, a man who made a study of, and delighted in, sadism. When he had come to Prince Albert from New West¬ minster, he had announced that he would give everyone, both guards and prisoners, a square deal. He immediately got the nickname Square Deal and he revelled in this, although he knew both cons and hacks used it ironically. There was no Siberia in Prince Albert, but there was a fish tier, where the fish stayed for a week or so after they came in, until they were assigned to a job of some kind. One noon they took me up to see the warden as they did everyone who came in. He read out my history; I had been convicted of so and so and would serve three years. He said, “You have been in prison before and you know the rules. I would advise you to mind your own business and do your own time.” Whenever he finished a sentence, he would smack his lips as if he relished every word of what he had said. I had been in wardens’ courts before, but never in one where the guards were so visibly terrified of the warden. I was a little sick from my habit, but I couldn’t help being amused at this comic-book-character of a warden. He wound up with, “And in here we give everyone a square deal, and that is why they call us Square Deal.” Then he waved his right hand, back, upwards, and slightly to the right in a slow gesture indicating that was all. The guard barked, “Left turn, about face, quick march.” A couple of days later, I was called up to the Catholic priest as I had put myself down as an atheist. The priest asked me if I had ever been a Catholic and I told him I hadn’t. He asked me what my mother and father were and I told him they were both atheists too. That cleared me with him, so I was sent to the Protestant minister. I asked him for a white card which would exempt me from church. He didn’t give me any argument but signed

A square deal in Prince Albert it, and said I’d have to see the warden again to get it okayed. The next day I was in warden’s court again. Square Deal said, “Now I understand that you want a white card,’’ and he smacked his lips, slowly. I said, “Yes, Warden, I would like a white card.” He said, “And do you believe that any church services carried on in this institution will not be of benefit to you?” I said, “Yes, sir, that is my belief.” “All right then. Listen to this,” and he read something like, “I conscientiously believe that I cannot possibly derive any benefit whatsoever from any church-parade or any church service carried on or likely to be carried on in this institution,” and he smacked his lips. “Now you will sign there.” Another smack of the lips. I leaned over to the desk and signed, and then straight¬ ened up. He said, “Now, you understand that this relieves God of any further responsibility for you; from now on you will be on your own;” and he smacked his lips at this pearl of wisdom. I said, “Yes, sir, I understand that.” “And do you understand also that God is getting the best of the bargain?” “No, I hadn’t given it any thought,” I said. “You will say ‘Sir’ when you address the warden, and I want you to give it a little thought,” he said, and smacked his lips. Then again the warden gave his lofty gesture, indicating the interview was ended, and the guards gave their, “Left turn, about face, quick march.” I had heard plenty of stories about Square Deal, most of them indicating he was somewhat of a madman, but you had to see him perform, and hear him, to appreciate how much truth there was in this. I decided not to lock horns with him if I could help it.

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Bitter Humour Tough wardens or deputies didn’t hold any terror for me, but quite clearly this man was mad and who can tell what a madman will do? After shining bars for a few weeks, and getting over my habit, I was called before the deputy-warden who, like the deputy in Lethbridge, was referred to as the Snake. He asked me what kind of work I did outside. I told him I was a travelling salesman. He said, “We don’t have any salesman’s jobs, and we don’t encourage travelling. What would you like to work at?’’ I told him I’d just as soon work on the cleaners for a while, and he said, “All right, and when you find a place you’d like to work, let me know.” It wasn’t so hard to keep the bars shiny in Prince Albert as it was in New Westminster, because there wasn’t the dampness. After a few weeks on a range, they put me working with a guy doing the dome floor. Two guys swept it and mop¬ ped it twice a day with brooms and mops about two feet wide. After I got over my habit, I got some textbooks from the library and began studying. Sometimes in the afternoon Square Deal would come through the dome with his cane. Guards and cons would both pass the word along that he was coming, so that every con on the ranges would be working, and no guards would be smoking or committing any other heinous offence. He always had a guard with him. He would stand in the middle of the dome and point his cane at whatever he saw wrong, and he always saw something wrong. There was a strict rule that no two cons could be to¬ gether unless they were in sight of a guard. Off the dome was a little cubby-hole with a large sink where we got our water to wash the dome floor. When we were through we used to go in and run water in the sink to wash our mops out.

A square deal in Prince Albert One day, the guy that washed the dome floor with me was in the cubby-hole with me, and we were both washing our mops out in the sink. The guard rushed to the cubby-hole and said, “All right, one of you come out of there. You can’t both be in there together.” We went out and washed our mops one at a time. Both of us were disgusted at the inference which was that if two of us were in there together we must be guilty of some sexual aberration. The other fellow said, “God damn it, that gets my goat. I’m going to ask him what he cares.” He went up to the bull and said, “What do you care anyway, if I’m hosing him or if he’s hosing me?” The bull said, “I don’t, but it’s against the rules and if Square Deal sees it, it’s my job.” But one thing was certain when Square Deal came through the dome, or into a shop, the bulls were more frightened than the cons. Some of the bulls, if they knew they could trust a con, would refer to Square Deal as the madman. One day the Snake called me over and said, “You’ve been working on the cleaners long enough; if you don’t have any place you want to work we’ll have to pick one out for you.” I said, “How about the library?” He said, “All right, you’ll go to work in the library, starting tomorrow.” I wasn’t in the library long before I found that you could take school courses and write examinations. This information was supposed to be available to everyone, but Square Deal had put the damper on it and the librarians were afraid to advertize it. The head librarian was nicknamed Maggie, and he was a pretty frustrated character. Square Deal thought only a certain type of convict should have access to education and that he was the one to judge what type. Then Square

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Bitter Humour Deal would give orders that certain books could not be issued without permission from him. I began taking a Grade IX correspondence course and got all the textbooks and the Saskatchewan Government syllabus of studies. Much of the work concerned things I already knew from reading and experience, and I passed the exam quite easily. Meantime, I was on the silent range where we weren’t bothered with the radio blaring; and since we spent about eighteen hours a day in the cells, it was ideal for studying. In addition to studying for Grade X, I read everything I could get my hands on in the library that had anything to do with the manufacture and use of nitro-glycerine. I exchanged my knowledge with a safe-blower who had made explosives, but in a rather crude sort of way. Some of his practices, according to the books, could be extremely dangerous. We planned that when we got out we would get together and make up a batch, enough to last for a couple of years. He told me that when you made it you got such a violent headache it paid to make enough so that you wouldn’t need to make more for quite a while. Meantime, we had a lot of fun in the library. One of the fellows told me, “Wait until you see Maggie go into a tantrum. It’s really something to watch.” I didn’t have to wait too long. One day, she searched the boxes of books and magazines that were set out to be delivered to the ranges. She came across four or five buckshee books, that is, books that weren’t marked out on cards. She grabbed her sparse strands of long white hair with both hands and pulled them straight up with clenched fists. Her face went beet-red and the veins stood out on her neck; she stomped her foot and then let out a shriek: “I’ll fire every last one if I don’t find out who did this. Oh God in heaven, why should I have to put up with this? I treat them right, I use them right, God knows I’m fair, and yet they do this to me, and me an old man, too.”

A square deal in Prince Albert I looked around and everyone either had their handker¬ chiefs over their mouths or a book in front of their faces, so that Maggie couldn’t see them laughing. I couldn’t help myself, I burst out laughing. This made her more furious and she started in again, “Oh, idiots! Oh, imbeciles! And to think that I’ve had thirty years of this and I’ve still kept my sanity.” I think most psychiatrists would have argued that point. However, the storm subsided just as suddenly as it started, and in ten minutes Maggie was talking in a normal tone of voice as if nothing had ever happened. We were treated to one of these spectacles on an aver¬ age of about once a week. But we all liked Maggie despite her ways, mainly, I suppose, because she hated Square Deal so much. Whenever we had a conversation cutting up Square Deal, Maggie was always right in the thick of it. She was conscientious and she was fair, in her own way, but she was afraid of Square Deal, and hated his petty rules. One of the rules he made was that if a scribbler was issued to a con the pages had to be numbered with a stamp. When the scribbler was returned for another one, Maggie had to check to see that every page was there and that each one was full. This was one of Square Deal’s ideas for stop¬ ping cons from writing kites, that is, notes to one another which might be plotting escapes or worse. The second guard in the library used to spend most of his time reading. He was supposed to be the discipline guard to see that we didn’t do anything we weren’t sup¬ posed to, like smoking when it wasn’t smoke-period, or writing kites, and slipping them in the magazines, or pass¬ ing out books or magazines that we weren’t supposed to. When we wanted to do something we didn’t want him to see, and thought he might, one of us would go and talk to him, and the other would do it. One kid in the library was notorious for passing out sexual favours to anyone who had the desire, the tobacco to pay for it, and the opportunity. The rest of us referred

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Bitter Humour to him as the Kazoony. He quite often did a little dance and a song, appearing as much like a woman as it was possible for him to do. The guy who worked with me was doing ten years and was salty and bitter as he figured he had about seven years too much for what he had done. He seldom smiled. One day the Kazoony went into a little dance, and started to sing, “I don’t want to set the world on fire.” The guy working with me grumbled, ‘‘Don’t worry, you won’t, you phony, queer son-of-a-bitch.” When I wrote my exams for Grade X, eight subjects were required. I took ten subjects just in case I failed one, but I passed all ten with a low mark of ninety. This cleared the way for me to get almost anything I needed in the way of school supplies and textbooks. So many cons started to study, and got a bunch of books, and then gave it up, that they were a little reluctant to order books you required until they saw you were serious about it. All of us in the library slept on one range until the silent range was opened up, and then I went there. When I was on the library range, the Kazoony was next cell to me. The cell doors would be opened just before the cleaners lined up for supper, and we would go through the line right behind the cleaners. One afternoon, as I was going to my cell with my tray, I noticed another guy in the Kazoony’s cell with him. It wasn’t my business, so I went into my cell, let the hinged table on my cupboard down, and set my tray on it. Just then the Kazoony started to yell my name, and asked me to open the door, and let him out. I stepped over, lifted the tappet to release the door, and they both came out. This was on the third range, and the guy that was in the Kazoony’s cell slept on the bottom range. When they came out, the Kazoony kept yelling, ‘‘The dirty bastard, he hid in my cell behind the blankets, and he was trying to hose me.” Meantime, the other guy dropped to the second range and from there to the bottom floor, and got in his cell.

A square deal in Prince Albert I went into my cell, closed the door, and started to eat my supper. I thought the Kazoony had gone into his cell, too, but he had gone down to the dome and got the Snake. The Snake and the Kazoony appeared in front of my cell, but I didn’t see the Kazoony. The Snake said, “All right, what went on up here.” I said, “I don't know anything about it.” “Well, you opened the cell door and let-out, didn't you?” I said, “No, I didn’t.” Just then I saw the Kazoony and he said, “Yes, you did, you opened the door.” The Snake said, “What have you got to say about that?” I said, “All right, I opened the door. What are you going to do about it?” He said, “You opened the door and let-out of this cell.” "I opened the door, and I didn’t see who was in the cell, or who came out.” He said, “Look here, you know if-was in that cell or not, and I want to know.” By this time, I was getting a little hot for getting mixed up in this nonsense in the first place. I told the Snake, “Well that’s my story and if you don’t like it, you’ve been a Mounted Policeman and know all the angles. Let me see you try to make me change it.” He said, “All right! You’ll be in court.” The cuprit was moved to the hole so that he wouldn’t be able to contact anyone to supply evidence for him. Next day at noon I was called to court for the big trial. The only part of the proceedings I heard was when I w7as called in to give evidence. When they had taken the guy from the hole and he saw that I wasn’t there he knew that whatever I must have said would be favourable to his case so he asked to call me as a witness. When I went in Square Deal said, “-has been charged with being in the cell of another convict, to wit, Number 0000, and he has called you as a witness.” He

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Bitter Humour smacked his lips and looked at me as much as if to say, “This ought to be pretty good." “Now what church do you go to?” “I have a white card.” “Very well.” He waved his hand to the clerk of the court. The clerk cleared his throat and said, “Do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” Square Deal said, "Say, ‘I do.’ ” I said, “I do.” -was looking at me wondering, I suppose, what I was going to say. I could have cursed him because I knew I’d pay for this sooner or later. Square Deal said, “Now, just tell the court what hap¬ pened on the range last night, when you were going to your cell.” I gave him the same story I had given the Snake. When I finished, he turned to the Snake and asked him which side the tappets were on, on that range. If they had been on the other side, as they were on some ranges, I would have had to cross in front of the cell to lift it. The Snake told him which side they were on. Then Square Deal said, “And when you were going down the range did you notice if there were two men in this cell?” I said, “No, I was looking straight ahead until I got in front of my cell.” “Good,” he said, “make sure you always do that,” and he smacked his lips reminding me a little of a rattlesnake giving the warning rattle. Then he turned to the Snake and said, “Do you think this story is possible?” The Snake said, “Yes, Warden, I investigated and I think it is quite possible. I was a little dubious at first, but I’m convinced now that it could happen.” Square Deal pursued, “And do you believe this story?” The Snake hesitated, then he said, “Yes, I’ve no reason

A square deal in Prince Albert not to believe it. This man was cooperative in answering all my questions during the investigation.” I guess he figured Square Deal would catch up to me for this, and there was no need of his pouring fuel on the fire. Square Deal said, “Thank you for giving evidence. You may go.” The charge against-of being in the cell of another convict with him, for which he could have got the paddle, was reduced to being away from his place of work. He was sentenced to three days in the hole. As soon as he got out of his cell, he told everybody on the range about the trial; how I had saved his bacon; and how hot Square Deal was about it. With him blasting it out on the range like that, if some screw didn’t hear it and tell the warden, certainly one of the myriad of stoolpigeons would. I didn't have any use for either him or the Kazoony but certain things you just have to do whether you like the people involved or not. I got kicked out of the library in the next week, and I knew that it was over this. They put me on a gang that worked in the root-houses outside the wall. I didn’t like this. It was a quarter of a mile out there in the snow and below-zero weather. But there was one sure way to get off an outside gang. I asked a friend to point out the most reliable stoolpigeon to me. He did. At the same time I asked my friend to drop the word to other stool-pigeons that I was planning to escape. He said he himself didn’t talk to them, but he would see that they heard about it. It didn’t take long for this plan to work. One morning, when our gang lined up to go to work, two big hacks grabbed my arms, one on each side, and hustled me to the hole. Here they made me strip, searched all my clothes, and ran their fingers through my hair. One of them said, “I guess you know what this is about.” I said, “Yes, I suppose somebody has squawked about something or other.”

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Bitter Humour He said, “Yes, and you know what it is about. Don’t think that you can plan any escape here without us finding out about it. You know what the Deal says about that.” What he was referring to was Square Deal’s boast that if three cons were talking he could find out what they were talking about because “One of them will be my man.” So they put me back on the cleaners which was better than outside as far as I was concerned. A safe-blower friend of mine was cleaner on the bottom range which is considerably wider than the higher ranges. I had the next range up, and sometimes when I finished my work I’d go down and help him. We kept the bars on the gates well shined up, and our corridors clean, so the hack in the dome left us pretty much alone, and rode the guys that didn’t keep their bars shined and ranges clean. This fellow had been in considerable trouble on a pre¬ vious bit but had a clean slate on this one. We worked together several months but I had never told him about my experience in the library. One day a young hack came to the range and told us to bring mops and come up to the Protestant church. Every week, the hacks would select a bunch of cleaners to clean out the church. The ones they didn’t like would mop, and the others would sweep and dust. My friend said, “Fuck him and his fancy ideas; let’s take brooms.” I said, “Well, it couldn’t matter less to me,” so we took brooms. The screw got hot when he saw us with the brooms and said, “I told you two to bring mops; now get down there and get mops and bring them up here.” When we got to our ranges my friend said, “That dirty punk son-of-a-bitch of a screw bums me up. You can do what you like, but I’m not going back up there.” So I said, “Well, I’m not going back up by myself.” The screw came down and asked us if we were going up. We said, “No.” He said, “Well, then. I’m reporting you both.” They

A square deal in Prince Albert didn’t call it “crimed” as they did in New Westminster; they called it “reported.” But it meant the same thing. When we went to court I was first in. I pleaded guilty to the charge of refusing to obey an order. Square Deal smacked his lips and said, “You are sen¬ tenced to ten days in the hole on No. 2 diet.” This was bread and water for breakfast and supper, and mush and potatoes for dinner. Shortly after I was put in the hole, my friend came down and was put on the other side. There are two rows of cells and they are back to back. After the screw had gone out, my friend hollered over to me and said, “I think we’ll be getting out in a couple of days. Square Deal said he’d be down to see me in a day or two.” I said, “You may be getting out, but I won’t.” He said, “Well, if he let’s one of us out he’ll let the other. I’ve been in lots of trouble on my other bits, but you’ve never been in trouble before.” In a couple of days, Square Deal walked into the hole and came down on my side. I was lying on the board that was set on trestles to sleep on. He smacked his lips and said, “Stand up when the warden is in front of your cell.” I stood up. He said, “Do you like prison?” I said, “I’ve never given it much thought, but I’ll work on it and see if I can come up with an answer.” He said, “We break men in here. It doesn’t matter how tough they think they are, we break them,” and he smacked his lips. I didn’t say anything. He persisted. “Do you understand that we break men in here?” I said, “Yes. The judge who sentenced me told me that other penitentiaries tried to build men up and make them fit for outside, but that this one was devoted to breaking them, and destroying their souls, and that being the case

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Bitter Humour he wouldn’t sentence me to as much time as he otherwise would have.” ‘‘What was the judge’s name?” “I don’t know.” ‘‘There is no judge in here but me. There is no God in here but me. I have the power of life and death over every man in here, and if you get out of here alive it will be because I so desire it. Now do you understand that?” ‘‘Yes, it seems quite clear.” He went out, and after he had gone the guard, who had been listening at the gate waiting to let him out when he was through, came down to talk to me. He said, ‘‘That dirty sadistic son-of-a-bitch. Why they haven’t put him in the booby-hatch a long time ago is more than I can see.” The next day he was down again and he went over to the other side first. Then he went out without coming down to my side. My friend hollered over from the other side, ‘‘We’re getting out. Square Deal just told me.” They took him out and after he was out Square Deal came in to see me. The same thing all over. ‘‘Stand up when the warden is in front of your cell.” When I stood up he said, ‘‘I suspended-’s sentence. He blew up and we sometimes make allowances for men who blow up. But you didn’t blow up.” Then he smacked his lips. “You just sat calmly by, and waited for the balloon to go up so you could climb on to it. “You are a potential rioter; you are a potential Com¬ munist. You lie in wait for the action to happen, and then you join it. You are extremely dangerous not only to your¬ self but to everyone who associates with you. “That is the reason that your sentence is not going to be suspended and that you will do your full ten days. “Tell me, do you realize what a vicious and despicable person you are?” “Yes,” I said, “but this is no startling discovery. My mother realized this before I was six years old, so she used

A square deal in Prince Albert to keep me tied up on a dog-chain; but I broke the leash, got away, and here I am.” He said, ‘‘Now, I’m glad I didn't suspend your sentence because you’ve given me an insight into the kind of person you are.” But he didn’t come back to bother me any more. During the night a night-guard talked to me for a while. He said he didn’t smoke but would go and ask one of the cons for some tobacco for me if I knew one we could trust. On his next round he came back with enough tobacco to last my time out, and a works. If it hadn’t been for the caper on the range, and my evidence, I’d probably have done only two or three days the same as the other fellow. However, it was Square Deal’s policy always to give different sentences or to suspend one sentence and not the other on men charged with the same offence. He dealt the same way with guards. His policy was to create an atmosphere of distrust and fear. The Archambault Commission recognized this and made a note of it in its report. When a bunch of fellows were transferred from Kings¬ ton Penitentiary, he immediately tried to create dissension and distrust in ways that weren’t too subtle. He would take a western guy off his job, and put a Kingston man on it. If two guys were getting along good, working together, he would split them up and put each with one he couldn’t get along with so good. In Prince Albert, the cons all had night-gowns, but the fellows who came from Kingston all had pyjamas. Square Deal confiscated their pyjamas and had night-gowns issued to them. This didn’t sit too well with the Kingston guys, and they were still more burned up when their pyjamas were issued to western guys. Most of the guys from Kingston had longer sentences than the average in Prince Albert. For the most part they were from ten years up to twenty-seven years and I don’t recall if there were any lifers among them or not. Some of the westerners made friends with some of the easterners.

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Bitter Humour That way it got around pretty quickly who the stoolpigeons were. Most of the Kingston guys would rather have been back in Kingston, but some of them told me that apart from Square Deal, Prince Albert was a picnic compared with Kingston. One guy told me how cold it was in Kingston, and it was always warm in Prince Albert. Even when it was forty below zero outside, it was warm in the cell block and in all the shops in Prince Albert. Quite a few of the hacks in Prince Albert were half breeds. One of these with an Irish name was nicknamed the Bow and Arrow. The other hacks called him the Bow and Arrow behind his back and he was disliked especially by the other hacks who were part breed. Whenever he crimed anyone, they used to call him Bow and Arrow to his face, but he wouldn’t report this to the warden. One of the guards told me once that Square Deal had called them all in at dinner-time and given them a lecture because there weren’t enough reports coming in. He told them that it was impossible with such a large number of cons that some of them weren’t breaking the rules. The only conclusion he could come to was that the guards weren’t doing their duty. There was a guy on the cleaners we called the Fire-Bug. He had set fire to an apartment house in Edmonton and wound up with seven years. He was a bit of a nut, quite apart from his hobby of trying to bum people alive. On the range above the Fire-Bug, a Chinaman was cleaning. He had killed three other Chinamen in a fight over a white girl, and got life for it. When he first came in, they put him to work in the tailor-shop. One of the fellows in the tailor-shop started to rib him. The Chinaman walked calmly to his sewingmachine, picked up a screw driver, took the big screw out of a long pair of shears, and with one of the halves charged the guy who was ribbing him. He was overpowered and charged in warden’s court. The guy who had ribbed him said that it was his own fault and that he had been teasing

A square deal in Prince Albert the Chinaman; but it didn’t do any good. The Chinaman lost his job and went to the hole. The Fire-Bug saw him going down the range and said, “Oh there goes a Chinaman 1 Let’s tease him. Here chinky, chinky Chinaman.” I said, “Look, you nut, do you know that that Chinaman killed three men and that he attacked a guy twice your size with a pair of scissors for teasing him?” The Fire-Bug’s face went white and he said, “That little guy killed three men?” I said, “Yes, and what’s more he is pretty well liked around here. If you get in wrrong with him, and it’s your fault, you may run into a lot of bad luck, and it won’t necessarily come from him.” His face was still white as he said, “Well, thanks for telling me. I won’t do that any more.” I said, “It’s all right. I couldn’t care less what happens to you, because I think you are a nut anyway, but that Chinaman minds his own business, and is a pretty nice guy. I’d sure hate to see him hang for slitting your worth¬ less throat.” The Fire-Bug checked with a couple of other guys and found that what I had told him about the Chinaman was true. From then on he gave him a wide berth. Luckily Charlie hadn’t heard him with his “Chinky, chinky Chinaman” or he’d have Chinky-chinky-Chinamanned him.

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People of the big house On the cleaners, at smoke-period twice a day, the big bell in the dome rang and we had to come off our ranges and sit on the steps where we could be watched. We weren’t allowed to carry our works with us, but there was always one on the bars of some of the cells that we could use. Most of the screws weren’t too strict on this, because they used to sneak smokes themselves. During these smoke-periods we’d sometimes talk to the fish and find out what they were in for; or guys would tell stories of things that happened on their previous bits. A guy told us of a farmer that got pinched during the depression for stealing wheat, and got two years. The farmer told how he’d worked hard all year, and half the time his family didn’t have decent clothes, or even enough to eat. But he did own his farm, and when he harvested in the fall he managed to clean up his debts and had a few dollars cash left over. When this was gone, he would live on credit until the next crop was harvested. As the con told it, the farmer said, “Well, I hooked the team to the Bennett buggy and drove into town in high

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Bitter Humour spirits. After I paid up all my debts, I went to the grocery store and got all the groceries the wife had put down on the list. Then I went to the dry-goods store and got some thread and gingham she had ordered to make some dresses for herself and the kids. I got a couple of things I needed at the hardware store and after I had got everything and put it in the Bennett buggy I thought I’d drop into the hotel and have a few glasses of beer. I hadn’t had a drink of beer for months. “Well, I had a hell of a time talking to fellows I knew, and I stayed a little longer than I had expected. When I got ready to go home it was dark and I was feeling a little tipsy. "But when I got to the Bennett buggy all the stuff I had bought was gone. I pulled the tarp back, and the goddanged thieves had left only one miserable stalk of celery. "I grabbed it and started whirling it around in the air and cursing a blue streak. “Well, when I went home it was a disappointment to my wife and the kids, and on top of that I had a big head the next morning. "It made me so blamed mad. I was the poorest farmer in the district, and they had to steal my little luxuries that I had worked like a slave all year for. “I decided that if that’s the way they wanted to play I could do a little of it myself. So, a day or two later, I hooked up the team to a wagon one night, and drove up to another farmer’s granary and loaded her up. I drove all night but at nine o’clock the next morning I was at the elevator in town, and sold the load of wheat. “Well, with the cheque from that I sort of made amends a little bit at home, and I guess if I’d let it go at that nothing would ever have come of it. "But this was pretty easy money and you got a cheque for it the minute they unloaded it at the elevator, so I stole a load or two a week, and sometimes three loads. “Then, one night, they were laying for me. They hid until I got loaded up and then they came out. The farmers around had formed a kind of posse, and they were armed

People of the big house with shotguns and rifles. They held me until the police came, and so they gave me two years — seems like a heck of a big hunk of time to me.” He hadn’t been a farmer all his life, but had started farming when he was about forty years old with practically no experience. According to his stories, the other farmers probably pulled his leg occasionally. He told of how, one day, when he was plowing with three horses, he was having a rough time because of one horse. The other two walked along steady, but this one always hung back. When he’d use the whip the horse would just switch its tail. He was plowing near the fence by the road when a neighbour drove up in his Bennett buggy and stopped to ask him how it was going. He told the neighbour about the balky horse and the neighbour said, ‘‘Well, don’t you know how to cure that? All you do is get a piece of rag, tie it to a long stick, and soak the rag in turpentine. Then you just shove that in the horse’s ass, and that will take all the balk out of him.” He said, “I tried this and, gad-dang it, we were plowing around there so fast I had a hard time staying on the plow, and that danged cayuse’s tail was straight up.” I had several close calls when I was on the cleaners. Once I got a note from a guy telling me he would leave some hack-saw blades in the broom in the comer of his cell on the range I was cleaning on. He wanted me to pick them up and take them to the waterhole, where a guy who worked on the other side of the dome would meet me. I agreed to this and, when the cleaner on the range across the dome stood at the end of his range and nodded to me, I went to the cell, reached in, and plucked the hack-saw blades out from behind the cell whisk-broom in the comer. I stuck them inside my shirt, picked up a bucket, and headed for the waterhole. The other con was in the waterhole and I was just going to step in, when a big hack appeared from the other side and said, ‘‘All right, give it to me.” I said, ‘‘Give what to you?”

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Bitter Humour “Come onl You know what I’m talking about, and I want it.” He seemed excited which gave me a little edge, because I appeared to be calm and laughing outside. I wasn’t laughing inside though. I said, “Now if you’ll just calm down and tell me what it is you are looking for. I’ll see what I can do for you.” He said, “Well, you moved Hooligan’s cell yesterday, didn’t you?” I said, “Yes, of course, what about it?” “Well, just this much about it. What did you do with his compass?” I said, “I didn’t take it. Most of us hang our compasses on a nail on the side of the cupboard, and if that’s where his was I probably missed it when I moved his things. Let’s go and have a look.” He calmed down a little and said, “All right, let’s go and look.” It was the second corridor up from the dome floor and I decided on the way over that if the compass wasn’t there I would swing over the railing, jump down to the main floor, and throw the hack-saw blades in the cleaner’s cell where they kept mops and brooms on the bottom range. For this I’d get crimed for being off my range, but I wouldn’t get convicted of the hack-saw blades which would have meant the paddle, all my copper, and a couple of months in the hole. But luck was with me and the compass was hanging on a nail on the cupboard in the cell. The screw went down to the end and worked the running-bar so that I could open the gate by lifting the tappet. I took the compass out and closed the door, and the screw locked the running-bar and went down to the dome. I took the compass over and gave it to Hooligan, and he said, “Thanks.” I said, “You phony son-of-a-bitch, you couldn’t ask me, but you had to go to the screw. I wouldn’t have all the hard luck that’s going to happen to you in the next few weeks for $1,000.”

People of the big house Meantime, the guy who was waiting for the hack-saw blades didn’t know what was going on. When he heard the bull, at first he thought for sure I was nailed with the blades. But I walked over to the waterhole again, and pulled the blades out while I was filling the bucket with water. He came in and stuffed them inside his shirt under his belt. After he had put them in his cell, we both met at the waterhole again, as I knew he was curious as to what had happened. He was pretty hot when I told him. Telling the screw if you miss something is just some¬ thing that isn’t done. You go to the con first and, if you think he stole it, you beat his head in, or get even some other way. But you just don’t go to the screw. I told the guy I gave the blades to, “Well, I did my part. Now it’s up to you to look after that bastard that nearly got me pinched.” He said, “I’m going to be pretty busy cutting my way out for the next few days, but I’ll see that he is looked after.” My friend got someone else to give Hooligan the lightbulb treatment. This was breaking a light-bulb, grinding the glass up into a fine powder, and then putting a little at a time in the guy’s wooden salt-shaker in his cell. Just about the time the three guys got out of their cells at night and went over the wall, Hooligan wound up in the hospital with symptoms of ulcers. When the guys took out, they were only gone for a few days before they were caught, and then the screws took them downtown and gave them more time for escaping. One of them, who got six months for the escape, laughed and said, “I’ve lost more good time than that.” Another time a fellow charged with escape was put in the hole, paddled, and lost remission. Then they took him downtown to charge him. He told the magistrate, “I’ve already been punished for this escape,” and he told him what he had got. Square Deal told the magistrate to sentence him, but the magistrate dismissed the charge and bawled Square Deal out. After that, when there was an escape. Square

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Bitter Humour Deal would wait until the man had been sentenced in magistrate’s court, and then he’d be tried again in prison. Quite a few of us who had been in the penitentiary before had read the Archambault Report on the outside. It was forbidden reading in prison. We were talking about it once and of what it said about Prince Albert and Square Deal. The Commission had seen through him and recommended his dismissal. One guy said, “Yeah! They recommended Square Deal’s dismissal. Look how long ago that was and he’s still here, and farting at them. Either he or his wife has got some kind of pull in Ottawa, or they have something on some¬ one there, or I’ll put in with you.” Most of us felt the same way, and even many of the guards said they couldn’t understand it. What we didn’t understand was that the Commission didn’t have authority to do anything but report. Then, when the war broke out, the whole thing was practically shelved. During the war the penitentiary got our ration tickets. According to the Kingston guys, the grub was a lot better in Prince Albert than in Kingston. Some of the guys used to plan to join the army when they got out, and a lot of them did: but many of us adopted the attitude, “We’ve had nothing all our lives and now that there’s a chance to make a buck we should go and fight so a son-of-a-bitch like Square Deal could flout the law and run his school of sadism and treachery. Why not us flout the law a little, too, and make a buck out of it: at least we didn’t get a kick out of making someone suffer.” The fish who came in at this time told us how good it was outside for thieves; money every place and you couldn’t go wrong. A guy most of us knew came in with a brand new threespot one day. He had a reputation for using boys instead of women for his horizontal refreshments. In fact, a kid was pinched with him. The fish-tier was the range above the silent range and he hollered down, “Well, boys, I’ve been coming to jail all

People of the big house ray life, but this time I came in style; I came in an aeroplane.” They had started bringing the cons from Lethbridge by plane as it was less expensive than sending Mounties on the long train trip. Someone said, “Yes, I hear you also came in with a ball¬ bearing prostitute. Why don’t you leave those kids alone, and look after business?” “No, no, nothing like that. He’s just a nice young fellow I met, and we teamed up together.” “Have you ever heard about women?” someone asked him. “You know they are a pretty fair go.” “Could be, but there are a lot more guys in here over women than there are over kids. I wouldn’t trust one of the god-damn split arses. They’ll squawk on you every time.” There were a lot of chuckles and that was the end of that. During smoke-periods in the dome, when we sat on the stairs and smoked, the fish used to talk and tell us about their cases. A farmer, who had killed his hired man and got three years for an unlawful burial, told us about his case. He said, “My wife was about twenty years younger than me when I married her in Kentucky, and then we came up to Alberta to farm. After the kids was beginning to get kind of growed up she seemed to get a bee in her ass, and I just couldn’t seem to satisfy her any more. “Well, I had this hired man and I knowed she and him was carryin’ on, and I warned the both of ’em a couple of times. When that didn’t do I fired him, and told him not to set foot on the farm again. “But he went to one of my neighbours and got a job, and I knowed he was sneakin’ over to my place when I was away. I met him on the road once, and I warned him again. “Well, I laid for him and one day when he thought I was away he sneaked over and went into the house. I went into the house, and they were both in bed so I took the

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Bitter Humour rifle down from the wall, and took him outside so I wouldn’t get blood on the floor, and I killed him. “The oldest son was there so I told him to get a couple of shovels and we dug a hole and planted the son-of-a-bitch a few feet from the house. Then I told the wife if there was any more carryin’-on like that she would get it the next time, but for the kids’ sake I wouldn’t kill her this time. “Well, everything went along all right for a few months until the wife started to get a little ornery. She figured she had something on me and was trying to threaten me with it. “One day, she was over at the neighbours who had hired this varmint after I fired him. They was wondering what happened to him as he left and never came back for his wages or nothin’. "Well, the wife blabbed it out. At first the neighbours didn’t believe her. But finally they got the idea they better report it to the police, just in case there was somethin’ to it. “The police got in touch with the wife and heard the whole story from her. They came out with shovels and dug up the body; I had buried him only two or three feet from the front-door step. They arrested me and at first I was charged with murder. It looked kind of bad for a while. "At the trial the wife gave evidence against me and then the oldest son. He was there at the killin’ so they put him on the stand and, of course, he took his mother’s side. It looked pretty bad. “I figured I only had one chance. Most of the jury was farmers, and I knew they wouldn't hold none with this varmint sleeping’ with decent folks’ wives. “Well, anyways, they dropped the murder charge after my lawyer gave the judge an argument, and then they found me guilty of not givin’ him a decent burial. So they give me three years. Lawyer told me if I’d reported it to the police after I shot him, and he could have had a decent burial, there’d have been nothin’ to it. Should have done that I guess, but it just never entered my mind to give a varmint like that a legal burial.”

People of the big house He talked slowly and almost unconcerned. There was no sign of regrets or any indication of the sweetness of revenge; just a narration of something that had to be done and was done. During exercise-periods some cons played quoits and volleyball, but another guy on the cleaners and I just used to walk around in the big yard. It was five times the size of the yard in New Westminster. He had been a safe-blower for years, and we used to talk mostly about blowing safes, and how to make nitro¬ glycerine. He said, “The hardest thing about this racket is finding out where the money is.” Later on, I found out how right he was. But he told me, too, how to find out if money was kept in a safe, and whether there would be enough to make it worthwhile or not. Even with a certain amount of research, you would still run into duds. I got the formula and directions from another guy on how to make nitro-glycerine. I checked everything in books in the library and found that his formula was close, but not exact. Then I read everything I could get on nitro¬ glycerine, how to make it, how to handle it, what to do if it got too hot when you were making it, when it was dangerous to handle, and when it wasn’t. I made arrangements to meet the guy who had made it after our bits were up, and he would show me how it was done. At nights I was studying school subjects, and in the daytime and sometimes in the cell, too, I was learning everything I could about explosives. I figured that if I weren’t restricted to safes that could be punched, I would make a lot more money. By now I had no intention of working for any considerable length of time. When the fish used to ask us about learning a trade, we’d tell them to forget about it, unless they had ten years or more. The only trade I know of that a man could learn in prison in four or five years, that would be of any use to him in making a living outside, was as a stationary steam engineer. After a certain period of firing the boilers, a con could write for papers, and some did get third and fourth

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Bitter Humour class papers. But only three men could do this at a time, one on each shift, so that didn’t leave much scope. The chief keeper was nicknamed Pinnochio. There were rumours that he had been in Ponoka, that is, in the mental asylum at Ponoka, Alberta. Then his nickname was gradually changed to Pinnochio. The only run-in I had with him was one day he called me to the middle of the dome at smoke-time. He said, “You’ve been in here quite a while. Are you satisfied to work all your time on the cleaners?” I said, “I’d have been satisfied to work all my time in the library, but Square Deal had me yanked out because I wouldn’t finger a guy.” “Oh yes! Well, I can’t do anything about that. We can’t put you back in the library, but are you satisfied to stay on the cleaners?” I had to be careful. If he knew I liked it on the cleaners he would change me, and I didn’t want to be changed. I said, “Well, if you are talking about being satisfied. I’m not even satisfied being in the penitentiary, in the first place.” “Well, is there any place you’d rather work than the cleaners?” “Yes, there is.” “Well, where is it? I’ll see what I can do.” “I wouldn’t mind working in the hospital.” “But you are a drug addict, aren’t you?” “Yes.” “Well, you’ll not work in the hospital where all the drugs are. In fact, I think the safest place for you is right here on the cleaners where we can watch you. Go back and finish your smoke.” And that is the reason for a lot of complaining in some prisons. Cons know that if the officials think they are getting along all right, and are satisfied, they will be changed. So they complain every once in a while just to keep it the way it is. When it got near time for me to go out, Pinnochio took me over for finger-prints and photograph and to be

People of the big house weighed. I told him I wanted to wear my own clothes out. If you wore your own clothes they would press your suit for you, but you couldn’t take the joint suit. He asked me where I wanted my ticket to and I told him I hadn’t made up my mind yet. I knew that the authorities inform the romp every month of who is getting out and what their destination is. So I told him I didn’t know. He said, “Well, you had better make up your mind because we’ve got to know.’’ “Well, it will be Edmonton, Calgary, or Regina. I’m not sure yet.” "That’s no good. We’ve got to know.” I said, “All right. I guess I’ll give Edmonton a break.” He said, “I’ll get your ticket for Edmonton.” When I had about ten days to go, I put my name down to see the warden. It was the first time I had ever been in warden’s court at my own request. Square Deal sat like a statue of a little fat Buddha, and stared at me. Then he smacked his lips and said, “Well, what can we do for you?” I said, “I ordered my ticket for Edmonton and I would like to change it and have it to Calgary.” He smacked his lips and said, “In the penitentiary you don’t order anything. You request.” And he smacked his lips again. "All right, I request my ticket be to Calgary.” "Request denied. You may go.” I said, “I have another request. I would like a letter to the Superintendent of Penitentiaries.” “What for?” “I will make my request to him.” “Request denied.” I said, “You deny my request for a letter to the Super¬ intendent?” He said, “Yes, request denied. You may go.” The right for a con to write to the Superintendent was as accepted in the penitentiaries as was the right to trial outside. Other wardens used to try to talk cons out of it,

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Bitter Humour but Square Deal is the only one I ever heard of actually denying the right. I wasn’t the least bit worried as I could trade my ticket in at Saskatoon, and change it from Edmonton to Calgary. It might cost me a few dollars extra but not much. Then when I got out, I’d have my lawyer write to the Superintendent, and maybe take it to the papers. It wasn’t that I had any faith in the Superintendent because at that time it was Sauvant and I had met him. My impression was that he hated cons. It was just the principle of being denied the letter. And, in any case, I wasn’t worried about the ticket. But a couple of days before I was to go out, Pinnochio came to me and said, “There has been some mistake. Your ticket has been made out to Calgary. Is that all right, or do you want it changed?” I said, “No, that will do.” The morning I went out, a hack drove me down to the station and waited on the train with me until it pulled out. Thinking about it on the train, I concluded that I had learned more about stealing in the three years I'd done in Prince Albert than on all my other sentences together. From now on, I’d make a lot more money, but I’d also get a lot more time if I got caught, as I would eventually. Meantime, I’d hope for a good run of luck.

Postgraduate course In the pen I had heard about the Mounties checking on cons getting out. They met my train at Saskatoon where there was a five-hour stop before it pulled out for Calgary. As I went to go up the stairs to the station, I spotted them before they spotted me. They were both plain¬ clothes, probably one Mountie and one city bull. I was about halfway up the stone stairs before they spotted me, and nodded to each other. Then they turned and walked away. Mounties met the train at various towns on the way down, and both Mounties and city police were at the cnr depot in Calgary. They didn’t say anything, just turned and walked away when they saw me get off the train. Things had changed a lot during my bit. Prices were higher. Everybody who wanted to work was working. Rationing was on, and a lot of people were capitalizing on the shortage of liquor and some food products. While I had been in the pen, my divorce had been made final so I didn’t have to worry about that. I had been turned down for the army before I went to

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the pen, but had lost my exemption slip. So I went through that again, and got another exemption slip, and then got a labouring job working on the airport. The first night, as I was finishing work, two city detec¬ tives talked to the foreman. Then they came over and talked to me, and asked me how it was going. I told them it was all right. When they left, the foreman called me over, and said, “So you’ve been in a little trouble eh?’’ I said, “I’ve been in a lot of trouble, and if those guys keep pestering me I’ll be in a lot more.” “Well, what they said cuts no ice with me. Your work is satisfactory and that’s all I’m interested in. They can look after their own problems. We have a hard enough time getting men.” I would have stayed a couple of weeks on that job, but they held back a week’s wages, and the only way you could get your money was to quit. I didn’t want to borrow money, so I quit and got my wages. The next morning I got another labouring job where they paid weekly. Every time I walked down Eighth Ave., the main street, I was stopped by a couple of detectives who usually wanted to see my registration card and exemp¬ tion slip. They gave us buttons with the exemption slip, but the only time I wore mine was when I went to apply for a job. As soon as I decided the police weren’t tailing me too much, and figured I had settled down to work, I went out one night and kicked in a drug store. The price of drugs was away up, and the amount I got was worth several hundred dollars on the black market. I went to see a prostitute friend who was using drugs. We made a deal for her to keep half the drugs, and sell the other half and give me the money. I would give her a supply each night when I came from work, and she would give me the money for the previous day’s supply. Actually she sold as little as she could get away with, because drugs were scarce and she wanted to keep all she could for herself. So all the money she made, she put into

Postgraduate course buying drugs, because for every grain she bought she got one free. This put me on my feet. I got dressed up and put some money in the bank. I had taken quite a few fixes but hadn’t got hooked. And I kept working for about six weeks. By the end of that time, I was in a position where I didn’t have to worry too much. Things had changed considerably in the safe-cracking business. Now, all the safes contained valuables. Some didn’t have too much money, but they had ration books, war savings certificates, gas coupons, and everything that was short on the market. If you hit one that would have been a dud before the war, it was now likely to contain from $300 to $400 worth of stuff that could be readily converted to cash. As we had planned in the penitentiary, my friend and I went out to a little stream near Mindapore, south of Calgary, and made a batch of nitro-glycerine. It took us all day to make it, and my friend was willing to let me do most of the work as I wanted to learn. He had made it before, and knew what a violent headache it gives you. He had warned me about that, and I had a tube of morphine at home, intending to take a fix afterwards. At one stage, the temperature started to go up while we were adding the glycerine to the nitric and sulphuric acid, and he thought we might have to dump it all in the river; but we stopped adding glycerine till the temperature went down, and then continued. The continuous washing in clear water to get it abso¬ lutely clean seemed as though it would never end. How¬ ever, we finally finished and had two sixteen-ounce bottles of pure nitro-glycerine. When I got home I took a fix, but it didn’t do much for the headache. It was a couple of days before I got over it. Meantime, I had got married again. My wife was a drug addict too, and we got along great. There were seldom arguments of any kind, and never any serious ones.

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Bitter Humour I was eager to get out and blow a safe to see how it was done. I thought I could probably do it, but I wanted to see it done once before I went on my own. My friend had a safe lined up in a factory, so we decided to take that. We took a small bottle of nitro with us, about three ounces, and had little trouble getting into the place; but we had to jemmy the door to the office after we did get in. It was a six-foot-high vault. My friend decided to give it a “com” shot, that is, blow it from the combination instead of from the jamb. He knocked the dial off with a hammer, then took a screw-driver and removed the little plate. He had worked the bar of Fels-Naphtha soap into a putty-like or plasticine-like gob beforehand. With part of this, he fashioned a little cup and pressed it against the safe so that when the nitro was poured in, it would follow along the spindle. After putting two eye-droppers-full in, he said, “We are O.K. She’s starting to drink.” When he figured the right amount was in, he stuck the fuse in the cap, clinched the cap, and laid it on the cup. Then he lit the short fuse and pressed the soap-cup and cap tight against the safe. We got back behind, and about six feet from, the vault, and crouched down. When it blew it felt like my eardrums were busted, but we got only the force of the blast after it had hit the wall in front and come back. We went to the vault and he turned the handle and opened the door. Inside, there was a little cylinder lock; we punched that out and opened the inside door. There was a metal cash box with a padlock inside, so we just took the box. After we had hidden what remained of our nitro, the fuse, the caps, and tools, we broke the padlock on the cash-box and started counting the money. We split about $1,500. Better still, I felt that I could blow a safe on my own now if I had to. I hadn’t seen a jamb shot done but figured I could do it. There wasn’t too much heat on me for a while, as the

Postgraduate course police didn’t associate me with using nitro-glycerine. But whenever a safe was punched, they looked me up fast to see where I was when it happened. With my working inter¬ mittently, it was hard for them to keep a line on me. Then, too, we were going out of town once in a while to give the rural merchants a break, and the city police weren’t interested in that. But the Mounties were. Whenever I was out at night, my wife would wait up for me even if I didn’t get home until daylight. I never forgot the two months I had done in Dorchester Jail because I didn’t have enough money to pay a twentyfive dollar fine. I never intended to be in that position again, and I never was while I was stealing. There were lots of times I didn’t have twenty-five dollars in my pocket, but I could always get bail and borrow a couple of hundred if I needed it; and I always had a lawyer within a few hours of being arrested, if one could do me any good. Truly, the law, bail processes, court procedures, and so on were all in favour of the criminal with experience as against the guy who had never been in trouble before. And I think they are still that way today. What policeman or detective, if he has only half a case against a guy, wouldn’t sooner it was someone who has never been in trouble, rather than an experienced criminal who has been through the mill? Once, a fellow who had been in New Westminster when I was there called at the apartment. He had come down from Vancouver, was nearly broke, and wondered if I’d go on a score with him. I told him I didn’t want to, as I was taking it easy for a time, but I could let him have a few dollars if he needed it. He said, “No, I’m not flat broke, but I don’t want to be either. Do you know of any punch job where I might make a few bucks — maybe something you took that I can rehash?” I thought for a moment and then said, “I don’t know whether there would be any money in it or not, but I know where there’s a church, and it would be a cinch to get into. The safe in the office is a punch job.”

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Bitter Humour He wanted to know about tools; he didn’t have any. I said, “Well, I’ll give you a hammer and screw-driver, and you can pick up a car valve-stem from the auto wreckers to use for a punch.’’ He took the tools. Just as he was leaving, he said, “Maybe it’s none of my business, but how are you sure this is a punch job, and how do you know exactly where the safe is located, and everything?’’ I said, “Well, that’s the church we were married in. When we went into the office to sign papers afterwards, I noticed the safe.” “Oh,” he said, “that’s good enough for me. I thought maybe it was hearsay, but as long as you saw it yourself.” When he left, my wife started to cry, and I couldn’t understand why. I asked her but she wouldn’t tell me at first. I thought she would be happy because I hadn’t gone with him, as she had complained a little about my going out so often when there was no need to. I was at a loss. I said, “We’ve got more money than we’ve ever had, we’ve got lots of junk (narcotics), and you’ve got all the clothes you want, so just what is the matter?” She said, “Oh, it’s only that you have safes on your mind all the time. I wouldn’t be surprised if, when you are kissing me, you have visions of a big safe loaded with money. Twenty-four hours a day you think of safes.” I was still puzzled and said, “Well, you knew when we were married that I was a thief and a junker, and it’s never made any difference up to now. It’s something more than that. Now, just what is it?” She sobbed, “Well I felt hurt to know that one minute after we got married you were standing there looking at a safe, and thinking about what kind it was, and how to open it. I would have thought your mind would have been on me in that moment, instead of on safes.” I said, “Well, I wasn’t consciously thinking about it; but you know how you walk into a room and notice a certain piece of furniture. That doesn’t mean you intend to steal it. I wasn’t thinking of robbing the church safe. If I’d been

Postgraduate course a typewriter repair-man, I’d probably subconsciously have noted what make of typewriter was there.” She started to laugh, and we never had any further arguments on that. Sometimes, though, when we were visiting other couples, she would tell them about it, and laugh. There were all kinds of opportunities for jobs and, since I was exempted from the army, I could easily have got a job at which I could have worked from then on. But the opportunity had come too late. I was the finished product of a punitive penal system. I was using morphine most of the time, and couldn’t possibly have made enough by working to buy it. And I felt I had done so much time for so little money, that now there was a chance to make a little money, I had no intention of working except as an alibi for short periods, when I was forced to. The police wouldn’t arrest me unless they thought they had me dead to rights, because they knew I’d have a lawyer down to the jail inside of half an hour to get me bailed out. Corporal Macadams was on the narcotics division of the rcmp and we got to know each other quite well. He searched me several times, and a couple of times only missed by a hair’s breadth catching me with narcotics. He never did get me, but if it hadn’t been for the city police tipping me off, he would have snared me on at least two occasions. He had to take a city detective with him when he made a raid, but he never let them forget he was in charge, and would order them around. This didn’t sit too well with the city detectives, so when there was going to be a raid they would sometimes tip me off; and they’d add, ‘‘And rub it in to Mac the Crack” — our nickname for him. I was in a spot because Mac never framed anyone, and he never used strong-arm tactics. On the other hand, it was nice to be tipped off when there was going to be a raid. It kept me from going to jail a few times. It’s the easiest thing in the world for a policeman to frame a junkie if he wants to. All he needs to do is find narcotics in the room, or in the junkie’s pocket when he

136

Bitter Humour is frisking him. Who’s going to believe a junkie against a policeman? One night, I was waiting for them to come, when I ran out of cigarettes. I was going out to get some, and as I opened the door, Mac the Crack and two city fuzz were standing there. Mac said, “Where are you going?’’ I said, “I was just going out to look for some dope.’’ The city detectives laughed but Mac didn’t. He said, “That’s what we came here to look for. Keep your hands away from your mouth and stand still. I’m going to frisk you.” I said, “Well, if you find anything I can use it; but I'm afraid you are wasting your time.” After they frisked me, and a friend of mine who was there, they took about three-quarters of an hour to search the rooms. When they had given up hopes of finding any¬ thing, and Mac was the only one that had had any hopes, he said, "You know, one of these days I’m going to find something on you.” I said, “How many times is this you have frisked me either in my apartment or taken me off the street up to the barracks? It must be at least twenty-five times, isn’t it?” He said, “It may be more than that but, remember, you can win 100 times and I only need to win once.” I was well aware of that, and also that it wasn’t Mac’s fault he hadn’t nailed me on more than one occasion. But there was no animosity between us. The police knew what I was doing, and I knew they knew, and we both knew if I got caught I’d go to jail. When they pinched me, and I beat the charge, they’d say, “Well, we’ll get you next time,” and laugh. But we all had a lot of respect for Mac. He made some pretty spectacular arrests by such means as buying mor¬ phine directly from a connection. He was smarter and more of a gentleman than any other Mounties on narcotics that I have ever known. But he was too much of a stickler for rules and ethics for the city detectives, so they sabo¬ taged him and, of course, this kept some of us out of jail.

Postgraduate course Whenever he stopped me, or just talked to me when we met on the street, he never asked me about any other junkies, or tried to get any information. He had his stoolpigeons and I knew who some of them were. Sometimes I'd feed them a phony story about junk, and they’d probably tell him, because that day or the next I’d get a visit from him and the city fuzz. The object in this was to have the frisk, and get it over with, because then, in the normal course of events, there wouldn’t be another frisk for at least a week or ten days. Once, my wife and I took a fix before going up-town. We used to hide the works in a bathroom outside of our apartment. My wife went up with the works and when she came downstairs we left. We were sitting in a cafe on Eighth Ave., having coffee, and I had my back to the front door of the cafe. My wife said, “Oh, there’s Mac the Crack; he just came in.” She looked scared. I said, “Well, what’s there to worry about? We’ve got nothing on us.” She said, "I forgot to leave the works in the bathroom. It’s in my pocket.” I said, “Well, isn’t that just dandy.” Just then Mac tapped me on the shoulder and said, “All right, I’m taking you and your wife up for a frisk.” He said, “Will you promise me you won’t make a break for it? If you don’t. I’ll have to put the handcuffs on you, and I don’t like to do that.” I said, "No, I won’t promise you. You’d better put the bracelets on me as I don’t trust myself out there on the street, and I wouldn’t want to break my word to you.” What I was trying to do was draw his attention as much as possible to myself in the hope that somehow my wife would have a chance to get rid of the works. He said, “Well, I guess you’ve beat me again, but I’m going to take you both up and frisk you, anyway.” He grabbed the sleeve of my overcoat as we walked across the street, and my wife walked across with us. On the way up in the elevator he said, “From your

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actions, it looks like you beat me again. If you have, you can go as soon as you both get frisked.” I didn’t see how my wife was going to get rid of the works. If she didn’t, it meant that she would go to jail. Mac took us in a big room and told one of the Mounties, “See that he keeps his hands out of his pocket, and away from his mouth. I’ll be back to frisk him in a minute.” As he went through a door to his office, adjoining the room, he told his secretary, “We have to have a matron to search a woman.” The door closed and I couldn’t hear any more. In a moment he was back and had me strip off all my clothes. Then he ran his fingers through my hair and looked between my toes and on the soles of my feet. This was just routine. He didn’t expect to find anything there. When he was finished and I was dressed, he said, “We’ll wait to see how your wife makes out.” Then he went out. I waited for about twenty minutes, feeling sure he would come in any minute and tell me she was charged. Finally, he opened the door and said, “All right, come on out.” I went to the door and he said, “There’s your wife. You can both go.” I said, “Thanks! Better luck next time, Mac.” He said, “I can promise you there will be a next time and I don’t need luck. It’s you who needs the luck, and you’ve been having a lot of it lately.” He didn’t know how true those words were. When my wife and I got out on the street I asked her how she got rid of the works. She said, “I didn’t. It’s in the lining of my coat.” We grabbed a taxi and went home where we took the works out, and I hid it in the bathroom on the next floor. Then she told me what happened. In the elevator, going up to headquarters, she had shoved the needle and eye-dropper through the pocket of her fur coat. It went down between the lining and the outside of her coat. When Mac came in, he told his stenographer that no matron would be available until the following night, as

Postgraduate course she was escorting a woman prisoner to Fort Saskatchewan. He asked his secretary if she would search my wife for narcotics. His secretary said, “I’ll ask her, and if she doesn’t object I will.” She asked my wife if she would object to her searching her as no matron was available. My wife told her it didn’t matter to her who made the search. She said, “I haven’t anything on me, anyway, so I couldn’t care less.” When Mac left, and closed the door, the secretary said, “I don’t like this. We’ll just sit here, and not do anything.” My wife said, “No, you had better search me, because if he asks you what is in my purse, and looks himself and you can’t tell him, you may be in trouble.” The secretary thought this was pretty sporting of my wife, who immediately took charge of the search. She turned the pockets of her coat out and said, “First you make sure there is nothing in the pockets or any holes in the lining,” and then she draped the coat over a chair. Then she took the contents out of her purse, and showed the secretary how to search each item, and finally the lining of the purse. She told the secretary, “You are sup¬ posed to make me take off all my clothes and look in each piece.” But the secretary said, “Oh, don’t bother with that. I wouldn’t know what it looked like even if I found it. The only reason I agreed to do it was because he told me if I didn’t, you’d have to stay in jail until tomorrow night.” So they sat, and smoked, and gossiped, while I sweated outside thinking my wife would have to go to jail for the works. Another time we had a basement apartment, and I was keeping the drugs in the hollow handle of a screw-driver outside the apartment. If Mac had found them out there, he might have had a hard time convicting me, but he would have known they were mine, and the landlady would probably have asked us to leave. But when Mac and other detectives made a search they found nothing. When I came home, I didn’t find anything either; no screw-driver.

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I asked the landlady if I could borrow her screw-driver. I said, “I had one, but I seem to have lost it.” She said, ‘‘Oh, I forgot to tell you, the people in the trailer wanted to borrow a screw-driver so I gave them that one in the basement. I thought it was probably yours but forgot to tell you. I’ll get it back for you.” She brought it back and it hadn’t been opened. That was another time Mac missed by a fluke. But he finally got on to our feeding phony information to his stoolpigeons. Then we had to give it to them through another party. Once, when I was caught dead to rights with morphine, the policeman who arrested me for another crime threw it away. Otherwise, he would have had to turn it over to Mac to prosecute and he said, “Let Mac the Crack make his own arrests. I’m not interested in narcotics.” When Mac arrested junkies, he got the Mounted Police doctor to give them drugs while they were at headquarters, and, as a rule, he didn’t press for long sentences. The last time I saw him, I was waiting in rcmp head¬ quarters to go to Prince Albert. He said, “Well, when you get out this time. I’ll be retired, and you can shoot all the junk you like in peace, as far as I’m concerned.” I heard that after his retirement he got a job as housedetective at the Palliser Hotel in Calgary.

Further encounters with safes, drugs, and jails When I was in Lethbridge, a fellow had told me about a safe in a drug store quite a piece from Calgary. He said there was no bank in the town and it looked as if the drug store cashed cheques and acted as a bank. He thought there might be a good haul there, but in any case there would be a fair supply of drugs. Years before, another fellow I knew had got six months in Lethbridge for tapping a pipeline in Turner Valley. He piped the gasoline to his place, up into a big tank in his yard, and sold gasoline to farmers. Several people used to buy gas from some of the oil companies and resell it to farmers who wanted to pick it up in a hurry and get back to Spring work. It was used just for tractor fuel, as it wasn’t a good enough grade of gas to use in cars, although some people did use it in cars. I had kept in touch with this fellow, and after I settled in Calgary he used to drive me on jobs sometimes. The arrangement was that I would pay him for the trip whether I got. anything or not, and, if he helped, he would get half the score, but he would not come near the place

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until I had it opened up, so he could come in the back door. I told him about this place and he thought it would be pretty good as he had once drilled wells in that district. He offered to drive me there and back for fifty dollars. On the way up, he inquired at a couple of farmers’ places about well-drilling equipment so as to establish an alibi; that is, an alibi for the tools we were carrying in the back of the car. We even went and looked at some equipment. When we got to the place, I opened the front door with an arrangement we had made with a truck jack that spread the door frame and let the door swing in. It took about thirty seconds. Then I went through the door, slipped the bolt on the back door, and opened it. When I came back to the front I went out, pulled the front door shut, released the pressure on the jack, let the door-frame spring back into place and lock the door, and removed our contrap¬ tion. We quickly disassembled this so that it wouldn’t be recognizable for what it was, but just a combination of ordinary tools. Then I went in the back door and to the safe. It was a punch job, but it was such a small safe that I thought it would be better to put it in the back of the light delivery we had. So we took it about a mile out of town and drove into a field and opened it. In an envelope was $2,000, nearly all in new bills from fives to twenties. There was also a considerable amount of drugs — laudanum, opium, morphine, heroin, codeine, pantapons. There were a couple of large bundles of war bonds. My friend said, “What’ll we do with these?” I said, “We’ll throw them away. I wouldn’t keep any¬ thing but drugs and money.” He agreed; there was no use hanging on to something we didn’t know where to get rid of, and how much to charge. To us, they were probably worthless and we could go to the penitentiary for having them. So we buried them

Further encounters with safes, drugs, and jails in a farmer’s plowed field. We just scuffed a hole in the ground with our feet, put the bonds in, and covered them over with dirt. I had all the money and all the drugs in the pockets of my coat. The arrangement was that if we got arrested I would tell them I was hitch-hiking and he had picked me up. This would give him a chance of beating it, and we wouldn’t both go to jail. When we had driven about twenty miles we began to feel pretty good. It was 2 a.m. and with steady driving we would be home by 7 a.m. Suddenly, we saw a Mountie standing in the middle of the road waving his flashlight. My friend said, “Let me do the talking.” I was glad to do that. The Mountie said, “How far up is the fire?” The prairie was covered with smoke, and had been, far beyond where we had pulled the job. My friend said, “It’s farther up than we were. We have been looking for some well-drilling equipment, and we were up as far as so-and-so’s, and we also went to see soand-so, but they didn’t have just what I want.” Then he launched into a technical explanation of the kind of tools he wanted, and why he needed that kind of tools for the formation in Turner Valley. The Mountie said, “What have you got in the back?” My friend said, “Oh, I’ve got all kinds of tools for taking off pulleys, and removing gears, and so on, for the kind of equipment I’m looking for.” The Mountie pulled back the tarp and looked at the tool box with the padlock on it, and the other tools, and was convinced. My friend had been doing all the talking as he was afraid the Mountie might recognize me if he got a good look at me. The Mountie wouldn’t have known me, but the rcmp send out bulletins on known safe-men, and give descriptions, and he might have recognized me from one of these. When the Mountie asked me what I was doing, my

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friend said, “He’s my hired man and he’s going to work with me on the outfit as soon as I can get a well-drilling rig together.’’ After the Mountie looked at both our registration cards and at my friend’s driver’s licence he said, “You fellows are O.K. “Actually the only reason I stopped you is that one of your headlights isn’t working. You better get it fixed the first chance you get.” My friend said, “I better fix it right now. It may have come loose.” He got out and fixed it. The bulb had just jarred loose. The Mountie wished us luck, and waved goodbye as we drove off. It was a fairly cold summer’s night with a strong wind blowing, but I was sweating by now. About ten miles farther on, we drove through the city where the Mountie who had stopped us was stationed. Once we got through there, we didn’t have any more large places to pass through until we got to Calgary. It was beginning to get daylight and we were pretty safe driving through the city. Once out of Calgary, we used back roads the rest of the way, and were home before eight o’clock. I had a job working on the oil-wells so I had breakfast and my friend drove me to work. I signed in at eight o’clock and worked until four. Since the Mountie who stopped us had our names, we thought we would probably both get a visit from the police. With proof that I was at work at eight a.m., they were sure to discount the possibility that I could have been on this job. What we hadn’t figured on was the Mountie who stopped us. When he realized he had let us slip through his fingers after questioning us for twenty minutes, I guess he thought the best thing to do was to keep it to himself. In any case we weren’t questioned. After about a week, I quit my job, and my wife and I went back to Calgary. A friend of mine, who had just got out of Prince Albert, was in Edmonton, and we decided to

Further encounters with safes, drugs, and jails go up and visit him. We took a few hundred dollars, and enough morphine to last us until we got back, and went to Edmonton for three or four days. My friend had read about the safe job in the papers. I hadn't seen a paper since we pulled it. He asked me if I had made that sting. I said, “Yes, and we got quite a few drugs out of it too.” He said, “Boy! That was a dandy. I’d like to get just one like that and I’d pack it in and go into business or something.” I said, “I don't know what kind of a business you’d go into on that much money unless it was peddling shoe¬ laces. Even if we sold the drugs, and we are not going to do that, we are going to use them, my end wouldn’t come to more than $3,500 or $4,000.” He said, “Yes, but that’s chicken-feed compared to the bonds. What about them? Are you going to sell them or hang on to them for a while?” I said, “Oh yes! There was a bunch of bonds but we threw them away. I wouldn’t monkey around with any¬ thing like that. It’s just a good way to go to jail.” He thought I was kidding, but when I convinced him I wasn’t, he said, “Well, you just threw away $50,000, and it was as good as cash.” He showed me the clipping from the Edmonton paper. The main story was about the war bonds; it hardly men¬ tioned the $2,000 cash and the drugs. Then he told me fellows who stole them had been getting full value for war bonds all along. When I realized what we’d done I could have slit my throat. We talked about going down to see if we could find them; but it was dark when we buried them and I wasn’t sure that I could even go to the right field much less the right spot. So we gave up that idea and carried on with the party. I was out on bail at the time, as I had got pinched before Christmas the previous year, for attempting to break into a drug store in Calgary to get some drugs for Christmas.

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When I came up for trial, I got ten months in Leth¬ bridge. But this time, when I went to jail, I had a few dollars, plenty of clothes, and a fair supply of drugs. My wife looked after the drugs, but she got arrested and was sentenced to seven months in Fort Saskatchewan for pos¬ session of narcotics. Her time would be up about a month after mine if she paid her fine, and we had the money to pay it. This was one of the easiest bits I ever did. Things had changed considerably in Lethbridge and, with the war on, there weren’t nearly as many prisoners as usual. Most of the freight-riders and vagrants had either joined the army or gone to work. They really needed men at the jail to work, and an entirely different kind of attitude pre¬ vailed among the guards. Instead of threatening, and sometimes bullying as they had done in depression days, now they resorted to coaxing and buttering up the cons to keep them in good humour for working. Now there was a regular tobacco issue and cons had their own cigarette lighters; punk-boxes were a relic of the past. Also, most of the new guards they hired were a dif¬ ferent type. They weren’t worried about losing their jobs because they knew they could get other jobs, probably at better wages. When I got out I decided to go to work at least until my wife got out. I found a job on a delivery route for a laundry firm. They were glad to get me, because help was scarce, and I knew the city well. This was one of my most interesting jobs. It gave me an insight into some aspects of the ordinary housewife I didn’t know existed. The foreman went on the route with me for a week, the time it took to cover the whole route. Explaining many of the angles to me, he warned me about giving any credit except for people he had established, and for whom the firm would go good. He said, “Some of these women will try to get their laundry on credit, and will do anything to get you to leave

Further encounters with safes, drugs, and jails

it. You’ll be surprised, when you refuse, how many of them will offer to go to bed with you, if you’ll just leave their laundry. "But if you do that just once, you are in trouble. After that, they will tell you to leave the laundry for nothing, or they’ll tell their husbands; you’ll be paying for their laundry from there on in. "There are plenty of them who will be glad to pay you for your laundry, and also go to bed with you for nothing. I’ll introduce you to three or four of them.” He did that, but he was about twenty-five years older than I was, and what looked all right to him didn’t have any appeal for me. Sure enough, the first week I was on my own I delivered laundry to a housewife about twenty-four years old with two small children. She said she didn’t have any money, but told me to leave it and she’d pay me next time. I told her there was absolutely no credit, and that if I left it without getting paid I had to pay for it myself when I returned. This was true. You had to pay for all the laundry you delivered when you checked in. She said, “My husband’s shirts are in there and you won’t be back for a week. I’ve got to have them. He needs them for work.” I said, "I’m sorry but I can’t leave it without the money.” She said, "Can’t you trust me for a dollar forty?” — or whatever the amount was. I said, “No. If you can’t borrow that amount of money from one of your neighbours who know you, why should I, who don’t know you, lend it to you? And that is exactly what I am doing if I leave your laundry.” All this while I was standing at the door and she was in the doorway. She said, "Come on in, I want to talk to you.” I went into her living-room and she locked the front door which opened on to the living-room. Two small chil¬ dren were playing on the floor. They were both under three years old, I guessed.

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She said, “Now, you leave the laundry and I’ll go to bed with you.’’ And she started to unbutton the front of her dress. I said, “No! I can’t leave it without the money.” She slipped out of the arms of her dress and let it fall around her feet on the floor, and stood there in her slip. I said, “No, lady, it’s no dice.” As she kept removing the rest of her clothes, I began to get a little scared. What if someone came to the door, a neighbour, or her husband maybe come back sick from work. I said, “I’m getting out of here.” She gave it one last whirl as she started to remove her brassiere. “Come on, be a sport just this once, and I’ll take all my clothes off.” I said, “You’ve got most of them off now, and it doesn’t do anything for me. Either I get the money, or I don’t leave the laundry.” She said, “Oh, all right! I’ll give you the money, but I was saving it for something else.” She walked over to a dresser, lifted up the comer of the dresser scarf, took out a five-dollar bill, and handed it to me. By now she had removed her brassiere, and stood only in her panties. I gave her the bundle of laundry and her change. She said, “Well, you got your money and I got my laundry, and since I’m this far undressed, we might as well go to bed anyway.” This story ends here. Having associated with thieves and prostitutes most of my life, I was surprised to find out that so many ordinary housewives offered their favours, often free, to deliverymen, pedlars, and salesmen. The foreman placed these women in three categories. First the housewife, usually young, who has spent some of the grocery money on something else, and is desperately trying to keep her husband from finding out.

Further encounters with safes, drugs, and jails Second, the married woman who pays her bills and gives her favours because she likes a change, or isn’t getting enough at home. And last, the single woman or widow, who may be going with someone but wants to give the right impression until marriage, and still have her fun in the meantime, or the single woman or widow who just wants to have an occa¬ sional fling, and doesn’t want neighbours or anyone to know about it. They are all perfectly safe with a milkman or bakery- or laundry-man because he certainly can’t be telling people, “I went to bed with this woman or that one;” and this is especially true if he is married. After my wife came home, I told her about some of these experiences and she began to frown on this job. It wasn’t without some justification, because she knew that if I wanted to work I could make more money at some¬ thing else. I told her I’d quit and, after breaking a new man in on the route for a week, I quit the laundry and housewife business. What seemed ironic to me on this job was the fact that by contrast when I delivered laundry and dry-cleaning to a couple of bawdy-houses on my route they always paid, and also gave me a tip. There was never any suggestion of taking it out in trade. These propositions came from the housewife. For a while, I worked as a waiter in a beer-parlour. The wages weren’t as much as I’d made on the laundry route, although they were union wages, but at that time the tips amounted to as much as the wages and sometimes more. Nearly everyone was working, and there was lots of money and heavy tipping. My shift was from about three to ten p.m., and quite often after I got off shift I’d go out on a score. I was using drugs but more in moderation than I had been accustomed to. The police knew I was stealing as well as working, and some of them told me so; but one of the city detectives told me they didn’t care as long as I did it out of the city. The Mounties, on the other hand, didn’t care how much steal-

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Bitter Humour ing I did in the city, as long as I didn’t go into their terri¬ tory outside of the city. Each one had his own territory. Macadams was interested only in narcotics; but it didn’t matter to him whether it was in the city or country, it was his business. We gave them all a break. On some of these scores we got a bunch of bonds and war-savings certificates. An old safe-blower A1 Jeeves, who had packed it in and gone into a prosperous business for himself, used to drive me on scores out of town. I had concluded that I didn’t have too much longer to go in this stealing racket so we decided to keep all the bonds, war-savings certificates, and negotiable papers for the time when I would quit altogether, or when I would need money for a lawyer. Since A1 was less likely to go to jail than I was, and still less likely to be suspected going to and from a safety-deposit box in a bank, we decided that he would rent one, and put all of our joint papers in it. This built up until we had more than $50,000 in bonds and certificates. One large bond was registered, and we didn’t know if it was negotiable or not, but decided to keep it anyway. With this nest-egg behind me, I didn’t have too much to worry about, or so I thought. I also started saving drugs that are usually thrown away. I had Dover tablets, morphine hyoscine, morphine atro¬ pine, lead and opium tablets, codeine tablets, and bottles of triturates stored. Triturates are tablets that are taken by mouth instead of intravenously; but they can also be used intravenously by dissolving them in luke-warm water, instead of heating the water as with hypodermic tablets. They have the same effect and are just as good as the hypodermic tablets, except that it is a lot more fuss cook¬ ing them up. We would never use triturates until all the hypodermic tablets were gone. A druggist told me a lot about drugs; it was he who taught me how to extract the opium from Dover tablets so it could be used intravenously.

,

Further encounters ivith safes, drugs and jails There is also a way to extract most of the opium from Gall and Opium pile salve, if one has a large enough quan¬ tity. It cannot be used intravenously, but can be made into pellets about the size of a small pea, and swallowed. Every once in a while, I’d get careless with drugs and, whenever I did, I paid for it. The sickest I ever was occurred when I got lead-poison¬ ing from shooting lead and opium tablets. My druggist friend had told me how to extract most of the opium, but warned me that it was virtually impossible to get all the lead out of the tablets. He said five or six fixes in a pinch would probably be all right, but anything more than that and I’d be in danger of getting lead-poisoning. Once, when I was short, I dug up the lead and opium tablets I had cached and started to use them. I forgot about the five or six fixes and in about four days I had lead¬ poisoning. My wife went to a doctor and told him what had happened, and he told her what to do. In about three days I was all right again. Another time, I opened an ounce bottle of heroin and cooked up a fix. I had been using morphine and put in the same amount I would have if it had been morphine. Shortly after I pulled the needle out of my arm, I fell to the floor unconscious. My wife immediately called a doctor, but by the time he arrived she had brought me to. On another occasion, I took morphine hyoscine by mis¬ take and was practically blind for four or five hours. It was the queerest feeling, knowing everything that was going on, and being able to talk and reason intelligently, but not able to see properly. Luckily I hadn’t taken too much, as I saw another guy who did, and he was practically goofy for a whole day. He didn’t know his friends, or even the difference between a man and a woman. Once, when I was using morphine atropine, I was in a hurry and didn’t bother to take the atropine out. To take the atropine out you plug in an electric iron, and then turn it upside down. You place a piece of blotting-paper on the iron, and put the morphine atropine pills on the blotting-

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Bitter Humour paper. Then with an eye-dropper you apply about a quar¬ ter of a drop of water to the top of each tablet. The combination of the heat, blotting-paper, and mois¬ ture draws the atropine out, and leaves the tablet with tiny holes like a microscopic piece of coral; a brown stain caused by the atropine forms on the blotting-paper where the tablet was. Instead of going to all this trouble, I just cooked up three or four pills and shot them. The atropine dried my mouth up so much that, even when I swallowed liquid, as soon as the liquid was down it felt as if I had just finished eating a box of soda biscuits dry. But in a few hours I was back to normal. We always took the cocaine when we broke into a drug store. It is no good to substitute for any opiate, because it has an exhilarating effect, whereas opiates are a soporific. Neither, as many people believe, is cocaine habit-forming in the sense that opiates or tobacco are habit-forming. But we used to use it, along with morphine or heroin, to have a party. When you take a fix of morphine, you don’t need an¬ other one for eight or nine hours, and with pure heroin it is also several hours before another fix is needed, al¬ though not as long as with morphine or opium. But you can take a fix of morphine, and then take a fix of cocaine, and keep repeating this for a couple of hours. One counteracts the other. Sometimes we made speedballs, half cocaine and half morphine or heroin or some other opiate. Cocaine by itself makes the user nervous and, after using it by itself once, I never did it again, unless I had a good supply of some opiate to straighten out on afterwards. It is cocaine and marihuana that are responsible for the public misconception about the drug-addict and addic¬ tion. Although both are, by legal definition, narcotics, neither is an addictable drug in the sense that it sets up a physical craving. Cocaine has slight aphrodisiac proper¬ ties, and I have no experience with marihuana. It is the effects of these drugs that give the drug-addict

Further encounters with safes, drugs, arid jails the image of knifing or shooting people, or of jumping off high buildings, or committing sex crimes. Actually, opiates, which include heroin, opium, morphine, codeine and all other derivatives of opium, have the exact opposite effect. They are soporifics and tend to decrease sexual desire and bring on a feeling of lethargy. Heroin is defined as a derivative of morphine, but more correctly is morphine treated or processed with cer¬ tain acids. A heroin habit is formed much quicker than a morphine habit, but it can also be kicked much quicker. A heroin fix wears off much faster than morphine, and this is why the people who control the drug traffic prefer heroin to morphine. A further advantage of heroin to the drug overlord is that it can be adulterated with a variety of substances from sugared milk to epsom salts, and even strychnine has been used. Practically every person who handles it, from the wholesaler to the lowly pedlar on the street, cuts it with something as it passes through his hands. This is not possible with morphine or opium, at least not to this extent. When it finally reaches the addict, it is quite often a mixture of chloral hydrate, strychnine, sugared milk, epsom salts, digitalis, and possibly fifteen percent heroin. During this time, I had never bought heroin from ped¬ lars, and in fact there was none of it being sold in Calgary. Opium was being sold on the streets in Vancouver, and once or twice I went out to Vancouver, and bought a couple of hundred dollars’ worth. But I stole most of the drugs for my wife and myself. When we were really stuck, we had four or five doctors who would give us one fix each at from two to five dollars a fix. One of them used to charge a dollar a grain. A Mounted Police corporal had been tailing me pretty closely. He didn’t make any secret of the fact that he was watching me. He was stationed in Calgary and I had taken too many safes in his territory so he had made up his mind to get me. The odds were in his favour as he knew I was hooked,

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Bitter Humour as my wife was, on drugs, and that sooner or later I’d have to kick in another drug store. He also had an idea that A1 Jeeves was driving me on scores, as he had dropped into Al’s place a couple of times when I was there, and also to my place when A1 was there. A1 had a light delivery that he used in his painting business and Cpl. Horne knew it. Since A1 lived only a block from me, Horne used to check his place to see if the light delivery was there, and check my place if it was gone. Then he’d be waiting for our return. However, we wouldn’t return together and A1 never had anything on him or in his car. Another junker came to my place one day and told me he had discovered a drug store in which he knew there were a lot of drugs because he had seen the safe open. It was in a town near Crossfield, Alberta, a few miles north of Calgary. He had the habit bad, as did his wife, and he really wanted to get drugs. He asked me to come with him and blow the safe, as he didn’t know anything about blowing safes, and I agreed to go. We arranged for A1 Jeeves to drive us up in his light delivery. We knew it was pretty risky with Cpl. Home tailing me so closely, but I thought we’d take a chance on it. I wasn’t that short of drugs, and didn’t need money that badly either, and my wife was against my going on another job right away, as she knew how closely Home was watching me. We got A1 to drive us up and he took all the precautions possible. Several times, before coming to a sideroad, he turned his lights out, and drove down the sideroad where we waited for a few minutes to let cars go by. Just in case Horne was tailing us, and there was a good chance he was, we could maybe give him the slip. When we got to the town, A1 let us off near the drug store and we took the necessary tools, the nitro-glycerine and caps, while he parked near the edge of town. If we weren’t at his car in an hour, he would know we were pinched and drive off.

Further encounters with safes, drugs, and jails When we got in the drug store we went to the safe. All I wanted the guy with me to do was hold the flashlight and keep his mouth shut, but he was as nervous and excitable as a woman who’d just had her baby stolen. What I could have done in five minutes by myself, it took me more than twenty to do with him. He made me nervous shining the flashlight all over the store as if it were legal. It seemed to be a game to him; he didn’t realize he was flirting with the penitentiary. He had never been in the pen yet. Then, too, he hadn’t had a fix for quite a few hours, and was nervous and excitable. After I knocked the spindle off, and was taking the screws out of the plate, he’d shine the flashlight some place else, and the beam would go to the top of the store, so that it could be seen half a mile away if anyone was up. This made me nervous too, and I only had a light half the time as he was shining it elsewhere. But finally I moulded the soap into a cup, and attached the cup to the spindle. When I took the nitro-glycerine out of a back pocket and started to pour it into the cup, he asked me how I’d know when there was enough, would it make much noise, would we stay inside when it blew, was there any danger of getting hurt, and did I think there would be many drugs in the safe. I reminded him that he had seen the drugs in the safe; I told him that anyone who was awake would likely hear the explosion, and I asked him to hold the flashlight steady. I had just about half enough nitro-glycerine in the safe when he walked away with the flashlight, and said, “I'm going to get some cigarettes from the front.” I was at the end of my patience. You can’t pour a little nitro-glycerine in now and then a little more later on, and know what you’re doing. The idea is to get in all that you are putting in, as fast as it will drink, and set the fuse before it drains away. Almost for a certainty, this job was botched already, but I’d try to go through with it anyway. I put the fuse in the

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Bitter Humour cap, laid it in the soap cup, pressed it against the safe, and lit it. As soon as the fuse started to sputter, my friend took out like a startled deer. I waited a few feet from the safe and it blew. We had messed it up; only half the nitro-glycerine had exploded. The first part that I put in before being inter¬ rupted with no light had drained away so that we only got half a charge. Now we were in a pretty mess. We couldn’t put in another combination shot because the first explosion had opened it up so much that it wouldn’t hold the explosives in a small enough space. It had also jarred the door so that it would be tough to make it with a jamb shot. We could have opened it with the bars in about ten minutes, but I didn’t want to spend that much time. So we got a box of absorbent cotton from the front of the drug store and I packed it in as tight as possible for a jamb shot and then put in what would ordinarily be enough nitro to blow three safes this size. Then, as I lit the fuse, I told my partner, “There was no need for you to take out before but there is this time; so make sure you get well outside the building because it’s anybody’s guess what will happen here.” He went to the back door and waited outside. I used a short fuse, lit it, and, as soon as it hissed, I ran out of the back door. My partner was about fifty feet away when I got to the back door and the explosion rocked the air. At the same time he ran into the arms of Cpl. Tommy Home. The Crossfield Mountie was with Home, and they arrested both of us. The next morning we appeared in court in Crossfield, got a week’s remand, had bail set, and were taken to Mountie headquarters in Calgary. I got out on bail that afternoon. If I could have got bail for my partner we’d have had the case set over to high court; but he was from Vancouver

Further encounters with safes, drugs, and jails and I couldn’t find anyone to go his bail. I figured we might as well plead guilty and get it over with. We made a deal for four years. I forget, now, just what it was. I tried to make it for three, but they wouldn’t go for it. They could easily have given me five years just for possession of explosives, so anything less than that was a break. I agreed to plead guilty to so many charges and my total time would not be more than four years. It wasn’t an out¬ right deal. I think maybe Horne talked to the Crossfield Mountie who talked to the magistrate, and they told us they felt sure that this would be the case, after having made inquiries. In addition to that, my partner agreed to give Home some bonds, or post office money-orders, or something, that belonged to me. He made this deal without my knowledge. After the trial, Horne came into the cells at the rcmp barracks, and said to him, “All right, what about that deal?” My partner didn’t know any more about this stuff than anyone reading this would have known, except that he knew I probably had it somewhere. I couldn’t give it up because half of it belonged to A1 Jeeves, and in any case it was in a safety-deposit box and I didn’t even know what bank it was in, and wanted it that way. I never had any love for policemen, but Horne was one of the few I did respect. I always figured if you gave your word it should be good, no matter whether it was to a policeman or to anyone else. I didn’t like to see this happen to Horne, because I knew he had probably told his superiors that he’d be able to recover these bonds or post-office money orders or what¬ ever it was, if we didn’t get more than four years. This would put him in a spot, especially if he had gone to his superiors, as I suspect he had, to see that we didn’t get more than four years.

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Bitter Humour He called me into his office and said, “You know he made a deal with me.” I said, “Yes, I know now that he made a deal with you, but I didn’t know it before. I can realize what your position is, but I am not in a position to do anything about it. If you had tried to make that deal with me, I’d have turned you down, because I couldn’t have carried out my end of it.” He wanted to know if, in my opinion, there was any chance of his ever getting his hands on the stuff. I told him that I couldn’t conceive of there ever being the remotest chance of his getting hold of it. He said, “Well, at least I know where I stand.” When I got back in the cells, I asked my partner about his having made the deal, and he admitted it. He seemed proud that he had done it, and that we had got only four years. I didn’t like it. Horne had always been square with me as far as his word was concerned, and he had a right to expect the same treatment. He realized I wasn’t respon¬ sible for this, but, as he said, “Well, he’s your partner,” which indicated he had made the deal probably on the premise that what one of us agreed to, the other would go along with. I don’t recall what the specific jobs were that we pleaded guilty to, but the record shows the following: “1945, May 17, Crossfield, Alta. 1. Breaking and entering and theft, three charges, 4 years on each charge concurrently: 2. Possession of housebreaking instruments by night, 2 years concurrently; 3. Possession of explosives, 2 years con¬ currently.” Concurrently means that you serve only the largest sen¬ tence. In other words we had four years. There is no such charge as safe-cracking or safe-blowing; the charge is breaking and entering and theft. There are charges of possession of safe-breaking instruments and possession of explosives. Meantime the war had ended. I heard from guys com-

Further encounters with safes, drugs, and jails ing out of Prince Albert that Square Deal was no longer there, and that the Snake was now warden. Reports were that the change was remarkable and that compared to Square Deal’s days the place was like a rest home. It all sounded encouraging, especially since I’d have to spend the next few years there. We had got drugs while we were in the rcmp barracks in Calgary, and got a big fix before we left. The provost told our escort to see that they called a doctor as soon as we got to Saskatoon. When the doctor asked us how much we were taking, and we told him six grains of morphine each, he said, “That’s twelve grains and more than I’ve got with me, so I’ll have to go and get some more.” We asked him to give us what he had first as we were sick. So he split a tube of quarter grains, which is six and a quarter grains of morphine, and gave us about three grains each. It didn’t do much for us as we had pretty big habits, and had got all we wanted in the barracks in Calgary. But the doctor came back with a tube of half grains and fixed us up so that we could eat. He said he’d be in in the morning before we left to give us a good fix. We told him it would be our last fix for four years and asked him to make it a good one. He promised he would. They brought us our meals in the morning, and we wouldn’t eat until we got fixed. The Mounties got the doctor on the phone and he was right over. He gave us two fixes each, and each one was five grains so that we each got ten grains. It was actually a couple of grains more than we needed but I knew it would be the last, and I also knew what going through the chief keeper’s office is if you are sick. We were sailing when we got to Prince Albert and ate our dinner in the rcmp barracks. It didn’t take nearly as long for me to go through as it did the first time I was there, because they had all the records of personal history. The hair-cut, and the inevi-

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Bitter Humour table creoline bath, and finger-prints and picture don’t take as long the second time around. When I got to my cell I was still high, which is what I had hoped would happen; but about eight o’clock at night the effects of the morphine started to wear off. From then on I was pretty sick for from ten days to two weeks. Then I began to get the chuck horrors, that is, I couldn’t get enough to eat. With several guys stealing extra grub for me, I soon began to get heartburn from eating too much. This was the last stage of kicking the habit. After I was in about a month I was back to normal, although probably still a little under weight. I started out working on the cleaners and immediately noticed the contrast from when Square Deal had been at the helm of the good ship Revenge. Now there was an altogether different atmosphere since neither guards nor cons were under the strain of constant fear, as they had been before. Some of the cons who were there when Square Deal left told us stories about the manner of his leaving. There was a rumour that he had been sent to a private nut-house. I don’t know whether this was true or not, but certainly he belonged in a puzzle factory of some kind. One of the guards told me he died a raving lunatic. I don’t know whether this was true, or whether it was wish¬ ful thinking. In any case there were plenty of believers, both cons and screws. There is a railroad spur-track that runs back of the penitentiary, and here coal for the power house is un¬ loaded at the coal docks. Here, also, box-car loads of produce for the penitentiary are left for unloading. When Square Deal was leaving, a box-car was shunted onto this spur to load his belongings into. I talked to some of the fellows that were on the outside gang that loaded it into the box-car. There were inlaid cedar chests that had been made in the penitentiary carpenter shop, and trunks and boxes, as well as the ordinary household articles.

Further encounters with safes, drugs, and jails The gang had crowbars to pry boxes and trunks around in the box-car. A fellow who was on the gang told me the guard turned his back and walked away as it was being loaded, and that the fellows inside rammed the crowbars through cedar chests, trunks, washing-machine, sewingmachine, and every possible thing they could damage. One fellow, who had got the paddle, would ram a crow¬ bar through a packing case and say, “How do you like that?” Then he would smack his lips. This, of course, was an imitation of the performance Square Deal went through when anyone got the paddle. A fellow told me that out of one of the cedar chests they got all kinds of secret papers. Evidently Square Deal had intended to write a book. In any case, he had letters from the rcmp, and in one case the letter stated that the fellow, whose picture was enclosed, had been very useful to the rcmp especially since other thieves didn’t suspect he was a stool-pigeon. It was suggested that he might be of use to the warden. This was a fellow most of us knew and respected. If it were true, it accounted for a lot of things we couldn’t account for before. However, I didn’t see the letter so didn’t jump to any conclusions, but I didn’t discount the possibility of it being true. The fellows at first had thought of distributing the letters and memos around, but then they decided that it would cause so much hatred and ill-will and that this is just what Square Deal would have liked. So they burned most of them in the incinerator, and the thieves kept the information among themselves rather than make it public to everyone in the penitentiary. This, they figured, gave them a little edge since the “wrong” guys didn’t know that they knew. It really mattered only as far as about three guys were concerned, as these guys were trusted outside. Actually, as far as those in the pen were concerned, it didn’t really matter whether a guy was a stool-pigeon or not. Unless you were figuring on making an escape, or on knifing

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Bitter Humour someone, and most of us weren’t, there wasn’t too much else that was serious. Probably nothing that the average con would contemplate would be considered serious any¬ way. And the petty stool-pigeons who squealed about little things were more of an annoyance than a danger. They couldn’t get you into any real serious trouble. But those who were trusted among the thieves, and whom you might team up with outside if you didn’t know the score, could be responsible for your getting from five years up. A couple of times I know of, someone in the pen told another con of some score he pulled outside, and was later charged with it. On some occasions, the Mounties used to come out to the penitentiary and question guys about other charges. These visits were not always the result of talking to other cons, but sometimes they were. I wound up working in the kitchen and for a while was working with another guy on the steam-pots. All the other guys who worked in the kitchen had white clothes changed twice a week. This guy I worked with had black clothes, and I don’t think he ever changed them. They had been white when he got them, but you had to look closely at them to realize that. I’ve seen guys working in the grease-pits in garages who didn’t look as dirty and slovenly. His nose seemed to be always running and he would wipe it with the sleeve of his shirt; and, after he had drawn his sleeve across his nose, he would twitch the corner of his mouth in the same direction as he had wiped as a kind of finale to the operation. This slovenliness and filthiness got so on my nerves that I decided to get a different job. The con bookkeeper was the guy to see if you wanted a change. If he liked you, he’d go to the steward, and the steward would usually listen to him. When I went to him, I told him I couldn’t stand much more of the kitchen job, and he asked me why. I told him, and he laughed and said, “I know what you mean.”

Further encounters ivith safes, drugs, and jails He asked me how I’d like to work with him in the office and I told him I couldn’t type. He said, “Well you can learn and I’ll do all the typing until you learn to touch-type. If you practice four or five hours a day, it won’t take you long to learn how to type good enough for all the typing you’ll need to do here. Actually, I can do it quite easily myself, as I have been doing for two years, but I'd like to have someone to talk to.” So I went to work in the office and before too long learned to type good enough to type out the menus and the odd letter which was about all the typing I had to do. Also, I was taking more high-school grades and studying in my cell. The steward had graduated from barn-boss to his posi¬ tion, and he looked as if he had brought part of the stables with him. He usually looked like a grease-monkey just getting off shift before wash-up. But he was a likeable guy in spite of his slovenliness. Whereas the previous steward had boasted he liked three crews, one coming, one going, and one working, this guy never fired anyone. He got guys who knew how to do the work and kept them. They stole him blind, while he spent his time balancing the budget and experimenting with new dishes. One day he was concocting a mess of some kind and a guy we called Spider said, “What is that you’re making, boss?” “Why, don’t you know, that’s Mexican meat pie.” Spider said, “You tell a Mexican that and he’ll cut your throat.” The steward laughed and said, “You’ll see, you’ll see, it will be good. The boys will like it.” It wasn’t good, and the boys didn’t like it, but they gave him credit for trying to give a little variety anyway.

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Shaking time In Prince Albert, at this time, there was a silent range where the loud-speaker was not supposed to be on unless it was by the consent of everyone on the range, for some special event. Most of the fellows on the range were study¬ ing, or just liked it quiet without the radio blaring. But a couple of queers got on the range so they could be close to their lovers. The kids would decide it was too quiet for what they wanted to do, and ask to get the radio turned on. This caused a lot of dissension for a while, but it was finally resolved. In a cell next to me was John Brown, who was taking university courses from the extension department of Queen’s University. He used to talk for a few minutes while he was eating his supper, and then settle right into studying. If someone he didn’t like, or thought was a phony, asked him anything, he used to get pretty snarly. Another fellow, a few cells away, was convicted in Quebec or Northern Ontario a few years later for marry¬ ing a woman and then burning the house down with his wife in it to collect insurance. At his trial it came out that a house with a previous wife in it had also burned up.

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Bitter Humour In Prince Albert, he was doing a long sentence and was putting on the religious act, obviously, we thought, trying to get a parole. He worked in the Catholic church and was particularly obvious on the religious bit when there was a guard around. Other cons don’t usually care how religious a guy is but they do resent his putting on an act, especially when they think he’s a phony — not phony in the sense that he’s a stool-pigeon, but in the sense that he is just altogether counterfeit. All this con’s talking and protesting he was religious was counteracted, as far as the other cons were concerned, by his advances to younger fellows, and associations with other queers. The cons usually wish a guy luck if he’s putting on an act for the screws and officials, in the hope of getting a parole; but they resent his trying to spoof other cons that he is religious, and reformed. The cons usually see through this long before most of the screws do. One night the phony religious guy hollered over to Johnny Brown and said, “Johnny, I’ve got a problem; something that’s been bothering me. I wonder if you’d give me some advice.” Johnny said, “Yes, I’ll help you out if I can, but make it snappy. I’m going to start studying and I haven’t got all night to listen to your bullshit.” The other fellow said, “Well, you know I work hard all day in the church, scrubbing the floor, and dusting, and getting the altar ready for mass, and at night when I come in my cell I’m completely tired out.” Johnny said, “Yes, my heart bleeds for you. Go on.” He said, “I can’t neglect saying my prayers, but I’m so tired at night when I kneel on the floor. Do you think God would mind if I said my prayers in bed?” Johnny said, “Certainly, God would mind, you stupid son-of-a-bitch. Bed is where you go to fuck, not to say your prayers. Do you think God wants you to say your prayers

Shaking time in the same place you fuck. What the hell kind of sacrilege are you trying to pull anyway?” This had backfired on the phony guy, and as everyone else burst out laughing he protested, “All right! I’m sorry, I just didn’t think. Yes, I can see you are absolutely right, I should have thought of it before. I’ll get down on my knees when I say my prayers even if I am tired.” Someone suggested, “Why don’t you get a pair of knee pads?” When the fish came in they were put on the range above us for a day or two until they were assigned to a shop, or wherever they were going to work. Usually they’d holler down during supper-time and ask a few questions. Several times Johnny would say, “Now, you’ve asked us a lot of questions. How about us asking you a few?” The first question Johnny would ask was, “How long are you doing and what is the charge?” The guys in for sex crimes would usually start off with, “Well, it is supposed to be — Here Johnny would cut in and say, “O.K. How old was the girl?” Sometimes they’d say, “Well she was fourteen or fifteen but And Johnny would cut in again and say, “But she was big for her age and could pass for nineteen or twenty eh?” The guy would usually say, “Yes, that’s right. How did you know?” “Oh, we have ways of finding out things in here. Now you can shut up. This is a silent range, and we don’t talk here except when we are eating supper.” Once Johnny asked a fish, “How old was the girl?” The fish said, “It wasn’t a girl, it was a boy.” Actually, the guy was in for bogus cheques, but he had been in other pens, and knew what the score was when Johnny started to question him. This line of questioning could be pulled only on guys who had not been in the pen before. Actually, it is not one

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Bitter Humour con’s business what another con is in for, or how long he is doing, and this rule is usually respected, although the news usually comes from the cons working in the chief keeper’s office, if it is an unusual type of crime. It is not unusual for one con to know another for a couple of years, and not know what he is in for, or how long he is doing. If the guy doesn’t talk about his case himself, you usually don’t ask him. Sentences for thieves from the prairies seldom ran over eight years, although there were a few hold-up cases where it was fifteen and, even fewer, twenty years. But the trans¬ fers from Kingston had whopping big sentences. I would guess that the average sentence of the Kingston bunch that came prior to my arrival this time, was from fifteen to twenty years. There were sentences of thirty-five and forty years. Of course, these sentences were, in the main, for dif¬ ferent types of crime. Whereas the common types of crime on the prairies were safe-cracking, breaking and entering, forgery, and theft, the cons from Ontario had been con¬ victed mainly of crimes with the use of firearms. These included bank robbery and various other hold-ups. Some of them had carried guns on ordinary breaking and enter¬ ing jobs, and this usually increased their sentences by from three to five years. There was a considerably higher number of rape charges among the Kingston guys than among a corresponding number of Western guys — probably because of the larger population, and larger metropolitan centres in Ontario. Now that the war was over, there were rumours that the government was going to act on the recommendations of the Archambault Report. I felt that I’d have to see some indications before I’d believe it. Most of us felt the same way, although some were highly optimistic. When I was working in the office in the kitchen, I used to talk to the hospital orderly when he came in to order the diets for the hospital. After we had a few dealings, and I felt I could trust him, I asked him if he had access to the

Shaking time drugs. He said he did, though he didn’t know anything about drugs. But he told me to come up to the dispensary and he’d leave the door open and the light on in the cubicle where the drugs were kept. I could stand in the door and look at the shelves when the nurse wasn’t watch¬ ing, and if I saw anything I wanted he’d get it for me. I saw quite a few things I wanted and he started bring¬ ing them to me. After we ran out of the easier things to get, I told him to get me some Dover tablets. I had seen two bottles of 500 each on the shelves. That night, when he brought the hospital wagon to the kitchen for meals, he had both bottles in the wagon and gave them to me. This was over 350 grains of opium but I’d lose about thirty grains in extracting it and processing it — maybe more. But I would still have around 300 grains. In Prince Albert, this was a lot of opium, because there were only three or four drug addicts there. In New West¬ minster or Kingston, it wouldn’t have lasted so long with the large number of addicts. I got a guy in the machine-shop to drill a small hole about an inch and a half up from the bottom on each of two pint monel-metal cups, in which we got our tea or coffee, and sometimes soup. Then I got small wooden pegs, and put them in the holes. I put the Dover tablets in the cups, filled the cups with boiling water, and let them sit all night in my cell. In the morning the powder and ipecac had settled to the bottom, and I pulled out the pegs and drained off the golden coloured liquid into two other cups. Now, as soon as this was boiled down, it could be shot either into the skin or into a “main line’’ vein. Since guys in the kitchen used to put their coffee cups with tea or coffee on the kitchen range to keep warm, or to heat up, this seemed a good place to boil down the liquid. One of the cooks on the big range was a Kingston guy, and a real good egg. I told him what I wanted to do and he laughed and said, “Don’t worry. I’ll watch it for you, and I won’t let anyone touch it.”

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Bitter Humour As soon as one cup was boiled down enough, I went down to the basement and took a fix. Then I put what was left in the cup in a bottle, and my friend put the other cup on the range. Once, while it was boiling, the steward came over to the range and noticed it wasn’t coffee or tea. He asked the cook, “What is that?” The cook said, “Oh don’t let anybody touch that. That’s a special concoction I’m making out of herbs. It’s good for the health. I’ll let you taste it when it gets boiled down enough.” The steward said, “Fine and dandy. I won’t let anyone touch it.” Another con came up to the range with a cup of coffee and was going to push ours to one side. The steward said, “Here now. Don’t move that. That’s George’s and he’s making a herb drink.” This wasn’t good enough for George; he had to carry the joke further. When it was finished, he took a little on a teaspoon, diluted it with water, and gave it to the steward to taste. It was bitter, of course. The steward made a face and said, “Well, it’s bitter enough, so I guess it’s good.” George said, “You just have no idea how good it is.” When George told me about this, and laughed as he gave me the rest of the solution, I said, “You were taking quite a chance with my dope weren’t you, George?” “Hell no!” he said, “Old Bassy doesn’t know any more about dope than I do and I figured a little taste of dope would do the old boy good. He’ll probably invent a new dish after that.” He laughed so he could be heard all over the kitchen. My partner was in the kitchen, and he and I used most of the opium. We gave a few fixes away, but there weren’t many addicts in Prince Albert. A few guys would take an occasional small fix, but they were not addicts, and didn’t want more than one fix.

Shaking time In about three weeks, when it was all gone, we had a small habit, but nothing serious. Actually I was glad when it was gone, because I was taking courses for the last year of high school, and didn’t do any studying while the opium lasted. The easiest time I did was when I was studying, and I was glad to get back at it. I realized that I was about at the end of my rope as far as stealing was concerned, and I wanted to equip myself as well as I could to make a living. There wasn’t any trade I could learn, but the formal education might help me to get some kind of a job. When I was out on bail, I had packed the clothes I wanted to bring with me in two suitcases, and put in three boxes of mothballs. I had put vaseline on the outsides of the shoes, after they were highly polished, to help keep them. With two or three suits, seven or eight good shirts, and a couple of pairs of shoes besides what I wore in, there wouldn’t be any worry about clothes for a few months after I got out. It was now legitimate to have fountain-pens and you could either bring them in with you, or order them through the library. Almost everyone who was studying had pens. But before the pen was issued, they scratched the con’s number on the part just above the nib. It was so fine it was hardly visible, and in many cases you couldn’t make out what the number was unless you knew it. The idea of the number was to prevent cons from buy¬ ing pens and selling them to screws for contraband, as well as to prevent cons stealing someone else’s pen and selling it to another con. After a year, I got permission to go to the chief keeper’s office to examine my clothes, and put more moth balls in them. While I was doing this, the chief keeper’s clerk asked me if I wanted to sell a couple of gabardine shirts. He had been trucking with a lot of the guys, but there was nothing I was interested in that he could bring me.

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Bitter Humour So I told him no, the shirts were tailor-made, and I wanted to keep them, especially since they wouldn’t be worth as much to anyone else because they were made for me. A year later, when I went up to examine my clothes, my shirts were missing. I told the clerk about it and he said, “Geel Maybe I made a mistake. Your partner told me to take some of his shirts and maybe I took yours by mistake.” So I said, ‘‘Let’s see the book.” I meant the book where you sign for your belongings when you come in. He got the book out and we went over the list. There were other items missing, but nothing of much value. He said he was sorry, and wanted to know if there was something he could get me to make up for it. I told him what they cost and said, “The only way you can make it right is either to give me the money, or order me shirts from the shirt-shop where I got them made.” He said, “Don’t worry! I’ll straighten it out one way or the other.” I was worried; it didn’t matter too much about the shirts but what if he stole my suits and shoes. I certainly didn’t want to go out in a joint suit after coming in with more than $400 worth of clothes. I couldn’t beef to the officials about it, because this screw was doing business with several of the thieves, and it just wouldn’t have been cricket to beef and make him lose his job. So I contented myself with worrying about whether I’d have any clothes to go out with or not. One of the guys, who worked on the electricians, used to come in the kitchen and he talked me into going on the electricians. He was taking a $400 correspondence course, and said I could get the practical experience and also study his course. It seemed like not a bad idea and, since I had more than a year to go, I took a whirl at it. I kidded myself into believing, that with the help of the electrican and this guy, I could learn enough in a year to get a job at this

Shaking time type of work when I got out. So, besides studying high school subjects, I studied this course, and the electrical code, and got a little experience in conduit-wiring and repairing simple electrical appliances brought in by the guards. About this time, the Penitentiary Commission had been appointed, and Maj.-Gen. Gibson had visited the peni¬ tentiary. I put my name down to see him, but they said he wasn’t interviewing cons. Later on, Joseph McCulley, who was to be responsible for an educational program for cons, among other things, visited the penitentiary and it was announced that he would see cons. Meantime the chief keeper’s clerk had been fired. One of the cons had lost his fountain pen and reported it to the warden. In fact, several cons had reported pens stolen. The warden realized something queer was going on and was on the lookout. One day, one of the new guards was talking to the warden when the latter noticed a pen-set in his pocket. It was the same make as one of the sets reported stolen. This in itself wasn’t much, but not too many guards carried thirty-five dollar pen and pencil sets, so the warden asked him. if he could try it. The guard agreed. After the warden tried it and, I suppose, looked for the number, he asked the guard if he could take it home and show it to his wife. Again the guard agreed. Instead of taking it home, the warden took it down to the rcmp laboratory where they put it under an ultra¬ violet-ray light, or something which brought out the number. This confirmed the warden’s hunch that the pen was stolen from the con who had complained. So, when the warden called in the guard about the pen, he asked him where he had bought it, and how much he had paid for it. The guard told him he had bought it at an auction sale downtown and paid nine dollars for it. When a check was made with the auction-house which

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Bitter Humour kept records of all sales, it was found that quite a few things from the penitentiary had been auctioned off. The chief keeper’s clerk was fired. I don’t recall whether he was charged or not. As soon as I heard that, I went up to the chief keeper’s office again to check my clothes. By now I had only a few weeks left. As I suspected, about half my stuff was gone. I didn’t say anything to anyone, because I knew the warden would try to hush it up. And now that the chief keeper’s clerk was fired anyway, I intended to bring it out in the open. When I went up to see Joseph McCulley I didn’t intend to say anything, until I had sized him up first, and could judge whether he would do anything or not. It was a private interview and there were only the two of us in the room. He seemed friendly and sincere, and I asked him about courses in formal education. He ex¬ plained to me what they were doing which sounded good. Then I mentioned the kind of clothes they gave guys going out, and he agreed and said this would be changed soon, and there would be a better type of clothes. I think he agreed with all my suggestions except one. I suggested that they would never get the right type of guard, and especially instructor, unless they paid more money. He said, “The guards we have now are getting paid very well for what they are doing, and most of them would not be paid as well at any other type of work they could do.” I had to agree with that, but didn’t agree that it should be that way. Then he started to explain some of his problems to me. He said, “We just get started on a program like this and three men go over the wall at Kingston and there is a public outcry. Then we have to drop everything and explain to the public how a thing like this could happen.” He said, “As far as you fellows are concerned, you too have to realize that the guards’ job isn’t always easy, and

Shaking time you have to try to understand they have certain problems too. And you’ve got to have respect for them.” By now I had decided that he was no Sauvant and that he would be as good a person as anyone to complain to about my clothes. I said, “It’s a little rough to have much respect when the guards steal your belongings and the warden tries to cover it up.” Then I told him about half my clothes being missing. He was just about speechless; but he asked me for more detail and I gave it to him. Then he said, “I’m going to investigate and I’ll call you up. If your story is true this thing has got to be straightened out before I leave, and I was going to leave this afternoon. “And if it’s not true, it’s a pretty serious charge and I’ll be talking to you.” Things buzzed that afternoon in the penitentiary and rumours were thicker than grasshoppers in the worst season. McCulley and the warden and an accountant went up to the chief keeper’s office. As soon as they had checked a few cons’ belongings against the books to confirm what had been going on, McCulley decided to stay another day or two until they went right through the books, and checked every item against the belongings. My partner was working at the warden’s house where he used to wash dishes, and do housework, and a little gardening. The warden’s wife used to tell him all the scandal, warning him not to repeat it. So he used to give me the choice titbits when I saw him, usually once a day. He said she told him, “We all like you, and the warden likes you too, but that partner of yours must be a horrible person. “He got the warden into all kinds of trouble and he is fuming so much you can hardly talk to him. “Mr. McCulley was pretty mad, and asked the warden how this could go on under his nose for more than two years without his knowledge.

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Bitter Humour “And then Mr. McCulley is here one day and finds out about it and all this happens. “Your partner must be a despicable person. I don’t see how a nice fellow like you could pick up with him.” McCulley said anyone who had things stolen and made a claim would have them paid for. I didn’t bother putting in a claim for what I had lost, as I still had plenty of clothes left to go out with, and didn’t want to be bothered. In one of my letters to my wife I asked her if she would like to go to Toronto with me when I got out. She said she would, and we decided to do that. We visited our relatives in and around Calgary for a week and then left by train for Toronto.

On making a deal Before I left I found out that Jeeves had gone down East to buy some heroin, had got nailed, and got a short bit in Burwash Reformatory in Ontario. The stuff we had in the safety-deposit box would be safe, so I wasn’t worried about that. I sent word to Jeeves by the grapevine that I was in Toronto, so that he could come and see me before going back out West. Meanwhile, I had made arrangements for Johnny Brown to meet me and my wife when we came to Toronto. He had got out a few months before me. I told him I was going to go to work, that I didn’t intend to use junk, that I was only taking one more chance, and it would have to be for a big score. If I made it, all right; if I didn’t, I’d pack it in. Those were my intentions. I figured that if I missed out and was still free, I’d have a few thousand I could raise from what Jeeves and I had in bonds and securities. If 1 got pinched, and it looked as though I was going to get a long stretch, I could bargain with the bulls for my end of the securities and bonds. If we made a deal for me to get

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Bitter Humour a short stretch, or beat the charge, then Jeeves would give my end of the loot to a lawyer, and he’d deliver it to the bulls. Deals like this are common, especially where an insur¬ ance company is involved. A spokesman for the insurance company will actually promise that you will not get more than a stated amount of time if you deliver the goods. I have never heard of anyone getting more than was agreed upon. The insurance man usually wants a day or two to investigate before he makes a deal. This, I suppose, is to confer with the crown prosecutor and police involved and, for all I know, maybe with the magistrate or judge. I recall one incident where a drug addict was arrested for a smash-and-grab in a jewellery store. He was doing a short bit in Lethbridge for the crime when he told me about it. According to my recollection this is the story in his own words. “I had sized up this place and knew that if I smashed the window I wouldn't have much time to get away. But after going over the ground, I found a place where I could ditch a couple of trays of rings a short distance from the store. If I was lucky, I could get on to another street by a short cut and have an 80-20 chance of getting away with it. If I wasn’t lucky, I’d get pinched, but they wouldn’t be able to find the rings, and I could probably beat the charge. “There were two trays of 100 rings, each priced at $100. I figured even if I got a fifth of the value I’d have four G-notes. So it was worth a whirl. I had gone by the joint several times, and these trays of rings were always there. It seemed too good to be true. “I waited almost an hour and a half, walking back and forth near the place, waiting for the crowd to thin down a little. I knew I couldn’t hope for a deserted street or even a situation where nobody would see or hear the crash when I smashed the window. All I wanted was to cut down

On making a deal the odds against me. I wanted, if possible, to have nobody closer than 100 feet; with this, I thought, I’d have a good chance. "Well, when I thought it was as good as it would ever be, I smashed the window, grabbed the two trays of rings, and took out. I figure I had the rings planted in ninety seconds after the glass smashed, and I walked away. ‘‘I went through the back entrance of an establishment and out on to the street. They didn’t think anything of my coming through, because I had come through there two or three times a day for a week previous. "But when I went out on the street, I had only walked a 100 yards when I was stopped by a bull. "He was so sure that it was me that he dragged me back to the scene of this despicable disaster. "Well, some of these jokers standing around the broken window saw me with the handcuffs on, and began to hold court right there. "One guy said, ‘Oh, they’ve caught him already. Look, he’s handcuffed to the policeman.’ Another said, ‘Boy! That was fast work. I was just standing up there when he smashed the window.' "Shamus was thicker than flies. One dick said, ‘Did you see it, lady?’ “This old girl said, ‘Oh yes, officer. I saw the whole thing, and I’m sure that’s the man. And he looks like the criminal type too.’ "Just about this time a young punk from the Calgary Albertan, their office is only a couple of blocks down the street, said, ‘What happened officer, big robbery?’ "This big hoosier that I was handcuffed to was basking in the limelight, answering all questions, and volunteering information. “He was telling them, ‘Yes, I caught him single-handed, almost right on the spot. If I hadn’t got him, he’d have made a clean get-away.’ “Meantime they got the owner or proprietor of the

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Bitter Humour jewellery store down, and he said two trays of rings were missing, and each tray contained 100 rings valued at $100 each. “The bull I was handcuffed to was pleased as punch, and quickly told some of the bystanders what an enormous robbery it would have been if he hadn’t stopped it. “Meanwhile about six bulls, both uniformed and plain¬ clothes, had been searching in the alley for the rings. These Sherlock Holmeses came back one by one looking like a dog that had buried a bone, and found it had been dug up and stolen. “One of them told the bull handcuffed to me, ‘Take him in and book him. We’ll keep searching.’ “This bull, who took me in, was hotter than a fire¬ cracker. He figured the detectives would steal his thunder. He said, ‘God-damn them, they know where the stuff is, but they just want to discover it themselves so I won’t get the credit for it. Then it will come out how the smart detectives solved the case. “ ‘If I hadn’t had you to look after, I’d have found it. Why don’t you be a sport and tell me where it is, so I can go and get it. It doesn’t make any difference to you. You are going to the penitentiary anyway.’ “I said, ‘Officer, I don’t like to disillusion you, but you are handcuffed to an innocent man. You have let the guilty man get away.’ “This didn’t sit too well with him, and he was still moaning when he booked me in at the police station. He cried so much the sergeant on the desk asked me, ‘Why don’t you say something to cheer him up? Poor fellow’s down in the dumps.’ “I said, ‘Well, they will insist on arresting innocent people.’ “The dicks weren’t too worried about it that night because it was dark, and they said, ‘Come daylight, there won’t be much trouble finding it.’ “Well, it just goes to show you what comes from living

On making a deal right. That night it snowed twelve inches. I wasn’t worried that they’d find the stuff anyway, but when I knew it had snowed that much it was a certainty they’d never find it. “Next day they called me up to the detectives’ office several times. They grilled me, cajoled me, promised me, threatened me; and I continued to tell them they had arrested an innocent man. “Once they called me in and three of them were sitting there smiling. One of them said, ‘Well, the jig’s up. We have found it, and now you’ll go to the penitentiary for a good long time.’ “I knew they hadn’t found it or they wouldn’t have needed me so I said, ‘O.K.! Thanks, fellows. If you were smart enough to find it, you were also probably smart enough to find the guy who did it, so I guess you’ll be letting me go any time now. I won’t demand a public apology but this should be a good lesson to you. Don’t arrest an innocent man.’ “One of them said, ‘You dirty dope-fiend son-of-a-bitch, you think you are pretty god-damned smart. You know god-damned well we haven’t found it, and if you hadn’t hid it yourself you wouldn’t know that.’ “I said, ‘Better luck next time, fellows; but you know what you remind me of? You’re like Don Quixote assail¬ ing the windmills. “ ‘Here you are, the best brains of the police force, pitting your accumulated wits and intelligence against one practically illiterate dope-fiend. Now, that in itself should tell you that you have the wrong man, or you’d have broken him long ago.’ “One of them said, ‘Get the son-of-a-bitch out of here, before I break his head in.’ “I said, ‘Aw, now, you wouldn’t do that, especially since you know the doctor saw me this morning, and will be in again to see me tonight.' “A couple of them laughed, and they hustled me back down to the cells.

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Bitter Humour “They kept remanding me, hoping to find the rings. Meantime, the jeweller had put in a claim to the insurance company for $20,000, or whatever it was. “Finally, a man from the insurance company came down to see me. He had found out that I had another charge against me. In fact, he knew almost as much about me as I knew about myself. “He told me that the jewellery store had been smashed into before, and that the insurance company suspected the jeweller was claiming insurance for a far greater value than he lost. “He said, ‘If he is substituting cheap rings and claiming insurance for expensive ones, he is a worse thief than you are, but the only way we can catch him is if we can recover the rings.’ “I saw a chance to make a deal to get a small bit on the other beef and this one. I realized that even if they didn’t convict me on this, they would give me a heavy enough sentence on the other one to make up for it. So I asked this insurance man what kind of a deal he could give me. “He asked me what I wanted and I told him, and he said he’d see what he could do, and he’d let me know in a couple of days. “He came back and had a deal that was acceptable, but there was one hitch. “This was that they wanted a city bull to go with us when we picked the stuff up. I wouldn’t agree to this and it took a while for him to straighten that out. “When I showed him where it was, and he recovered the two trays with no rings missing, he was happy. He took a look at the rings and said that it was just as he had suspected; a lot of cheap rings had been substituted for the $100 ones. “The police were hotter than ever. An outsider had solved the case. One of them told me, ‘If we can help it, you’ll never get out.’ “But when I went to trial and pleaded guilty, this egg from the insurance company went to bat for me like I was

On making a deal his own son. He told the magistrate, ‘The real criminal in this case is not this man, who has pleaded guilty to stealing the rings; it is the man who attempted to defraud the insurance company, and would have done so had the rings not been recovered.’ “The magistrate agreed with the insurance man, handed out a light sentence, and reprimanded the jeweller for trying to bilk the insurance company.’’ While deals like this are never publicized, they are made quite frequently. I have heard of a couple of dozen where I knew the persons accused, and I have never heard of the representative of an insurance company not backing up his word. The same can be said for investigators for the Post Office Department. Back in the days before penitentiary officials in Ottawa discovered that parole was for the pur¬ pose of releasing inmates, I knew a couple of postmen convicted for theft from the mails. The investigators had promised them that if they pleaded guilty, they would be released in a certain time, and they were. This was when the minimum sentence under the Act was three years in the penitentiary. I think it has been reduced since, so that they can get lighter sentences now.

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Fresh fields and pastures new I had heard of Alex Edmison who was then head of the John Howard Society in Ontario. I wrote to him, told him I was coming to Toronto, and asked if he might help me locate a job. He replied asking me to come and see him when I got to Toronto, and promised to do what he could. I didn’t know much about the John Howard Society then, and was under the impression that it had a list of jobs for anyone who was willing and able to work. I didn’t want to be out of work too long, because after paying our fares to Toronto from Calgary, we had only enough to keep us for about three weeks or a month. And it wouldn’t be like Calgary where I could borrow a couple of hundred dollars when I needed it. When we arrived at the Union Station in Toronto, Johnny Brown met us and took us to an apartment he had leased for the summer. It was a two-bedroom apart¬ ment; Johnny and his girl-friend had one, and my wife and I had the other. Johnny said we could stay there for three or four weeks until we got settled and I got a job.

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Bitter Humour The first day or two I went to the John Howard Society and met Alex Edmison who talked to me and, I think, referred me to Murdoch Keith, who was case-work super¬ visor. He asked me if I needed money and I told him I didn’t, but would in a short time if I didn’t get a job. He showed me a map of the city, told me which way the numbers ran on the streets, and then went through the want ads with me. First I thought I’d see if I could get something in the electrical line. I went up to the union office of the Brother¬ hood of Electrical Workers. I laid my cards on the table and the fellow I talked to said, “I doubt if you’ll be able to get a job at electrical work of that type in the city. And if there is anything I can do to prevent it, I will. If we find out you are working at electrical work, you’ll be through.” This took me by surprise. I thought such bluntness and honesty was refreshing even though it wasn’t what I had wanted to hear. Then he said, “And it’s not because you have been in trouble. That couldn’t matter less to me. The reason we will try to keep you from working in this business is that you are from out of town, and we have a couple of hundred of our own union men who are not working. If they were all working, I’d be the first one to try to get you placed.” I couldn’t hold that against him, and said so. Then he suggested that I try to get on with some of the outfits that repaired electrical appliances. He said, “They don’t pay much to start with, but perhaps with the little experience you’ve had you could get on, and after you’d had a year’s training or so, your wages would go up, and in a few years you would be making fair money.” I thought I’d try this out, and did get a job at a place where they repaired all types of electrical appliances. The first day everything went well; I was able to do the simple things they gave me to do. But about the second or third day, the foreman told me to install a thermostat in something. He drew a diagram of the wiring scheme which I would have been able to follow if I had had enough

Fresh fields and pastures new experience to know what I was doing. I knew it was over my head, but thought I’d better try it because I might be lucky, and if I told them I wasn’t sure how to do it, they’d probably let me go right there. When I thought I had it hooked up properly, I plugged it in to test it and burned the thermostat out. As soon as the foreman saw what I had done, he went to the boss, and the boss called me in. He said, “I don’t know where you got your experience but you are not going to be able to handle this job. I couldn’t send you out to install an electric fan, or repair a complicated appliance in someone’s home, because they want these things done fast and correctly.” He offered to keep me on at about fifty cents an hour less and train me. He figured it would take me about two years to get enough experience so that I would be worth what he was paying me then. I felt I might as well get a job where I would make more money, as we didn’t even have a place of our own to stay yet. I got a job with a glass company but didn’t intend to stay there too long either, as the wages weren’t too good. Meanwhile, Johnny and the girl he was with left for a few days. They weren’t there most of the time anyway. One night the police came in, and the regular tenant of the apartment and his daughter were with them. They were fuming, the tenant and his daughter, that is. They asked me where Johnny was, and I said I didn’t know; and I didn’t. They wanted to know our names, and how I had come to meet Johnny. I told them I didn’t know him very well, but had met him in Winnipeg. The girl and her father had been at Wasaga Beach where the girl had seen some of her clothes on Johnny’s girl-friend, and that’s what the row was all about. We had met the father the day we arrived. He knew we were staying there and had no objections. He told the police, “These people are all right; it’s that girl Johnny’s

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Bitter Humour with. My daughter is afraid she’ll take more of her clothes.” When the police saw there wasn’t much to it, they left. My wife was scared, not because of the police so much, as of having anyone think she might take the other woman’s clothes. She insisted we get an apartment of our own right away. I was eager for that, too, so we decided to get one before the end of that week. One night, Johnny and a couple of other guys asked me if I would make some nitro-glycerine. They said they had a good score lined up. I told them, no, I couldn’t make it on that short a notice. They wanted me to make it in the apartment and I told them I wouldn’t even consider it. It had to be out beside a stream. When they found out it would take most of a day just to gather up the equipment and ingredients to make it with, and another day to make it, they decided they didn’t have time to wait. Johnny and another guy asked me if I wanted to go on a score with them. They said they were going to steal three safes and there would be a boodle in them. From what little they told me about it, I didn’t want any part of this operation. In the first place, they were going to steal a big truck to load the safes in. In the second place, that would make four guys on the job which, in my opinion, was two too many. And finally, why steal safes if you haven’t got the equipment to open them with? So I declined. Later that night, my wife and I were sitting in the livingroom talking when Johnny and one of the guys came in, soaking wet up to their belts, and out of breath. They wanted a change of clothes in a hurry. I gave them some of mine and they asked me to take their clothes out and drop them in an alley, or garbage can, or something. As soon as they left I did that and then came back. We expected the police to come that night but they didn’t, and we decided more than ever to get a place of our own. The next day the papers carried the story of the abortive attempt to steal three safes.

Fresh fields and pastures new It was a post office on the Danforth, and, as I recall, they had backed the truck to the door and loaded the safes into the back of it. It was either a trailer-truck and the driver jack-knifed it in the alley and got stuck, or it was too wide for the space and his driving capabilities. In any case, a crowd gathered around the truck stuck in the alley. Johnny got out, waved a gun, and kept them back. Finally they abandoned the truck and all three of them got away. Johnny and the other guy were cursing the guy who drove the truck when they got to the apartment. We got an apartment of our own far from the down¬ town district where Johnny’s apartment was. Several times Johnny had offered to get a fix for my wife and me. He said it would take him only a few minutes. We turned it down as we didn’t want to start again. In any case, by now we knew that wherever Johnny was, the heat was. When we got in our own apartment, Johnny didn’t come up very often, as it wasn’t as handy to the district where he hung around as his apartment was. My wife got a job too. It used to take us both an hour each way on the street-car to get to work, and the same to get home. From Johnny’s apartment we used to walk. But we figured it was worth the extra time on the street¬ car to live in a better district. One Sunday, Johnny brought a guy up to visit us who was a junkie. After we’d had supper, Johnny said, “If you want a fix you are welcome to it, because I’ve got lots of it.’’ We told him we didn’t want any and he and I went out to talk privately about something. He knew I wouldn’t discuss what he wanted to discuss in front of someone I didn’t know. When we came back, Johnny went to the bathroom and my wife told me the fellow with him was a junkie and was sick. She said, “Maybe you should get Johnny to give you some. Then we could give him a fix and have one our¬ selves.’’

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Bitter Humour I said, “O.K.” and I told Johnny we’d take him up on that fix and we’d fix the other guy up too. Johnny gave me twenty-five caps, saying that was the smallest bundle he had. I hid most of it, about twentythree caps, in a cemetery, and we had a couple of fixes each that night. We both had to go to work the next day so we didn’t have another fix until the following week-end. I was eager to get rid of the rest of the drug, as there would be enough to get us started again if we weren’t careful. After about four weeks, during which we’d been taking a fix each week-end, Johnny came up one day and asked me if I had any left. He said he needed as much as he could get. I gave him back twenty caps, keeping only enough for a couple of fixes for my wife and me. I felt relieved that it was gone. We didn’t know where to get more and weren't going to go looking for it, so we were pretty safe, I thought. Meantime, I had got a job working on a punch-press in a factory, while my wife had a job in another factory. We worked within three or four blocks of each other in the downtown district. At night I usually worked overtime. We could work as much overtime as we liked, and I some¬ times worked till ten or eleven p.m. Things went well until we decided we were spending too much time, two hours a day, travelling to and from work. Then we got accommodation downtown. By now we knew where to buy a cap of heroin when we wanted it. What we didn’t know was that the people who were selling it lived half a block from the rcmp head¬ quarters, and were setting up their customers for the Mounties. Occasionally, when I was working late, my wife would go and buy a cap or two, and when I’d come home we’d have a fix. This went on for several weeks and we weren’t hooked. In fact, we didn’t use more than a cap or two a week between the two of us. One night, when I came home from work about 10.30

Fresh fields and pastures new p.m., I found McAuley, the Mountie on the narcotic squad, along with a city detective, in the room with my wife, who had her coat on, ready to go out. When I said, “What’s going on here?” McAuley answered, “You’re under arrest for possession of narcotics.” I began to beef and my wife said, “I told you he didn’t know anything about it.” She could have saved her breath for they well knew that I didn’t know anything about it. That didn’t stop them from charging both of us with possession of narcotics. We were remanded for a couple of days. When we came to court, our lawyer tried to get me off without putting me on the stand. But Norman L. Mathews, who was special prosecutor in narcotics cases, wasn’t having any of that. While my wife was on the stand, Mathews, in his ques¬ tioning, indicated that he knew exactly how many caps she had bought. I think she had bought three, and they found only one. She had hidden the other two, and put one in my overcoat pocket. When the police arrived she was just going to write me a note that she was going to her sister’s place in case I got home before she was back, and that there was a cap in my overcoat pocket. The two policemen said my wife had told them I was working, and they had sent a car down to pick me up, but the place was locked, and there was no sign of work going on. I told my lawyer if I could beat it without taking the stand, I could probably keep my job, but if I had to take the stand, and my record came out, I’d lose it. He tried his best to keep me off the stand, but following Mathews’ argument, Magistrate Bigelow ruled there was enough evidence to put me on my defence. I realized as I took the stand, that this was the end of my job. So if they were going to bring my record out, just to make me lose my job, I thought that at least I’d make their methods public. Every question Mathews asked me weakened his case against me; but I had to state where I worked, and why the police couldn’t see from the street at night because the

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Bitter Humour lights in the factory part where I worked were not visible from the street. Finally, when he realized there wasn’t going to be any conviction against me, he read my record out conviction by conviction, even the concurrent sentences, adding at the end that these sentences were concurrent. When my lawyer examined me on the stand he asked me if I knew anything about these drugs prior to my arrest. I said, “No, I didn’t know anything about them. I can prove I didn’t know anything about them, and further¬ more the police know that I didn’t know anything about them.” At this point Magistrate Bigelow looked up quickly, and said, “You can prove it?” I said, “Yes.” My lawyer continued his questioning asking how I could prove that I didn’t know anything about them. I pointed out that the police had already established the time when the drugs were brought into the house by my wife, and even indicated the amount that was bought. Then I told them that I punched a clock to go to work at 8 a.m. and that the foreman and men I worked with would know that I hadn’t left until 10.30 that night except for lunch-hour when I punched in and out. It would be impossible for me to leave without the foreman knowing, for two reasons: production would stop on my machine and would be noticed; and besides he had the key to the front door and would be the only person who could let me out. The lawyer said, “What about phoning? How can you prove that you didn’t phone your wife, or that she didn’t phone you?” I explained that this would be impossible because the phone was in the office, and the office was locked. The lawyer said, “Do you have any idea why the police charged you, knowing that you knew nothing about it?”

Fresh fields and pastures new I said, “Yes! They told me they weren’t too concerned about my wife; it was me they were after. When I told them the only result of charging me would be to make me lose my job, one of them said, ‘Well, at least we'll accom¬ plish something.’ ” The magistrate asked me why I’d lose my job and I told him it was only a small place with a few employees and, now that my record had been made public, I couldn’t very well go back even if they would let me. Magistrate Bigelow looked at Mathews and said, “There was no reason for this, Mr. Mathews.” Mathews grinned. I was acquitted, while my wife was sentenced to seven months, and a $200 fine. It was less than a week from the time we were arrested until I was acquitted. Our rent had been paid in advance so at least I didn’t have to worry about that, I thought. But the city detective had looked after that little detail in his customary methodical fashion. When I put the key in the door I thought I heard some¬ one inside, and when I opened it there was a young couple standing there, apparently moved in. The fellow said, “What are you doing here?” I said, “What are you doing here? This is my flat.” He said, “It can’t be. We rented it last night.” I took the receipt for the rent out of my wallet and showed it to him; and I asked what had happened to our belongings. He said the place was empty when they moved in and I’d better see the landlord. I went down to see the landlord and his wife and asked them what was the idea. They looked a little frightened and said, “The detective told us to rent it. He said that you were going to Kingston Penitentiary, and your wife was going to the Mercer, and we might just as well rent it. “We asked him what would happen if you got off and he

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Bitter Humour said, ‘I don’t want him around Toronto anyway. The best way to make sure he leaves is to see he hasn’t got a place to stay.’ “He told us to pack your things up and put them in the basement in storage, so that’s what we did.” I was furious and said, “Well, since you are taking directions from a policeman, perhaps you had better call him up and tell him I’m demanding my room, and ask him what to do now. I’ll be back in about an hour and you had better have it straightened out.” Actually I had more than this on my mind. I had to get a job. But luck was with me. I answered an ad and got a job at better wages than I had been getting before. When I came back I was in a little better humour, and was mainly concerned with getting a suitable place to stay. The landlord and landlady had made arrangements while I was gone for me to get board and room at a house a couple of doors away, if I wanted it. I settled for this since it was handy and convenient for me. I packed what needed to be packed and put the rest with my wife’s clothes in storage. After I was settled, I went over to see our former land¬ lord and landlady, as they had asked me to come over. When I got to know them a little better they told me how scared they were when I came in that morning. The landlady said the detective had told them I was a dope-fiend, and wouldn’t think anything of attacking them with a butcher-knife while they were fast asleep. When they had phoned him after I came back that morning, he practically told them they were on their own. This didn’t do much to allay their fears, and that’s when they started looking for a place for me. I asked them if the detective had taken any of our things. They said, “Yes, he took some pictures and he told us he was keeping them. He told us not to say anything to you about them, but when we told him we weren’t going to be responsible, he said we could tell you he took them. This burned me up, because the only pictures we had

Fresh fields and pastures new were of my family and my wife’s family. I was talking to these people one night and I said, “I think I’ll phone the detective and ask for my pictures. He’s got no business keeping them.” The former landlord said, ‘‘Go ahead, use the phone.” I phoned him and asked him about the pictures. He said, “Oh yes, where are you staying now? I’ll mail them to you.” I said, “Just send them to the same address you got them from.” He said, “O.K. I’ll send them out to you in a day or two.” About three weeks later I hadn’t got them, so I phoned him again. This time he said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll look through the files one of these days, and if I find them I may send them to you.” I said, “You may send them to me?” “Yes, what’s wrong with that?” “You took them, didn’t you?” “Yes, what about it?” “Well, I would think it was your responsibility to see that I got them back.” He flew into a rage, “Look you dirty dope-fiend son-of-abitch, I told you to get out of town. I’ll take your god¬ damned pictures and tear them up, and there’s nothing you can fucking well do about it.” I said, “Well I can be a gentleman too. You can go and fuck yourself.” A few days later, I saw Keith at the John Howard Society, told him about the incident, and asked him what he could do about my pictures. He told me to give him a couple of days, that there was a detective he knew pretty well, and he would talk to him about it. The next time I talked to him he said he had seen this detective who told him he could probably get the pictures if my detective friend hadn’t destroyed them as he had threatened to. However, he said that if I did get them back

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Bitter Humour now after all this row, it would probably make my friend so mad that he might go to any extremes to get even. He advised me that if the pictures were replaceable for me to forget about them, as there wasn’t too much chance of my getting them back anyway. I couldn’t help but wonder what the city detective would do if he got mad. When he wasn’t mad, he tried to send me to the penitentiary for something he knew I wasn’t guilty of. He had me put out of my lodgings illegally, confiscated some of my possessions illegally, and ordered me to leave town. But since Keith had been pretty good, even to the point of loaning me a few dollars until I got paid, I figured I’d better go along with it. Meantime, I kept working, and used to go out and see my wife once a month, as permitted, at the Mercer. She had some fair tales about that joint, some hilarious and some pathetic. I had her fine paid long before she was due out. A month or so before my wife got out, Jeeves got out of Burwash and came to Toronto. He had gone in with more than $1,000 but had paid different guys’ fines and one thing and another, and was virtually broke when he got out. He wanted to make a few bucks to buy some heroin to take back with him. He said he knew a lot of junkers from being in Burwash and if he could get a connection he could push for a few days and make some money to buy stuff to take back. The fellows I knew would not trust Jeeves because they didn’t know him; so the arrangement was that I would give them the money and they’d tell me where the plant was. Then I’d tell Jeeves and he’d pick it up. In a few days, he had three or four hundred dollars and bought stuff with it to take out West. Before he left, he asked me why I didn’t take over his customers for at least ten days, put that money into stuff too, send it to him and we’d split. I decided to do that and took over his customers. I still

Fresh fields and pastures new kept working, picking up the stuff at night and delivering it. But with taking a fix here, and one there, I soon had a little yen. By now I knew ten or fifteen junkers and there was more heat on me than I would have had in Calgary. In Calgary the law of averages was in my favour from knowing who most of the stool-pigeons were. Here it was against me. By now, too, I wanted to get some nitro-glycerine made so that we could make a score, and that was going to be the end for me win, lose, or draw. I had made a quick trip to Calgary and back, and was working as a kind of handyman for a firm that prepared exhibits for trade fairs, exhibitions and so on. Since I didn’t have a car, I had to depend on Johnny’s friends to drive me out to make the nitro-glycerine. It was arranged that we would go one Saturday. Meantime, I bought the glycerine, nitric acid, stone, and glass vessels, dairy thermometer, litmus papers, and the things we’d need. I didn’t get the sulphuric acid, because to have the three components together would be the same as having the actual nitro-glycerine. All this stuff I had in my apartment, and was a little worried about it. The arrangement was that we’d take the stuff out into the country in two cars. Meantime, I was to get the sul¬ phuric acid and bring it to my friend’s house. By now my wife was out and we were both using heroin but not a great deal. I bought the sulphuric acid in the name of the company I was working for. What I didn’t know was that my city detective friend, and his Mountie colleague had been following me. When I went in to get the acid by the main door on one street, they took me into the warehouse part and let me out the side door on another street. I got on a street-car and took the acid to my friend’s place. In the meantime, the two policemen had gone into the drug wholesalers and found out what I’d bought. The following Saturday, when we were supposed to go

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Bitter Humour out and make the nitro-glycerine, I went down to my friend’s place, only to find that he and another guy had decided to go fishing, and wanted to postpone making it. There wasn’t much I could do about it although I didn’t like it. My wife and I decided we’d hold off one more week, and if they weren’t ready to go the next Saturday we’d throw the ingredients out and call it off. But we didn’t have that opportunity. One morning we got up and were going to take a fix. I went out on the veranda where the works was hidden and picked it up. The city detective smashed the window and jumped in, and the Mountie smashed the door in. I swallowed a couple of caps but there was the spoon and works and cotton. The detective said, “All right now, you son-of-a-bitch. I’ll teach you to call me and give me orders over the phone.” He took his blackjack out and started to move to¬ wards me, but the Mountie said, “All right, now don’t mess this one up.” The Mountie wrapped up the evidence and sealed it, while the detective said, “We’ll charge you as an habitual criminal.”

Habitual criminal The Habitual Criminal Act had been passed when I was in Prince Albert. One guy had been charged with it in Calgary, but had beat it. This Act, still on the books, was based on a similar Act in England, and on one in the United States. It incor¬ porated the worst features of both the U.S. and English Acts. The Canadian Habitual Criminal Act seemed to be specifically designed as a weapon for the police to obtain information. It has been widely used for this purpose. To be charged, a person had to have had three previous convictions for an indictable offence for which he could have received five years. Although I had never got as much as a five-year sentence, I had an armful of convic¬ tions on which I could have received that much. An additional clause requires proof that the accused has been persistently leading a criminal life. I had done consider¬ able work after getting out the last time, and I figured that might help. The detective said, “I shouldn’t do it, but I’ll give you one chance to get out of being charged as an habitual.”

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Bitter Humour McAuley said, “Take him outside the door, Ernie. I don’t want to hear it.’’ The detective took me outside the door and told me, “I know you’re getting your drugs from Vemie Epter, and if you want to set him up for me, I’ll see that you don’t get charged as an habitual. If you don’t go along with me you will be charged.’’ I said, “If you know as much about me as you claim to, you should know that I don’t do that kind of thing.” He said, “Yes, I know. But when the pressure is put on, a lot of fellows change their minds. Do you think Epter would do it for you? You could set him up, and he doesn’t have to know it's you.” I said, “I’d know it was me, and I have to live with myself, whether I’m in jail or outside.” Then he wanted to know about the sulphuric acid. They knew I’d bought it, and, if they could get it together with the other acids, they could charge me with possession of explosives. As it was, they couldn’t. One of them mentioned another detective’s name. I said, “Yes, I’ve heard a lot about him, but I’ve never met him.” Both policemen started to laugh. The Mountie said, “You remember the day you bought the acid from National Drugs. You got on a street-car at Wellesley and went down to King.” I said, “Well, what about that?” “Do you remember just as you were going to get on the car, a man stepped in front of you and blocked you, and you shoved him to one side, and got on the car. Well, that was him.” I didn’t recall the incident, but it was something I might well do if someone just stood there and blocked me. Finally they took my wife and me to headquarters on College Street. While we sat in a room and waited, I heard the detective phoning. He said, “I want to get permission to charge this guy as an habitual.”

Habitual criminal After a minute he said, “Well, chief, we got him with the ingredients to make enough explosives to blow up a city block.” Another pause. “Yes, chief, this guy’s an expert. If this Habitual Act should apply to anyone, it should apply to him.” When we appeared in court, we were both charged with possession of narcotics, and remanded for a week. It was necessary for the police to get permission from the attorney-general to charge me as an habitual. This is just a matter of form where the habitual is used. If the police don’t get the prosecutor to make application, it never comes to the attorney-general’s attention. So it is, in the first instance, the police who decide who will be charged under the Act, and who will not. The crown-attorney could refuse to make application if he thought there wasn’t a good chance for conviction, and the attorney-general could refuse to give permission if he wanted to, once the selection had been made by the police. I had read the Act and had a little knowledge about it; I had no doubt that I would be charged if the detective could swing it. He’d make up now for the arguments we had had over my pictures. When I was in the Don Jail I saw a lawyer; he said he didn’t think they’d charge me as an habitual. I didn’t feel as confident as he did. My wife got out on bail one afternoon. She left a note that she’d come out to see me in the morning. At least I had a chance, now that she was outside to help me. I felt better. The next morning, as soon as they opened the cells, the guard told me to go downstairs right away as the chief guard wanted to see me. As soon as I saw him, he said, “Your wife is dead.” I said, “How did she die?” He said, “I don’t know. The police just phoned and said to tell you she was dead.” I was stunned.

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Bitter Humour As the guard led me into the corridor, he said, “Well, I guess that’ll show you, eh!” I said, “Oh go to hell, you phony son-of-a-bitch.” He looked startled, but I felt numb and didn’t pay much attention. As I went down the corridor, a guy I knew asked me what had happened, and I told him. Then the guard called him down and asked him what was the matter. When he told him, the guard called me back and said, “Jesus Christ, man, I didn’t know anything like that had happened. I wouldn’t want anyone to think I’d try to rib a guy or make fun of a misfortune like that.” It was obvious from his attitude that he hadn’t known what had happened, and he offered to do anything he could for me in phone calls and messages. He was as good as his word, too, and went out of his way to help me. My friends outside tried through the lawyer to make arrangements for me to go to the funeral; but it was no dice. Permission was obtained through the lawyer, how¬ ever, for me to be taken, handcuffed, to the funeral parlour in the morning of the day of the funeral. For a time I was in such a daze that I didn’t care whether I got convicted or not. Most of the fellows in the corridor played cards in the daytime but I couldn’t get interested in cards and spent my time walking up and down the corridor, sitting down once in a while to rest. This made me fair game for all the fish who wanted someone to tell their troubles to. One fellow fell in beside me and started to tell me all about his troubles. They were of such a minor nature, he was in no danger of going to jail even if he were guilty, and he assured me he wasn’t. I never asked him any questions or encouraged the conversation, but this didn’t make any difference. We walked up and down the corridor while he continued to talk. Occasionally he would ask me, “what do you think of that?”

Habitual criminal I’d say, “Oh I don’t know. You had better talk to a lawyer about it.” He had bugged the guys at the card-table, and when they got through ribbing him they chased him away. I was the only one he had left to tell his troubles to. Some of the guys at the card-table had known me for years and felt that this wouldn’t last too long before I blew up. In fact, one of them told me later, one guy had said, “I wonder how much longer Blackie’s going to listen to that square’s troubles before he tells him off.” Finally, I said, “I feel sorry for you, but I’m not a lawyer, and there’s nothing I can do to help you, so if you don’t mind I’d just as soon walk by myself.” He said, ‘‘Nobody else will talk to me. I want to talk about my case and nobody else will listen.” I said, “That’s inconsiderate of them, but that is your problem. I have a couple of little problems of my own, and I’d like to think about them, if you don’t mind.” He threw both hands up in the air and said, “Yes, but that’s different. You’re guilty!” One of the guys at the card-table blew up. He said, “You dirty, square son-of-a-bitch. A guy’s wife dies, he’s charged with the habitual, he may get life, and you’ve got to bug him with a piddling matter like yours. Who the hell are you to tell him he’s guilty? Been in here two days, and already you’re the judge and jury.” The guy said, “Oh I didn’t know about that. Anyway, it’s you guys’ fault. If some of you would have talked to me I wouldn’t have bothered him. One guy said, “A square is a square is a square, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” Much later, some of the guys used to rib me once in a while and say, “Yes, but you’re guilty.” Before my trial, Murdock Keith from the John Howard Society came out several times to see what he could do. He lined up my previous employers to be on hand to give

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Bitter Humour evidence for me at the trial, and kept me informed as to what was happening. We hoped that the work I had done would be enough to get me acquitted on the habitual criminal charge. If my wife had lived, and been able to give evidence for me, it might have worked. As it was, there wasn’t too much chance. When I came to trial, three previous employers gave evidence that I was a good worker, and honest as far as they knew. Murdock Keith gave evidence and said that I had seen him when I first came to Toronto. He said that after my wife was arrested the first time, I had borrowed some money from the Society, a relatively small amount, and had paid it back in a short time. He said this was in contrast to many people who come to the Society for help, and get a few dollars. “We never hear from them until they are in trouble again.’’ But the special prosecutor the Royal Canadian Mounted Police engaged at that time to prosecute narcotics cases, Norman L. Mathews, used this work I had done to show how devilishly clever I was. The city detective lied, especially with reference to telephone conversations, and any conversations where it was his word against mine. This is one place where the Crown always has an advantage. Who is going to take the word of a criminal against that of a policeman? If there was any chance of that, I’d have been capable of telling just as big whop¬ pers as the detective did. If a policeman gets tripped up on the stand, it is usually regarded as an honest mistake. With the criminal, it’s an outright lie to save his skin. The truth of the matter is that neither the majority of policemen or of criminals have much regard for the truth on the stand. Both treat it as a game of checkers, each trying to win. The policeman is trying to get a convic¬ tion, the criminal is trying to get acquitted. Both are advised by counsel who indicates what kind of an impres¬ sion it is desirable to give. Counsel then leaves it to the

Habitual criminal

consciences of the criminal and the police how to best do this. The experienced criminal doesn’t have much respect for the conscience of the average police officer, and the average police officer probably has less for that of the criminal. So when they lock horns in the court room, it resolves itself into a matter of who can tell the biggest lies and get them believed. There are some exceptions to this, of course. Cpl. Macadams of the rcmp in Calgary was respected by crimi¬ nals for not framing anyone, and for sticking to the truth on the stand. It is ironic that in spite of this, and in spite of the fact the city police fouled up a lot of his arrests by tipping off the junkers of impending raids, he made some spectacular arrests. Cpl. Thomas Horne of the rcmp in Calgary was known for his honesty on the stand, and in dealing with criminals. Of all the police who gave evidence against me at my trial, the only ones who didn’t try to colour the evidence were Cpl. Home, a railway policeman from Calgary, and a retired policeman from Vancouver. All of my witnesses were honest people, so that left only me to do any colour¬ ing of evidence for my side. The outcome of the trial was a reserved judgment. I went back to the Don Jail to wait it out. At least a reserved judgment meant there was some hope yet. Since I didn’t have much money, I had either to quit smoking, or get into the poker game to keep in tobacco. We had chips made out of old playing cards, valued at twenty or twenty-five for a package of tobacco. Those with money could order tobacco about three times a week. Often a guy with ten or twelve packs would get bail, and either split his tobacco up with those in the corridor, or give it to a couple of guys he knew would be there for a long time. For the average guy who came in, the poker game was just a means of passing time. He didn’t care whether he lost a few packs or not. For us, who had been there several

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Bitter Humour months, and would likely be there for several more, it was serious business. We played to win, for if we didn’t win we didn’t smoke. Against us, those who didn’t care whether they won or lost didn’t stand much of a chance in the long haul, al¬ though they might come out on top for brief periods. For some of the fellows even the poker game got monotonous and they would look around for something else to do. One fellow, who had been in Kingston several times, was always trying to impress the fellows in the corridor with the good connections he had. He told me once he had had a hack-saw blade smuggled in, and was going to cut his way out. He asked me if I wanted in on it. I said, no, as I didn’t see where it had any chance of success, and further¬ more I hoped to get acquitted. He showed me his hack-saw blade. It was about four inches long. Although he told me his lawyer had given it to him, I knew one of the guys on the work-gang outside had brought it in to sell for a couple of packages of tobacco. In order to get out of the window, he would have had to cut a half-inch steel bolt on the bottom of the screens inside the window, then cut through a steel bar about an inch in diameter. I knew there was no possibility of his getting through that much steel with a four-inch piece of hack-saw blade. He knew it, too, and just wanted to raise hell. When I told him that, he laughed and said, “Oh well, things are getting kind of dead in here.’’ But he got two or three other guys interested, and they began taking turns cutting at the bolt on the bottom of the screen. One would go up to talk to the guard, who sat outside the cor¬ ridor, to keep him occupied, and another would hack away at the bolt. They chewed away at it for three or four days, and didn t make a big enough dint for the guards to notice when they made their regular inspections night and morning. One day the guards came into the corridor, and took

Habitual criminal out three of those who were in on it; but they didn’t take the guy whose idea it was and who had supplied the blade. The other three got the paddles. One of them showed us his welts. They were criss-crossed on both buttocks, black and blue, and in some places seared as if a two-inch¬ wide emery wheel had scraped off the outer layer of skin. It was severe punishment for mere monkeyshines since the intended escape didn’t have a prayer of a chance of succeeding. As one guy said, “If the Governor had told them, ‘All right, you guys; keep that piece of hack-saw blade, and you don’t get anything to eat until you’ve cut through a bar,’ they’d have all starved to death.” Every day I kept looking forward to hearing the results of my trial. When the Globe and Mail came in the morn¬ ing, I’d turn to the Osgoode Hall news first thing. This went on day after day for months. Finally, one night after supper I was playing poker when Frank Battaglio, “Frankie the Bat,” later killed in a gangland slay¬ ing in Montreal, shouted, “Blackie, you won your appeal.” He was reading one of the evening papers. Everyone at the table shouted for joy, and we all left the cards and chips and tobacco, and rushed to see it in the paper. But my joy was short-lived, for further down in the story it said I had been granted a new trial, which meant that I had to go through it all again. The lawyer wasn’t too optimistic about my chances. The Crown had made a lot of mistakes at the first trial which they wouldn’t make at the second. Ordinarily, when a new trial is granted, it is heard before a different judge from the one presiding at the original trial. But the Habitual Criminal Act stated that the charge must be heard by the same judge who presided on the primary charge. In my case, the primary charge was possession of narcotics, and I received two years on this charge plus three months or a fine. It was several months before they notified me of the new trial. Since each conviction had to be proved by the

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Bitter Humour arresting officer, it meant they would have to bring the witnesses back from Vancouver and Calgary for the new trial. At the first trial one of the policemen from Vancouver had had a stroke, and was in such bad shape he had had to sit in a chair to give his evidence. To go back in front of the same judge was a certain conviction, I believed. About the only hope I saw was for the policeman in Vancouver to die or be so sick he wouldn’t be able to appear. Without proof of that con¬ viction, there wouldn’t be enough to convict me. Several fellows had beat the charge on technicalities either at their trial, or on the appeal. It was a compara¬ tively new law at that time and mine was the fourth conviction in Canada. I asked my lawyer if there was any chance of the Crown dropping it. He said they had spent so much money on it that they couldn’t afford to drop it now. Things didn’t look too good. If convicted, I realized that I might never get out. The only way I could get out would be parole or escape. And I didn’t think much of my chances of a parole. I had seen lifers, who had made only one mistake, die in prison after fifteen or twenty years. The average lifer has usually been an honest law-abiding citizen except for his one crime. If these guys, who had made only one mistake, couldn’t get out in fifteen or twenty years, what chance did I have? My whole life had been a mistake. Moreover, the lifers for the most part committed their crimes during the heat of passion, while most of my crimes had required a certain amount of planning, and some of them a great deal of planning. There wasn’t even a parole board at that time, although there was some talk of setting one up. I had a lot of time to think about it. Month after month went by, and there was no word. Meantime things went on as usual in the Don Jail. I got to know all the rubby-dubs, a general term for

Habitual criminal winos and consumers of rubbing alcohol, by their first names. Some of them would come in three and four times a month. They would get sentences of from five days to a month. Sometimes they’d, get two months and have to go to Mimico Reformatory. They were good people to know in the Don, as they worked all over the place and, if they trusted you, they’d get you anything that was available. If they couldn’t get it, they knew another rub who could. After about a year I could no longer stomach the jail food, and the rubs used to keep me supplied with jam, brown sugar, and anything else they could lay their hands on in what officials referred to as the kitchen. Sometimes guys coming in would have nembutals or barbiturates, and the rubs would get hold of them one way or another. They used to cut me in on anything like that. Quite apart from being obliging, the average rub is pretty good company when he’s sober. Most of them are witty, and some of them are quite well read. They used to give us the scandal of what went on in other parts of the jail. One, who worked in the laundry or change-room, used to tell us of any unusual happenings with the fish coming in. One night, when he came up from work, he said, “We got a female impersonator in today. He had lipstick, curled hair, padded breasts, high-heeled shoes, manicured finger¬ nails, and the whole bit. He really looked like a woman. But when they got him peeled down, he was all man. Had a whang on him a foot long.” Most of the rubs had a relative indifference to values of anything except money. If they liked you, they’d think no more of stealing a bottle of laudanum or a hack-saw blade for you than they would of stealing a spoon from the kitchen. Only actual cash and the grape seemed to have value for them. Anything else they took just to do someone a favour. After about a year in the Don they moved me to the

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Bitter Humour other side of the jail. Shortly after I left 3-Corridor we heard rumours that there would be an escape. Such rum¬ ours are frequent in any jail, and only the guards, as a rule, pay any attention to them. However, one morning, as soon as we awoke, we sensed something was wrong. In about two minutes we heard that three men had got out of a window in 3-Corridor into the exercise yard, then scaled the wall, and escaped. These were the members of the notorious Boyd gang. Things were sizzling or, to use a con’s expression, “so hot you could light your cigarette from the bars.” When something like this happens in prison the con with experience usually keeps his mouth shut, and minds his own business. He knows pressure is put on all the staff, and nerves are likely to be frayed. At such times, a con is likely to get crimed for something that would ordinarily be overlooked. On the other hand, the squares usually start asking the guards stupid questions, and get bawled out, or punished. It’s ironic that at such times it’s always the poor square who doesn’t know anything about it that gets the brunt of the officials’ revenge. The day following the escape, a little junkie, who was also a race track tout, was put in the corridor below 3 with the rubs. A new guard about six-four, weighing about 250, started shoving him. The junkie let a bellow out of him and said, “Who do you think you’re pushing around, you big meat-head? You’re such a smart ass-hole. What were you doing when three men went over the wall? And I hear one of them had a wooden leg. You keep your god-damned paws off of me.” With this bit of encouragement all the rubs in the corridor started to jeer the guard too till the chief keeper came and told the guard to leave. The next day he pushed another guy going to the exercise yard, and this time again it was the wrong guy. He made a fuss and refused to move until the chief keeper came. That was the last we saw of that guard. He was fired that night or the next morning.

Habitual criminal I had been in the Don over two years, and was still wait¬ ing for my second trial, when a junkie I knew came in. He had brought several caps of heroin with him and told me to get ready to have a fix. He said “Give me six,” meaning to watch for the guard and keep the squares away while he was fixing. When he was finished he said, “How much do you want?” I said, “Not much. I haven’t had a fix for about two years.” He said, “Well, I left the cotton a little damp, so I’ll just put a little more in.” What I didn’t know was that he was taking six caps to a fix. There was probably enough in the cotton alone to kill me, but he didn’t think about it. And since I was watching out for the guard I didn’t see what he was doing. When he handed me the works, I tied my arm up and shot it into the vein. Then I handed him back the works and sat down on the floor. I was probably unconscious in less than a minute, but nobody noticed it for five minutes or so. Finally, one of the squares said, “Look at that guy! His face is all black.” The junkers saw I was too far gone for them to try to revive me, so they got the guard to get the doctor who was in the dispensary on the floor below. They took me to the hospital and put me in an oxygen tent. When they brought me back, they put me in the death cell for safe¬ keeping. I didn’t remember anything, even having the fix; but I saw the needle mark in my arm and guessed. My tongue was sore; I suppose the doctor had put a needle through it and tied it, to keep me from swallowing it. I had a pretty rough time talking my way out of the death cell, mainly because the officials had a suspicion I had tried to commit suicide. There was no way of dis¬ pelling that without telling them what actually happened and how, and, of course, that just isn’t done. Someone who was at the Don while I was in the death cell told someone in Headingly Jail near Winnipeg about it. He, in turn, told someone in Calgary when he got out.

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Bitter Humour When my mother heard the story, it ran that I was in the death cell waiting to be hanged. So I got a special letter to write and tell her that they weren’t going to hang me yet. If I had had any chance of getting acquitted at my se¬ cond trial, this escapade was probably enough to blow it. No physical damage, I know of, resulted but my memory was impaired and will probably never be as good as it was originally.

Life in the Don During this time, the fellows from the Boyd gang, who had escaped, were recaptured and, for safe-keeping, they were put in the death cells. We soon heard that the death cells were bugged to the governor’s office. Then we heard that the guys had blades and were going to try to make it out from the death cells. This would certainly be quite a feat if it came off, because it meant that they would have to saw not only through the bars in their cells, but through bars on the outside window as well, after they got out of their cells; and this would all have to be done from cells that were bugged to the governor’s office. When I heard about it, I didn’t think it had much chance of succeeding, and neither did a couple of other guys I talked to. However, one of the guys in the death cells started making a noise like a lion. The big Irish guard thought this was very funny, and every once in a while he’d say, "Come, now, let us hear ye roarrr like a lion.” The guy would always oblige. At night, after we were locked up we’d hear these

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Bitter Humour roars sometimes almost continually for periods of half an hour. When another guard would come to that side of the jail in the day time, the Irish guard would say, “Did ye know we have a man here that roarrrs like a lion? “Come now, let us hear ye roarrr like a lion.” And, of course, the prisoner would roar. One day, while the guard was talking to a couple of us at the gate at the end of a corridor, he said, “And don’t you think he’s getting a foine roarrr. I believe he’s getting better all the toime. Just ye listen now till ye hear it.” Then he went over and said, “Come now, let us hear ye roarrr like a lion.” After he roared, the guy talking to me said, “That guard will roarrr like a lion if he walks in and finds three empty cells there some morning.” The guard on our corridor came on in the morning and said, matter of factly, “Well they’ve gone again.” I said, “Who?” “Those guys in the death cells,” he said. He was a new guard and had only been there about a week. He wasn’t getting excited about a little thing like this. When breakfast was over and brass started to swarm all over the place, this guard was jarred out of his reverie when some official barked at him to stand up. When he left for lunch one day, he told us he didn’t think he’d be back, and we never saw him again. If you could light a cigarette from the bars after the first escape, you could have lit it from the ice-box after this one. Some of the guards moved around as if they were walking a tight-rope. They even cut out of the newspapers intended for us, accounts of the escape and comments. Of course, we got most of these from the rubs who fished them out of the garbage cans. Everything was tight for a while, and most of the guards were jittery. Some heads have to roll after an event like

Life in the Don this, and each guard was toeing the mark lest it be his. Things went on much the same as usual at the Don. There were the regulars and a sprinkling of unusual cases. After I had been there two years, there was seldom a day that fish came in that I didn’t know some of them. One Sunday morning, they brought in a guy who walked down the corridor a few feet, then lay down on the floor. He promptly went to sleep. When they woke him up at dinner-time, he said he didn’t want anything to eat, and went back to sleep. The same thing happened at supper-time. At bed-time they woke him up and he went into his cell. He had come into the corridor in his shirt-sleeves and stocking feet. Some of the fellows figured they might have kept his shoes for evidence. But this wasn’t the case. He was charged with attempted rape. The police said he had hidden by a hedge, and then sneaked up on a woman and tried to attack her. He was over six feet and about twenty-two years old. He said he had no recollection of the matter at all. After seeing him sleep off his drunk for about twenty-four hours, it wasn’t too hard to believe. Later on, he got into the poker game with us and once, when he was day-dreaming and holding up the game, one of the other players said, “Well, what about you, Homy? What are you going to do?” He laughed, and after this everyone called him Horny, even the guards. Once a kid about nineteen came in, charged with steal¬ ing a jack from the subway construction job he was working on. He was married, his wife was going to have a baby, and he needed money so badly he stole the jack. He was scared stiff. It’s so rare that anyone comes into the Don who is really scared, that the fellows had to have a bit of fun with him. When he asked a guy how much he would get, the guy said, “It’s your first time. You haven’t been in any trouble before. I think the judge would be inclined to be a little

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Bitter Humour lenient with you. I wouldn’t think you’d get any more than five years.” Now he was really scared. Someone else asked, ‘‘Do you think your wife will wait for you for five years?” ‘‘Oh yes, she’ll wait for me, but how will she live for five years and take care of the baby?” ‘‘She’ll just have to go down on Jarvis Street and start hustling,” someone said. “She’d never do that. She is respectable, and I wouldn’t want her to do that either.” “You wouldn’t want her to. You left her out there to starve didn’t you, and her going to have a baby. A fine one you are. You’ll just have to talk her into it, that’s all.” He was pretty broken up. One guy said, “Oh don’t take it so hard, kid; you might even get off with three years, who knows?” Someone who had talked to his lawyer, asked him to see the kid; he did and got him out on bail or on his own recognizance, and we never heard any more about him. He probably got a suspended sentence. An interesting character was a stockbroker, in for a $50,000 swindle the papers said. He was well liked, and talked to nearly everyone in the corridor. He seemed to be interested in what everyone was in for. After he had been in about three or four weeks he said to me one day, “You know, it amazes me what some of these fellows are in for. I think they must really like going to jail to commit such petty crimes. Look at the time some of them get. “Good lord, you can talk the average man out of a thousand dollars and he’ll just give it to you. What on earth would a man want to steal something worth three or four dollars for?” I said, “Well I don’t doubt that you can talk a man out of a thousand dollars, but he’s not an average man, be¬ cause the average man hasn’t that kind of money. Perhaps the average man in the circles you travel in has, but then

Life in the Don what chance would any of these guys have of ever getting into those circles?” I said, “I’m sure that if my living depended on talking someone out of $1,000, I’d have starved to death long . *> ago. “I suppose you’re right,” he said, ‘‘but it seems such a waste to do so much time for so little.” He never talked about his own case except when some¬ one asked him about it. He was sincerely interested in other people’s troubles, and I gathered he thought his were pretty minor by comparison. After all, what’s $50,000? I think he looked on his arrest as a calculated risk. He was being held for deportation so couldn’t get bail. His first name was John and he was over six feet tall. He acquired the nickname of Long John, and sometimes Long John Silver, and he seemed to like it. There was no legal aid society at that time, and some of the fellows used to write their own appeals, or get someone else to write them. Written appeals, as a rule, don’t have much chance of success, but occasionally an acquittal results. I wrote several for various guys, and the first year I was in the Don a couple of them were successful. One day the governor called me down to his office. There was a woman there with him. He said, “This lady’s son is in a bit of trouble, and he has received three months. Now I want you to write an appeal for him. You have got quite a few fellows off by writing their appeals. This woman hasn’t any money to hire a lawyer. If you will write the appeal for the boy. I’ll give you paper, and you can go with him into the barristers’ booth and get the details.” I said, “I’ll do the best I can.” The governor then assured the woman, “Now, you go home and don’t worry. This man has been in here more than two years and he knows more about courts and appeals than a lot of lawyers.”

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The woman said to me, “He’ll get off, won’t he?’’ I said, “I don’t know, but I’ll do the best I can.” The governor said, “Oh, sure he’ll get off. Now you go home and don’t worry.” I went into the barristers’ booth with the kid, and bit by bit dragged the information necessary for an appeal out of him. He wasn’t nearly as interested in his appeal as he was in finding out what it was like in the big house, and a lot of other things that he would probably find out soon enough. He had pleaded guilty, but he was a juvenile. I based the written appeal on the fact that his parents had not been notified, which is required by law in the case of juveniles, and on the fact that he wasn’t represented by counsel, and none had been appointed by the court. He won the appeal. His mother left a few dollars in the office for roe to buy tobacco with. Actually, any of the appeals I sent in for fellows, I dis¬ cussed with some lawyer who would advise me what might be accepted by the appeal courts. Most written appeals fail because the people who write them believe the appeal court is interested in whether the convicted person is guilty; that is, did he commit the crime? The function of the appeal court is not to decide this, but to rule on whether the convicted person has been convicted properly according to law, and whether the judge or magistrate erred in his decision based on the evidence. Procedure is important, and the appeal courts reverse many decisions because the proper procedure wasn’t followed at the trial. But in the Don, once you write an appeal that is success¬ ful the word spreads quickly, and guards and cons both know about it in a short time. Many of the guards don’t like lawyers as they resent their being able to be alone with clients. These guards try to tout the jail-house lawyers and I was becoming known as one. They would tell fellows, “Don’t spend money on a lawyer. Get this fellow to write it for you.” But I used to

Life in the Don

advise anyone who had money to get a lawyer to handle the appeal. Only when a person had absolutely no hope of getting a lawyer would I write his appeal, and then only if I thought it had a chance of success. After I had written about six successful ones, some of the guys had a childlike faith in my ability to do the impossible. Some guys would get caught bang-up com¬ mitting a crime, sign a confession, go into court, plead guilty, and then ask me to write an appeal to get them off. Altogether I wrote about eight or nine successful appeals, but nobody for whom I wrote an appeal had a longer sentence than nine months. There was nothing complicated about any of them. In most, if not all the cases, it was a matter of the accused having been denied some of his legal rights. I think, too, that all but one of them were people who had never been in trouble before. Many of the fellows who wrote their own appeals didn’t hope or intend to win. They just wanted to stay in the Don until the appeal came up. It might be so they could get visits they wouldn’t get in Kingston, or maybe it would be a guy released from Kingston one day, and arrested the next. He might want to sit it out in the Don for a few weeks before going back “home.” Some of these used to abandon their appeal just before it was scheduled to be heard. Others signed the waiver as soon as they got back from court. The waiver is a docu¬ ment stating that you do not intend to appeal, and giving the law authority to remove you to Kingston. But after thirty days, if notice of appeal has not been given, the prisoner may be shipped to Kingston without his signing the waiver. I had signed my waiver on the drug conviction when I came back from court but not, of course, on the habitual criminal conviction. Hence, my time on the drug con¬ viction was going on while I was waiting my appeal on the other. In fact, this sentence had expired long before I got out of the Don. At long last, I was served notice of my new trial. The

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Bitter Humour reason it had taken so long was that a test case was going on out in B.C., and they were waiting for the results of this. The lawyer couldn’t see any way out of putting me on the stand. He argued that I should be tried before another judge, but was overruled. In order to acquit me, the judge would, in effect, be admitting he had made a mistake at the first trial. In addition to this, there would be the evidence of my taking drugs in the Don Jail. I felt that the trial would be a mere formality and that the only hope would be in another appeal. I asked the governor if I could have my clothes pressed as they had been rolled up in a bundle for more than two years, I thought. He said he’d arrange to have them cleaned and pressed in the change-room. I sent the guy who would press them a couple of packages of tobacco so he’d do a good job. But the morning I was to go for trial, they gave me a suit that didn’t even look like mine. I was furious because, I thought, they had pressed the wrong suit, and this thing didn’t even fit me. As they scurried around down the change-room, trying to find my clothes, it gradually became apparent that they had all been stolen. One of the rubs, knowing it wouldn’t be discovered for a long time, had probably switched suits, and sold mine to someone else. What made it worse, as far as the officials were con¬ cerned, was that the guard who had checked my clothes in, no longer worked at the jail. Well, clothes or no clothes, I had to get to court. That was the law. One of the guards came up with a suit of his, and let me wear that, and I borrowed shoes from a guy in one corridor, and a guy in another corridor loaned me shirt and tie, and someone else came up with a pair of socks. So, with clothes belonging to about six different people, I went to court for my second trial. In the sheriff’s car on the way to court, one of them said,

Life in the Don “Took them quite a while to get you out. I hear the rubs made off with your clothes.” I said, “Yesl Never even left me a pocket handkerchief.” One of them said, “Well, I guess it’s not the first time that has happened, and in there anything can happen.” The second trial was a repetition of the first except that the Crown didn’t make any mistakes. The lawyer put me on the stand, and under Mathews’ questioning I had to admit that I had taken drugs in the Don Jail, and was taken out to the hospital. Mathews, in his summing up, said that the fact that I had contrived to get drugs smuggled in to me after two years in the Don Jail showed that I still hadn’t reformed, and still didn’t intend to stop using drugs. This just about sewed it up as far as he was concerned. Even to me, it sounded bad. The outcome, however, was a reserved judgment. Well, that meant I’d have to wait it out again for the court’s decision. Murdock Keith had seen all the witnesses the second time so that they were on hand in court. Their evidence was the same as the first, but this time Mathews had the advantage of knowing what they were going to say. The most damaging evidence was the fact that I had been found with the ingredients, or some of them, for making nitro-glycerine. Since I had been convicted of pos¬ session of explosives out West, this showed a persistency in the same type of crime. Police evidence indicated that I was an expert on explosives. Actually the only thing I was ever expert in was getting into trouble. When I got back in the Don I distributed the clothes I had worn to court back to the guys who had loaned them to me. Gradually, I accumulated socks, shirt, underwear, tie, handkerchiefs, and so on, but this time they let me keep them in my cell. Waiting it out again for the judgment to be handed down was a repetition of the first time, although it didn’t

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Bitter Humour take quite as long this time. When it did come through, I was convicted again. This time I had absolutely no money and no means of getting any. The lawyer told me he wouldn’t charge me for the appeal, but I’d have to pay for the evidence, about $150. The fellows in the Don took up a collection, and some friends outside sent or brought money, and in a short time I had the money and gave it to the lawyer. So, at least I’d have another appeal, anyway. By now my time was up on the drug charge and if I should happen to win my appeal I would be free. The lawyer wasn’t enthusiastic. He said the Crown had patched up most of the mistakes they made the first time, and my own evidence of having taken drugs in the Don was not going to look good to the appeal court. Murdock Keith came to see me quite often. He told me he thought even if I didn’t beat the Habitual that the time I spent in the Don would be taken into consideration and count on my sentence. This could mean a lot, or it could mean nothing. At that time, nobody convicted under the Habitual had ever been released. From what I knew about the Remissions Branch — there was no parole board then — I didn’t feel there was much chance I’d ever get out. In England, there is a maximum time on the Habitual, ten years, I think it is. In the States, some states have Habitual Acts but they have parole boards that a convicted man could appear before. There is no federal habitual criminal law in the States. Here, in Canada, we had neither maximum sentence nor parole board. In the States too, in states that have Habitual Acts, it is mandatory to charge everyone who comes within its scope. Here, in essence, it was up to the arresting officer to make the charge. The Act seemed specifically designed to be used as a third-degree method for getting information. Had it been mandatory in Canada to charge everyone who came within its scope, they would have had to have a parole board long before they did, or build more peni¬ tentiaries, because about fifty percent of all penitentiary

Life in the Don inmates could have been charged and convicted as the Act is now. We used to talk about all these things in the Don. While I was there four other guys were charged as habituals and all were on narcotics charges. Two of them were convicted; the judge refused to sentence them, stating he didn’t think the Act was intended for this type of criminal. Another fellow beat it on a technicality. When he appeared in magistrate’s court he knew they were going to charge him as an habitual, and when asked how he wished to be tried on the drug charge, that is summarily or by way of indictment, he said, “Before you, your Worship, and I plead guilty.” Mathews said he couldn’t plead guilty and the magis¬ trate asked, “Why not?” They had a recess, to argue about it. He wound up being charged as an habitual; but it was too late, his election and guilty plea were on record. It was, however, about two and a half years later before that was settled, and he was in the Don all the while. Then he had to serve his sentence on the drug charge. Alex Edmison, then assistant to the principal at Queen’s University in Kingston and an executive in the John Howard Society, came out to the Don to see me several times when he was in Toronto. I was always glad to see him. Perhaps it was his training as a lawyer, but in any case his attitude was, “We’ll see what can be done about the future.” There wasn’t any dwelling on the past such as, “You should have done this, or you shouldn’t have done that.” I think he gave me credit for enough intelligence to know what I should have done and what I shouldn’t; and he didn’t waste time dwelling on it. He trusted me and I trusted him and we both learned things to our advantage knowing it would go no further. During my time in the Don there were three different governors and one acting-governor. One of them tried to make the jail as livable as it was possible to do under the

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Bitter Humour circumstances. At one time, he arranged for one special meal a day for six of us who had been there more than a year. This was at supper time; we ate separately, and the meal was a change from the line food. He was more lenient with the visits and always investigated any complaints no matter who made them. But he was altogether too human to last very long at the Don. After one of the escapes, he was transferred, and someone came down from Queen’s Park. By this time there were only two of us on the special meal, the others had gone. When the newcomer cut us off the special meal, I went to see him. He said, “You are no better than anybody else, and you’ll get the same as they get.” I said, “Do you think I’m just as good as anybody else?” He said, “Yes, but no better.” “Then I should be treated the same as everybody else.” “Exactly.” “Well let’s start doing it right now, then. Other people get the clothes they came in with, to go out in. Mine were all stolen. I want to be paid for them since you are so keen on treating me the same as everyone else.” This took the wind out of his sails and he said, “I didn’t know about that. If your clothes were stolen you’ll be paid for them.” He gave me a sheet of paper and told me to make out a list of my clothes and the value. They got someone down from Queen’s Park to inves¬ tigate, and found that between the time I had appeared in court and now, someone had tom the sheet listing my effects out of the ledger. There was such a fast turnover of guards in the Don that they couldn’t pinpoint it, and blame any guard for it. Had the governor who was there when I went to court still been there, I didn’t intend to make a claim for my clothes, as he was going to see that I had clothes I could go to court in, and that I could keep whether I was released or sent to Kingston. Since he had done the best

Life in the Don he could to make the jail livable, and a little easier for guys who had been there a long time, I felt under some obligation to him. But I didn’t feel under any obligation to this little pip-squeak. The outcome of this was that about two years later I got paid for my clothes, but it took many letters, many phone calls from people outside, and two or three visits to Queen’s Park. As one guy remarked, “The Department of Reform Institutions is used to covering up its mistakes, and there is probably no precedent for it paying for one. Such a thing probably throws the whole Department into con¬ fusion.” In any jail or penitentiary, after an escape, there follows acts of revenge by the authorities on those who remain. If the authorities can get to the bottom of it immediately, and punish all those they think are responsible, things return to normal in a comparatively short time. But if they can’t, they gouge and snipe away at the privileges of those remaining. They will punish prisoners for petty things that are usually accepted as normal. Ironically, this usually hits the square John the hardest. He doesn’t know anything about the escape, and he doesn’t know enough to keep his mouth shut unless he’s dead right. Something he said yesterday that the guard laughed at, he goes to the hole for today. To him an escape is some¬ thing interesting which he wants to know all about. The guard, with nerves frayed from pressure above, isn’t in any mood for pleasantries or stupid questions, and often thinks that instead of genuine curiosity the guy is trying to rib him. Then, too, sometimes the old timers will put a fish up to asking the guard a stupid question just to hear the guard roar; or they’ll tell the fish some outlandish story and the fish will ask the guard if it’s true and get bawled out. Once in the Don, after an escape, a guy in the corridor told a fish, “It seems a shame that with all the policemen in Canada they don’t have anyone smart enough to solve

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Bitter Humour this case. They have sent for Fagin of Scotland Yard and he’s flying over to wrap it up.” The fish said, “My God! When will he be here?” “He landed in Montreal this morning, and he’ll pro¬ bably be here this afternoon.” “Will we see him?” “Oh, yes! Fagin always comes to the scene of the crime first. He’ll be in shortly after dinner. He probably won’t be in this corridor, but if you’re near the gate you’ll be able to see him going into the death cells.” The fish was excited, and said, “I don’t want to miss him.” All the fish could talk about all morning was seeing Fagin. He said, “My brother thinks he’s so smart. Wait till I get out and tell him I’ve seen Fagin.” One of the guys said, “Let’s hope he hasn’t read Oliver Twist.” The fish said, “I don’t think so. He never reads the papers much.” Officials in civvies were coming up frequently to inspect the death cells where the escape was made from, and every time one would come up, the fish would ask, “Is that Fagin?” Finally an official came up with a guard and went over to the death cells. One of the guys told the fish, “That looks like him. I think that’s Fagin. You’d better ask the guard.” The fish went up and asked the guard, “Sir, is that Fagin that just went in there?” “Fagin? What Fagin? What do you mean?” “Well, you know, Fagin from Scotland Yard.” “What in the blazes would someone from Scotland Yard be doing over here?” “Oh, didn’t you know? They didn’t have any policemen smart enough in Canada to solve this escape, so they sent for Fagin from Scotland Yard, and he flew up from Mont¬ real this morning.” The guard blew up, “Look, you smart-aleck son-of-a-

Life in the Don bitch, you’re getting awful god-damned cheeky for a guy that’s just come in. One more word out of you and you’ll go before the governor.” The fish looked as though someone had thrown a bucket of ice-water in his face. When the guard saw his amaze¬ ment, he knew that some of the guys had been pulling his leg. When he calmed down a bit he told the fish that he should have been smarter than to believe the guys. Later the fish and the guard both laughed about it, and we called the fish Fagin from then on. There were a lot of arguments in the corridors, but I saw only two fights, both over trivial matters. Two fellows were sitting down arguing about whether Toronto was the best city in the world. A young fellow, who had done a bit of boxing, argued that it was. The other older fellow wasn’t quite so sure about it. I was walking up and down in the corridor and didn’t hear this discussion until they decided to ask me my opinion. The young fellow said, ‘‘You have been in a lot of different cities. What is your opinion of Toronto? I mean the residential districts, not downtown.” I said, “The only difference I noted from other cities that I’ve been in is that they put their garbage out on the front street in a lot of districts. I had not seen this before I came to Toronto. In the newer cities in the West, the garbage is put in the back alleys, and the garbage trucks drive down the alleys.” He said, “Well, if the West is so god-damned good why don’t you go back there?” I said, “Well, if you can arrange it with the governor I’d be quite happy to.” They both laughed; I continued walking up and down, and later sat down at the card table. Suddenly, there was a bellow, and the young guy was swinging at the older one. We all ran to the end of the corridor to stop them, as they were both pretty good guys.

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Bitter Humour But before we did, the young guy got in two or three good smashes to the older guy’s face, and made quite a mess of it. The argument about whether Toronto was the best city in the world had led to this fight. Many of the fights in prison are over such things. Often two guys get on each other’s nerves and use anything as an excuse for a fight. It wasn’t so in this case. They liked each other, and were good friends again about a day after the fight. About the time the fish got in wrong over Fagin, there were stories in the papers about Fabian of Scotland Yard possibly coming to Canada to solve some case. The fish was reading the paper one night and he jumped up and shouted, “Hey, you guys, you had it all wrong. This fellow’s name from Scotland Yard is Fabian; it’s not Fagin.” Someone said, “Ah, you’re kidding.” “No, no, it’s right here in the paper.” Someone else said, “Big score.” Lots of guys who came into the Don didn’t know what they were in for. Usually they were habitual drunks and never paid any attention to what anyone said to them or bothered to inquire. But when they found themselves on one of the trial corridors, they’d know it was something more serious than drunk, and begin to inquire. After the Stone of Scone was stolen, and the papers were full of it, a guy came into our corridor and said, “Jesus! I thought I was in for drunk, again. But it must be something more serious or I wouldn’t be up here.” One of the fellows had heard his name when the guard asked him before he let him into the corridor. He said, “Isn’t your name so and so?” “Yes, yes, why? What did I do?” “Well, the way I hear it you are in real trouble. You’re charged with stealing the Stone of Scone. Have you got it hidden some place?” “Good God! I don’t know. I can’t remember a thing. Is it valuable?”

Life in the Don “Valuable! Christ man, they’ve got half the police in Canada looking for it.” “What a mess! What do you think I’ll get for that?” “Who knows! Nobody ever stole the Stone of Scone before. But your average stone will run you around five years in the penitentiary, so it’s a fair guess that the Stone of Scone will get you from ten to fifteen unless they recover it. Then you might get off with five. Your best bet, if you don't know where you left it, is to tell them that you will cooperate to the fullest in helping them recover it. Then you can show the detectives where the last place you remember drinking was, and perhaps they can pick up the trail from there.” “Well, how do I go about telling them I’ll cooperate?” "Oh, just tell the guard you’ve been thinking it over, that you would like to cooperate, and you’d appreciate it if he’d notify the detectives.” As he went up and called the guard to the barrier, one of the fellows put a finger over his lips to give the guard the silent sign, an indication the fish was being ribbed. The fish said, “Sir, I’d appreciate it if you would notify the detectives that I am willing to cooperate.” “Oh, I see. What do you want to do? Squeal on someone else, or make a confession yourself?” “Oh no, there is no-one else involved. I just want to help the detectives recover it, and do the right thing, and maybe I won’t get so much time.” “I see! Well what is it you stole?” “Well I don’t remember doing it, but the guys in the corridor said I stole the Stone of Scone.” The guard managed to keep a straight face, “Oh, you dirty, traitorous, heathenish bastard! You’re the one that went and stole it. And now you want me to help you.” The guy said, “Oh please, Sir, I was drunk. I didn’t know what I was doing.” “Drunk? That’s what they all say. No, I’m afraid I can’t do any favours for the reptile who stole the Stone of Scone.”

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Bitter Humour

The guy turned and walked back down the corridor, shaking his head disconsolately. Someone got curious as to what he was in for and asked the guard to find out. He had been booked on suspicion with two or three others who were picked up in the vicinity after someone was robbed. He had nothing to worry about, but he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, and some fellows who were waiting to go to Kingston to serve sentences up to ten years were laughing and scratching. As one guy said, “I guess it’s all in the frame of mind.” Things got monotonous, and one guy said, “Oh, I think I’ll go and cheer up the Stone of Scone.” He went up to the fish and said, “You know some of these guys in here have been exaggerating about how much time you’ll get. I don’t think myself that you’ll get a day over four years.” The fish seemed considerably relieved and said, “Well, I hope you are right. I guess that wouldn’t be so bad. But ten years! I guess I’d never get out.” While all this was going on, I was awaiting the results of my second appeal. The Habitual Criminal Act had been declared ultra vires by the Supreme Court of British Columbia, and the Crown was appealing the decision to the Supreme Court of Canada. When the decision was handed down, the B.C. court’s ruling was reversed. That was another hope out the window. I figured my best hope now was for Jeeves to get out and see what he could do with the bonds, stocks, and other loot we had. I had no doubt, if he could get to an investigator of one of the insurance companies involved, that he could make a deal by giving up the stuff. There was approximately $100,000 worth of bonds and securities involved, and for that kind of money the insurance com¬ panies can work wonders. Meanwhile I hoped my case wouldn’t be disposed of until Jeeves got out.

Life in the Don About this time a guy was brought to the Don from Prince Albert on another charge. He told me that Jeeves had got a parole because he had cancer and had only a few days to live. Jeeves had told him to tell me that he’d get in touch with my mother and make arrangements about the stuff in the safety-deposit box. He told him to tell me that he had quite a bit himself, besides what we shared. He would turn it all over to my mother, and tell her what to do with it. This was good news and I was happy for a while. Some of the fellows noticed I wasn’t worrying so much, and asked me if I had good news, but I didn’t comment. Each day as the mail came, I looked for a letter, because I knew that as soon as my mother heard from Jeeves she would get in touch with me immediately. A week went by and no word, or “No word from the firm,” as my friend in Lethbridge would have said. After nearly two weeks I got a letter from my mother. She said she had been out to Banff for a week, and when the letter from Jeeves came it went to my sister’s place. My sister, not thinking the letter was important, didn’t forward it, but kept it until my mother came home. My mother read the letter in which Jeeves told her he had something important to communicate, which could mean my freedom, but to hurry as he had only days, and maybe only hours to live. She immediately started for Calgary where Jeeves was in a private nursing-home, and went down to see him. Jeeves had died half an hour before she got there. The people at the nursing home had asked Jeeves to write out his message and they would give it to her. Of course he refused. So all of our well-laid plans for the rainy day were down the drain. The only hope now was to beat the case in the appeal court, and I didn’t feel too confident of that. One morning a fellow from the other corridor came over and said, “Well, you blew it again.”

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Bitter Humour The appeal court had upheld the trial court, and all there was to do now was to go to Kingston for life. At least it would be a bit of a change. I had been in the Don three years and four months, and was weary of it.

Life sentence The impression I got of Kingston from guys who had been there was that it was worse than any place I had been in. Guys who had been in New Westminster and Prince Albert when I was there, and later went to Kingston, told me, “You’d have to see it to believe it.” I heard about them having to keep the toilets covered on some ranges, to keep the rats from coming up and eating out of the trays in the cell. Others told how cold it was in the dome in the winter. One guy who had been transferred from Kingston to Stoney Mountain said he hoped he could get transferred again. “In Kingston, in the winter, you freeze to death in the dome, but out in Stoney it was as warm as toast.” Some of them said, “Oh Kingston isn’t too bad if you get a ‘go.’ ” A “go,” in Kingston parlance, is a job where you do a minimum of work and have a maximum of freedom of movement. Such a job was a “runner” going from one department to another. Outside it would be called a messenger. Some of the clerks’ jobs were con¬ sidered “gos.”

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Bitter Humour Then there were jobs on the committee, and on the Telescope, the prison magazine, and other places that were considered “gos.” They were wiring the cells for ear-phones, and this was expected to cut down on the noise. But my overall impres¬ sion was that if I had to go there I would probably find it the worst place I had ever been in, except the Don which, of course, was not intended for anyone serving long sentences. Some of the Kingston guys who had been transferred to Prince Albert had told me about Kingston. They had three complaints: it was dirty; the food was rotten; and it was the noisiest pen in Canada. Two sheriffs left with four of us for Kingston. We were handcuffed until we got on the train, and then they put leg-irons on and removed the handcuffs. The other three doing short sentences had been in Kingston before. One had been out only two days from doing two years when he got another two. This would have been his sixth day out. He said, “Well, I don’t like going back, but since I am. I’m glad it’s in time to make the baseball team.” He told one of the sheriffs his racket was stealing car radios. The sheriff asked him how he did at it and he said, “Oh, I steal about twenty a day. I get an average of thirty dollars each for them, and I knock off about $400 or $500 a day.” The sheriff said, “Well that seems to be pretty good.” He had probably heard this sort of nonsense a couple of times a week for God knows how many years, but he let on it was all new to him. The guys talked about jobs they would get in Kingston, and one of them said to me, “You’ll have nothing to worry about; you’ll get a ‘go’ with your sentence.” Anyone who had not been in a penitentiary would have thought we were on a holiday. In the chief keeper’s office it was like old home week.

Life sentence “Well, you didn’t stay out long.” “Nope! You can’t win them all, you know.” “How long were you actually on the street?” "Just forty-four hours to be exact.” “Well, your job is waiting for you. They didn’t put anyone on it yet.” The routine was much the same as in other pens I’d been in, except that they had done away with the baldy haircut. The chief keeper gave us the usual pep talk about minding our own business, doing our own time, every¬ thing you get is a privilege, and you are entitled to nothing, and so on. In the chief keeper’s office they asked me what I wanted to do, and I told them either work in the library, or a clerk’s job. So after a couple of days of shining bars with emery cloth, they transferred me to the mail-bags. Some of the cells in the dome were the smallest, darkest, dirtiest-looking cells I had ever seen. The only opening was the gate, and the rest of the front of the cell was blocked in. In most of these cells, as I’d been warned, guys kept the toilet covered to keep the rats from coming out of the bowl into the cells. The discipline hack in the mail-bags said, “You may be here for a long time, so I’ll give you a good job.” The good job was turning old mail-bags that came in for repair inside out, and shaking the dirt out of them. A day or so later he asked me how I liked it. I said, “It may be my low mentality, but I can’t seem to work up too much enthusiasm over it.” He said, “Well, stick with it, because with your time you’ll be one of the oldest men in the shop in a few years, and you can then pick and choose any job you like.” I applied for a transfer of jobs and went before what is perhaps the biggest farce in Kingston, the work board. This is composed of the deputy-warden, chief keeper, chief trade instructor, classification officer, librarian, Pro¬ testant minister, Catholic priest, and a clerk. It reminded me of a picture I had seen in Time of the

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Bitter Humour signing of the peace treaty aboard ship, when the Japanese surrendered after Hiroshima. One of them, probably the deputy, asked me what f wanted and I said I’d like to get transferred back to the cleaners. I had learned by now there was no use stating a preference unless you had an instructor or guard, in the place you wanted to go, pulling for you. In some respects the cleaners was considered punish¬ ment for guys who got in wrong in the shops. One of them said, “You’re doing a long time. I think you should go some place where you can learn a trade.” All except the Protestant minister laughed at this. He was probably preoccupied, thinking of his next sermon. I said, “That is probably a good idea, but I’d like to work on the cleaners to get acclimatized until I find out where I want to work.” A couple of them whispered and nodded to themselves and then one said, “You can go; we’ll let you know later.” When the work changes came through, I had been trans¬ ferred to the kitchen. Working in the old slop-shop wouldn’t have been too bad but for the noise. The Don had been fairly quiet except when they were bailing someone out, or someone else was roaring like a lion to cover the noise of the hack¬ saw blades. After nearly four years of this relative quietness, my nerves just couldn’t stand the noise of banging metal trays, shouting, steam hissing, and all the rest of it. I asked to get back on the cleaners and the steward had me trans¬ ferred back. The steward can get anyone put out of the kitchen, and always does when they ask. They might drop a bar of soap in the soup, or pull something like that, if he didn’t. After I was on the cleaners a while I met the librarian, and asked him about getting in the library. He said he would be glad to have me, and would do what he could to get me transferred. I had to go in front of the work board again, but this time I got transferred to the library. In Prince Albert, in

Life sentence my two bits, I had passed Grades IX, X, XI, and about three subjects in XII. Since Grade XII in Saskatchewan was equivalent to Grade XIII in Ontario I had only a couple of subjects in Grade XIII to pass for senior matri¬ culation. I thought if anything would help me to get out, it would be progress in formal education. Certainly, it would be preferable to becoming proficient in making mail-bags which, in Canada, are made only in penitentiaries. The librarian, whose name was Paterson, was dedicated to improving education, and it didn’t matter whose, as long as the person was willing to learn. Of Warden Allen, “Little Dick,” the Archambault Re¬ port said, “The opinion of your Commissioners is that Warden Allan is conscientious and upright in the per¬ formance of his duties but that he would perhaps be more fittingly employed in connection with penitentiary indus¬ tries and construction work.” Since the new system with hobbycraft, and much more time out of the cells, the guys didn’t use the library so much as under the old system, and there wasn’t much work to do. It left quite a bit of time for reading, studying, and, if you needed any help with the studies, the librarian and his assistant were both school-teachers and glad to help. I became good friends with an old fellow in the library, who had started out in his youth working in a bank for twelve dollars a week, or some such amount. He had become a legend for his cheque swindles in Canada, and had also done a bit in San Quentin. Through two long bits in Kingston, working in the library all his time, he knew almost every book in the library and had read most of them. You had only to know the name of the book or author, or what it was about, and he could give you more information on it. Sometimes, when we were talking, some young guy would try to butt into the conversation and start an argument. The old fellow’s caustic comments would usually go over the intruder’s head. Younger guys used to resent it because he wouldn’t

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Bitter Humour argue with them, and they continued to try to draw him into arguments. Once we were discussing the law in regard to nsf cheques and, after he had explained something to me, a young fellow intruded with, “Well, I never heard of anything like that.’’ He smiled and said, “There are more things in Heaven and on earth, Horatio.’’ I laughed, and the young guy blew up. “There you go spouting the Bible. That’s what you guys always do when someone beats you in an argument. Thought I didn’t know it was from the Bible, eh?’’ He turned to me and said, “I’m no dummy.’’ I said, “You keep it well concealed.” He thought I meant he kept his knowledge well con¬ cealed and said, “Oh yes, I know a lot of things people don’t think I know.” The discipline guard said, “Why don’t you leave those men alone. They weren’t bothering you, and you asked for what you got.” “What I got! I made a fool out of them,” he said. “They think I’m a dummy.” The discipline guard said, “Oh, I think they’re much too intelligent to make a mistake like that.” One good thing that had come in since I was in Prince Albert was safety razors. The hobbycraft was good, too, but it made for a lot of noise on the ranges. There was sawing, hammering, rasping, and pounding. On top of all this was the shouting back and forth. It certainly wasn’t conducive to studying or reading. There were classes in various subjects held in the library, and those of us who worked in the library could attend any of them. Professors from Queen’s University in Kings¬ ton used to come out to lecture. These were always interesting. Hugh Garner, well-known writer and television-panelist, lectured on writing once, and a columnist from the Globe and Mail another time. Keith had told me he thought the time I spent in the

Life sentence Don would count on my sentence. It soon became apparent to me it wouldn’t. The classification officer was something new since I’d been in the pen before. One day the classification officer in Kingston called me to his office and let me know that the officials in Ottawa were not in favour of the time I spent in the Don counting on my sentence. Up to this point, it didn’t make too much difference whether it did or didn’t, as nobody had been released on the Habitual. The Act called for a review of the sentence every three years. The review, as far as I could see, consisted of a letter from Ottawa to the warden, asking him to inform me that the law had been complied with. Since I didn’t get my first review until three years after the date of my second trial on the Habitual, I knew the time didn’t count. I was penalized for appealing. The classification officer wanted to talk to me about drugs and told me about what reading and so on he’d done. It was apparent he fancied himself an expert on drug-addicts’ problems. It was also quite evident that he didn’t know much about either drugs or drug addicts except for a little superficial knowledge, probably gained from textbooks, and some malarkey handed him by drug addicts. The editors of the prison magazine, the Telescope, decided to hold discussion sessions to try to encourage guys to contribute. A few drug addicts attended these and once the discussion was on an article about legalizing the use of drugs. One addict said something should be written about some aspect of the drug law. One of the editors said, “I agree it is not right, but it is the law, and so there’s not much you can do about it.” The addict said, “Well, if that’s the law, then the law should be changed.” A fellow, known for his Communist activities, stood up and said, “The law you want to change, just. I want to change the whole system.” These sessions didn’t result in much, if any, material for

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Bitter Humour the Telescope, but they did produce some interesting conversations. In Kingston, there were two types of canteen. In the outside canteen you could buy ice cream, pop, and so on, with money you had in your property. You signed a slip for the money, and were issued tickets. In the inside canteen, you could buy only with money you earned at your work in the institution. Tobacco, chocolate bars, gum, jam, and honey were sold in the inside or joint canteen. Some fellows, without money, would buy tobacco in the joint canteen and sell it three packages for a dollar to get tickets for the outside canteen. Eventually, because I was studying, I got moved to the East Cell Block which had originally been the Prison of Isolation. Here, the floor on each range went right out to the wall of the building, so that each corridor was a unit by itself. The cells were bigger, and the meals were brought over from the kitchen in a metal wagon, and served in the East Cell Block. On Sundays, we could go to the exercise yard practically all day, except for the dinner-hour. There were usually two ball games, often an outside team coming in to play the prison team. A fellow had been brought down from Vancouver and it was expected that he would be hanged in Cornwall, if he didn’t escape. One Sunday in the yard, about five dif¬ ferent guys came up to me and told me there was going to be an escape. One of them said, “You’re doing a long time, you might as well get in on it.” Up to this point I hadn’t known anything about it, but I knew that if this many people knew, there were probably thirty or forty more who also knew, and that meant that the authorities would know too. This was the difference in Kingston from the western pens I’d been in. There, only the cons actually involved would have known about it. Here everyone knew about it. It seemed to be the stool-pigeons’ way of covering up; to

Life sentence inform about 100 guys and ask each one not to tell any¬ body else. Of this 100, probably fifty would tell a friend or two and later it would be impossible to tell who had squealed to the authorities. The escape plot was a wild scheme. The guards on the towers used to get their lunch sent up from the kitchen. The coffee was to be poisoned with strychnine, I think it was. After the guards with guns on the towers had drunk it and died, the fellow who was expected to be hanged, and several others, would go over the wall. The guards in the yard don’t carry guns because they might fall into the hands of cons. An old-timer said to me, “The master-mind that cooked this one up, and then fingered it to the bulls, will probably get a fair-sized parole.” He had no sooner said this than two hacks grabbed the guy who was expected to hang, and whisked him into the dome. The story came out afterwards that the authorities knew all about the plan before the poison was put into the coffee, and had warned the guards on the towers that it was poisoned and not to drink it. When the guy was taken to Cornwall, several guys said, “Well, he’ll beat them anyway.” He did, too. Shortly before he was to be hanged, he poisoned himself, and died, leaving a suicide note. Papers and everyone clamoured for the head of the governor of Cornwall Jail. Maj.-Gen. Gibson, Commissioner of Penitentiaries, at this point showed he was a pretty big man. In the face of all this clamouring for heads it would have been easy to let the jail governor take the beef. But Gibson made a public statement, saying investigations revealed that the man had probably brought the poison with him when he was transferred from Vancouver to Kingston. With that announcement the clamouring for heads stopped. When the canteen had first been organized, they started to give prisoners pay rated in Grades 1, 2, and 3, worth

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Bitter Humour ten, twenty, and thirty cents a working day. The warden had appointed the committee. There were rumours that the committee was stealing. After a great deal of agitation, Little Dick, the warden, agreed to let the cons hold elections for a committee. Those doing the most agitating for a new committee argued there should be honest men on the committee, and they ran a slate. During the election campaign, there were posters being torn down as fast as they could be put up, and opposing sides were calling each other stool-pigeons. An old-timer said, “What’s the use of having an elec¬ tion? The committee that’s in there now, it’s already fat from stealing. You put another committee in, and they are skinny. They got to steal more already to get fat. You seel It will be worse.” His predictions proved correct. A kid asked an old-timer who he wras going to vote for. “Kid, I got no business to vote. These guys are all honest men and I’m a thief. Surprising, though, how so many honest men got in the penitentiary all at once.” The kid said, “Well, yes! But there can be honour among thieves.” “I’m glad you told me that, kid, I didn’t know; and I been coming to jail forty-five years already. But I’ll give you some advice. When you see a man who has been in prison four or five times boasting about his honesty, you watch out for him because he’s dangerous. They tell you that because you are young, and don’t know any better. They wouldn’t tell me they were honest, because I know them and they know that.” On election day, the slate of five honest men got elected to the committee, and the old committee was out. Jacksonian democracy “to the victors go the spoils,” was put into effect almost immediately. Guys who had “gos” on the old committee were replaced by other guys to keep election promises. These were mostly jobs around the ball diamond, looking after equipment, picking up

Life sentence pop bottles, working in the canteen, and anything to do with the committee. For a while it looked better with the new committee, but before too long it became apparent that the first com¬ mittee would turn out to be pikers compared with the honest men when it came to feathering their own nests. Every night there was a broadcast from the committeeroom over the p.a. system, and this was devoted mainly to campaigning, and showing what the committee had done for the welfare of the inmates. Near the end of the committee’s term, the hobbycrafters were getting hot, because the committee was taking more and more of their money, and they weren’t getting anything for it. They figured if any of it went back to the population, it was only to buy votes for the next election. The hobbycrafters banded together and decided to put a man of their own on the committee. One of them asked me if I would run and try to protect their interests. He said they would assure me of getting in. I agreed, but said I would stay on the committee only as long as I thought I could do them any good. I was elected and made secretary to replace the defeated member of the previous committee. The others kept the jobs they had had. The member of the previous committee, who was in charge of hobbycraft, was sincere in trying to help the hobbycrafters, but the odds were against him. Since some of the guys on the committee were his friends he was in a spot. We got through a motion to make the minutes of the meetings public, and that at least showed the hobby¬ crafters where each committee member stood. Once, someone made a motion for the warden to meet with the committee once a week. When they were getting ready to vote they asked me what I thought. I said, “Well, if we are going to vote on what the warden is going to do,

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Bitter Humour I’ll vote for him to open the north gate right now, and we’ll all go home.” Someone said, ‘‘Now you’re being ridiculous.” I said, “O.K. I won’t vote, and we’ll see who looks ridiculous when you put that up to Little Dick.” One guy said, ‘‘You know, he’s got something there. It is going a little overboard to vote on what the warden will do. After all he is the warden.” On the committee I had a pass to go to most places inside the walls. Although I didn’t use it much it did come in handy. About once a month Little Dick would come down to the committee-room to hear the committee’s requests. He made these visits brief, and would say, ‘‘You can have this; you can’t have that; write me a letter about that; I’ll have to write to Ottawa about that; send me a note on it;” and he would be away. He had a short time only to go until he was pensioned off, and it was the general opinion that he was just coast¬ ing out and letting things slide. I met a guy in the yard I had known in Prince Albert. He had been a Kingston transfer and was winding up a double sawbuck — twenty years. Here he was doing fifteen. He had a canvas bag over his shoulder. After chatting with him I asked him what job he had. He tapped his canvas bag and said, ‘‘Oh, I’ve got a good job, killing rats.” He spread rat poison around, and this was a full-time job. He said, “Too god-damned bad I couldn’t kill some of the two-legged ones. Jesus! Since this new system came in, it’s really brought the phoniness out in some of the socalled good guys. “In the shops they are cutting each other’s throats to get on Grade 1 and some of the guys we thought were solid before, well you’ve just got to see it to believe it, but you’ll find out soon enough. “Under the old system, the finks were covered up a little, but this has pulled the blankets off them and brought them out in the open. I wish I could give some

Life sentence of this poison to about two dozen of them for a start.” He went off, laughing. In Kingston, every once in a while, there were boxingmatches, and usually the betting was heavy. The little gangster, wrho had been in Prince Albert, fought in every match and had never been beaten. Although he didn’t have a death-dealing punch he was faster than anyone he ran up against, and could always win easily on points. A couple of guys on the committee thought they'd clean up on the fights, so they offered the gangster fifteen tickets if he’d win. He had a job picking up bottles in the yard and the committee never dreamed he would throw the fight because they could put someone else on his job. The gangster was a gambler, and fifteen tickets weren’t too much good to him. Someone else offered him 100 tickets to throw the fight. Some of the committee members figured to clean up on the fight and were betting themselves, and getting other guys to bet for them. Other guys, knowing the gangster was going to throw the fight, took all the bets they could get. After all they had to pay the gangster 100 tickets just to throw the fight. I didn’t usually go to the fights but I went to this one. When the bell sounded, the gangster shot out of his comer and there were lusty cheers from those who had money riding on him. He danced around, threw a few light punches, and looked as though he was playing with his opponent. After a couple of rounds of this, he just covered up when his opponent came near. Then the other guy started lacing in punches, and the gangster never tried to fight back, just kept his gloves in front of his face, so he wouldn’t get hurt. The screams of anguish from the guys with money on the gangster were really comical to anyone not involved. After the fight, one of the guys with money on the gangster went to him and said, "What happened?” "Oh, he pearl-harboured me, and I couldn’t get my wind back,” the gangster said.

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Bitter Humour Probably three or four hundred dollars’ worth of tickets and tobacco changed hands in this fight. Feeling was running pretty high against the committee, and I didn’t see where I could do much more as far as the hobbycrafters were concerned, so I decided to get off. I got on the Telescope, and the fellow next in line with number of votes took my place on the committee. Meantime, Little Dick was pensioned off, and a new man, who had been warden’s clerk in New Westminster when I was there, came as warden. His name was John¬ stone and, in the interim since I had known him, he had been Director of Officer Training at Calderwood in Kingston. He was the public-relations type and at first did not go over too big with the cons. Before long it was apparent that he knew, or was going to find out, about the rumours of the committee stealing money. The committee, sensing this, set out to undermine him. One of the committee members, and another guy, made an escape in a refreshment truck that came in to deliver goods at the canteen. They were captured a short time later, and put in the hole. One of the fellows left on the committee came up to the Telescope office, which was on the second floor at the end of the south passage, and asked me if it would be possible for me to get an alibi for noon-hour, and for the rest of the afternoon. I said, “Well, I always go to my cell in the East Cell Block at dinner-time, and I can get an alibi for this afternoon.” He said, “Make sure some hack sees you, because if they find out you were up here at noon, or in the afternoon, you would be in a bad position for ever getting out.” From my cell I went directly to the library and talked to the librarian and school-teacher to make sure they knew I was there, and that they would remember it. About an hour after I was at the library, a fire broke out in one of the wings, and the fire-engine pulled in beside the library. Then they locked the library door and

Life sentence nobody could get in or out so I didn’t need to worry about an alibi. It soon became apparent that more than two wings were on fire, and I think we knew before we went in that four of them were burning. I knew now why I had been advised to have an alibi. The next day I saw Johnny Brown, who was also on the Telescope, in the yard. He said, “What happened, you didn’t come to the office after dinner yesterday?” I told him what had happened and he said, “A good thing. Christ, I was sitting there typing, and one guy goes up to that opening in the ceiling to the ducts, and another hands him two pails of gasoline. About two minutes later another guy comes up with two more pails, and I said, ‘Christ, I’m getting out of here.’ ” After all this planning and plotting had been done, things were arranged so that a fire could be started in the ducts of any or all of four wings by remote control switches. As soon as the firemen tried to put out the fire in one wing, another would be started. The first fire was started in the afternoon, and late that night, from our cells in the East Cell Block, we could see the flames in the Telescope office at the end of the south passage. The guys in some of the cells in the dome said they were afraid to go in the cells after the fire because they were unsafe. Some of them had been soaked with water from the fire-fighting. So they put some of them in the mail-bags to sleep and some in various other shops. Sunday morning, when we went to the yard, the East Cell Block was out first. Guys had been saying for weeks that the joint was going to go up and I, for one, believed it. Tension was high, and it seemed that for every level head there were about three that would fall into the categories of psychopaths, pyromaniacs, and paranoiacs. It took very little at any time to stir these up. Having been locked up in cells at night for years, and then sud¬ denly thrown together in large numbers in the shops, their tension increased.

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Bitter Humour A fellow in the exercise yard said to me, “God, this thing is really going to blow one of these days. So many maniacs cramped up in this small space.” No sooner had he said this than a con shouted through the bars of a window of one of the shops in the south dome, “Come on up, you guys. We are wrecking her, come on, come on.” A crowd charged into the domes and upstairs, some bent on deviltry and others out of curiosity. I looked in the south dome to see what was happening. Guys had bars breaking open the gates. I heard later they got the keys to some of the shops from the guards. It wasn’t long before all the shops were on fire. I moved back towards the East Cell Block and watched the activity from in front of it. They had set fire to the print-shop which was in another building, and the deputy had gone in to make sure there was nobody inside. A fellow who was watching it told me some young fellow had slammed the door and locked it on him. The place was a blazing inferno and the deputy came to the window. It was on the ground floor and he screamed to get out. One of the older fellows thought he had been locked in by mistake, and went to open the door. A couple of young fellows blocked his path and said, “You’re not going to let him out.” Meanwhile the deputy was screaming to get out. Another older guy said, “You guys can hang for this, you know. I got no use for the god-damned deputy either, but you can’t let a man bum to death just because you don’t like him. I’m going to let him out.” So they let him out, and someone cracked later, “The warden was pretty hot over this riot, but you know the deputy nearly got burned up over it.” From in front of the East Cell Block, I saw about thirty young guys in a crowd all shouting and laughing. They had got into a gasoline supply and were carrying it in buckets. They came up to the little yard-shanty, sloshed

Kingston Penitentiar August 19 The fire started in the roof of one of the wings

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Soldiers march through North Gate

With the situation under control, guards

Guards outside the walls in case prisoners use smoke as cover to escape.

rhly return prisoners to cells. Fire starts in roof over Telescope office (centre).

Convicts are herded together on ball diamond

Guards search prisoners before returning them to cells Soldiers watch while guards search prisoners.

The roof of one of the wings gutted by fire,

Life sentence gasoline over it, and put the torch to it. They moved in running and as they passed it, it was all in flames. Some of the pyromaniacs actually screamed with joy to see the flames. About an hour and a half or two hours after it started, there were huge clouds of black smoke rising from several of the buildings. A helicopter was flying above the yard and broadcasting and soon the guards in the towers started to empty their rifles. At first I thought they were shooting at someone, but they had been ordered to empty their rifles. Then the army came in, and everyone was lined up against the wall and searched before being escorted to his cell. Several of the guys had leather wallets, and purses, and so on, and the guards threw these on the ground and wouldn’t let them take them. The soldiers were picking them up and stuffing them into their pockets. As I was searched, I heard one soldier tell another one, “I got six god-damn fine wallets already, and there’s a lot more of them guys to be searched yet.” There weren’t going to be any hot meals, just sand¬ wiches and tea, and that lasted for a couple of meals. Then a guy went to the hospital; they thought it was typhoid and were afraid of an outbreak, so they started to put out hot meals. One building was completely ruined by the fire and had to be demolished and rebuilt. If the riot did one good thing, it hurried the lowering of the roof of the dome. The great massive dome which served no useful purpose used to absorb any heat there was in the blocks. It was so weakened from the heat of the fire that they decided to lower it right away. So the contractors began cutting it down. It was made flat instead of dome-shaped, and only rose about one-sixth the height of the old dome. After this the Telescope office was moved to the library. Quite a number of guys were locked up over the riot, and some of them were put in cells below us in the East Cell Block. Some of them started hammering through the

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Bitter Humour walls from one cell to another. Apparently they slept all day and hammered all night, because we couldn’t get any sleep for a few nights. Some of them went to the hole, and we heard some of them got paddled; after that the noise stopped. As always happens, several fellows who had nothing whatsoever to do with the riot were locked up as ring¬ leaders. One fellow who was doing twenty years and had only a few months to go was locked up. I had talked to him during much of the rioting and he was interested only in finishing his time and getting out. Warden Johnstone was on leave at the time and so, after the army came in, Little Dick returned and appeared to be taking charge for a while. He stood in the middle of the yard, pointed to various cons with the cane, and said, “Lock him up. Lock him up.” This fellow had been in a little trouble in the 1930’s and Little Dick remembered him from that. I had a cer¬ tain amount of guilty knowledge, but some of the guys who were locked up didn’t even have that. Some of them were locked up for months. What could Little Dick know about it? He hadn’t been warden for months, and the last year he was warden he virtually let the joint run itself. The task went on of tearing down the buildings that had been weakened by fire and rebuilding them. Everyone seemed to have an opinion of what was the real cause of the riot. Some blamed the warden, some blamed the committee, some blamed the lack of a parole system, some blamed the crowded conditions, some blamed Dr. O’Connor for insisting that the psychopaths under his care be allowed freedom to go to the yard. My opinion is that none of these as a single factor was the direct cause of the riot, but that all these and several more were contributing factors. I think, though, that the lack of a parole system at that time, and the crowded con¬ ditions were two main factors. One habitual took an active part in the riot and said.

Life sentence “Let them try to do something to me.’’ They couldn’t give him more time because he had all the time there was. They could sentence him to more, but it would have been like sentencing a man who is going to be hanged next week to an extra ten years. It would be meaningless. This fellow actually wanted to be taken out and tried so he could tell the court about the Habitual Criminal Act. But they didn’t try him. Fortunately, he beat the Hab on a tech¬ nicality and was released. Things went on much the same on the Telescope and in the library, as the library had not been ransacked. Dr. O’Connor showed me a copy of a letter he had written to the Penitentiary Commission. He suggested that someone from Ottawa come down and explain the theory of the Habitual Criminal Act to me. Dr. Gendreau came down, and I was called up before him. He said as near as I can recall, “Now, I’m going to try to explain to you what I think is the theory of the Habitual Criminal Act and its treatment. But you must understand that this is only my opinion and that I do not necessarily agree with the Act. In fact, there’s a great deal about it that I do not agree with, and as a doctor could not agree with. “Now if you convince me that you understand that, I will try to explain what I think is the theory to you.” Apparently I convinced him and he outlined the theory much of which I was not unfamiliar with. In brief, the theory was that the criminal’s mind is damaged in the process of growing up, and that it must be mended by a process of treatment. During this “treat¬ ment,” things that are looked on as indications of improve¬ ment are: participation in inmate activities; going to church; studying; learning a trade; getting along well with other inmates and with officers. He talked to me for probably an hour, and when I came away I knew at least what made some of the master-minds in Ottawa tick the way they did. The prison grapevine had it that one of the reasons I

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Bitter Humour wasn't getting out was because of some of the things I wrote in the Telescope. The cons believed that the officials in Ottawa didn’t like it. This was ironic, because the warden had a strict censor¬ ship on the Telescope and not a word could go into it without his O.K. I got off the Telescope almost immediately, and never wrote anything more for it under my own name. Warden Johnstone, when I asked him for a letter to Ottawa, brought up the subject of my leaving the Telescope, and I told him I’d never write anything more for it and told him why. One of the people from Ottawa told me that the report the classification officer had sent in on me wasn’t too good. I asked him about it and he seemed quite happy to tell me he had sent in a bad report. A psychologist came to the penitentiary full time. His office was in the Northwest Cell Block where, at this time, I was sleeping. He was a hell of a nice guy, and we used to exchange a lot of information. He loaned me two or three dozen of his books on psychology and penology, but some he was reluctant to let me have at first. The psychologist had the idea that the grapevine was some mysterious thing that only convicts knew about, and he was determined to find out about it. I said, “I’ll tell you all about the grapevine, but you have got to convince me that you are going to help me get out of here.” An official who was in a position to know had told me that the classification officer was the only hurdle in my way, and that he might be able to keep me there indefin¬ itely. So it boiled down either to deceiving the classifica¬ tion officer or staying there until he got kicked upstairs, and maybe by that time I’d be dead. It wasn’t that I intended to steal or associate with ex-cons when and if I got out. I had decided even before I lost my second appeal that I was through, whether I lost or not. The rub was that I had to change my attitude and

Life sentence admit that the Habitual Criminal Act was a good thing, and I had to admit that there wasn’t much chance for anybody who had ever been a drug addict, and a lot of other hogwash. I knew personally at least thirty people, mostly men, but a few women, who had been drug addicts and quit, and been off for at least five years. But these self-styled experts on narcotics get their information from police records and such places. Police don’t keep records of drug addicts who have quit. They have quite enough to do looking after the ones who are still using drugs. Unlike alcoholics who have quit alcohol, drug addicts can’t tell people they have been addicts. To be an alcoholic is considered a social hazard for some people. To be a drug addict is a downright disgrace. Hence the treatment or approach cannot be the same; but the classification officer thought alcoholics and addicts were the same problem, and that if addicts joined Alcoholics Anonymous it would be the end-all to their problems. My first approach to the classification officer was, “Well, I haven’t had much success trying to get out, so I’m going to put myself in your hands. You should know the answers and I think you do. Are you going to help me or not?” His eyes lit up like a Christmas tree and a look of sereneness came over him. He sat back in his chair and smiled. I fancied he thought, “Well he’s come around at last.” He said, “Yes, indeed! That’s what I’m here for.” From then on things started to happen and there were indications they were getting ready to turn me loose. I thought it was a bit ironic that I intended to be honest when I got out, but I had to be dishonest to get out. Now I was beginning to look forward to these sessions with the classification officer, and before long he told me he thought I’d be getting out soon. He called me up once and said, “You had good reports on everything from everyone, but they turned it down.” I knew what the score was here. In Ottawa, they weren’t

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Bitter Humour going to let the classification officer make the decisions. they were going to make them. So I said, “Oh well, don’t worry about it. We’ll probably make it next time.” Not too long after that, the psychologist called me in and said, “It looks good. I have the Rorschach test here for you to do. But before I give it to you, you promised to tell me about the grapevine.” So I told him, “There is nothing mysterious about the grapevine. It is just a cons’ and guards’ expression for saying they don’t want to tell you where they got the information.” I told him about the Doukhobors in New Westminster and how the guards attributed their knowledge to the mysterious grapevine. A guard will tell a con something, and he’ll repeat it and say he heard it on the grapevine. From writing with invisible ink, a con will hear something. Visitors will tell a con something, and the con will know it sometimes before it is made public, and will say he got it on the grapevine. I added, “It’s ironic to me that you, a psychologist, whose training tells you that there is a logical explanation for everything, should think that there is anything mys¬ terious about the grapevine.” He said, “I knew there was a logical explanation, and that’s what I wanted to find out.” He was horrified at the information some of the cons got that they weren't supposed to get, such as Dr. O’Con¬ nor’s files on individual patients and their recommenda¬ tions. These had been obtained by making keys for the filing cabinets where they were kept. After he gave me the Rorschach test, and the Binet test, and a couple of others, he wrote a letter to Ottawa as he was required to do. He was so fearful of leaving it in the office, or trusting it to regular channels, that he took it down to the telegraph office and wired it. By a one-in-a-million chance, before it got to Ottawa it passed under the eyes of a friend of a person who knew me, and had heard my name mentioned. This person made

Life sentence a copy and gave it to my friend. I had it word for word in less than a week after he sent it. Later, when I was talking to the psychologist again, he said, “Well I sent in a report about you and I think it was pretty good. It was at least honest.’’ I said, “Thank you. What did you put in it?’’ “Oh, I couldn’t tell you that.” "Well, it doesn’t matter too much. I have a pretty fair idea what you would write.” “What do you think I would say?” From memory I told him roughly what he had said in the report. “You probably think so and so,” I said, “and I guess you’d put that in the report; but because you think so, it isn’t necessarily true, you know.” He stared at me in amazement and then said, “You didn’t tell me all about the grapevine.” He was so bewildered and perplexed that I would have liked to tell him how I got the information. I couldn’t because someone might have lost his job over it. He didn’t stay in Kingston long. After I got out, I found out where he was working, and wrote to him; but he didn’t answer. He was trying to learn so much so fast, and was having a hard time separating facts from nonsense, it was really comical. I felt now that I would be getting out before too long. I only hoped it would be before winter. The classification officer used to call me into his office quite regularly, and I used to go in on my own once in a while. I was beginning to get a kick out of this now. He’d ask me what my opinion was on something and I’d say, “Well, what you think about that?” He’d tell me what he thought, and the next time he asked the same question, I’d give him his own answer, and nothing could have pleased him more. Finally he called me up and told me my parole had come through. There was a period of a couple of weeks or so after it came before I was to be released.

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Bitter Humour During this time I didn’t have to do any work and spent some time outside the walls. Alex Edmison arranged for me to visit friends of his in Kingston, and sometimes I’d be out all day and he’d bring me back at night. I liked being with him because I could be honest with him. No doubt a lot of my opinions and ideas he didn’t agree with, although he never said so. He was the most understanding of those with whom I came in contact. Most important of all, I trusted him and he trusted me. I was given civvy clothes when I went downtown. One day I had dinner at a contractor’s, another time at a minister’s place, and on several occasions someone from outside took me to a restaurant. When anyone else took me out, they would stay with me all the time. But when Alex took me, he would leave me at one of his friends’ places, and pick me up when it was time to check back in. This did good in relieving me of a lot of my bitterness. The people I visited were all interesting. Some of them wanted to know things about the inside and I told them, and some of them never talked about it. Finally the morning arrived when after nine years and two months, I went through the North Gate to freedom. Alex picked me up and took me to his house in Kings¬ ton, where friends were waiting with a car to take me back to Toronto. There I would stay overnight, before leaving the next morning by train for another city. There could be no more stealing or using drugs. Now, I’d learn how the other half managed to get by.

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