Julian Hawthorne: The Life of a Prodigal Son

Prologue

Prologue At 9:30 am on Wednesday, October 15, 1913, two elderly men stepped into the open air through the gate of the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. Each of them wore a shoddy suit, a vivid scarlet tie, and a pair of paper shoes, and each carried a suitcase as well as a train ticket to New York and a fivedollar bill, their graduation gifts from Uncle Sam.1 Julian Hawthorne and Will Morton had been college classmates and friends for more than fifty years. They took a streetcar downtown to the Piedmont Hotel, where they rendezvoused with Edith Garrigues, Julian’s partner, and Sidney Ormund, a stringer for the Atlanta Constitution. For the next forty minutes the four of them cruised around Atlanta in Ormund’s car while the ex-cons filled his ear with details about the abuses they had witnessed during their four months behind bars.At 11 am Julian,Will, and Edith boarded a northbound train. Within twenty-four hours all hell had broken loose.2 After the interview, Ormund posted on the wire service a story that dozens of newspapers coast to coast printed the next day: that the warden of the federal penitentiary,William Moyer, was“unfit”to hold his job, corruption in the institution was rampant, and violence against inmates was common. Julian’s rant was scathing: They are starving men in the name of economy. . . . Prisoners are subjected to treatment which is nothing more than slow murder. There is never enough to eat. The Warden attempts to feed strong men on nine cents a day and boasts when he does it. You hear of clean cells, but you never hear of the “hole.” For the slightest fault, sometimes the breaking of a plate, a prisoner is sent to the hole. There the heat is terrific and the stench fearful. Prisoners are chained by their wrists and held with arms outstretched for hours. Neither he nor Morton had been maltreated—each of them was a high-profile inmate accorded such privileges as congenial work and special diets—but 2 prologue the prison was “a living hell” for most of the convicts.3 When copies of the Atlanta Constitution containing the interview arrived at the Atlanta prison, as one of the convicts later wrote Julian, “there was quite a sensation. You were cheered by the boys in their quarters. . . .The boys are elated but orderly and they are with you.”4 Julian was interviewed again the next day as he passed through Washington , D.C., where he not only reiterated his allegations but also vowed vengeance. Still sporting the scarlet tie, he told reporters that he would devote the next six months of his life to the cause of prison reform. “I am going to do what I can for the poor devils in that penitentiary,” he said. By the time he arrived in New York on the evening of October 16, his charges had become a cause célèbre. A bevy of reporters met him at Grand Central Terminal. “I can’t forget that there are eight hundred poor souls down in that hell in Atlanta,”he told them,“and I am going to do all in my power to help them in their misery and, if possible, to abolish the tortures practiced upon the prisoners in various forms for the very slightest infractions of the rules.”He asserted that the Atlanta jail was“the worst prison in the world.” There were many prisoners who were [chained in the hole] for three and four days. . . . Some of them were taken out to die. There are eight of these cells, all opening on a corridor like stable stalls. . . . In these cells the stench is almost intolerable, and the heat makes the perspiration pour out. The walls are slimy and covered with crawling things.The floors are covered with filth and are alive with vermin. And into one of these eight hell holes a poor prisoner is thrust for talking out of his turn and fed with one slice of bread a day and one cup of water. Here he must sleep standing up. One of the reporters asked him if had been permitted to see the dungeon cells. He replied with wry wit, “No, I was not permitted, but I saw them.” By the time he arrived in New York, moreover, some thirty hours after his release, Julian was demanding not a pardon but an apology from the federal government for jailing him. To...