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Eighteen •————————————• Novak’s Second Disappearing Act As hard as it was to “do the book”—prison slang for a life sentence —at Anamosa, marking time was much worse at Fort Madison State Penitentiary. With cramped, filthy cells and a well-­ deserved reputation for draconian punishment, the old prison was a much rougher facility than its newer sister penitentiary one hundred twenty-­ five miles to the north. Workers broke ground for the Fort Madison Territorial Penitentiary in 1839, seven years before Iowa became a state. Known as the oldest prison west of the Mississippi, The Fort was perched on a small ridge about four hundred yards from the Big Muddy. Before a crude wooden stockade was completed, the first prisoners were kept in the cellar of the warden’s house. “Each night, with ball and chain dangling from their legs, they were [lowered] into the cellar through a trap door,” but the makeshift jail had immediate security issues, for “in spite of precautions, seven of the first twelve prisoners escaped before the cells were ready.”1 The warden’s cellar was a harbinger of the squalid conditions of the stone cellblock, which was completed in 1841 and could hold one hundred thirty-­ eight convicts.2 A prisoner later described the cells as “vermin-­ infested” and crawling with bedbugs.3 “The house is damp and dark,” he wrote. “We live and die in those steel and stone apartments . We curse and pray in them, plot future crimes and cry bitterly in them.”4 Novak’s Second Disappearing Act 207 Each dimly lit cell measured about six feet in length and eight feet in height, more like a small cave than a cell, with little natural light filtering through the barred window. Dozens of noxious lard-­and coal-­ oil lamps made a feeble attempt to illuminate the building’s interior. Also, since there was no indoor plumbing, a wooden bucket stood in each cell until morning, when the inmates carried them down to the lower yard and dumped the waste into a trough.5 On the outside, although The Fort was not as distinctive as Anamosa , it displayed a similar appearance of complete authority. Thirty-­ foot high stone walls ran about four hundred feet on each side, forming a square around the compound. At the entrance, an enormous stone watchtower guarded a pair of heavy iron gates while several smaller, medieval-­ looking turrets were built along the perimeter walls. From the beginning, living conditions at the penitentiary were abominable. As early as 1845, just six years after its founding, once “the public realized that prisoners were crowded into small quarters and that violent punishment was used to control the unruly, a committee was appointed to investigate [the problems].”6 Even so, it wasn’t until twenty-­ four years later, in 1869, that Dr. George Shedd, a member of the Iowa State Prison Board, headed east to study conditions at other prisons and penitentiaries. But despite his findings and despite the first seeds of prison reform sprouting in other parts of the country, little was done to improve life at The Fort. In fact, shortly after Shedd’s report, a warden named Martin Heisey was investigated for malfeasance. In 1870, a special joint committee of the Iowa Senate and House of Representatives examined thirteen charges against Heisey, ranging from neglect, fraud, and nepotism to dereliction of duty. Although the charges were dismissed by the investigating committee, which cheerfully reported that Heisey’s “faithful, efficient and untiring devotion to his official duties has but few parallels,” the complaints underlined some of the ongoing issues at the old prison.7 By 1874, two hundred sixty-­ four prisoners were jammed into Fort 208 t h e w h i t e pa l a c e a n d t h e f o r t Madison. Twenty-­ two years later, the cellblock had grown to three hundred seventy-­ two cells with plans to add one hundred twenty more, making a fourth level.8 All of these prisoners still were housed in the original cellblock building. By 1907, there were five hundred twenty-­ six inmates with only forty guards, much higher than the ten-­ to-­ one ratio mandated by state law. As at Anamosa, much of each prisoner’s day was filled with work. From the beginning, the directors at Fort Madison were instructed to make sure that each inmate “now convicted [and] in the confines of this place [should be] sentenced to hard labor.”9 However...

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