GOOD KEEPER, BAD KEEPER

“After I saw you the thought of my Saviour (sic) vanished from my mind, and I did not know you, but your countenance seemed familiar”- Jack Hodges, Black Jacob, A Monument of Grace by Rev. Ansel D. Eddy  

     It wasn’t long before our young hero Austin Reed was back in custody again, also headed for Auburn State Prison. Although still a juvenile, much to  Austin Reed’s relief, he wasn’t sent back to The House of Refuge; but for the first time, Reed would experience an adult prison. He would soon wish he had been sent back with his Irish buddies on the Bowery. On May 2, 1840 seventeen year old Austin Reed boarded the canal boat “James Savage” and headed east on the Erie Canal. There, he would meet the “kindly” keeper Capt. James E. Taylor.

      

 “While I was sitting in this deep reverie of thoughts,” Reed wrote, “I heard the heavy tramp of footsteps treading behind me, and in a moment’s time the heavy weight  of a man’s hand was laid upon my shoulder. “Here, get up here youngster, and take off your cap,” said one of the officers in a rough tone of voice. I stood up before Captain Tylor [Taylor] and taking my cap, I made a low bow to him. “Where are you from?” said he. “I am from Rochester, sir,” I replied. 

“How long have you come for?”

“Two years sir,” said I.

“Pah,” said he, “that’s nothing. We will make a man of you before that time. How old are you?”

“Thirteen sir,” said I. [Reed was seventeen]

“Well,” said he, “You must be a good boy and behave yourself well, and try to be as good and as smart a man as your father was. I was acquainted with your father.”

     Three months later, in September 1840, fettered and bound, William Freeman was also transported the short distance from the Auburn jail to the State Prison. The spider web of Auburn now trapped most of our dear ones—Freeman, Reed, and Seward. Although released to the Auburn Seminary in 1828, Jack Hodges is now living with Mrs. Martin, in Canandaigua.

    I’m able with some confidence to place William Freeman and Austin Reed in the same workshop at the same time, with the same (according to Reed) charming, fatherly keeper—Capt. James E. Tyler. For another perspective we have only Capt.Tyler’s recollection of his interaction with Freeman from the stand, not Freeman’s of Tyler, but it will do. In recalling his interaction with the slight and “sprightly,” young William Freeman, Capt. Tyler’s testimony under oath from the Freeman trial reads as follows:

       “I called him up and told him I had done talking to him- I was going to punish him. I told him to take his clothes off. I turned to get the cat and received a blow on the back part of the head from him. It started me a little. As I looked around Bill struck me on the back. I kicked at him and knocked him partly over- perhaps he fell clear down. He jumped up went across the shop, took up a knife and came at me. I took up a piece of board lying on the desk, went down and met him. It was a basswood board, two feet long, fourteen inches wide and half inch thick…….I struck him hard on the head- split the board and left a piece in my hand four inches wide.”

   You couldn’t ask for two more disparate portrayals of one individual, at exactly the same time and place, by two pretty reliable sources. Like Jack Hodges’ exploitation by the clergy, press and state, Rob Reed indulges the reader in his own skewed propaganda, playing to the crowd. The keepers were many times sadistic and cruel, other times empathic and parental. And not all of Reed’s memoir is believable. He digresses into preachy temperance sermons, racist invectives and even diatribes against (of all things) excessive masturbation. This could be seen as an attempt to cater to a salacious public, eager for a rollicking prison memoir, with a splash of moralism, or heartfelt honesty on his part. We’ll never know. Stylistically it’s of its time and Reed probably thought this tact of periodically embracing the institution, that was literally whipping and scarring him, a necessary evil. He took his writing seriously and wished it to be published some day, thinking these sections could help selling it. I can relate.

     Both depictions of Captain Tyler could be accurate. The Freeman account, delivered by Tyler’s own incriminating words, under oath, feels honest and unapologetic. This butts up against Austin Reed’s touching recollection of Tyler—a compassionate man, not a sadistic beast. The complexities of the individual can get lost when trying to unravel historical events 200 years ago. Was Richard Jennings universally disliked and as big of a litigious misanthrope as everyone said he was? Were these three black criminals sympathetic just by virtue of their race and the systematic oppression of the time? Was every keeper at Auburn a brute torturer, the very embodiment of evil incarnate? I’d say Austin Reed just met Capt. James E. Tyler on a good day and leave it at that.