THE MAP OF TARTARY

“The cases of mental disorder occurring in this penitentiary are, with a few exceptions, of short duration, curable, and caused by masturbation, and are mostly among the colored prisoners.” -1839 report from Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary

    Crust eyes wake of sleepy matter, I tried to pry them up, wishing stay in peaceful slumbers, dark and quiet cave. Soon cracks of streaming daylight melting window frost. Pray, still stubborn stove how much have you forgot? There I warmed above its armor, lost, a wretched sinner without a prayer to utter, my saintly father dead and buried, rotting in his grave.

    Off I go on horseback, clinging ropes of mane. Big sweating fellow, not used to running, trust I not betray him into a rocky wall or thrust his leg in unseen crevice asking for his fall. We crest, so now we’re flying, breaking in the buckwheat,

racing ever faster, a foggy streaming river causing us to worry what lies beneath it’s surface, waiting without malice to knock us to the ground. I whisper in his ear “On my faithful servant, you are a loyal vessel, strong and dark as coal, I promise no betrayal the Lord shall take our souls.”

   A wind whips off the mountain, breaking morning’s silence scratching through the leaves, the broken fingered gibbet, a witness to the violence swinging in the trees. Now watch us free of others who would soon as slit our bellies like a flopping fish, or step on any fowl. I curse them with my dying breath, to the slush room make your duff, I had no more than nothing left, and still that’s not enough? 

  To wake my little princess, this would be my wish, and so I say in that regard on your brother please plant a kiss, from all my faithful men. And this I’ll say again.

     Ahead there lies a valley, my ears are in my throat. Into a womb of agony, how stinging your reproach. When all I ever asked of you was milk soaked bread and mush, you whipped me for the poison stew, gone bad through your neglect, and wrapped me in your guilty robe like that’s what you expect.

     

     As we’ve seen repeatedly, the collective belief amongst penologists was that mental illness in prison was caused by excessive masturbation (especially amongst blacks). This assessment would be funny if it wasn’t tragically true. The field of mental health was in its infancy. At the same time the laboratory of prison was on on the cutting edge, utilizing both physical and psychological torture, testing how far the mind and body could be pushed. Auburn, Sing-Sing and Clinton’s systems were perfect experimental venues in which to study the extent you could manipulate a man—mentally and physically. And when the inmate broke, the keepers already knew the cause: “excessive masturbation.”

Although Austin Reed picks up on this “by reason of masturbation” defense in one chapter, he has another, more plausible reason for inmates going insane.

“Reader, I hardly know what to say or what to call this little water craft. I think I must call her the Conqueror. I pity the passenger that ever steps on board of her, and when I see so many young men a taking passage on her, it makes me shiver and ache all over. She is a dangerous little craft to sail on, and the passenger that step aboard her is continually in danger of his life, or of getting good reason lost. Woe unto the poor unfortunate passenger who steps on board her, if he has committed a heavy crime, for he will be sure to meet a heavy tempest…….Glad is that poor man who is board of her, expecting every moment to be lost in an ocean of showers, glad is he when she touches harbor and lets her anchor drop. How his heart beats with joy, when he hears the captain give the orders to take in the sails.”

    

     Once again the literary witness of Reed’s metaphorical prose brings a horrifically stinging reality to his torture and torturers that mere sterile description would never suffice. He describes more than a dozen officers watching his “session” in this new water torture device. His usual obstinance and refusal to cooperate is overshadowed by increasingly brutal treatment and this “voyage” in the “Conquerer” is no exception. The Showering Bath does seem to “prick” him, although never coming close to breaking his will with the efficiency of the chaplain’s kind words. Imagine how many times between 1840-45 the now deaf, possibly brain damaged, William Freeman would also have endured a voyage on the Conquerer.

      From published schematics the Showering Bath was shown to be an elaborate water boarding device; a combination of the Spanish Inquisition and Abu Ghraib. It looked like an outhouse without a front door or shit-hole. The prisoner was seated, shackled and blindfolded; a drainage system hooked up to accommodate the excess spilled water and evacuating body fluids. Above the inmate’s head was a funnel made of copper. The keeper climbed up a stepladder (or worked a valve) and was passed bucket after bucket of water, which he poured into the funnel. Controlling the water’s flow with a stopcock, the officers were able to keep in the inmate’s mind a constant sense of drowning. Of the dozen officer’s gathered to watch Reed’s session, to a man they agreed it was a very effective invention.