THE MILK WHITE HAND

   “Good evening sir,” said I as I extended my black paw into his milk white hand.

“You look very pensive and sad this evening,” said the chaplain. “You look so you have passed through some trouble today.

“Yes sir,” I replied. “I have been drinking out of the cup of sorrow today and now tonight I have to taste the bitter bread of pain.”- Austin Reed The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict

     One of the most surprising revelations in all my family research was just how many Jennings and Osterhouts were members of the clergy. My parents and grandparents were not church goers to any degree and I did not grow up indoctrinated in any specific faith. I attended a Presbyterian church until I was a teenager and had Catholic girlfriends; going on Sunday “church dates,” but that the the extent of it. It wasn’t until art school that I developed a keen interest in all things religious. I don’t know why. I was searching for something. Like my ancestors, I went to seminary and now run my own church as an ad hoc social sculpture. The big difference is I do not consider myself clergy and my church is not a religious institution. I wouldn’t exactly call it “a mockery of God,” but close.

     Going back to genetics, it’s not surprising that I would explore faith based theopathy as a rubric in my work. Religion, the church and it’s functionaries, play into my art as much as anything else. It’s fertile territory for an artist. Although most times I am highly critical of religion, I cannot deny that much of what we call “faith,” and “spirituality,” is hard wired into us. This is what makes Jack Hodges, William Freeman, and Austin Reed so vulnerable to the “milk white hand,” of the chaplaincy and the clergy so eager to extend it. 

     No matter how cynical you want to be, the motivations of Thomas Eddy and Rev. Louis Dwight seem, at their core, altruistic. They visited the worst of antebellum era prisons in both the north and south, and used these experiences and expertise to make real world decisions, in order to better the plight of inmates in New York. The difficulties arose due to politics, economics, inadequate staffing, greed and corruption. Even today sin and crime are inextricably linked with penology, leading to moralizing and political knee jerk reactions based more on evangelic fundamentalism, than penal reform. 

     The drink from the “cup of sorrow” Rob Reed lyrically refers to is his own trip to the bowels of the penitentiary, is where Captain James E. Tyler deposited and tortured William Freeman. According to Reed’s account, the south wing of Auburn Prison contained a specific confinement device called the box. This device was built like an oversized steamer trunk— 3”x8” planks were strapped together with thick iron plates, hammered through with large rose headed spikes. You had to step over the edge of the box and crouch in, stick your hands through a small window, with a center iron rod in the front and let the keeper handcuff you in place. Then the lid was closed, the latch secured and you were left, forgotten in the dark—for however long the officer deemed fit. The purpose was to confine and inflict a sense of complete abandonment on the inmate. It worked. After an hour in that medieval device the inmate thought he’d never see a living soul again. Tyler would have had to pick up and drop the limp, naked, unconscious Freeman and place him into the box all on his own. It couldn’t have been too difficult. According to his inmate record, the seventeen year old William Freeman was 5’ 6” and weighed 110 pounds.

     Reed’s “black paw and milk white hand” illustrates just how effectively the addition of the clergy (men like Curtis and Dwight) had been in controlling the prison population. It was the missing link the reformers and the keepers alike, had been searching for. With the help of clergy the officers could now remain completely aloof, show no humanity, remain unavailable on any personal level other than the most basic master and slave relationship; while dolling out tiny bits of “grace” through their emissaries the reverends. It had the calming effect the administrators desperately needed in controlling the inmates, now woven into the fabric of spatial cohesion on the inside. Penal authorities did learn from their mistakes. When Thomas Eddy’s removal of corporal punishment proved problematic, they brought back the whip. When complete isolation and solitary confinement led to suicide and insanity they added  congregate labor. Now the Revs. would reward compliant behavior with tidbits of human (clergy) contact and literacy.  

     Even Austin Reed; so immune to the lash and the box, crumbles when faced with the smallest kindness offered by the “Rev. Gentleman.” This was a changed Austin Reed; not the defiant boy who disdained his mother’s pocket bible, swearing never open it again. Twelve years after Rev. Louis Dwight and Jared Curtis started their prison “mission,” with star pupil Jack Hodges, the chaplaincy program had grown and was in full swing, securely instituted at Auburn, Sing-Sing, Clinton and elsewhere; helping prisoners digest “the cup of sorrow and bitter bread of pain." This was the new Auburn System where Bill Freeman and Austin Reed now found themselves, susceptible to the state’s ultimate weapon—Grace.