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This Week in History: Creating the modern prison system, introduction of the ‘Camel Corps’
This week in history features the birth of modern prisons and an Army experiment with good intentions but poor results.
Feb. 26, 1773
Although it is difficult to imagine, incarceration as a form of criminal punishment is a comparatively modern practice.
Before the 19th century, prisons as we know them today were a relatively rare feature of American cities.
Now, they are as common as schools and churches with as many as 2.3 million Americans living in more than 6,000 correctional facilities (source: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2016.html).
This wasn’t always the case. In fact, there was a time when criminals of all stripes – from petty thieves to cold-blooded murders – could count their punishment not in the number of years spent behind bars, but in the number of limbs removed or minutes spent swinging at the end of a long rope.
Rehabilitation is an entirely modern notion in jurisprudence. It was far easier to simply and permanently remove the criminal – or offending limb – from society.
On this day in 1773, the city of Philadelphia took the first step towards a new system of punishment in the construction of a modern prison, the Walnut Street Jail.
Conceived as a Quaker alternative to corporal punishment, this jail featured small individual cells radiating off from the large communal rooms, thereby introducing the practice of solitary confinement.
Prior to this, most prisons in the colonies were more akin to the English workhouses across the Atlantic: spacious communal-living structures where vagabonds and other ne’er-do-wells were forced to do menial tasks.
Workhouses – and the later jails and prisons of America – were intended to rehabilitate penitent criminals (hence the term penitentiary).
Incarceration was thought to be far more humane than the other types of punishment. Their ancestry certainly can be traced to medieval dungeons.
The difference between the dank dungeons of King Arthur’s castle and the workhouses of 17th-century England is one of intent.
Once glimpsed, the inside of a dark dungeon cell usually remained the only vista ever seen by the unfortunate inmate until his death. A workhouse, on the other hand, was a place to sweat and toil the evil from a criminal before once more releasing him into the world.
This switch between simple punishment and humane rehabilitation began around the early 1500s. In Sir Thomas More’s famous “Utopia,” the social philosopher urged England to enslave criminals rather than send them to the gallows, although it took hundreds of years for most rulers to heed this advice.
For the next several centuries England, and other European kingdoms, transformed their jurisprudence and developed types of punishment that were scaled to the different crimes committed. The concept of rehabilitating criminals was born.
In North America, the construction of Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Jail marks an important point of departure towards our modern correctional facilities.
Following the Revolution, American prisons began to develop along similar lines as the Walnut Street Jail and incarcerating prisoners in solitary cells increased apace. For better or worse, the practice continues into the 21st century.
March 3, 1855
The canonical features of the American West – its iconography – include the stagecoach, the lone sheriff, the masked bandit, the band of Indians and camels.
Well, camels almost became an important symbol and on this day in 1855 the first step towards making that a reality were taken.
Jefferson Davis, then the secretary of war, urged Congress to appropriate funds for the purchase and training of camels for use in the arid southwest. On this day in 1855, Congress set aside $30,000 to import the dromedaries from Egypt.
As part of his plan, Davis suggested that howitzers be mounted on the camels’ humps and used against the Indians as mobile batteries – a sort of fantastic prelude to tank warfare.
As far-fetched as this idea was – and is, for that matter – using camels in America’s desserts was actually a stroke of genius.
The animals could travel miles without a sip of water and, when the need finally hit them, they had an uncanny knack for tracking down potable sources of the stuff.
In May of 1856, 33 of the large animals were finally unloaded at a port in Texas, after a journey that had taken over a year and cost countless bumps and bruises to the poor sailors tasked with the duty.
When they finally landed, the Army took to the task of training the camels, and themselves, for imminent duties in the southwest.
The animals’ first field tests involved carting materials across the expanse of Texas and they passed with flying colors.
Whereas the traditional mule-drawn wagons were only able to carry 1,800 pounds of oats and took nearly five days to make the journey, the six camels were able to carry a combined weight of 3,648 pounds and made the trip in only two days!
Jefferson Davis was pleased with the results of these early endeavors and wrote in his annual report to Congress for 1857: “These tests fully realize the anticipation entertained of their usefulness in the transportation of military supplies … Thus far the result is as favorable as the most sanguine could have hoped.”
Unfortunately, after some successful missions along the Colorado River carting supplies for survey teams, the Army’s “Camel Corps” began to be neglected.
The dark clouds of Civil War were creeping over the horizon and Congress was more concerned with keeping the country together than appropriating additional funds for Davis’ pipe dream of camel-tanks.
In 1860, the camels were moved to California and, more due to poor leadership than any actual deficiencies in the camels themselves, failed several field missions in the Golden State.
At the start of the Civil War, those few camels that remained back in Texas were captured by the Confederates and used to transport salt and other supplies for the remainder of the war.
Back in California, the herd remained in pastures and started breeding. Finally, in 1864 the by then 37 camels in our state were sold to private citizens.
Ending up in circuses or living on private ranches for the exotic pleasure of their owners, these camels became a familiar sight in the state. Many of them were eventually turned out and allowed to roam in the wild.
Sightings of these wild camels continued unabated well into the 20th century, with the last camel reportedly dying in 1934.
And so we missed an opportunity for the Wild West to be that much wilder. If not for the Civil War, the Lone Ranger’s Silver might have had two humps and a penchant for spitting.
Antone Pierucci is the former curator of the Lake County Museums in Lake County, Calif.
