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About this book
For fifty years prison inmates in Texas were leased out to railroads, coal mines, farm plantations, and sawmill crews with terrible incidences of brutality, cruelty, injury, and death to the prisoners.
They were forced to produce daily work quotas of seven tons of coal, three hundred pounds of cotton, or one and one-half cords of wood. They were fed spoiled hog meat and slept on mattresses filled with bugs and filthy from sweat, blood, and dirt. They were punished by brutal whippings with an instrument known as the "bat" and by various other methods. Self-mutilation by cutting off fingers, hands, and feet and even self-blinding were commonplace to avoid working in these lease camps.
It was a period in which the state prison system was shrouded in secrecy. Former prisoners had only one option available to try to inform the public about the brutality and corruption. They could write their personal memoirs. And an amazing number of them did—dating back to the 1870s. Herein are some of their stories.
They were forced to produce daily work quotas of seven tons of coal, three hundred pounds of cotton, or one and one-half cords of wood. They were fed spoiled hog meat and slept on mattresses filled with bugs and filthy from sweat, blood, and dirt. They were punished by brutal whippings with an instrument known as the "bat" and by various other methods. Self-mutilation by cutting off fingers, hands, and feet and even self-blinding were commonplace to avoid working in these lease camps.
It was a period in which the state prison system was shrouded in secrecy. Former prisoners had only one option available to try to inform the public about the brutality and corruption. They could write their personal memoirs. And an amazing number of them did—dating back to the 1870s. Herein are some of their stories.
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Yes, you can access Texas Gulag by Gary Brown in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & North American History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Fourteen Years in Hell
- 2 Where Hogs Feasted on the Corpses of Convicts
- 3 Who Was John Henry and Why Do Inmates Call Him Johnnie?
- 4 The Texas Convict
- 5 Thirty-Nine Lashes with the “Bat”
- 6 The Man Who Fought the Brutality and Oppression of the Ring in the State of Texas for Eighteen Years and Won
- 7 Women in Chains
- 8 “Necking” on the Way to Prison
- 9 Sixteen Years at Huntsville
- 10 When the Sun Goes Down
- 11 Schribner’s Monthly Report to the World
- 12 The Uncle with the Neck Chains
- 13 Run Like Hell, You Pitiful Soul
- 14 Long John Dunn of Taos
- 15 The Progressive Reporter from San Antonio
- 16 The Trans-Cedar Lynching and the Texas Penitentiary
- 17 The Infamous Calvert Coal Mines
- 18 Why the Aggies are Hated in Texas Prisons
- 19 25 Years Behind Prison Bars
- 20 Tools of Torture
- 21 Hell Exploded
- 22 Where, in God’s Name, Were the Prison Chaplains?
- 23 Lookout, Dawg Boy!
- 24 Seven Years in Texas Prisons
- 25 That First Night in the Pen
- 26 The Life of A.J. Walker, an Innocent Convict
- 27 What Was a Bertillion Officer?
- 28 Breakin’ Rocks in the Hot Sun, Texas Style
- 29 Buried Alive
- 30 Eating What a Dog Would Spurn
- 31 Twenty-Two Months in the Texas Penitentiary
- 32 Huntsville’s “Dummy”
- 33 Texas State Railroad
- 34 Twelve Years in a Texas Prison
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index