Firm But Fair: The Life of Sing Sing Warden Lewis Lawes
By: John Jay Rouse
Chapter 1
BEGINNINGS
Lewis Lawes, probably the most famous and accomplished prison warden in American penology, started his life in a quiet little town, Elmira, in upstate New York. He was born on Friday, September 13, 1883 to Harry Lewis Lawes and Sarah (Abbott) Lawes. He was their only child. His father was born in England and was a Protestant. His mother's family was Irish Catholic, originally from County Kerry. The Abbotts had emigrated to the U.S. during the potato famine in Ireland in the 1840's. His mother saw to it that he was brought up as a Catholic.
Lawes grew up a half mile away from the New York State Reformatory where his father worked as a guard. He attended P.S. 5 and the Elmira Free Academy. He worked for The Telegram, Elmira's Sunday paper, after school and on weekends. He was not always the respected, strait-laced, law-abiding citizen that he would become. As a boyhood friend, Frank Tripp, has stated:It's swell to meet boyhood friends who rise to the top-the very top-in their life's work and find them just like you left them; when you stood on a corner and pondered whose window would next be stoned out. As a matter of fact I kept looking in Lewie's hand-for a rock.1
In 1901, at the age of 17, Lawes decided to run away from home and join the United States Coast Artillery. He was posted to Portland, Maine and Fort Hamilton, N.Y. He started as a corporal and was a sergeant when he left. It is not clear what prompted Lawes to make this drastic move. In his writings there is very little reference to his family. Perhaps he felt the military would help him to regain a focus which seems to have drifted a little in his youth.After Lawes left the Coast Artillery he returned to Elmira and got a job at an insurance company. He timed his walk to the insurance company he worked at in downtown Elmira so that he was passing by the front door of Katherine Stanley's house as she was leaving for work. He would then initiate conversations about his job, her job, the weather and sports in order to get to know her better. Eventually they started dating-walks in the country and picnics were typical dating fare. Lawes was earning $7 a week at this time.Lawes was growing restless in his job at the insurance company and he decided that he wanted to pursue his father's line of work. He started his prison career as a guard at Clinton Prison at Dannemora on March 1, 1905. When he arrived at Dannemora he asked the station master when the next train back to Plattsburg would be leaving and he was told the next morning. Dannemora was a town of state institutions. In addition to a state prison Dannemora also had a State Hospital for the Criminally Insane and a State Hospital for the Tubercular. Lawes decided to stay because he thought he could do some good at Dannemora. However he frequently thought back on it later in life-what would have happened if he could have take a return trip on the train that day?The pay was $55 per month with 12 hour days and 2 weeks vacation per year. Prison jobs were patronage jobs in those days-every prison employee was expected to pay twenty-five dollars a year to the party in power in order to retain his job. Lawes did not pay but managed to keep his job anyway.During the time that Lawes was in Dannemora he kept up a correspondence with Katherine Stanley. He was not dating anyone else and decided that she was the right woman for him. They were married on September 30, 1905. Lawes was two weeks past his twenty-second birthday. Katherine did not join him in Dannemora but stayed back in Elmira.While Lawes was at Dannemora an old convict named Chappeleau told him that carrying a club was not going to elicit respect from the convicts. Once Lawes used his club and struck the victim of a knife attack rather than the knife wielder. He never used his club again.This was out of the ordinary for the time- prisons were still primarily about punishment.Lawes took a State Civil Service test for the position of Reformatory Guard on May 24, 1906. He scored #1 on the list with a grade of 96.90. On March 1, 1906, Lawes transferred to Auburn Prison. His pay went for $55 per month to $61 per month. His wife joined him when he transferred to Auburn.While visiting his parents in Elmira Lawes met a former classmate, George Crandall. Crandall was a journalist and he had also worked on the campaign of a newly elected Republican Assemblyman from Chemung County. Lawes asked Crandall for help in getting a position in the Elmira Reformatory. When a vacancy occurred in the Fall it was given to Lawes. He started working there on October 1, 1906.In 1912 Lawes took a leave of absence from Elmira and enrolled in the New York School of Social Work. At the time he and Katherine already had two daughters-Kathleen and Crystal. In March, 1915, Lawes was appointed Superintendent of the City Reformatory on Hart's Island in New York City.While Lawes was in charge of the New York City Reformatory on Hart's Island about ninety boys collapsed on the field during a ball game. They had taken narcotics from the prison hospital and the drugs had acted as emetics. The guards blamed the incident on Lawes's lack of proper supervision. A grand jury found that the guards had framed Lawes because they resented an out-of-towner being in charge. All but two of them were fired.Lawes then lobbied through the press for another location for the reformatory. Eventually land was purchased in New Hampton. Lawes did not like the old reformatory location because it shared an island with a home for derelicts and a potter's field.One night in New Hampton Lawes was awakened by the sound of horses' hooves. He went out in his car and found two inmates on horses galloping along the road. One of them had a gun. Lawes told them that unless they immediately surrendered to him he would take away all of the privileges from all of the inmates in the reformatory. They handed over the gun and went back with Lawes.While he was working in New Hampton Lawes was approached by a film company that wanted permission to shoot the picture "Mexican Border" near the reformatory. Lawes got them permission and he also agreed to let 150 inmates perform as extras in the picture-50 as cavalry and 100 as infantry.In 1918 Lawes tried to become warden of the Massachusetts State Prison. In a letter dated January 5, 1918 from Burdette G. Lewis, Commissioner, Department of Institutions and Agencies, N.Y. to Col. G.B. Adams at the State House in Boston, Burdette notes:Allow me to commend to you Superintendent Lewis E. Lawes of our own New York City Reformatory at New Hampton. Major Lawes was appointed from an eligible list created as a result of most rigid and comprehensive examination open to persons from the whole state of New York. He has succeeded beyond our hopes in revolutionizing the discipline, system of administration and the office and record system of the reformatory. He is especially to be commended because of his experience, his training, his initiative, his executive ability, his knowledge of men, his tact and discretion and his honesty and integrity.2
In 1919 Lawes was approached by New York's governor, Al Smith, concerning taking over as Warden of Sing Sing Prison. Smith had already determined that he wanted Lawes in this position and he used an old psychological technique to get him to take the job. He said that maybe Lawes could not do the job but he at least wanted him to try. Lawes felt personally obligated to meet the challenge. However before accepting the wardenship at Sing Sing, Lawes met with William Ward, Republican leader of Westchester County and Michael Walsh, Democratic leader of Westchester County, to let them know that he would take the job only on the condition that it was not political. They both agreed.Lawes became the warden of Sing Sing on January 1, 1920. At the time the prison population was a little over a thousand. He succeeded retiring warden E.V. Brophy of Port Chester, N.Y.Lawes's second wife, Elise, once asked him why he took the job at Sing Sing. He replied:I went to Sing Sing for one reason only. The Press had made a story that I took on the job because Al Smith, seeing me hesitate, drawled a well aimed taunt that because I was so young, maybe I was afraid of it. The Governor did needle me, but that wasn't why I took on Sing Sing-the toughest assignment he had to fill. An institution with the reputation of breaking its wardens inside two years. There were ten in the twelve years before me. Several lasted only a couple of months. No, I went to Sing Sing because Sing Sing, being what it was, with the eyes of the world on it, offered me a pulpit. As Sing Sing's warden I would command attention as I could not command it as Superintendent of New York City's Reformatory. And there was so much I had to say.3
When he got there Lawes quipped to the prisoners: "... the easiest way to get out of Sing Sing is to go in as warden."4For the twenty years before Lawes became warden at Sing Sing the average tenure was about eleven months. Lawes was to remain the warden for twenty-one and a half years.In succeeding years Lawes turned down an offer to be the warden of the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. He also rebuffed entreaties regarding being the police commissioner or correction commissioner of New York City and also to run for Congress and the governor's office. He always felt he could accomplish more by staying where he was.Lawes was 5 feet, 10 and a half inches tall, weighed 189 pounds and had brown hair and blue eyes. He preferred wearing double-breasted blue or gray suits. He was a registered Republican. His hobbies included golfing, fishing, reading mystery novels and listening to the radio. He enjoyed smoking cigars. His voice was deep but tender. A journalist, Douglas Church, described it this way: "His voice is deep and almost gruff, but, nevertheless, there is something of softness in it."5