Roland Burnham Molineux - The Room with the Little Door

Transcribers Note

text on illustration of door with bars

title page

G. W. Dillingham Company

Publishers New York

decorative illustration around copyright info

Most of the following is true, or founded on truth. A few are waifsproducts of my imagination; little stories that came into my mind from time to time. Some of them are from letters written home while I was confined in the Tombs Prison in New York City, and in the Death-Chamber at Sing Sing.

In them I have not inflicted myself to any great extent upon the reader. Herein is chiefly what I saw when trying to look upon the bright side. There are also glimpses of the side which cannot be made bright, look at it as one may.

But if anything in these pages leads some one to think of what must be endured in either place, let me say, that no suffering was ever willingly caused by the officials with whom I came in contact during my banishment, and I take this opportunity to thank them all, without exception, for their consideration, sympathy, and unvarying kindness to me and mine.

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The Room with the Little Door

There are few who can describe life in the Death-Chamber at Sing Sing. The officials can, but will not. Visitors there are few; and most of us who know it so well, come and go like our predecessors, saying nothing afterwards about our experiences, for an excellent reason.

The corridor in the Death-Chamber is not large. Ten cells for the condemned men face it, most of them on one side. Their inmates are not supposed to see much of each other. When one of our number walks in the corridor for exercise, curtains are drawn down in front of all the cells, and we see upon them what our fellow-inmate often resemblesa shadow. A shadow, and a voice which calls to us, that is his identity. There are no windows in these cells; three sides are solid wall; their fronts face the corridor, and are barred like cages. In them one can easily imagine himself a bear in a menagerie, even to the sore head that animal is afflicted with more or less occasionally. In front of the bars and curtains are wire nettings to keep our visitors from coming too near us. There are no hand-clasps, no kisses. The corridor and cells constitute the Death-Chamber. It has two doors; an entrancefew of the condemned ever use that door for any other purpose; and an exita final oneleading into the Execution Room and to the Chair.

It is very light indeed in the Death-Chamber. Glass skylights by day, and gas and electric light by night, throw their beams into every corner of our cages of steel and stone. There is no privacy. The guards pace up and down night and day, always watching. There is no sound while they do this, as their shoes, like ours, are soled with felt. It is like living, eating, sleeping, and bathing in a search-light. It is like being alive, yet buried in a glass coffin. We enter the front door; exist for a year or so, and then go out through the little door, as we call it, some morning to a very welcome release. From the moment we arrive the monotony begins, and continues always, broken now and then by such excitement as a half hours exercise in the corridor, the weekly bath and shave, and, best of all, a visit, which must be from some member of our immediate family. We see our guest through those miserable bars and netting which divide us. A keeper must hear everything we say. These things are all that ever happen in that chamber of death, except greeting new arrivals, and saying good-by now and then to a fellow we have suffered with. No newspapers come to us, but books from the excellent library, as many as one wants, are supplied. We receive our mail after it has been opened and read, provided it is thought proper for us to have it. If the letter contains the news we are all awaitingthe final newsit is improper. That information is kept from one as long as possible. All the tobacco is provided. It is called State. It puts you in a state when you first attempt to smoke it. No clock ticks in that room, and none is needed, because the value of time and its relation to affairs is eliminated. Enough for us in there that it is either day or night. What do we care about the hour? To us time is just an endless waiting without expectancy. Imagine it for yourself. Each second seems an hour longand we are kept in there for years.

This is the life we lead, and who would care to speak or write of such an existence? Is there anything to tell about this living deaththis sort of noiseless purgatory in which, as the months go by, past experiences, the hopes and fears and happinesses which were, grow fainter and fainter, till, like the future, they inspire us with nothing but indifference, leaving only the present to be endured?

Yet there is one thing here which interests us intensely; which is before us all the time, and which some day will close behind us. On one side is lifesuch as it ison the other instant death.

To pass through will be an experience surely. It is seldom opened; I have observed it so just seven times; but when it is ajarthings happen. Whenever we look out of our cages we see it; we close our eyeswe still see it. When exercising in the corridor one passes and repasses it; though we walk away, we know we are going towards it. Thinking by day and dreaming by night, it is always with us, and irresistible is its fascination. All else here is insignificant; and to us the Death-Chamber is but The Room with the Little Door.

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It would seem impossible for any one to escape from the Death-Chamber. But there is a story of one man who refused to stay, and who, under the very eyes of his keepers, without any privacy or apparatus, manufactured the poison with which he ended his life; for that is almost the only way you can end your stay in the Death-Chamber.