LET'S TALK...plus EASTERN STATE PENITENTIARY Investigation

Eastern State Penitentiary!
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Eastern State Penitentiary

This is our investigation into the Eastern State Penitentiary

I was headed to Philadelphia for work and decided to go down a little early so I could check out one of the creepiest Prisons in the United States,. The Eastern State Penitentiary.

It’s located directly in the heart of Philadelphia and its been described as a city within a city. It opened in 1829 and closed down in 1971and in its time housed some of Americas most violent criminals.
The most famous inmate was Al Capone who spent 8 months there for carrying a concealed weapon. Women were a small but regular part of the inmate population from 1831-1923, as were children. This 12 year old boy was booked on seconds degree murder charges and put into the genera population. It housed killers, mob hitmen, prolific robbers and everything in between.

At the time it was built it was the largest and most expensive public structure ever made. It has massive stonewalls on the outside that rise over 30ft and extend another 10 feet underground and are 8 feet thick. In the middle it’s shaped like a wagon wheel with the spokes making up the seven separate cell blocks.

Originally inmates were to be housed individually in a cell as part of their punishment. Thick wooden doors on the inside with a heavy metal door on the outside kept out all sounds and so every prisoner was essentially in solitary confinement at all times which was thought to best way for them to rehabilitate. If left alone with only their thoughts about the crimes they committed, it was believed this would lead them to feel sorry about what they had done and profoundly change them.

In order to keep the sense of isolation, inmates were hooded when they first came to the jail and anytime they left their cells.

The guards and officers regularly dolled out sever punishments to any inmates that were disobidient. Prisoners would be doused in water and left outside during the winter months. A device called the Iron Gag was one of the worst devices an inmate could have used on them. This was a metal brace that was inserted into the mouth that had chains running from it to the prisoners wrist. Any sort of movement or struggle would cause them to rip and tare the inside of their own mouth. Prisoners were put in Dark cells which were underground and painted black throughout the interior to create a space of completely pitch black environment. There were the Klondike cells that were built into it’s foundation that were concrete tombs that inmates could spend several weeks in.