Sing Sing: The Inside Story of a Notorious Prison
by Denis Brian
Summary
This story of Sing Sing, a maximum security “Hell on the Hudson,” encompasses much of the vivid and violent history of the United States from 1825. A must for fans of true crime, criminology, and urban American history, both a dramatic page-turner and a definitive history.
Excerpt
The story of Sing Sing, the notorious maximum security prison on the Hudson River, encompasses much of this country’s vivid and violent history....A small, walled city of some seventeen hundred men seventeen-years-old and up guarded by several hundred male and female corrections officers, Sing Sing has been the scene of bravery, chicanery, compassion, butchery, high drama, and low comedy.
Its inmates have made music, pulled hoaxes, contrived daring and ingenious escapes and equally ingenious failed attempts. They have set and fought fires, appeared in movies, divorced, married, and even given birth in the women’s prison, which is no longer there…
Over time, Sing Sing held the good as well as the ghastly; brutal, corrupt, and ignorant wardens, and some of the country’s most intelligent and humane. It was also home to brutal, corrupt, and mentally disturbed prisoners: among them wife killers, husband-killers, serial killers, rapists, and a cannibal. Then there were the kind, the caring, and the innocent’some of whom were eventually freed, or at least escaped electrocution.
Murderers found themselves among unlikely cellmates, such as Truman Capote’s stepfather, in for fraud; Armand Hammer’s physician father, in for performing illegal abortions, and later pardoned; and Richard Whitney, former head of the New York Stock Exchange, for embezzlement.
Sing Sing’s celebrity visitors have included Commodore Vanderbilt, reputed to be the richest man in the world; escape artist Harry Houdini; [and] author Arthur Conan Doyle?who was so shocked by the conditions that he recommended burning the prison to the ground.
In his youth, before his movie role as a killer who goes to the electric chair, Jimmy Cagney played baseball against Sin Sing inmates on the prison grounds?and was surprised to find some of his school-day friends facing execution among the home team.
As a profession actors seem to have been the most frequent visitors, often for location shots. Among these were Charlie Chaplin, Spencer Tracy, Charles Bronson, Red Foxx, Woody Allen, Peter Falk, Goldie Hawn, Ossie Davis, Tony Danza, James Woods, and Bruce Willis…
Television news personalities have included Dorothy Kilgallen, Geraldo Rivera, Jane Pauley, and Mike Wallace.
[I]n the late 1990s, after being stored away and forgotten for years, a treasure trove of official documents, photographs of some of the 606 men and eight women executed in Sing Sing’s electric chair, and copies of their letters came to light. These give a poignant picture of their lives in the death house. This book makes use of all these sources.
Sing Sing has inspired scores of plays, films, TV documentaries, and novels, notably by Theodore Dreiser and by John Cheever, who got to know it from the inside by teaching inmates creative writing.
Strangely, no one has provided a detailed picture of life and death in Sing Sing, from its conception to today. My aim is to remedy that, by providing an account of its rich and tragic history by those who knew it?and know it?best.
Reviews
"A]n excellent history for anyone interested in the history of prisons and prison reform in America"--Publishers Weekly
"[E]xtensive research from original sources...Involving and eye-opening"--Midwest Book Review
"An unforgettable look into the horrors as well as the kindness and generosity...compelleing"--Sister Helen Prejean, author of “Dead Man Walking”
Author's Biography
Denis Brian is the widely acclaimed author of The True Gen: An Intimate Portrait of Hemingway by Those Who Knew Him; The Curies; Einstein: A Life, and other works.