Elam Lynds

Captain Elam Lynds (1784–1855) was a prison warden. He helped create the Auburn system, which consisted of congregate labor during the day and isolation at night, starting in 1821 and was Warden of Sing Sing from 1825 to 1830.[1]

Elam Lynds
Lynds circa 1840-1850
Warden of Auburn Correctional Facility
In office
1821–1825
Warden of Sing Sing
In office
1825–1830
Succeeded byRobert Wiltse
Personal details
Born1784
Litchfield, Connecticut
Died1855 (age 71)
New York City
ChildrenCornelia Lynds DeForest

Early life

Elam Lynds was born in Litchfield, Connecticut in 1784. His parents moved to Troy, New York, when he was an infant. He learned the hatter's trade and worked at it for some years.

War of 1812 service

In the War of 1812 he held a captain's commission in a New York regiment.

Auburn State Prison

The Auburn State Prison's South Wing was opened in the Spring of 1817, and fifty-three prisoners were transferred there from nearby counties.[2] Lynds was made the first principal keeper, and four years afterwards he became Warden of Auburn State Prison.

Lynds devised the main features of the Auburn System of imprisonment.[3] When Lynds took charge of Auburn in 1821, he felt that discipline was lax, with guards only interested in preventing escape.[4] Lynds, believing that chaining prisoners in a dungeon failed to produce "a good state of discipline," resorted exclusively to beatings.[4] Speaking in 1826 to visiting commissioners, Lynds explained:

After making, as I thought, a fair experiment of [the dungeon], and finding it fail me altogether, I began to use the rod ; and when a [prisoner] would laugh at the dungeon, I could make him perfectly obedient with a few stripes of a cowskin [whip], and a promise that he should have as much more as should be requisite.[4]

In 1821, locals rioted to protest the inmates' treatment.[note 1][5][6][7] Even his own staff objected to Lynds's brutal methods.[2] In spring 1821, keepers refused to flog a prisoner.[8][2][9] The keepers were fired and a blacksmith named Jonathan Thompson carried out the flogging.[note 2] When Thompson left the prison, he was tarred and feathered by a crowd. Henry Hall, in The History of Auburn (1861), described the scene:

As he passed through the prison gate, he was seized by a furious crowd of laborers, tarred from head to foot, and borne through the streets astride a rail. The ring-leader of the mob, with a hen under his arm, walked by the side of the unfortunate Thompson, and plucking handfuls of feathers from the screaming fowl, stuck them to the blacksmith's tarry coat. This shocking affair was condignly punished as a riot. On the other hand, the convicts, stimulated by this outside sympathy, learned to be rebellious, transgressed the rules of the shops at every opportunity, and set fire to the buildings, and destroyed their work, whenever they dared.[2]

Retirement and death

After his retirement from the prison service he lived in New York City, where he died in 1855.[10]

Notes
  1. Prisoner mutinies were a continual source of concern for prison authorities of the period, partly because they worried that prisoners would receive aid and support from those living nearby and partly because they recognized that prison riots could form the nucleus of a wider popular uprising. For a discussion, see McLennan, Rebecca M. (2008). The Crisis of Imprisonment: Protest, Politics, and the Making of the American Penal State, 1776–1941. Cambridge University Press. p. 44. ISBN 9781139467483.
  2. Accounts of the incident vary. According to Hall's (1861) The History of Auburn, the incident began with the refusal of prison keepers to whip "three disobedient convicts." Other sources generally report that three keepers refused to whip one convict. (See Christianson, Scott (2000). With Liberty for Some: 500 Years of Imprisonment in America. University Press of New England. p. 113. ISBN 9781555534684.) Sources also differ about whether the keepers were fired in succession, with each fired when he refused, and about whether Thompson volunteered or was paid.

References
  1. Annual report of the Board of Managers of the Prison Discipline Society. Prison Discipline Society. 1827. Mr. Elam Lynds, the author of the Auburn system, and the founder of the establishment at Sing Sing ...
  2. Hall, Henry (1861). The history of Auburn. Auburn: Dennis Bros. & Co. pp. 132–133.
  3. de Beaumont, Gustave; de Tocqueville, Alexis (1833). On the Penitentiary System in the United States: And Its Application in France; with an Appendix on Penal Colonies, and Also, Statistical Notes. Carey, Lea & Blanchard. ISBN 9780608436449.
  4. "Appendix A, Elam Lynds (testimony, September 12, 1826)". REPORT Of the Commissioners, directed by the act of 17th April, 1826, to visit the State-Prison at Auburn (Report). Journal of the Senate of the State of New York. January 13, 1827. pp. 33, 126. Retrieved January 20, 2018.
  5. Welch, Michael (2013). Corrections: A Critical Approach. Routledge. p. 63. ISBN 9781136842740.
  6. Wolcott, David B.; Head, Tom (2010). Crime and Punishment in America. Infobase. p. 50. ISBN 978-1438126890.
  7. Brian, Denis (2015). Sing Sing: The Inside Story of a Notorious Prison. Prometheus Books.
  8. Lewis, W. David (2009). From Newgate to Dannemora: The Rise of the Penitentiary in New York, 1796-1848. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. p. 60. ISBN 978-0801475481.
  9. Christianson, Scott (2000). With Liberty for Some: 500 Years of Imprisonment in America. University Press of New England. p. 113. ISBN 9781555534684.
  10. Charles Richmond Henderson (1910). Correction and prevention.
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