2-981-891 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

American Sketches: Blackwell's Island Penitentiary, New York - Dining-Room, 1876. 'Blackwell's Island is the locality of several different institutions, besides the House of Correction, as we should call it, where our Artist, M. Felix Regamey, made his sketches. About six hundred prisoners, one hundred of them being females, may be confined here at one time. As we have before remarked, quite half of them are not Americans born, but are mostly from Ireland and from Germany; their offences are petty larceny and personal assaults, and their sentences commonly to less than six months' imprisonment. The treatment adopted in this "Penitentiary " seems to be judicious, and fairly carried out; all the prisoners are compelled to labour in some useful work. Our present Illustration is one showing the scene in their dining-room at the mid-day meal'. From "Illustrated London News", 1876.