The Original Jackson Prison

One of the first agenda items when Michigan became the 26^th state in 1837 was the establishment of a state prison.  When the state sought a location for the new facility, bids were received from numerous cities including Ann Arbor, Jackson, and Kalamazoo.  Even in those early days, communities saw employment and other economic advantages in housing a prison.

The state ultimately settled on Jackson for the site.  Jackson County was the most centrally situated of the state’s 14 counties (which, according to the first census of Michigan, collectively housed roughly 60,000 residents; that number would climb to 212,000 by the 1840 Federal Census).
 
Funds were allocated for the construction of a temporary prison, which opened in 1839.  It was constructed of tamarack logs.

(These and other painted Illustrations are from murals painted within the original stone prison by residents of the artist’s colony which now occupies one of the structures)

The wooden structure was intended to house prisoners while their labor was being used to construct a more secure and permanent facility from stone quarried from the area and barged down the Grand River, which ran near the site.  Indeed, a party of 12 inmates escaped from the wooden structure during its brief existence.  Widely known as The Jackson Gang, the escapees preyed on residents of the community for years.

 

The new stone structure that opened in 1842 proved less porous than the wooden stockade had been.  Over time, additional buildings were constructed to house the burgeoning population.  Inmates led a bleak life, locked each night in 4’x5’ cells within a drafty structure that lacked heating, ventilation, and plumbing (each prisoner was provided with a bucket into which to do his business).  The ventilation was so bad that caged canaries were hung in the corridors between the cellblocks.  If a guard noticed that a canary had toppled from its perch, he was advised to release the prisoners into the yard to get some fresh air.   But even in the yard, the prisoners were confined by 16’ stone walls with occasional guard towers staffed with armed guards with orders to shoot any attempted escapists.  

Guards travelled between the cellblock buildings and the towers through 4’ high underground tunnels that periodically rose to a height of 5-½’ to allow the hunched over staff to periodically almost stand up.

(Imagine the tunnels without the recently added infrastructure renovations)

While the cells were bleak, they were plush compared to The Hole—the disciplinary cell into which problematic prisoners were placed.   Shut off by solid steel doors with a slot through which meals were delivered, inmates in The Hole lived in permanent darkness.  They were told to do their sanitary business using a trough which ran around the perimeter of the cell.  Under the regime of one of the early superintendents, new inmates were greeted with an initial 14 day stay in The Hole to impress upon them the importance of abiding by the discipline imposed upon them.   That discipline included the Code of Silence.  Any prisoner caught speaking aloud to—to another prisoner, to a guard (unless the guard initiated the conversation), or even to himself—could find himself in The Hole.

Meanwhile, the prison presented to the surrounding community was more welcoming.  On frequent occasions, the public was invited within the walls to participate in special events.

 (The mural illustrates a watermelon festival held in the prison)

The 5-story tower in the illustration housed the areas where lawyers were permitted to meet with their inmate clients, as well as the primitive medical facility available to inmate, and a separate area later used to conduct classes for cooperative inmates who hoped to pursue a more productive career upon release.  The warden and his family lived on the third and fourth floors.  Guards and other prison staff resided outside the walls.

While the state’s handful of women prisoners were originally housed in the Jackson facility, it was clear that imprisoning men and women in the same facility wasn’t going to turn out well. The women inmates were moved to a separate facility elsewhere in Michigan in 1859. All but one. Serving a life sentence, she (who, in all likelihood didn’t remotely resemble the muralist’s rendering of her) remained at the Jackson Prison until the warden persuaded the Governor to commute her sentence at the age of 80 so she could spend her remaining years living with her daughter outside the walls. But during most of her incarceration, she did the cooking and housekeeping for the warden and his family and babysat the children on the rare occasions that he and his wife had a social commitment outside the walls. Apparently, nobody bothered to determine the crime that had earned her that life sentence—poisoning three of her own children.

Disclaimer:  Doubts have been raised about the authenticity of the muralist's
depiction of the prison's last woman prisoner.

 
Trusted and athletic prisoners were sometimes permitted to participate in these events, and a prison baseball team was even formed.  (Guards accompanied the team to away games.)

From the start, the prison was intended to be self-sufficient.   A farm was established within the walls.  Over time, additional industries were created and factories constructed within the walls.  Bricks, soap, clothing, brooms, and brushes were made for sale in the wider world, as were gravestones and monuments.  In 1918, prisoners began manufacturing license plates for horseless carriages that were becoming increasingly popular in Michigan.

All of that manufacturing required transportation to the market, and largely because of the prison industries the city of Jackson came to have six different railroad lines leading into it.  A separate spur permitted trains entry through the wall, and even into some of the prison buildings.  Buildings and the surrounding walls were retrofitted,

(Above:  Train portal through the outer walls;
Below:  Train portal into a prison factory which
has been rehabbed to house artists' studios)

Through a state agent, inmates were also contracted by local farmers and industrialists as cheap labor.  Prison labor was originally priced at 33½ cents per day (not per hour), with 28½ cents of that wage going to the state to cover the prison’s cost in housing and feeding him.  The remaining 5 cents was set aside to establish a grubstake for the prisoner upon his release.   Working under contracts that typically lasted five years, the prison built rent-free shops for manufacturers to use.   Prisoners working outside the walls were shackled during their walk to and from the prison and were under the supervision of armed prison guards while at work.

One of the most prominent employers of Jackson prisoners was the Austin, Tomlinson & Webster Manufacturing Co., which began making farm wagons in 1842.  The company’s Jackson Wagons achieved national prominence for their durability and reliability.  At the company’s peak, it was producing over 6,000 wagons annually, ranging from small ones designed to be pulled by a goat to huge ones requiring teams of oxen.  They proved to be the top-selling wagon among settlers heading west for the Gold Rush.  Perhaps their most famous customer was P. T. Barnum, who contracted with them to build a wagon big and strong enough to transport Jumbo (the elephant who allegedly was 10’ tall and weighed 6½ tons) in circus parades after his arthritic knees could no longer handle the walking.

But not all of the prisoners were happy campers.  After a disgruntled prisoner set a fire in 1852 that destroyed several of the company’s buildings, the company and other contractors began paying inmate workers bonuses which served as an incentive (AKA bribe) to perform more reliably.  The practice ensured smooth operation for 15 years until a state investigation barred the bonus practice as not punishing prisoners sufficiently.  Within a month of the ban, “accidental” fires caused over $100,000 of damage to contractors’ workshops.

Moving to the New Prison

 

While additions were periodically added to the prison to accommodate its growing population, it became clear over time that a new facility would be needed.  In 1924, construction began (by contractors this time, not prison laborers) of a modern prison (i.e., incorporating electricity, plumbing, and heating) on a patch of nearly 3,500 acres in nearby Blackman Township.  34 foot walls enclosed an area of 57 acres containing 16 free-standing cell blocks collectively comprising 5,742 10’ x 6’ cells.   While the cell blocks were windowless, the cells within each block were arranged on 5 levels surrounding a central dining area on the first floor.  Walls between cells were solid, but the front and back walls of each cell were barred.  Jail maintenance staff could access each cell’s plumbing and electrical circuits from a hallway that ran between the back of the cell and the cell block wall.

Starting in 1926, inmates of the old facility were slowly migrated over to the new one.  Since the structures were only three miles apart, groups of prisoners were shackled together and marched to the new prison by guards.  

The prisoners were undoubtedly pleased (well, as pleased as an involuntary guest of the Michigan Department of Corrections is likely to become) to be housed in better accommodations, but controversy arose when the warden announced plans to destroy the canaries that had provided alerts to dangerous gases in the old prison.  The long-term prisoners had grown attached to the birds and complained that there was no need to destroy the innocent creatures.  The warden finally relented and agreed to free the canaries once the original prison had closed.  Ironically, prison management had fed the birds better than it had the inmates.  The birds had subsisted on high quality Hartz Mountain songbird feed—a blend of various seeds.  Once the birds had been released, it became obvious that one of the sources of seeds in the blend had been the Cannabis plant.  Undigested seeds passed through the gut of the freed canaries resulted in the Jackson area having an exceptionally luxuriant population of wild marijuana.

By 1934, all the prisoners had been moved.  After the cells had been torn out of one cellblock, a hardwood floor was installed and the building was repurposed as a National Guard armory. Unique electric chandeliers were created from the huge wheels on the carriages that moved Civil War cannons.  Eventually, a dedicated armory was built, and the original facility was once again vacant.

 

Repurposing the Old Prison

Eventually, someone figured out what to do with the site. More than $8 million has been raised from foundations, donors, tax credits, a federal home loan, and community development block grants to convert an abandoned cellblock and one of the dormant factories within the 25-foot wall to art studios, a gallery, and 62 one, two-, and three-bedroom apartments, many featuring 18-foot ceilings.  Occupancy is limited to working artists, and the mixture of dancers, painters, sculptors, poets, writers, and others who began moving in early in 2008 make for a lively bunch.  (They report that the three foot thick stone walls keep their apartments cool in the summer and warm in the winter.)   A series of small shops offer visitors an opportunity to purchase works produced by the residents.

Additional funding promises the conversion of additional space into 88 townhouse units for senior citizens.

Armory Arts Village resident and master storyteller Judy Krasnow was drawn to the development when she first heard of it and became one of the first residents when she moved up from Florida.  Intrigued by the setting, Krasnow began researching the history of the old prison.  Working with current and former prison guards in the Jackson area, she found all of fascinating information.  She began arranging guided public tours of the facility, together with visits to the studios of some of the artists in residence.  When I took the tour a cousin and her husband in August, 2012, we had the opportunity to visit the studios of woodcarver Carol A. Kent and acrylic painter and woodburner Lou Cubille. 

(Above, woodcarver Carol A. Kent with a casting of one of her carvings.
Below:  Other than the eyes [acrylic paint], Lou Cabille's wolf
was produced solely by woodburning)

 

Krasnow had also arranged a contract with the Michigan Department of Corrections which allowed our guide and us a glimpse into the real, working prison down the road from the original one. 

After the federal government ruled that the sheer size of the new facility inherently led to inhumane conditions, eight of the sixteen cellblocks were shuttered.  The closed cellblock that we were permitted to visit had been the reception center.  Every prisoner entering the custody of MDOC initially resided in that structure during a quarantine period (for health reasons) and while the determination was made where to house them within the Jackson complex.  Some areas of the complex were medium security, while others were high or even maximum security. 

Cameras were not permitted during this portion of our tour, but the reality of seeing five floors of barred cells was sobering.  When our guides pushed the button to open or close the sliding doors of a dozen cells at a time, the sound was eerie.

The End of the Line for Prisoners

The tour ended after we were returned to the old prison to visit the gift shop.  Marilyn, Dick, and I, however, didn’t want it to end.   We checked with our guide and learned that prisoners who died in either the old or the new prison and whose bodies went unclaimed were buried in the prison plot of nearby Woodland Cemetery.  We found a bleak scene. 

The tombstones reflected the bleak and anonymous nature of a lifer’s prison life.  Most were marked only with sequential numbers reflecting the order in which burials had occurred. 

 

On occasion, loved ones would pay for a more personalized marker reflecting the date of death.  Even these, though, lacked the prisoner’s name. 

 

It was as though the individual’s identity had entirely faded away during his time within the walls. 

Eventually, even the tombstone might cease to exist.

 

 

 

 

Booking Your Own Tour

As I write this, the 2012 tour season has ended.  Judy and her crew will certainly resume and maybe even expand them.  The historicprisontoursjackson.com site seems to have gone dark, but that’s probably only a temporary glitch.  In addition to the regular daytime tours, they also offer a limited number of evening events during which visitors can determine whether or not the place is haunted.

E-mail historicprisontoursjackson@gmail.com for more information.

 

(Left:  Marilyn  (my cousin) & Dick Ludman in front of the wall surrounding the old prison.
Right:  Marilyn with a cutout of tour originator Judy Krasner re-enacting Temperance activist Carrie Nation)