The First Penitentiary in Illinois

I've lived in a small town on the Mississippi River in Illinois for most of my life. My small town is very rich in history, but some of it is not so nice.

Construction of the first penitentiary in the state was completed in 1833, a place where lawbreakers could be held while they awaited trail, and if need be, punishment. The word penitentiary comes from the word "penitence", essential in the punishment of a lawbreaker. Prisoners were held in windowless rooms with a toilet and running water.  Many of the prisoners went insane and it comes as no surprise that the prison is believed to be haunted even to the present day.

The penitentiary was designed in 1830 and opened 3 years later. It had 24 cells and by 1846 there were a total of 256 cells measuring 4 feet by 7 feet with an average of 2 prisoners per cell. Men were forced to do hard labor, working mostly in the rock quarries, and were housed back in their cells at night. Harsh punishment consisted of beatings and floggings for the tiniest of infractions. The money that was alloted by the state to care for the prisoners often went into the pockets of the warden. Many men who did get released didn't live for long due to their health because of the vile conditions at the prison.

In the 1850's, social reformer Dorthea Dix started a campaign to close the prison because of not being "fit for human habitation". It was then that the prison was built in Joliet, IL. However, in 1862 the prison would again house prisoners - civil war prisoners this time. The prison had been empty for several years, however was deemed perfect for what was needed and passed military inspection. The first prisoners arrived on Feb. 9th. by way of river steamer. Not all of the prisoners were were soldiers as some were spies, saboteurs, and southern sympathizers. Even a few women were locked up and two of them died there.

Within 3 days, the penitentiary was over crowed. What was built to hold a maximum of 800 held between 1,000 and 1,900 toward the last year of the war. The men were sleeping 3 to a bed. The women were kept in a dank, dark cellar far away from the men. During its period of housing prisoners of the civil war, 11,745 confederate soldiers were kept there. Several prisoners did manage to escape by tunneling under the west wall and the ones who were caught were swiftly killed by firing squad. After that every precaution was taken to prevent escapes.

While the prison was under the command of the army, it was managed by a warden who was not military. He was given $20,000 a year with which to maintain the prison and feed the prisoners. Any monies left over was Buckmaster's salary. Not far from the prison he constructed one of the finest homes in the area and lived a life of luxury while conditions at the prison deteriorated. Most were badly clothed, food was often withheld as punishment or was not edible, no bathing facilities, gnats , lice and rats and other vermin were common. Disease among the prisoners included dysentery, diphtheria, typhoid, measles, pneumonia, scurvy, and various infections.

During the civil war, 620,000 soldiers died on both sides and for every one who died in battle, two died from disease. A dreaded small pox epidemic hit the prison in 1864. A prisoner wrote in his journal of men dying in their beds and being carried out and dumped into a rough box and tossed into a shallow grave. The prison's "dead house" was overflowing with corpses. It soon became a problem with how to dispose of the bodies. So they came up with the idea of floating the bodies down the river on a ferry and then drive them by wagon to an old goat pasture which had been converted to a cemetery.

The townsfolk were beginning to panic and they wanted the sick and dying moved far away from their town. So they were taken to a small island called "Sunflower Island" where Abe Lincoln and James Shields had gone to fight a duel decades before. The island's name was later changed to "Smallpox Island". There was a dilapidated summer house on the island which was set up as a way to quarantine those with deadly diseases. It quickly became over crowed with the sick and dying. Trenches were dug on the island and bodies wrapped in sheets were deposited in them. Approximately 300 soldiers died while on the island. No graves were marked nor men identified and even some men were buried along the Missouri shoreline. Estimates range from 1,000 to over 5,000 died from the epidemic.

In 1874 a dike was built downstream causing the island to flood and washing some of the bodies away. The island has all but disappeared in the years that followed. The prison itself was closed down after the war and mostly torn down between 1870 and 1875. Many of the stones were hauled away and used in other projects. For years what was left of the building sat slowly crumbling. For some people it proved too much of a temptation not to explore a place with such a dark history. Soon stories began emerging of ghostly voices, eerie sounds, screams, moaning, and weeping coming from the supposedly empty prison. Disturbing stories surrounding the prison continued for decades.

People reported seeing spectral images of the tortured souls of the prisoners still roaming about the property. When confronted or approached they would vanish without a trace. They would be there one moment and gone the next. Passersby have described seeing the ghosts of men and soldiers dressed shabbily and vanishing leaving them with quite an unsettled feeling. Bones of the soldiers still turn up from time to time. Today only a very small section of the prison's wall remains. The ghosts however will still continue to roam the countryside.