16: The Domesticated Prisoner

Supplement to Endnotes

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Endnote 7) About the strange quote used by George: I have been unable to find any satisfying single source for this quote. Because he placed it in quotation marks, he must have figured Olive would recognize it. Maybe in his moment of sorrow, he simply tried to quote something he had recently read or heard. He certainly had access in his cell, though, to books and the Bible. For similar passages that together, in the form of a pastiche, might fit, see: Psalms 17:8-15; Exodus 15:23; Luke 19:43; Job 16:9.

 

Endnote 13) Eventually, during Cole’s time in jail, Albany County’s Board of Supervisors agreed to transport some of the prisoners to a nearby penitentiary to allow for badly needed improvements. In Cole’s second summer in the jail, a number of the inmates nearly escaped after “perforating” an escape hole in a rear wall. Joel Munsell, Collections on the History of Albany, from the Discovery to the Present Time, Volume 4, part 1 (Albany: J. Munsell, 1871), p. 21; For more on jail and prison conditions in New York, see: Nineteenth Annual Report of the Executive Committee of Prison Association of New York. Transmitted to the Legislature, January 29, 1864 (Albany: Comstock & Cassidy Printers, 1864), pp. 26-40