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Penitentiary   /pˌɛnɪtˈɛntʃəri/   Listen
Penitentiary

adjective
1.
Used for punishment or reform of criminals or wrongdoers.
2.
Showing or constituting penance.  Synonym: penitential.  "Wrote a penitential letter apologizing for her hasty words"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Penitentiary" Quotes from Famous Books



... worker was visiting a Southern penitentiary, when one prisoner in some way took his fancy. This prisoner was a negro, who evinced a religious fervour as deep as it was ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... [52] [Millbank Penitentiary, which was built in the form of a pentagon, was finally taken in hand in the spring of 1813. Solitary confinement in the "cells" was, at first, reserved as a punishment for misconduct.—Memorials of Millbank, by Arthur ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron

... still, I'd like to know? You teach me to know Fielitz! He needn't be putting on's far as I know. He's got another trade exceptin' just repairin' shoes. When a man's been twice in the penitentiary.... ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann

... take will be one toward the penitentiary. Get that into your cocoanut," the old miner ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine

... three men came to the doorway—the father and brothers. Without greeting, the old man said: 'Yo'd better come home, Ocie. Jim, he's dead, an' Andy'll hev to go to Moundsville, I reckon.' (Moundsville meant the state penitentiary.) The teacher helped to dismantle the poor little home and saw the few household belongings loaded on ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen

... guessed to be professional tinhorns. Another ran a curio store in town. The fourth was Dan Meldrum, one of the toughest crooks in the county. Nineteen years ago Sheriff Beaudry had sent him to the penitentiary for rustling calves. The fifth player sat next to the wall. He was a large, broad-shouldered man close to fifty. His face had the weather-beaten look of confidence that comes to an outdoor ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine

... up some trick between them," Webber continued, in a grumbling tone. "Carson or Porter is making something by selling Rag. They'd ought to be in the penitentiary." ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... unfastened he was well and regularly fed, now he has to forage for it; and if he can't pay for his grub, he can and will steal it. Abolition has done great things for him. He was once a life-labourer on a plantation in the south, he is now a prisoner for life in a penitentiary in the north, or an idle vagrant, and a shameless, houseless beggar. The fruit of cant is indeed bitter. The Yankees emancipated their niggers because it didn't pay to keep slaves. They now want the southern ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... the penitentiary at the Salptriere, and were dragged out of the court shrilly protesting their innocence, and followed by obscene jeers from the ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... for a lady to go alone, have become orderly. Local option has established temperance in Georgia. Out of 137 counties 115 are controlled by prohibition. In Iowa under prohibition, the Fort Madison Penitentiary is for the first time short of the supply of convicts sufficient to fulfil the usual contracts. England now has a national prohibition party, and Mr. Axel GUSTAFSON ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various

... from Southern cruelty. Whereas, all which love and kindness, and every form of indulgence, instruction, and discipline, tempered with mercy, could do, had been used with them in vain. One was a thief, the pest of the county, and had earned long years in a penitentiary; but slavery, you see, kept him at liberty! Another was brutally cruel to animals; another was the impersonation of laziness. Two of them would have helped John Brown, no doubt, had he come here, and they might have gained a Bunker Hill name, at the North, in an insurrection here, as ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams

... no use, Mose," said Judge Barber, whose legal title was honorary, and conferred because he had spent some time in a penitentiary in the East. "Them State Board fellers is wrong, but they've got grit, ur they'd never hev got the schoolhouse done after we rode the contractor out uv the Flat on one of his own boards. Besides, some uv 'em might think we wuz rubbin' uv it in, an' next thing you know'd ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... no means of supporting. They ought to have carriages and horses, mansions and pictures, with all the luxuries of affluence—at least so they think—and, being destitute of the resources requisite to maintain such state, they become adepts in those arts which qualify for the penitentiary. Others have such confidence in the strength of their virtue, such commanding arrogance of integrity, that, like a captain who underestimates the force of an enemy and overrates his own, they neglect to place a picket-guard on the outskirts of ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser

... heard that Moiron had again been called to the emperor's attention on account of his exemplary conduct in the prison at Toulon and was now employed as a servant by the director of the penitentiary. ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... while engaged in this work that he met his wife, Frederika Muenster, who was occupied in bettering the condition of the prisoners in the penitentiary at Duesselthal. He married her in 1828, and she became a helpful, inspiring co-worker with him in all ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft

... find out about the still he shore made it, that's all," answered Jephthah. "Ye can see right into it from whar he went. Ef you-all boys wants to stay out o' the penitentiary I reckon Creed Bonbright's got to leave the Turkey Tracks mighty sudden," and he swung himself heavily to the level ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan

... morning, between the careless laughter of the Roman beauty in Carnival, and the tragic earnestness of the same lovely face when the great lady kneels in Lent, before the confessional, to receive upon her bent head the light touch of the penitentiary's wand, taking her turn, perhaps, with a score of women of the people. It is the knowledge of an always present power, active throughout the whole world, which throws deep, straight shadows, as it were, through the Roman character, just as in certain ancient families ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... as well out with it. You want to know why I didn't get that position in the bank? It is because my father, J. Stillwell Stoker, died behind the bars of a penitentiary! I'm the son of a jailbird—a defaulter and a forger! That's why the bank didn't want me. They'd had their fingers burned with him, and didn't want to risk another of that name. Thought there might be something in the blood, I suppose. That's ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston

... next morning after his return, as we were sitting in the shade of the corrals waiting for the remuda to come in, "that poor little country girl might as well be in a penitentiary as in that school. She belongs on these prairies, and you can't make anything else out of her. I can read between the lines, and any one can see that her education is finished. When she told me how rudely her mother had treated you, her heart was an open book and easily read. Don't ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams

... harassed by militia. At this point he was overtaken by his pursuers, while gunboats in the river prevented his crossing. Nearly the entire force was captured. Morgan escaped, but was finally taken and confined in the penitentiary at Columbus. Four months afterward, he broke jail and reached ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.

... made himself an acknowledged authority. He was the originator of a house of correction, a Friendly Society, and a workhouse at Southwell. He was one of the "supervisors" appointed to organize the Milbank Penitentiary, which was opened in June, 1816. On Friendly Societies he published three works (1824, 1825, and 1826), in which, 'inter alia', he sought to prove that labourers, paying sixpence a week from the time they were twenty, could ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... before him dumb, and Ainley, convinced that he had stumbled on the truth, laughed harshly. "Stoney Mountain Penitentiary is not a nice place. The silent places of the North are better; but if I hear of you breathing a word of that rot you were talking just now, I will send word to the nearest police-post of your whereabouts, and once the mounters ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns

... instituted for purposes of justice and protection, and they could not but expect a stern rebuke from all the friends of morality and good order. The only prospect before them, upon a fair trial, was a sentence of twenty years to the penitentiary. This was by no means cheering, especially to those who had lived in ease and affluence, whose bodies were enervated by voluptuousness and hands made tender by years of idle pleasures. Crowds were gathering to witness their trial, and waiting in anxious suspense the issue. ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green

... effect the objects mentioned in "Fact No. 5," for the sum of 10,000 pounds sterling in hand, a Chief Justiceship, and the right to a tract of land West and North-West of the then city of Philadelphia, upon a part of which the Cherry Hill Penitentiary is now erected, and the whole of which, is at this time probably worth from five ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various

... touchin', so he won't sell an' he won't consolidate. If she don't 'tack up that-a-way, I'm an Injun. Carey wouldn't compromise with me an' take back his fifteen hundred. Why! There's a reason. He'd sooner see young Bob in the penitentiary because it'd mean more money to him. He wants Bob out o' the way, so he won't be on hand to draw cards, an' then this Carey person 'll just reach out his soft little mitt and rake in the jack-pot. All right, T. Morgan Carey! Bob's out of it, but even if he is a crook I'll string ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... me to do anything about it. The man was a criminal. The State can't go any further than that. I suppose if every man was set free who wasn't, in the last analysis, responsible for his crimes, we wouldn't have anybody left in the penitentiary. He's in for five years—considering what he'll pick up here, it might as well be for life. Amnesia—that's what the doctors call it—amnesia following some sort of a mental trouble. In the end you'll ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall

... found himself in competition with the dregs of humanity—one of them, as far as his employment went. Imagine this proud spirited boy humbled to the degree of bidding side by side for work with a ragged Italian, a broken down and blear eyed drunkard, a cruel faced refugee from the penitentiary, or a wretched, unkempt tramp. How his young, brave heart must have ached as he found himself working on the hoist or in the street with loathsome characters of this sort—characters that purity and self respect could only ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey

... Mr. Bonteen, that it would be very nice to send the brother of a marquis to Botany Bay, or wherever they go now; and that it would do a deal of good to have the widow of a baronet locked up in the Penitentiary; but you see, if they didn't happen to be guilty, it would be almost a shame to punish them for ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... for an understrapper. They are marshaling in witnesses before the grand jury—those men from the Warren, and you know what they'll say, of course! Your mates and quartermasters, too! Mayo, they're going to railroad you to Atlanta penitentiary. They have put something over on you because you are young and they figured that you'd be a little green. It seemed queer to me when Fogg was so mighty nice to you all of a sudden. But they don't lay off a man like Jacobs and put in a new man just to be nice. They either felt ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... when States' Rights was a sacred faith, a revered and precious palladium, State pride blossomed under Southern skies, and State coffers overflowed with the abundance wherewith God blessed the land. During that period, when it became necessary to select a site for a new Penitentiary, the salubrity and central location of X—-had so strongly commended it, that the spacious structure was erected within its limits, and regarded as an architectural triumph of which the State might justly boast. Soon after this ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... the worst sort, perhaps, next to the man who kills another. If he proved that he had not killed John Barkley, he would convict himself, at the same time, of having made solemn oath to a lie on what he supposed was his death-bed. And for that, a possible twenty years in the Edmonton penitentiary! At best he could not expect less than ten. Ten years—twenty years—in ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood

... his chair, got the confusion quieted, and with muttered threats of the penitentiary for him and everybody concerned in the affair, they got back to business again with the desperate haste of men working against time. And our jury bill ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various

... provided he deserved to be, he is degraded: the penalty renders him infamous, not by virtue of the definition of the code, but by reason of the fault which caused the punishment. Of what importance, then, is the materiality of the punishment? of what importance all your penitentiary systems? What you do is to satisfy your feelings, but is powerless to rehabilitate the unfortunate whom your justice strikes. The guilty man, once branded by chastisement, is incapable of reconciliation; his stain is indelible, and his damnation eternal. If it were possible for ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... offensive title with perfect equanimity. He was a smuggler, probably the largest operator in the illicit traffic of opium smuggling, and the most successful importer of Chinese along the whole extent of the American border. He knew that the penitentiary was yearning for him; and he knew that every moment of his life was shadowed by the threat of penal servitude. And in the meantime he was storing up his wealth, not in driblets, dependent upon the seasons for their extent, but in huge sums which ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum

... sport, you know, like a feller sometimes will when he's—well, when his soul gets kind o' itchy like,—an' it purt' nigh started a riot. She said 'at we wouldn't never believe how different the people was down there. I reckon a university must be run a good bit like a penitentiary. But as I said, she wasn't no quitter, an' I reckon, takin' it all in all, she give 'em back about as good as ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... forest community sees fire after fire set through ignorance, carelessness or purpose, and so far from punishing the offenders accords them every privilege of business and society. In cities, however insignificant the damage, arson leads to the penitentiary. A forest fire may destroy millions and the cause not even be investigated. If, aggravated by a particularly inexcusable case of malice or carelessness, some property holder (seldom the people) secures an arrest, acquittal ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen

... penal settlement, for a period not under three months, but beyond that depending entirely on his own regularity and proficiency, and the acquisition of marks exhibiting them, his treatment should consist of moral, religious, and other intellectual instruction in a penitentiary. 5. After this, he should for a time not under eighteen months, but the period also depending on the acquisition of marks, serve in a mutually responsible party, labouring for government, and disqualified for any situation of trust, authority or indulgence under it, or ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... responsible for the sins he commits whether they be large or small, few or many. Then why not have a good time in this life? Why not go the full length into sinful pleasure?" And go the full length he did. He had become involved in one criminal scrape after another, and he would have landed in the penitentiary before this time had it not been for Deacon Cramps' financial backing. And by this time it had come to be common knowledge in the community that the son's profligacy was almost certain to involve the Deacon in financial ruin. It ...
— The Deacon of Dobbinsville - A Story Based on Actual Happenings • John A. Morrison

... comes to us with an open visor we face with a smile; to set our feet upon his neck is mere play for us. The stupidly brutal acts of violence of police politicians, the outrages of anti-Socialist laws, penitentiary bills—these only arouse feelings of pitying contempt; the enemy, however, that reaches out the hand to us for a political alliance, and intrudes himself upon us as a friend and a brother,—him and him alone have ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... good news to send you to-day I can hardly write it fast enough. The Territorial Court has been in session, and yesterday that horse thief, Billy Oliver, was tried and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment in the penitentiary! The sheriff and a posse started for Canon City this morning with him and another prisoner, and I hope that he will not make his escape on the way over. The sheriff told Faye confidentially the route he intended to take, which is not at all the one he is supposed to be going over, and threw out strong ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... several of the Zepata citizens, and two visiting brother-desperadoes, and the corner where his gambling-house had stood was still known as Barrow's Corner, to the regret of the druggist who had opened a shop there. Ten years before, the murder of Deputy Sheriff Welsh had led him to the penitentiary, and a month previous to the opening of the new court-house he had been freed, and arrested at the prison gate to stand trial for the murder of Hubert Thompson. The fight with Thompson had been a fair fight—so those said who remembered it—and Thompson was a man they ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... Niagara district were treated with a degree of clemency which their shameless conduct did not merit from an outraged people. No persons were ever executed, though a number were confined for a while in Kingston penitentiary. The invasion had the effect of stimulating the patriotism of the Canadian people to an extraordinary degree, and of showing them the necessity that existed for improving their home forces, whose organisation and equipment proved ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... fist down on the table so forcefully that the books shook. "I'll not go to the penitentiary for an-ny man.... He wanted me to let him put two other teams on the rolls in my name. I wouldn't stand for it. That was six weeks ago. ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... called in, and all parties had been lodged in the watch-house; that the whole affair was being investigated by the magistrates, and that it was said that Miss Judd and all her coadjutors would be sent to the Penitentiary. This was quite enough to frighten two boys like us; for days afterwards we trembled when people came into the shop, expecting to be summoned and imprisoned. Gradually, however, our fears were dismissed, but I never from that time heard any thing ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat

... in the grate settled down with a slight crash; and Michaelis, the hermit of visions in the desert of a penitentiary, got up impetuously. Round like a distended balloon, he opened his short, thick arms, as if in a pathetically hopeless attempt to embrace and hug to his breast a self-regenerated ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... chosen disciple, a young newspaper reporter of excellent mind and trained pen. He had been captured by United States troops in Kansas as a guerrilla raider and was imprisoned first at Lecompton and then at Tecumseh. The fourth disciple selected was Aaron Dwight Stevens, an ex-convict from the penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth. Stevens was by far the most daring and interesting figure in the group. His knowledge of military tactics was destined to make him an invaluable aide. The uncanny in Brown's spirit had appealed to his imagination from the day he made his escape from the penitentiary ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon

... and waited only for his opportunity; knowing, too, that I was the owner of the bark, and supposed to have money. He was heard to say in a rum-mill a day or two before the attack that he would find the —— money and his life, too. His chum and bosom friend had come pretty straight from Palermo penitentiary at Buenos Aires when he ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum

... should like to do with him if I dared," he said, with a graceful smile. "There is a friend of mine not a hundred miles away from that very Kiev who wants a little admonition. Her name is Petrovna, she is the jail-matron of a female penitentiary; she is just a little too fierce at times. Murderers, thieves, prostitutes: oh yes, she can be civil enough to them; but let a political prisoner come near her—one of her own sex, mind—and she becomes a devil, a tigress, a vampire. Ah, Madame Petrovna and I may have a little reckoning some ...
— Sunrise • William Black

... found what I think will turn out to be a big defalcation. Somebody drops out in disgrace with probably a penitentiary sentence." ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter

... its scope includes preaching, exhorting, consoling, saying mass, giving the Sacrament, etc. Therefore, none of the three passages fits the power of the pope over all Christendom, except he were made the one confessor, or penitentiary,[63] or anathematizer, to rule only over the wicked and the sinners, which is not their desire at all. And if these words should establish the papal power over all Christians, I should very much like to know who could absolve the pope when ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... appear that he was followed across the ocean by his lucky star. He soon was made to feel that free speech and free press in this great republic was but a myth. Time and again he was arrested, brutally treated by the police, and sentenced to serve time in the penitentiary. Added to this came the fearful attacks and misrepresentations of Most and his ideas by the press, many of the articles making him appear as a wild beast ever plotting destruction. The last sentence inflicted upon him was after ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... whole gang into Kamloops, refusing to give them up to anyone till they landed these desperadoes in jail, whence they were taken to serve sentences in the penitentiary. ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... Well, you shall know. His father served a term in the Louisiana penitentiary for forgery. And now you may ask why I ever let him come into this house. I will tell you. He had been teaching school here some time and I said nothing. One day during a rainstorm he stopped at the gate. He was sick and I invited him to come in. After that I could ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read

... to do that now, Mat," said Morris. "You'll find that the country will stick to O'Connell, whether he's in prison or out of it;—but Peel will never dare to put him there. They talk of the Penitentiary; but I'll tell you what, if they put him there, the people of Dublin won't leave one stone upon another; they'd have it all down ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... click yore heels mighty loud, Miss." Dave caught in that soft answer the purr of malice. He remembered now hearing from Buck Byington that years ago Emerson Crawford had rounded up evidence to send Shorty to the penitentiary for rebranding through a blanket. "I reckon you come by it honest. Em always acted like ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine

... me in this contest, when I'm elected, we'll see if there isn't one less corrupt boss in this state and if Greeley County can't contribute a pompadour to the rogues' gallery and a tenor voice to the penitentiary choir." ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... who refused to take it was a public enemy; all the considerations of patriotism were rallied to its support, and the law provided that any citizens found trafficking in the money of the enemy—i.e., greenbacks, should suffer imprisonment in the Penitentiary, and any soldier so offending ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... can be shown by comparison of the capital crimes for white persons at the same time. These were four in number, (1) murder, (2) carnal abuse of a female under ten years of age, (3) wilful burning of the penitentiary and (4) being an accessory to ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... "Eatanswill" were soon bandying back and forth between them. One evening of May, 1856, King published, in the Bulletin, copies of papers procured from New York, to show that Casey had once been sentenced to the State penitentiary at Sing Sing. Casey took mortal offense, and called at the Bulletin office, on the corner of Montgomery and Merchant Streets, where he found King, and violent words passed between them, resulting in Casey giving King notice that he would shoot him on sight. King remained in his office ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... among them Archibald Dixon, raised $500 in order to secure Brown's conviction and sentence to penitentiary. ...
— The Fugitive Slave Law and Its Victims - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 18 • American Anti-Slavery Society

... the tarpaulin about his stool before us, chirrups toward the damp steam which symbolizes a horse, and we move off up the long, soppy street, past its houses and jails and grey bathing-penitentiary,—and out at last from Bareges. Out from Bareges, though into the vast unknown; and our spirits rise higher as the baleful spell of the spot is lifted and ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... trinket I'd given her—at their own valuation, about a quarter of what they cost me. She argued and pleaded and prayed, and swore she'd confess the whole thing to General Sheridan, who came there right after the riots of '66 and took command, and that would have sent me to the penitentiary. There were regular officers in the deals beside me, and they got wind of it and tried to bribe her; and she'd cry all night and mope all day, and swore she'd leave me unless I cut loose from the whole business and restored what I'd made. By God, I couldn't! I'd spent it! ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King

... the advice was not taken. Established in another part of Baltimore, Gamma renewed his attack on the clergy, and told one minister that he was a hardened criminal who had served a term in the Penitentiary, but, after hearing one of his sermons, he desired earnestly to reform. The latest news about the Gammas is a bit of information in which the charitable public will have to take an interest, however reluctantly, before very long,—there is a new ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond

... flesh-and-blood sitter's portrait upon it in the usual way. An appropriate background for these pictures is a view of the asylum for feeble-minded persons, the group of buildings at Somerville, and possibly, if the penitentiary could be introduced, the hint would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... right to plead guilty or not guilty, sentenced out of hand to thirty days' imprisonment for having no fixed abode and no visible means of support, handcuffed and chained to a bunch of men similarly circumstanced, carted down country to Buffalo, registered at the Erie County Penitentiary, had my head clipped and my budding mustache shaved, was dressed in convict stripes, compulsorily vaccinated by a medical student who practised on such as we, made to march the lock-step, and put to work under the eyes of guards ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London

... — N. prison, prison house; jail, gaol, cage, coop, den, cell; stronghold, fortress, keep, donjon, dungeon, Bastille, oubliette, bridewell^, house of correction, hulks, tollbooth, panopticon^, penitentiary, guardroom, lockup, hold; round house, watch house, station house, sponging house; station; house of detention, black hole, pen, fold, pound; inclosure &c 232; isolation (exclusion) 893; penal settlement, penal colony; bilboes, stocks, limbo, quod ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... are entitled to weight. Permit the statement of a single case, to which many similar ones might be added. In a remote state of the West there is a respectable and successful farmer, who was once sentenced to the penitentiary for life. His crime was committed in a moment of desperation, produced by the contrast between a state of abject poverty in a strange land, at the age of twenty-three, and the recollection of childhood ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell

... occupations, or a worshipper whose devout mind was engrossed by the contemplation of heavenly things.[300] There were indeed blind rumors, as usual in such cases; to the effect that De Berquin recanted at the last moment; and Merlin, the Penitentiary of Notre Dame, who attended him, is reported to have exclaimed that "perhaps no one for a hundred years had died a better Christian."[301] But the "Lutherans" of Paris had good reason to deny the truth of the former statement, and to interpret the latter to the advantage of De Berquin's ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... like those of Europe a century ago; to think of it gives gooseflesh. Easterns laugh at our idea of penitentiary and the Arabs of Bombay call it "Al-Bistan" (the Garden) because the court contains a few trees and shrubs. And with them a garden always suggests an idea of Paradise. There are indeed only two efficacious forms of punishment all the world over, corporal for the poor and fines for the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... the gangway once a week or so, every unreclaimed landsman of bad character and no seamanship, was sent on board of us: and in fact, except that there was scarcely any discipline and no restraint, we appeared like a floating penitentiary of convicted felons. ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... name—Thomas J. Thorington. Thomas? Tom? Tom Thorington! Why, the last she had heard of Tom had been fifteen years back. He had gone out West. She had received a picture of him in a uniform, with a gun on his shoulder. She dimly recollected that he had been a guard at some penitentiary. How long ago it seemed! He must have become a missionary or something, to be away off in China. And he had remembered her! She sat for a long time looking at the labels. She wondered if the queer Chinese letters spelled ABBIE SNOVER, ALMONT, MICHIGAN. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... of America, "the home of political and religious freedom," there is not one who can learn, live and teach the truth without danger of being put out of a synagogue and into a penitentiary; and this will continue until imperialistic capitalism and supernaturalistic Christianism, the father and mother of the whole brood of robbers, liars, persecutors and ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... penitentiary, curse 'em," snarled Brown, clenching and unclenching her hands. "I wish I could get my hooks on that man of mine, ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon

... that any Ministry who did not act upon that statement, and did not at once set about putting the country in the position she ought to occupy in respect to her navy, would deserve to be sent to the Tower or penitentiary,"—we may be sure that England has as much jealousy as trust, and perhaps quite as much ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... The force was to comprise eleven hundred men, divided into three divisions. Richmond—then a town of eight thousand inhabitants—was the point of attack, which was to be effected under cover of night. The right wing was to fall suddenly upon the penitentiary, lately improvised into an arsenal; the left wing was to seize the powder-house; and, thus equipped and supplied with the munitions of war, the two columns were to assign the hard fighting to the third column. This column was to have possession of all the guns, swords, knives, and ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... and passed between two peculiar stone houses dark as dungeons. They puzzled me from the outside, but when once past them, I was no longer in doubt. I had entered the open gateway leading to the courtyard of the Yuma penitentiary. No wonder the buildings looked like dungeons. This was a new experience for me, but somehow I had always imagined just how it would look. I was considering beating a retreat when a guard hailed me and asked me if I was not lost. With the assistance ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb

... ignored, and there were erected great stone structures whose chief characteristics are size, solidity, and the look of being "government property." The main buildings of the Academy, with the exception of the chapel, suggest the sort of sublimated penitentiary that Mr. Thomas Mott Osborne might, one fancies, construct under a carte-blanche authorization, while the chapel, the huge dome of which is visible to all the country round, makes one think of a monstrous wedding ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... sent a woman to Wichita Penitentiary for ten years. Just think of sentencing a woman to the penitentiary for talking. The United States under the rule of the plutocrats is the only country which would send a woman to the penitentiary for ten years for exercising the right to free speech. If this be treason, ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing

... is less capable of concealment than the feminine. Where men are frankly selfish, women are secretly so. Man's vices are few and comprehensive; woman's petty and innumerable. Any man who is not in the penitentiary has at most but three or four, while a woman will hide a dozen under her social ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed

... gave Saint Germain scarce a thought, and under the Empire it became a cavalry school, and later, under the Restoration, sinking lower still, it merited only the denomination of a barracks. Its culminating fall arrived when it was turned into a penitentiary. ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield

... away for a time, but was, afterwards, captured and tried, found guilty, and sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment in Millbank Penitentiary. ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton

... guilty, provided, however, that in any criminal case, upon a plea of guilty, tendered in person by the accused, and with the consent of the attorney for the Commonwealth, entered of record, the court shall, and in a prosecution for an offence not punishable by death, or confinement in the penitentiary, upon a plea of not guilty, with the consent of the accused, given in person and of the attorney for the Commonwealth, both entered of record, the court, in its discretion, may hear and determine the case, without ...
— Civil Government of Virginia • William F. Fox

... mother. As the confession was being made, as he supposed to but one person, it was all being taken down by those who were near enough to hear him speak, and when he appeared before the court his own confession was used against him and sent him to a life imprisonment in the penitentiary. What was true of this young man is true of us. Every sermon the minister preaches is recorded, every word an individual speaks is put down. It is a solemn thought to realize, that at the judgment we shall give account ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman

... then on the "Grand Canal" alone, as it was called. More than half of these boys were orphans, and it was not a good place for any boy, no matter how many parents or guardians he might have. Five hundred or more convicts in the New York State Penitentiary were men who, as I learned from a missionary who came aboard to pray with us, sing hymns and exhort us to a better life, had been canal-boat drivers. The boys were at the mercy of their captains, and were often ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick

... employer's money drawer to supply the deficiency. He eased his conscience, in this act, and deceived himself, with the hope of repaying it before he was detected. But in this he was mistaken. He was detected, tried, found guilty, and sentenced to the penitentiary for six months. He had now been out of prison a week, during which time he had been wandering about the city, ashamed to be seen or known. He had come to ask advice. The clergyman advised him by all means to go home to his father; assuring him that ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb

... Jefferson City, and walking over to the penitentiary, found the warden willing, and Skinner was called to ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton

... because on the one hand they were commonly tried by somewhat informal courts whose records are scattered and often lost, and on the other hand they were generally given sentences of whipping, death or deportation, which kept their names out of the penitentiary lists. One errs, however, in assuming a dearth of serious infractions on their part and explaining it by saying, "under a strict slave regime there can scarcely be such a thing as crime";[1] for investigation reveals crime in abundance. A fairly typical ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... Clifford, or at least control it. I have not yet told of this improvement in my condition, because I wished people to still think I was insane, so that I would be sure to escape being sent to the penitentiary. I know I was insane at the time I tried to kill both Clifford and myself, and feel that I don't deserve such a dreadful punishment as being sent to a State prison. However, I think it was that operation and my subsequent illness that caused ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... whose labor may be farmed out, shall be punished for any failure of duty as a laborer, except by a responsible officer of the State; but the convicts so farmed out shall be at all times under, the supervision and control, as to their government. and discipline, of the Penitentiary Board or some officer ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore

... many years has been a subject of Executive recommendation, have at last to a slight extent been realized by the utilization of the abandoned military prison at Fort Leavenworth as a United States penitentiary. ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland

... Jimmie Dale answered. What the man said was true—he would not have a hope—for an honest life—after five years in the penitentiary. He lifted his flashlight again and played it over Birdie Lee. They showed, those years, in the pallor, the drawn lines, the wan misery ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... cardinal's family. Of his children only Lucretia and Giuffre were in Rome at the time, and both were living with Madonna Adriana. Vannozza was occupying her own house with her husband, Canale, who for some time had held the office of secretary of the penitentiary court. She was now fifty years old, and there was but one event to which she looked forward, and upon it depended the gratification of her greatest wish; namely, to see her children's father ascend the papal throne. What prayers and vows she and Madonna Adriana, Lucretia, and Giulia ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... return to an untainted life is almost impossible—and that out of self-defence he is compelled to resort again to the same criminal enterprises for which he has already suffered. Struck with this view, the reformer would institute a penitentiary of so effective a description, that the having passed through it would be even a testimonial of good character. But who sees not that the infamy is of the very essence of the punishment? A good character is the appropriate reward of the good citizen; if the criminal does not pay the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... was the fulfilment of the promise, "As thy faith so be it," or whether he felt any conscientious obligation resting upon him not to disappoint public expectation, nobody knows. Nobody was surprised, however, when news went over the town that Jim Royal was going to the penitentiary. ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... took place about half a mile from the place of worship, near some wagons loaded with liquor and provisions. Two men, James H. Norris and William D. Armstrong, were indicted for the crime. Norris was tried in Mason County, convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to the penitentiary for a term of eight years. The popular feeling being very high against Armstrong in Mason County, he took a change of venue to Cass County, and was there tried (at Beardstown) in the spring of 1858. Hitherto Armstrong had had the services of two able counsellors; ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... Negro seemingly has decreased as the illiteracy has decreased. Out of every 100 criminals only 39 could read and 61 could not, whereas in the general population 43 could read and 57 could not.[73] In the Mississippi penitentiary where they had 450 convicts of Negro blood one half of them could neither read nor write, and less than 10 per cent had anything like a fair education.[74] Atlanta University has graduated 800 Negro men and women, not one of whom has ever been convicted of crime. Fisk University has only one ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various

... kindergartens and sunlight! I don't blame them for not becoming Christians on that basis. Why, the very day I left New York a man over eighty, who had been swindled out of all he had, rather than go to one of those Christian institutions deliberately forged a check and demanded to be sent to the penitentiary. He said he could live and die ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... "is a poor unfortunate who should have been sent to an asylum instead of the penitentiary. He killed Mart Wiley, a deputy sheriff, at a Lost ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various

... steal money, what difference would your love make to him? He would be as unfaithful to you as he has been to his trust in the bank. You must consider yourself—you must give him up; you can't link your young, beautiful life to a man who is only saved from the penitentiary because of ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... her she had been in a hurry. But if she don't bother me, I won't her. We got as far as that. And I reckon she won't, but I thought we'd better have a clear understanding, and she knows now it's bigamy in her case, and bigamy's a penitentiary offense. I made that clear. And now see here, David: I'm going to stay here in this settlement, and I don't want any trouble from you, no matter what you think of my doings, past, present, or future. I don't want you to say anything, or look anything. Don't you let on, even to that ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells

... great prison, called the Eastern Penitentiary: conducted on a plan peculiar to the state of Pennsylvania. The system here, is rigid, strict, and hopeless solitary confinement. I believe it, in its effects, to ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens

... articles. In these articles four main points seem to have been held in view. The first related to the system of confiscation, fines, civil disabilities, losses of office, property, honors, rights, inheritances, which formed a part of the penitentiary procedure, and by which the crown and Holy Office made pecuniary gains. The second secured secrecy in the action of the tribunal, whereby a door was opened to delation, and accused persons were rendered incapable of rational defense. The third elaborated the judicial method, so as to leave ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... familiar to seamen and a nickname too; they called her the "Hell-packet." Of all the tall and beautiful ships which maintained their smartness and their beauty upon the agony of wronged and driven seamen, the Etna was the most terrible, a blue-water penitentiary, a floating place of torment. To enhance the strange terror of her, the bitter devil who was her captain carried his wife on board; the daily brutalities that made her infamous went on under the eyes and within the hearing ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon

... near the beginning of this revival nine respectable young men of Vichy, Missouri, hired horses and saddles at the livery barn and came out to the schoolhouse to attend the meeting. Two desperate characters, reputed to have escaped from the penitentiary, were present, but remained outside the house. The services proceeded unmolested; but, after the service, when the nine young men from Vichy went to get their horses, they found that some one had cut the saddles and bridles in pieces and ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole

... so sure of the reforming effect of a penitentiary. I question the salutary quality of herding this delicate and high-spirited youth with the hardened criminals of the State." His strident, monotonous tone, and the cynical inflections of his voice made ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland

... accompany physical exertion in self-defense or escape. There is not one group of phenomena for the acute fear of the president of a bank in a financial crash and another for the hitherto trusted official who suddenly and unexpectedly faces the imminent probability of the penitentiary; or one for a patient who unexpectedly finds he has a cancer and another for the hunter when he shoots his first big game. Nature has but one means of response to fear, and whatever its cause the phenomena are always ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile

... with him at this point, but I will make no bargain with him. He is an unmitigated scoundrel, and he will only go out of this Court to be arrested for crime; and I do not expect to drop him until I drop him into a Penitentiary, where he can reflect upon ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... for it, but he always persisted that Ben wasn't bad at heart and would come out all right some day. No matter what the young varmint did old Stephen would make excuses for him—'his ma was dead,' or he 'hadn't had no bringing-up.' I was thankful when he did finally clear out without doing some penitentiary work." ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... contrasted well with the lofty pine-trees around it. But they, in turn, invested it with an air of secrecy and gloom, unrelieved by flowers or blossoming shrubs, of which there were no traces near the house, although in the rear there was a garden so formally regular that it looked like a penitentiary for flowers. ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... Lowell Female Reform Association for the purpose of reducing the long hours of labor for women, safeguarding "the constitutions of future generations." Mrs. Eliza Woodson Farnham, matron in Sing Sing penitentiary, was known throughout the nation for her social work, especially prison reform. Wherever there were misery and suffering, women were preparing ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... Cowperwood emerged from the Eastern District Penitentiary in Philadelphia he realized that the old life he had lived in that city since boyhood was ended. His youth was gone, and with it had been lost the great business prospects of his earlier manhood. He must ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... buy accommodations in a graveyard or break into a penitentiary, don't you ever live in ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... aviator over in France, and who tried to steal our Bug, meaning to fly away, and leave no trail behind for the hunting police. But Frank, you can't possibly believe Jules was the fellow who fired that shot? It don't stand to reason; because you know, he was sent to the penitentiary for ten years. Oh! no, I guess we'll have to think up something else this time," and Andy shook his ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy

... things," he replied. "Before coming to the study of theology, we are put through mythology; that is, under the guidance of reverend professors we make the acquaintance of a set of imaginary beings who, had they veritably lived, and in our day, would have soon found their way to the penitentiary." ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... thing too intractable; for another thing, too unstable, and for another thing (strange to say), possessed of too much heart. The Congo Government knows its work far too well for that. It does not take the murderer or the violent criminal from the penitentiary to do its work; it takes from the streets the man without hope. The educated man who has fallen, the man who can ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole

... the parish of St. John. The proper civil authorities had made no effort to arrest Walker, and even connived at his escape, so I had him taken into custody in New Orleans, and ordered him tried, the commission finding him guilty, and sentencing him to confinement in the penitentiary for six months. This shooting was the third occurrence of the kind that had taken place in St. John's parish, a negro being wounded in each case, and it was plain that the intention was to institute there a practice of intimidation which should be effective to subject the freedmen to the will of ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... sent to the penitentiary at the Salpetriere, and were dragged out of the court shrilly protesting their innocence, and followed by obscene jeers from ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... by this officer to the last session of the Congress he strongly recommended the erection of a penitentiary for the confinement of prisoners convicted and sentenced in the United States courts, and he repeats the recommendation in his report ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... any criminal law of the United States, or of the States or Territories thereof, will be subject to summary arrest by the United States Marshal, or his Deputy, or such other officers as the President shall designate, and to confinement in such penitentiary, prison, jail, military camp, or other place of detention as may ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various

... spent the half-awake first part of his youth in the dreary stone rooms and yards of the penitentiary. His adoptive father had little concern for the boy. He was absent for weeks at a time. Left in the care of a morose servant, whose main occupation was to manage the miserable financial affairs of the ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein

... aforesaid boots; with a leather belt buckled around his waist, under the coat, but over the haft of a bowie-knife, alongside which peeps out the butt of a Colt's revolving pistol. In correspondence with his clothing and equipment, he shows a cut-throat countenance, typical of the State Penitentiary; cheeks bloated as from excessive indulgence in drink; eyes watery and somewhat bloodshot; lips thick and sensual; with a nose set obliquely, looking as if it had received hard treatment in some pugilistic encounter. His hair is of a yellowish clay colour, ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid

... 1805, died in 1859; studied law, taking his degree in 1826; traveled in Italy and Sicily; in 1831 visited the United States under a commission to study the penitentiary system; returning published a book on the subject which was crowned by the French Academy; from private notes taken in America then wrote his masterpiece, "Democracy in America," which secured his election to the Academy in 1841; spent some years ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various

... near Leavenworth and wanted to locate your exact position, of which you are uncertain. You have the map shown in this manual, and, looking about, you see southwest from where you stand the United States Penitentiary; also, halfway between the south and the southeast—south-southeast a sailor would say—the reservoir (rectangle west of "O" in "Missouri"). Having oriented your map, draw on it a line from the ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department

... best way to educate the people," he said. "Truly, if we could only send every Austrian for one year to the penitentiary, we would have none but ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... of the case had an appeal been taken. But Phineas Copenny made no motion for a new trial and desired no appeal. He had feared, throughout, the possible capture and conclusive testimony of Drann and Holvey, and, lest a worse thing befall him, he accepted a sentence of a long term in the penitentiary. In view of the turpitude of "lying in wait," though a matter of inference and not proof, he doubted the saving grace of that anomaly of the Tennessee law that in order to constitute murder in the first degree the victim of a premeditated ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... bear away to the fever-haunted lands of our penitentiary settlements the politician of shady reputation and the anarchist guilty of murder, the pair will be able to converse together, and they will appear to each other as the two complementary aspects of one and the same ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... "Fellows like Buell will go to the penitentiary for life. His men'll get twenty years on bread and water. No whiskey! ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey

... years of good conduct in the Ancona Penitentiary, the life sentence of Giacomo Casale has been remitted by King Victor Emmanuel. Casale's astonishment at the altered world in which he found himself on coming out of prison was unbounded. He ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various

... with him, this Marix!" Barney shrieked, in his rage. "The only reason he gives me tips is because I know something disgraceful of him! I'll publish him from one end of the country to the other! I'll send him to the penitentiary! But I can't reach McDermott! Oh," he cried, with clinched fists, "if I ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane

... I do know his friends, and most of 'em aren't worth thinkin' about. They're big people here, but back where I came from, in old Virginia, the best of 'em wouldn't be overseers on a plantation. That's why they like it so much out here. Look at that gang! Casey has been in the penitentiary, Rowlee ran some little blackleg sheet down South until they run him out—-I tell you, sir, as a Southerner I'm not proud of the Southerners out here. They're a cheap lot, most of 'em. They were a cheap lot home. The only difference is that back ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White

... once more colonized by Christian people. When the Danish Government, after some years, sent up a handful of soldiers, with a major who took the title of governor, to give the settlement official character as a trading station, they sent with them twenty unofficial "Christians," ten men out of the penitentiary and as many lewd and drunken women from the treadmill, who were married by lot before setting sail, to give the thing a halfway decent look. They were good enough for the Eskimos, they seem to have thought at Copenhagen. There followed a terrible winter, during ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis

... futile, poor Pickle was arrested, called a miscreant, and all sorts of evil names; but was declared innocent by a jury of his peers, though his trial made a great noise, and there were enough unkind enough to say he ought to get twenty-one years in the penitentiary. Sly insinuations were also cast out about me; but they were coupled with so much courtesy, that as I had made nothing by the concern, I proceeded straight to the Astor, explained the state of my ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... as gilt-edged a job as it seems. But proof's what it's best to have before you ring up the curtain. You'd have to have it yourself. So would Palford & Grimby before it'd be stone-cold safe to rush things and accuse a man of a penitentiary offense." ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... which had made him epileptic and immoral. If this asylum for insane criminals had not been in existence, he would have ended in a padded cell, the same as another man whom I and my students saw a few years ago in the Ancona penitentiary. The director, an old soldier, said to me: "Professor, I shall show you a type of human beast. He is a man who passes four fifths of the year in a padded cell." After calling six attendants, "because we must be careful," we went to the cell, ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri

... father's beadles, constables, and overseers; and they were dispersed through other parishes, or led into captivity to roundhouses, or consigned to places called asylums for the poor and indigent, or lodged in workhouses, or crammed into houses of industry or penitentiary houses, where, by my father's account of the matter, there was little industry and no penitence, and from whence the delinquents issued, after their seven days' captivity, as bad or worse than when they went in. Be that as it may, the essential ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... jurisdiction of this court extends exclusively over all suits for divorce, suits where titles to land are involved, cases in equity, and criminal cases where the person is accused of a crime the punishment for which is loss of life or imprisonment in the penitentiary. Offenses of a lesser grade are called misdemeanors. The court has jurisdiction over all civil cases. The judge of the superior court has the power to issue various writs for the enforcement of the law, and grant charters ...
— Elements of Civil Government • Alexander L. Peterman

... of the indeterminate sentence is that every State prison and penitentiary should be a reformatory, in the modern meaning of that term. It would be against the interest of society, all its instincts of justice, and the height of cruelty to an individual criminal to put him in prison without limit unless all the opportunities were afforded him for changing his habits ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... couldve used you for a model to advantage. Have you a policerecord or have you so far evaded the law? Let me tell you, the Intelligencer is the evildoers' nemesis. Is your conscience clear, your past unsullied as a virgin's bed, your every deed open to search? Do you know what a penitentiary's like? Did you ever hear the clang of a celldoor as the turnkey slammed it behind him and left you to think and stew and weep in a silence accented and made more wretched by a yellow electricbulb and the stink of corrosivesublimate? ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... better than I ever did." The jailer told him that our friends sent in the luxuries. He looked at our big beds, shower bath, and other surroundings and said, "I have a d——d notion to send them to the penitentiary;" but the jailer told him it was pulled down, so he had to give up his d——d notion, and we ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol

... into the English prisons is said to have produced much good, and the experiment is about to be tried in this country. The corporation of the city of New-York are building one in the yard of their Penitentiary. One of the late London papers announces the singular fact that on the 12th of September, at the Town-hall, Southwark, there was no charge, either of felony, misdemeanor, or assault, within the extensive district, of five parishes, from ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 5: Some Strange and Curious Punishments • Henry M. Brooks

... A penitentiary asylum, called les Filles Dieu, was founded at Paris in 1226, and continued for some years open for the reception of female sinners who had gone astray, and were reduced to beggary. In the time of St. Lewis, their number amounted to two hundred; but becoming rich, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... lips. "I suppose it's all right, but I can't help wishing that I had been here to watch the ceremony of burning that record. I'd feel a damn sight more secure. But understand this: If you double-cross me in any detail of this game, you'll never go to the penitentiary for what Benham knows about you—I'll choke the gizzard out of you!" He took a turn around the room, stopping at last ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... he whispers in those accents which seem to have lost their magic power, "it is merely a claimant. I was expecting it, and I'll put him in the penitentiary for it. Do not be alarmed by forgers. ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern

... he sent her to Arizona, and later, when her case was declared hopeless, he sent the husband, too, to be with her to the end. Likewise, he bought a string of horse-hair bridles from a convict in a Western penitentiary, who spread the good news until it seemed to Daylight that half the convicts in that institution were making bridles for him. He bought them all, paying from twenty to fifty dollars each for them. They were beautiful and honest things, ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... liberty for her—liberty, with peace and respect. Think it over, Monsieur; at the first outrage, I shall arise from my tomb to prevent a second, and dig a trench between you and her which never can be crossed—the penitentiary!" ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... whatever decision Mr. Grant might reach. For the present he was ordered to his room, to which he submissively went, attended by Bertha, though he was fully resolved not to be "taken care of;" for he understood this to mean a place in the workhouse or the penitentiary. ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic

... had been leading a happy and an increasingly comfortable life,—no scrapes, and no dangers; and here, on a sudden, I had presented to me the alternative of saving a wretch from the gallows, or of spending unlimited years in a State penitentiary. As for the money, it became as dead leaves for this once only in my life. My brain seemed to be spinning in its case; lights came and went before my eyes. In my ears were the sounds of waters. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... try honest work? It's not so bad, they say, once you get broke in." He rose and shook hands with Feuerstein. "So long," he said. "Good luck! Don't forget!" And again he winked and waggled his thumb in the direction of the penitentiary. ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips

... name is Tom Jackson; he is a noted gambler and forger, has been convicted of manslaughter and other crimes, sent to the penitentiary and pardoned out. He hates me because I have exposed his evil deeds, and prevented the carrying out of some of his wicked designs. He has before this threatened both our lives. He is about your height ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley

... are to visit the penitentiary. Dear me," and in a kind of absent way, Mrs. Worthington took Hugh's arm, and the party proceeded on their way to the huge building known as the Frankfort Penitentiary. Hugh was well acquainted with the keeper, ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes

... arguments, a taut crowd, and sudden and overwhelming new testimony. Actually, the trial occupied less than fifteen minutes, largely filled with the evidence of doctors that Zilla would recover and that Paul must have been temporarily insane. Next day Paul was sentenced to three years in the State Penitentiary and taken off—quite undramatically, not handcuffed, merely plodding in a tired way beside a cheerful deputy sheriff—and after saying good-by to him at the station Babbitt returned to his office to realize that he faced a world which, ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... And then suddenly it seemed to change, that face, and become wreathed in smiles, and happy tears to run coursing down the wrinkled cheeks. Yes, she remembered! It had brought the tears to her own eyes. It was the night that the wayward Sparrow, home from the penitentiary, on his knees, his head buried in his mother's lap, had sworn that he would ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... may be necessary for us to refresh the readers' mind of the fact that Ed Butler of St. Louis, Mo., is considered one of the most high-handed "boodlers" in America, and who has had a number of his "dupes" placed in the state penitentiary and kept himself out of the same institution by a "technicality." But to go back to the point that we wanted to make, we will just say that a Catholic priest in the City of St. Louis by the name of Coffey had a falling out with Butler over some thing or another, and in order to get ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg

... went to Mansfield, and, on the 12th of April, to Cincinnati, to witness the inauguration of my friend, Amor Smith, Jr., as mayor of that city. He had fought and overcome the grossest frauds that had been or could be committed by penitentiary convicts. A crowd gathered around his residence, which, with those of his neighbors, was brilliantly illuminated. The Blaine club, headed by a band and followed by many citizens, filled his yard. His house was full of his personal friends. After music ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... He was to be confined at the Penitentiary at Millbank for six months. 'The offence,' said the judge, 'of which you have been found guilty, and of which you most certainly have been guilty, is one most prejudicial to the interests of the community. That trust which the weaker of mankind should ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... tyrant to the commune. It was the rod of Aaron staying the plague of barbarism. It was the sceptre of the veldt. It drew blood, it ate human flesh, it secured order where there was no law, and it did the work of prison and penitentiary. It was the symbol of authority ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... of the inspection, Foresta now said in a confidential tone: "Dave died in the penitentiary. He and a white man got in a fight. Dave killed him in self-defense. Dave could have come clear, but it wouldn't have done any good. He would have been lynched. His lawyers advised him to take a twenty years' sentence to satisfy the clamor, and said they ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... of today is a pilgrimage; I have come to lay my eyes once more upon the place which saw the birth of the liveliest impressions of my early days. I bow, in passing, to the old college where I tried my prentice hand as a teacher. Its appearance is unchanged; it still looks like a penitentiary. Those were the views of our mediaeval educational system. To the gaiety and activity of boyhood, which were considered unwholesome, it applied the remedy of narrowness, melancholy and gloom. Its houses of instruction were, ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... you can't. It wasn't what you think at all; so there. Caroline had no wedding-ring because she had thrown it away in bitterness, as she tramped the streets of the great city. "Why," she cried, "should the wife of a man in the penitentiary wear a ring." ...
— Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock

... beginning to make use of a mass of data furnished by physiology, psychology, and sociology, and on the basis of these data to subject prisoners to individualized treatment. Instead of herding all offenders into a single institution such as the county jail or the penitentiary, we are beginning to inquire, first of all, whether the prisoner might not be treated most effectively outside prison walls. For those offenders who seem to require institutional treatment, we are developing a whole series of institutions, designed ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson

... lady, "that Penrod hasn't much chance to escape the penitentiary if he doesn't? Well, we do learn to restrain ourselves in some things; and there are people who really want someone else to take the last cookie, though they aren't very common. But it's all right, ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington

... Guess that ain't doin'—anyway. I'm sousing all the liquor I can get my hooks on, an' it's all the sweeter because of you boys. Outside my duty to the railroad company I wouldn't raise a finger to stop a gallon of good rye comin' into town, no, not if the penitentiary was yearnin' to ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum

... and more sensational facts are expected to develop at the preliminary hearing, which will take place tomorrow morning. In case Armstrong is bound over to the Grand Jury, and convicted, he may get a heavy fine and as much as five years in a Federal penitentiary. He is described as being a surly, low type, reticent and vindictive, of vicious characteristics and mentally defective. The local Socialists have already taken up arms in his defense, ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England

... only get him turned off, I won't mind his hitting me," thought James. "I hope to see him in the penitentiary some day. It would ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger



Words linked to "Penitentiary" :   penitence, pen, punitive, penitential, penitent, punitory, correctional institution, repentant



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