It was a hard life for the inmates incarcerated in the first state prison on Tremont Street in Concord.
The prison, built in 1812, didn’t have enough funding through the Legislature to keep the men alive, so it operated on a model of contract labor. Inmates spent their days working, employed as blacksmiths, stonecutters, weavers, tailors and shoemakers. They worked from sunrise to sunset, ate meals in silence and returned their cells (which were lit by candlelight until 1910).
“The only activity they were allowed to do was to work,” said Milli Knudsen, a genealogist and author of the book “Hard Times in Concord, New Hampshire,” which documents the crimes, victims and lives of state prison inmates from 1812 to 1883. “They were given a set amount of time to eat; it was all highly supervised.”
The prison menu featured things like brown bread, cold corn beef, stewed peas with pork, fish hash, and Indian pudding. Prisoners complained about a lack of vegetables. Physician reports from the time indicated a prevalence of bowel disorders, diarrhea and dysentery among prisoners, especially in the autumn and spring.
The prison itself, a three-story wing of granite block cells, had poor ventilation and no central heating. The ventilation ducts from inpidual cells were vented into the attic above, though there was no way for clean air to get back. Rats inhabited the air flues and “nightly gorge themselves with the blood of suffering convicts,” a committee investigating prison abuse reported in the 1830s.
Knudsen recalled the story of a man from Nottingham whose legs needed amputation after he was placed in solitary confinement. The man was put on granite floors in the basement of the prison, which was flooded with water.
“He tried to tell people there was water down here and no one paid attention,” she said.
Winters at the prison were especially awful, she said. The prisoners were each given a blanket at night, though each cell had a hole in the wall. Prisoners had to decide whether to stuff the blanket in the hole or bunk with another inmate to stay warm.
“It took an awful amount of cooperation just to stay alive, frankly,” Knudsen said.
