Riot in the Big House

In the heart of Trenton's south-side industrial district stands New Jersey's prison for the state's toughest criminals --a block of ancient, dilapidated buildings crowded inside a 20-ft. red stone wall. It has long been a smoldering trouble spot, as well as an eyesore, in Trenton (pop. 128,000). Last week, for the third time in less than a month, the trouble spot burst into revolt. Just before the noon meal 69 convicts rioted, grabbed four hostages and barricaded themselves in the prison print shop.

There was no attempt at escape. Instead, the mutineers (led by August Doak, a kidnaper and reportedly a former member of Detroit's notorious Purple Gang, and William Dickens, a robber and alumnus of Sing Sing) settled down with cards and dominoes, chocolates, crackers and coffee (from a secretly hoarded supply), and worried about how the Yankees were doing. Through an open window, Ringleader Dickens presented the rioters' demands. "We're not asking for no hotel," he said. But the convicts wanted a full investigation of prison food and the prisoners' complaints of brutal treatment. Fearful for the safety of the hostages, officials decided to wait for hunger and thirst to break the revolt.

Shambles at the Farm. Two days later the revolt spread 37 miles north to Rahway State Prison Farm, a converted reformatory holding an overflow of lesser toughs from the Trenton prison. At Rahway the riot was bigger, and wilder. Eighteen guards were on duty in the wing of one dormitory where the trouble started. As the convicts began rioting, tearing bedding and overturning steel bunks, guards on the first floor got out, herding 75 prisoners ahead of them. Nine other guards were grabbed as hostages by 231 convicts, who barricaded themselves on the second floor.

The dormitory was turned to a shambles. The convicts piled huge stacks of bedding on the dormitory floor and set fire to them. The flames soon smoldered out. They hooted and jeered at the heavily armed guards and state troopers quickly assembled in the prison yard below. The Rahway rioters dramatized their grievances by posting them on crudely lettered bedsheets hung from the dormitory windows: "Stop Beating Cons." "We Want a New Parole Board." "Tell the Truth--We Have Radios."*

Message from the Window. As the hours dragged by, the rioters quieted.. Food and water supplies at both Trenton and Rahway gave out. The men drained stale water from fire hoses, broke radiators to draw off their rusty water. On the third day at Trenton, officials agreed to an investigation by the Osborne Association, a private organization interested in prison welfare. The next morning, after 77 hours of siege, the Trenton convicts gave up.

At Rahway, the convicts, leaderless and disorganized, held on. But the end was foreshadowed by another bedsheet hung from a window. It bore a plaintive, one-word message: "Water."

News of the New Jersey prison revolts spread quickly through prisons around the country, increasing tension everywhere. This week Southern Michigan State Prison at Jackson, 75 miles west of Detroit, exploded. Almost 200 of the prison's toughest convicts went wild in a disciplinary isolation block. Holding four guards as hostages, they wrecked their cell block, smashing everything in sight. Then, led by a robber named "Crazy" Jack Hyatt and an auto thief named Earl Ward, the rioting cons forced their way into other sections of the prison. They captured six more guards, swelled their forces to more than 2,500 with other released prisoners, some from hospital wards for the mentally dangerous.

Seizing control of half the prison yard and adjoining buildings, they burned down the laundry building, set fires in three others. Guards and state police surrounded the rioters with machine guns and shotguns. Shouting defiance across the prison yard, Ward held a knife at a guard's back as Crazy Jack warned: "We'll toss out a dead hostage if you start shooting." But as flying wedges of guards and troopers moved in, one convict was killed and eight others wounded under orders to shoot to kill if necessary.

* The "radios" were crystal sets fashioned from bits of wire, smuggled crystals and makeshift diaphragms. Though primitive, the sets easily picked up broadcasts from a nearby transmitter tower of Manhattan's station WOR.

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