Eastern State Penitentiary

A couple of days ago we went on a tour of the world's first true penitentiary - a prison designed to inspire true penitence - regret - in the hearts of criminals! It was fascinating! Some of the most famous criminals were sent here - the above picture is "Scareface" Al Copone's room! It's said that he was able to listen to the radio - his door was seldom closed - he came to prison on his own because it safer for him to be inside then on the outside!!

It was designed with indoor plumbing - toilets and sinks in each cell (which were private) so that criminals rarely left there cell! The thing that's fascinating is that even the white house and warden's room didn't have indoor plumbing at this time! The prison operated in almost complete silence and was open until the early 1970's!

What a depressing place to be!! I can't imagine! One of the only items they were given was a Bible - I was impressed with this thinking! Maybe if prison wasn't such a desirable place to be we wouldn't have so many people in there?!

You can see that there were wings with two levels and some with only one! Here's a room with two beds (look different then Al Copone's room?) - they started out only with single rooms and then incorporated double rooms later! Here's where they played baseball - the criminals weren't allowed to yell or laugh because they didn't want people on the outside to think they were having fun!!
*On our way home we were in a hurry for Mike and Jeriah to get to their meeting at 12:30 - we got pulled over for going 90 mph!! We were in a 55 mph zone - we also had Bo and Vince double buckled in the back seat, Jeriah wasn't wearing a seatbelt and Archie (who was quite upset) wasn't in his car seat! We could have had to spend our life savings on tickets - guess what?! NO TICKET! Just a mad officer who told us to SLOW DOWN!