9/5/1930 - Mostly forgotten now, just twelve days before his sixty-fifth birthday, after serving forty-five years behind bars, the once most wanted outlaw in the United States, ladies man, blind poet, escape artist, and train robber extraordinaire, Oliver Curtis Perry, dies of complications brought on by a hernial operation that took place three days before at New York's Dannemora State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.
Perry
Thousands of miles away from where the criminal antics of the James-Younger gang, the Sam Bass Gang, the Dalton gang, the Oklahombres of Bill Doolin, the Wild Bunch, the Ketchum brothers, the Sontag brothers, and Henry Starr will operate, a new charismatic desperado introduces himself to the world with the successful robbery of the "American Express Special" as the New York Central freight train makes a night run through New York State's Mohawk Valley. Made of cars owned by different companies and carrying no passengers, the money car "American Express Special" is made up of a large rectangle of wood with solid doors at each end, and sliding windowed panel doors on each side. Within, the car is divided by crossways partitions into three compartments, the central carrying specie or cash from the United States Treasury bound for western banks, along with bonds, jewellery, and other valuables, in four large safes and multiple sacks protected by an armed American Express messenger who also deals with a huge assortment of paperwork. On the Tuesday evening of September 29, 1891, the messenger handling the guard duties is railroad veteran Burt Moore. Everything seems normal as the train moves into the darkness of the canyons east of Utica, New York (the town gets electrical lighting in 1888), but then the run to Albany suddenly grinds to a halt. Investigating what has stopped the run, railroad employees jump down from the last car and moving forward along the tracks, discover that someone has cut the air brake hose at the rear of the money car and robbed Moore of somewhere between $20,000 and $100,000 in cash, bonds, and jewellery. Wearing a red hood with slashes cut for his eyes and mouth, and armed with two pistols, the outlaw has drilled a small hole in the door of the money car to secretly observe Moore checking waybills, then gained access to the car by sawing out an opening fifteen inches square in the door. After firing a round past Moore's head to put the messenger in a responsive mood, the outlaw pours a variety of booty into a large bag he is carrying over his shoulder, then while keeping a gun trained on Moore, moves himself and the bag out of the car, cuts the brake line, and as the train gradually slows down to a stop, vanishes into the darkness, single-handily taking down one of the richest and busiest railroads in the nation.
The Special
After going on to Utica, word quickly passes up and down the line thanks to telegrams sent by the local police to American Express and the railroad company that the "Special" has been robbed, and soon the area is filled with railroad detectives, local police, newsmen, and various armed parties all seeking the culprit. In turn, American Express hires the Pinkerton Detective Agency to bring in the guilty party, with the direction of the search being led by agency director Robert Pinkerton and the head of the agency's New York offices, George Bangs (for the duration of the hunt the detectives work out of offices in Utica) who not easily impressed by criminal antics nonetheless states to William Pinkerton "The man that committed the train robbery here is one of the nerviest I heard of. There are few if any men who possess the daredevil courage to accomplish what this train robber did yesterday." The hunt for the daredevil" will be the biggest manhunt in the region in over two decades. Clues missing and dead ends everywhere, a picture of the robber and the robbery begin to develop when five days after the crime, a couple of local men picking ink-berries in Bordon's Grove stumble upon a cache of money and bond wrappers, along with empty money envelopes, packages, and jewellery boxes as well as large cotton bags marked as belonging to the "Am. Ex. Co." Coupled to physical clues, a local farmer, Erving Vance, and his ten-year-old son relate to authorities a tale of a stranger showing up at their farm on the night of the robbery pretending to being drunk while asking directions to the local farm of Holmes Rider (and paying for the info with bills off a big roll of money the stranger pulls out of his pocket). And the man's description matches the crook's looks that Burt Moore spent part of his evening with. The authorities finally have a name and face for the desperado responsible when a member of the railroad crew, Frank Stacy, testifies that he witnessed the robber jump off the train ... and that the man looked like a former New York Central Railroad colleague named Oliver Curtis Perry. Bingo!
American Express Traveler's Check
Robert Pinkerton & George Bangs
The East Coast version of Jesse James (if his background stories are to be believed), Oliver Curtis Perry, is born in upper state New York at the Mohawk Valley township Ephratah (named for a biblical town now in Israel, during Perry's time there it will be known as the Irish Settlement) on September 17, 1865 (four months after the American Civil War ends at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia), one of thirteen children born into the Perry household. Little is known about his childhood beyond his life will be a struggle from birth (his mother is only 15 at the time of his birth) and he will claim to be a distant relative of early American naval hero, Oliver Hazard Perry (the winner of ten naval battles during the War of 1812 for control of the Great Lakes ... and for the words he sends to General and future President, William Henry Harrison, after winning the Battle of Lake Erie, that "We have met the enemy and they are ours, two ships, two brigs, one schooner, and one sloop.") and wealthy New York City financier August Belmont (the German-American that has his name attached to the thoroughbred horse racing track, Belmont Park, and the third and final gallop for the Triple Crown each year at the Belmont Stakes). Living in abject poverty, Perry is abandoned by his mother, Mary Allen, when he is just a child, and when his father, a contractor in Syracuse, remarries, his new bride Sarah is again only 15, and when she becomes pregnant, the youth finds himself rejected by his step-mother. His grandmother cares for the youngster for a time, but unfortunately for Perry dies later in the year. At first, no other relatives are willing to take on the responsibility of raising the lad and he is fending for himself by the time he is 10, using his wits and charm to survive, but he ends up in an orphan asylum anyway where he is often bullied and beaten. Tired of his helplessness, he leaves the Mohawk Valley while still a youth and goes west where he finds railroad work (first though there is stop in Luce, Minnesota to stay on the woodland farm with his aunt Mary and Uncle Edward, while also working in their small general store), but is back in New York by the time he is 14.
Perry At The Battle Of Lake Erie
Belmont
In November of 1881, Perry is arrested in the eastern Mohawk Valley city of Amsterdam for stealing a new suit of clothes from a man at the railroad. Arrested, placed in jail, tried and found guilty of the charges brought against him in the course of a long weekend, Perry is sent to a relatively new prison for children, the horribly named Western House of Refuge. Built on 42 acres of land just north of the growing town of Rochester, Perry will find no refuge at the institution where convict kids work an 8-hour day for local farms and businesses, and then spend their non-working hours honing their vocational and literary skills in cells often lacking toilets and paper. Like many that spend time there, Perry discovers a locale rife with lots of rules and lots of physical (beatings will be administered by way of rulers, paddles, fists, feet, strops, and sticks, with kids getting a special treat by have their noses and ears twisted with a uniquely designed key), psychological, and sexual abuse from both fellow inmates, and the keepers of the institution ("trouble-makers will also find themselves on a diet of bread and water and placed in "dark" cells while in solitary confinement). Only fifteen at the time, Perry is only 4'11" and a quarter inches tall and weighs less than 92 pounds ... a hard to miss target for bullies. Tormented beyond restraint, Perry responds by breaking as many rules as he can, and when pushed too far, fights with a savagery that can result in the death of an opponent. Tired of the trouble that seems to be drawn to Perry like a magnet, the authorities at the Refuge request their charge be transferred to the men's penitentiary at Monroe, and on March 7, 1883, the move takes place. Once at Monroe, Perry becomes a problem again, attacking the man responsible for the prison's shoe shop (a guard he was formerly friendly with named Kelly), twice with a skiving knife used for trimming leather after being publicly reprimanded by the guard. After being treated for stab wound to his stomach after his second fight with Kelly, Perry is placed in solitary confinement for the rest of his sentence. He is released from the Monroe institution on March 15, 1885. He leaves captivity with a range of skills that include shoe-making, lock-picking, improvising weapons, and fighting to win at any cost, he also finds out he can influence and manipulate others with his story telling ... and he develops a deep hatred of being confined and for complying with authority.
The Western House Of Refuge
Making another attempt to find a life he can live without getting into trouble, Perry finds work at a Rochester shoe store, but finds the labor too confining and difficult, and after four months he gives his notice and heads back to Minnesota, where he gets in trouble again participating in the robbery of his uncle's store. Sentenced to two years of hard labor at the Minnesota state penitentiary at Stillwater, an institution of confinement that is also the home of model prisoners that once struck terror up and down the Mississippi river corridor after the end of the Civil War, Jesse James' riding mates, Cole, Jim, and Bob Younger. Keeping his rebelliousness somewhat in check, Perry is released in the summer of 1888 at the age of 22. Fueled by fantasies he weaves out of the tales of old time convicts, Perry heads further west and continues his education as a fighter and thief. Over the course of the next couple of years, Perry finds the time to do some cowboying in New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, and south of the border in Mexico (there is a supposed plan to join up with Matamoros revolutionary Catarino Erasmo Garza), participates in a number of robberies, and falls in love on a New Mexico ranch
Returning to New York in an attempt to make himself into a suitable husband for his love, Perry's world instead comes apart.as he settles in the town of Troy. At the Helping Hand mission he meets Miss Amelia Haswell, who becomes his secondary "mother" for the rest of his life. Convinced her new friend deserves a second chance at a respected life, Haswell lets Perry room in her home as he goes to work as a brakeman for the local railroad company, the Fitchburg which runs a railroad line from Troy, New York to North Adams, Massachusetts (a talent that will come in handy later, part of the job entails running along the tops of moving train cars to reach the brakes between them). Trying hard to be a "good" person, Perry gives up drinking and swearing (along with his attachment to opium), joins the Young Men's Christian Association, and becomes a much in demand charismatic speaker that loves reading the Bible and singing hymns. At Fitchburg he also learns to hate the Pinkerton Detective Agency as he witnesses their "detectives" violently break up a strike; and it is with Fitchburg that knocked off a train passing through the Hoosick tunnel and is forced into a long hospital stay, that when over, sees the brakeman dismissed from his duties. His church friends find him another railroad job, but this time inside the trains, but Perry shows very little pleasure in his new work, which comes as he is discovering his New Mexican love has passed away from cancer. And so it is that Perry decides to vent some of his rancour on plucking a bit of cash from the coffers of the American Express Company. His wanted poster for the Pinkertons will state that Perry is 26 years old, stands 5'6" tall, weighs about 130 pounds, has dark brown hair and brown eyes, sports a sandy moustache, and has a three-inch-long scar on the upper part of his forehead, along with scars above the right nipple of his chest, with another on his left arm. The notice also mentions Perry liking to wear dark clothing, gloves, and is very particular about keeping his hands clean.
Locomotive of the Fitchburg Railroad
Pinkerton Wanted Poster
On his second robbery of the Special, Perry comes aboard at the train's Syracuse stop. Making his way over the roofs of the train's freight cars, when the robber arrives at the platform of the money car, he puts on the same red hood he'd previously used, arms himself with two Colt .44s and two small derringers (he also is carrying a cartridge belt), before climbing down to a windowed door at one end of the car (the train moving along at 50 mph, Perry is almost killed when the wiping winds about the cars almost pull the rope he is hanging from into a passing bridge stanchion). Thirty minutes after pulling out of Syracuse, messenger Daniel McInerney is startled when he hears glass breaking, and turns as he grabs his pistol ro see a gun pointed his way as a harsh voice demanding, "Hands up!" A split second later both men fire their weapons at each other. While McInerney's round misses, Perry's aim is better and his shot hits the messenger's gun, sending the revolver flying over McInerney's shoulder as the bullet breaks the man's fingers and shatters his wrist. Knowing he is at a severe disadvantage, the messenger kicks out wildly with his leg and sends the car into darkness when he kick's over the lamp lighting his work station in the car ... an act that is rewarded by a bullet being sent his way that grazes his temple and then a round that strikes the messenger in the thigh. Climbing through the broken window, Perry brings light back into the car by firing several waybills as he demands McInerney give him the money from the car's safes. He is unamused when the messenger tells him that another train is carrying the money and he has only jewellery and silverware among the goods he is protecting. Robbery falling apart, Perry sends a bulle by the head of train conductor Emil Laas when the men tries to slow the train. Approaching Port Byron there is no choice however in slowing up as they have been signalled to do so to let a coal train pass. Perry uses the slowing to swing up to the roof of the express car, pack his rope away, and then jump down the side of the car away from the approaching conductor. Hiding nearby, Perry quickly puts together a new escape plan, putting on his hat and eyeglasses, the outlaw climbs back aboard the Special after it has been searched as it begins chugging towards its next stop, the nearby village of Lyons. Slipping off the train unseen again as it enters Lyons, carrying a valise with his crime tools inside, the cool bandit saunters up to the train platform in the depot as if he is there to buy a ticket or meet a passenger. Escape seemingly within reach, Perry instead experiences a criminal "almost" moment when Laas, talking to other railroad men about the robbery as the train is refueled, notices a well dressed man loitering on the platform that matches a man he saw earlier in the night at the Syracuse station. Quickly putting the information together, he reasons that it would be impossible for the man to be there unless he is really the train robber. Rushing towards Perry with the men he was talking to, the correctness of his judgment of the situation is verified when the suspect pulls his pistols from the valise and orders the men to stay back.
Colt .44
Quickly adjusting to his situation, Perry spots a west-bound coal train waiting for the signal that it can pull out of the railroad yard. Making his way over to the vehicle, Perry orders the engineer and fireman out of the cab of the engine, pulls open the throttle, blows the train's whistle four times to signify his departure, and heads west out of the station. Moments behind him, now armed with a double-barrelled shotgun, Laas and a group of men follow in the Express engine. Realizing he can not win a race with the faster Express engine, halfway along the ten-mile run of the rails from Lyons to Newark, Perry slams on the engines brakes and reverses direction, headed back at his pursuer and initiating a gun battle between the two trains. Out of ammo after firing the shotgun at Perry several times and reluctant to face the outlaw unarmed, the Express heads back to Lyons. Temporarily free of his tormentors and knowing that authorities in Newark will be waiting at the town's depot, he abandons the coal train near the village of Blue Cut (a startled switchman working on the line nearby is ordered to take the train on into Lyons) and heads into the heavy snow drifts that have been building up in the area for ten weeks. Behind him, four groups set off in pursuit of the train bandit ... a group of farmers on horseback, in sleighs, in buggies and in carts (alerted when Perry, claiming he is chasing a group of three train robbers, "borrows" a horse at gunpoint from Samuel Goetzman and his wife, and after the horse becomes played out, a sleigh from Swedish farmer Frederick Beal), members of the Rochester and Newark police forces, a posse out of the town of Lyons, and a group of Pinkerton agents, over fifty men in all seeking a $1,000 payday for the outlaw's capture. Doing his best to keep the authorities off his tail, from time to time Perry sends lead slugs the way of his pursuers, but eventually a bold local youth named Charlie Burnett forces Perry to turn up a log road that heads into a Wayne County area named Benton's Swamp.
Lyons Train Station
Only a few hundred yards into the swamp, Perry is forced to abandon Beal's sleigh and wades through the ice cold waters of the bog. Exhausted by the hours of pursuit, numb with cold and soaked to the skin, unable to go further, the bandit reaches the far side of the swamp and takes position behind a collapsing stone wall, hoping he can hold out until night and then slip away in the darkness. Perry though is at the physical limits of his endurance and at around noon, he calls out to his hunters, "Is there an officer in the crowd?" "I am," shouts back Lyons Deputy Sheriff Jeremiah Collins. Laying down his gun, Collins makes his way over to Perry, where the tired outlaw places his gun on the stone wall and then begins quizzing the man on whether McInerney has survived the previous night's robbery and whether the two men can come up with a means whereby Perry can surrender peacefully. But Collins isn't the type of lawman to let a bandit's decisions rule the day. Distracted by a noise for only a moment, the couple of seconds the lawman is given when Perry turns his head to see what caused the sound, so Collins knocks Perry's pistol into the snow, then leaps on the outlaw (seconds after Perry tells the lawman, "If I give up, it means spending all my life in prison. Liberty is sweet to me and I'll sell it dear."). In the wrestling match that follows, Collins is eventually able to pin down Perry and then get a set of handcuffs on the man. Over and out it would seem, the most notorious man in the country is brought to Lyons to face charges and get sent to prison ... but the drama surrounding Perry is just beginning.
Collins Later In Life
The twin robberies, the gun battle between moving trains, coupled to his thwarted escape combine to make Perry into the nation's latest celebrity criminal (the press will declare that Perry's latest robbery had "outdone" the work of Jesse James), a villainous daredevil with a sensitive soul, and as the press, lawmen, and public (Perry is a major hit with young boys and romantic females of all shapes and ages, some that will come to his cell bearing books, flowers, fruit, and a variety of candies and other treats) flood into Lyons and the 24-cell Wayne County Jail (a local entrepreneur will sell supposed souvenirs from the duel of the two trains ... lots and lots and lots of bent bullets and shards of shattered glass that never have their provence proven), the outlaw does his best to put everyone at ease with tales of his Wild West antics, time in Mexico, and how the railroad and Pinkertons have wronged him, while all the while planning his early exit from incarceration. Upon being charged with shooting at an engine and second degree assault on the freight train's engineer, Perry will pled not guilty to his latest robbery and ask Justice Theodore Fries that he be allowed to represent himself.
Wayne County Courthouse & Jail
Among the visitors gathering at the courthouse daily is Perry's father, Oliver, who brings his son oranges to eat. He is also found to be carrying a drawing by his son of a key he wants made that will allow him to leave his cell. In response to the finding, the outlaw's ankles will be placed in iron shackles linked by an eight-inch long chain, and his father will be banned from the jail (through the father, the authorities also get their hands on a satchel belonging to Perry, a treasure trove of clues and more questions.that includes an expensively bound 1891 Bible, a leather case containing religious pamphlets and cards, a red railroad emergency flag, a long-blade Butcher's knife, smoked-glass spectacles, a harmonica, a small collection of photographs of women that includes one believed to be that of his dead sweetheart wrapped in a lock of her dark hair, a buckskin bag containing Mexican coins and two pieces of gold wire, a Spanish-English phrase book published in Mexico City, and in a glass jar, the severed ear of a black man that Perry took as a lark while committing a nighttime visit to a medical dissecting room. Countering the tales of a religious youth destroyed by the loss of his soulmate are the tales the Pinkertons tell of the robber, accounts that have the man pulling off crimes in Deming, New Mexico, Flagstaff and Tucson, Arizona, and El Paso, Texas, running a swindling business in Philadelphia, robbing a man in California, conning clergymen in Canada, and killing a Montana saloon keeper in a barroom brawl, along with a bevy of workingmen's daughters and fine ladies claiming that Perry made them all romantic promises before abandoning them. Crazily, Robinson's Musee-Theater in Rochester, New York soon begins presenting a show featuring a wax figure of Perry dressed in his outlaw apparel (general admission is 10 cents, a show seat goes for 15 cents, and boxes are available for a quarter). Not happy with not getting a portion of the show's profits, Robinson will eventually pull the plug on the endeavor, and the bandit exhibit will be replaced by "Professor Dick's EDUCATED FLEAS," and an appearance by "Angola, the Only Living Gorilla in America."
The Pinkerton Logo
Solidifying what the Pinkertons have tried to tell the public about Perry's outlaw ways, Sheriff Walter Thornton will catch the bandit trying to open the corridor door at the jail with a homemade wooden key, escape tools that include lead foil, pieces of wire, more tools will be found in an enlarged rat hole, a small saw is discovered concealed in his Bible that the thief has used to cut off his leg irons, a sharpened steel strip from a boot will be found in cells near Perry's barred home (another prisoner has betrayed the robber's escape equipment), and forced to strip, the outlaw's robbery clothing is found to contain five fifty dollar bills sewn into the bandit's waistband and collar. In reaction, Sheriff Thornton will have Perry placed in a cell that is only six feet by four feet and contains a solid door, outside of which there is a watchman on duty each day and night. There will be no more mixing with members of the press and public and all of Perry's meals will be eaten in his cell. Once jovial conning all the rubes into believing he is actually a nice guy, Perry begins showing a darker side to his personality after his escape plans are thwarted ... when not interested in talking to someone, the outlaw will simply face the wall in his cell until the disturbing person has withdrawn, and sometimes he will hide all but his eyes behind a white, silk handkerchief. He also becomes a problem child for his keepers, especially Deputy Sheriff Collins, the man that captured him. The deputy sheriff will catch Perry trying to break out of his leg shackles by dropping his legs over and over again on his iron bedstead. He hurls heavy earthenware that he has hoarded over time after meals at guards he does not like, and Deputy Sheriff Collins only keeps the contents of Perry's lavatory bucket off himself by pointing a revolver at the outlaws head everytime he comes within spitting distance of the train robber's cell.
The Town Of Lyons
The outlaw's Grand Jury hearing begins on Tuesday, May 17, 1892 and features more than forty witnesses testifying over two days. On the 19th, Perry is formally arraigned in front of an overflow crowd, but there is now a surprising change to how Perry pleads after spending time talking to his "mother,' Miss Haswell. Indicted for burglary, robbery, attempted robbery, assault, and discharging a firearm at a locomotive, to each charge Perry utters a simple one word response ... "Guilty." On Perry's okay, the presiding trial judge, William Rumsey (a future state Supreme Court justice), waives the two day wait period before sentencing and the bandit is given five years in prison for the first indictment, twenty years on the indictment's second count, five years on the second indictment, ten years on the third indictment, and nine years and three months on the fourth indictment, and the hard labor punishments run consecutively instead of concurrently, meaning Perry can expect to serve 49-years and three months behind bars, with potential time off for good behavior, his release is scheduled for October 13, 1921 when the outlaw will be 56. On Friday morning in front of most of the citizenry of Lyons (it takes twenty minutes to get through the crowd and aboard the train heading east to the state prison at Auburn, New York), Perry travels to his new home, arriving around lunch time (in a nice gesture, Sheriff Thornton briefly dupes the Auburn crowd by sending forth a guard, guarded by guards, that is supposed to be Perry, while the lawman and the actual robber head to a local restaurant for one last grand meal before he begins his incarceration).
Judge Rumsey
The second state prison to be built in New York (behind New York City's Newgate facility), Auburn opens in 1818 and soon is the known for the penal methods of the 19th century that become notorious as "The Auburn System" (it is also called the "New York System" or "Congregate System which most of the prisons in the United States soon adopt). It is a system built around the belief that prisoner rehabilitation is possible and can be reached by mixing hard labor with prayer, contemplation, career studies, and strict adherence to a set of rules that has the convict population in individual cells, segregated by the offense each man has been found guilty of, wearing striped uniforms (which also identify the type of crime committed), with everyone also wearing close cropped haircuts and having their mustaches and beards removed by a barber on their first day of residence. Assigned to one of the prison's shops, the men are forced to work to support the institution and for a small stipend that can be put away for the future. Work and meals are both communal, but a strict policy of silence is harshly enforced at all times. And movement within the prison is by lockstep, a form of travel in which the men move together in a shuffle with their heads bowed and a hand on the shoulder of the man in front of them. Discipline is often enforced by restricting foods from the convicts, and by placing miscreants in a solitary confinement of dungeon dark cells that can drive a man mad. The institution already found harrowing after decades of operation (the first execution of a convict by means of an electric chair takes place at the prison on August 6, 1890), Perry takes being sent there as a challenge and falls into his trouble-maker modus operandi all over again.
Entrance Building At Auburn
Just weeks after becoming a convict at Auburn, Perry gets into a fight with a prisoner named John Bender that is serving a life sentence. Quarrelling at dinner in front of most of the prison population, Perry produces two knives, one of which he throws at Bender, the other with which he challenges his opponent when the thrown blade doesn't hit meat. Argument stopped by Principal Keeper James Shaw before anyone is hurt, Perry is given nine nights in one of the institutions dungeon cells ... fun little holding pens where guests are placed behind a barred door, that then has a solid oak door locked over the bars that produces complete darkness that does not allow the resident to see the stone walls, ceiling, and floor are covered in vermin. Sleep takes place on the floor (if at all), men are stripped of their clothes during the duration of their punishment, the cold comes close to being unbearable, and once a day a meal is served consisting of a piece of bread weighing no more than two ounces, washed down by two ounces of water from a tin cup. The usual verbose Perry comes out of the experience in an extremely docile condition, but it is a sham because a few days later, the convict is missing from his cell and can't be located. Thought to be sleeping in his bed, it is discovered that the form under a blanket is just pillows and clothing and that Perry has dug through the 12-inch-thick wall into the cell next to his and vacated the unlocked unit while its occupant was at his daily work for the prison. Loose in the prison's yard, he hides in an outhouse waiting for darkness to fall so he can make a climb over the wall. Unfortunately for the outlaw, he is seen by a guard making his way between the foundry and the collar shop. Escape over when a warning shot is fired just above his head, Perry comes to a halt near the pearl button shop, where he is immediately assaulted by another guard that hits the prisoner over the head with his heavy night stick so hard that the weapon breaks in two. Bleeding and unconscious Perry's wounds are washed and dressed, and then because they are not to be deemed major injuries, the robber is brought back to the basement for more dungeon treatment, and since nine days didn't work the first time, his second stay in hell will for twenty-five nights ... beginning at once (and Perry loses nine years, eleven months, and four days of his "good time"for his actions). Over the next few months, having declared war on the prison and his keepers, Perry is put back in solitary for "insolence and threats to the night guard" and "for striking a keeper."
The News
The Auburn Electric Chair
Briefly, when he is given a job in the foundry, it appears Perry might settle down and come to terms with his situation, but it is just the volcano resting between eruptions. Believing that Principal Keeper James Shaw is responsible for the severity of the punishments that have come his way and that if he doesn't kill the man, Shaw will certainly kill Perry. Getting ahold of a file, the outlaw grinds the piece of metal into a knife and when he crosses paths with the man at the next dinner, he grabs the weapon out of his pocket and tries to stab Shaw. One chance only, Shaw just escapes the slashing blade and Perry is overpowered by the staff on hand and then drug back to the dungeons where he is subdued by being blasted over and over again with wet bursts from a high pressure water hose. This time he is given a punishment of over six weeks, 44 days in the hole. When he comes out of solitary a final time, it is obvious to both the authorities and his fellow convicts, that Perry's mind has snapped and he is now insane. Worried that it will only be a matter of time before Perry kills someone, the warden calls for a formal medical examination of the prisoner be made by the penitentiary's physician, Dr. Conant Sawyer, and a specialist in "brain diseases," Dr. Frederick Sefton. A done deal when Perry confesses to having hallucinations, after twenty months at Auburn, on Wednesday, December 27, 1893, the convict is officially declared insane and orders are drawn up for him to be transferred to the Matteawan Asylum for Insane Criminals.
Matteawan
Located on 246 acres of what was once the Dates Farm between the Hudson River and the Fishkill Mountains, the Matteawan Asylum for Insane Criminals (its name will be changed the following year to the simpler Matteawan State Hospital) opens in April of 1892 with a population of 261 patients (it is built to house 550 individuals). On December 28, 1893, escorted by three guards, Perry becomes a resident of the asylum the day after he is declared insane. On arriving, Perry will shake hands with the doctor in charge of the institution, 42-year-old Dartmouth College graduate Dr. Henry Edward Allison, while stating, "You are a man and a gentlemen. I can tell it by looking at you. I am glad to come here if you are in charge, for I know you will treat me well. You have a kindly face; you have no idea how different it is from those I have left. My God, I hope I never have to go back there again, to be beaten and starved and poisoned." Hoping to have made a good impression on the head keeper of the facility and trying to get fresh start, he is quickly disillusioned when he is put in a isolation ward cell for the most unruly and dangerous inmates, one in which the authorities can watch Perry without his knowledge ... and now on top of everything else, to regain any semblance of his freedom back, he will have to prove he isn't crazy. Once in his cell, Perry records for posterity his true feelings about his new home, carving in the wall of his cell below his name and the date, the words, "CAME TO HELL." And if Perry believes he is in Hell, he will make sure the authorities will share in his pains.
Dr. Allison
For eighteen months, Perry seems to improve but for a couple of cases of minor unruliness as he visited by "Ma" Haswell and other friends, but once more it is merely a mask disguising the outlaw's real plans. Shortly after 11:00 in the evening of Wednesday, April 10, 1895, Perry shows he is still a dangerous criminal (he is upset with his isolation ward cell, the behavior of the doctors and guards, and that he has been prevented from getting any exercise in the fresh air). As the night watchman makes a check of the isolation ward (a prison within the prison, the outer walls of the area that is located in a separate building from the hospital consist of a lining of sheet iron between two layers of bricks with windows secured by iron bars and galvanized wire shutters ... even the ceilings are secured by stone flagging ... the cells within the ward have doors that are made of two-inch-thick oak with two locks required being throw for entrance or exit that can only be turned from the outside with keys that never leave the prison) at the end of the corridor he hears Perry calling. Making his way to the train robber's cell, the guard is asked for a drink of water, turns to get it for the inmate, and is suddenly accosted by two other men (previously a loner on his escapades, Perry has help getting out of Matteawan ... with Perry's leadership they have gotten out of their cells using iron spoons converted into keys and a homemade saw made from a thin strip of tempered steel inside the sole of a prison slipper) who take the man's ward keys, bundle him into Perry's cell, stuff his mouth with rags, and then tie the guard to the the cell's bedframe using strips of torn sheets. The five men involved in the escape (Perry lets the last two men in on the plot out of their cells with the watchman's keys) then let themselves out of the ward with the watchman's keys, then lock the door back up. Moving like silent shadows, the convicts creep past the attendants' rooms and down a corridor to stairs leading to the prison's chapel with access again provided by the watchman's keys. Inside, they grab a 25-foot-long ladder being used to repair the structure's ceiling for an upcoming patient's confirmation by the Bishop of Albany. Using the ladder, the escapees pull themselves through a small hatch in the ceiling and on hands and knees, crawl across the attic floor to a dormer window. Breaking out the glass, now forty feet above the ground, the convicts move along the rain gutters to the front of the building where they shimmy down iron drainpipes. Down, they are spotted by guard that fires a bullet in their direction as he yells for the men to "HALT," which is ignored as the group runs off into the darkness. And just like that, Perry is again a major news story in New York and across the United States, as are his lunatic companions, 42-year-old burglar Frank Davis, 40-year-old burglar Patrick "Ugly Mac" Maguire, 25-year-old buglar Michael O'Donnell, and murderer and rapist, John Quigley.
Now Known As The Fishkill Correctional Facility
In the huge, but short, manhunt that follows, Quigley, still in his prison uniform is arrested without a struggle two days later on Good Friday, begging for food near an empty freight car at a local railroad depot. A reward of $2,250 is placed on Perry's capture by American Express and New York Governor Levi Parsons Morton (by contrast, Dr. Allison is paid a yearly salary of $3,000 for running the hospital). Soon after Quigley's arrest, Maguire and O'Donnell are pinched about forty miles from the hospital. After five days of freedom, Davis is caught after briefly running until shots are fired his way (happy to have found Davis, his captors take pity on what the convict will be returning to and get the man roaring drunk before he sets foot in Matteawan again). Perry's turn comes when a railroad detective named Edward Clifford, patrolling Weehawken from it's New Jersey shoreline across the Hudson River from New York City, investigates a suspicious fire near the tracks, close to where tramps often make camp (Clifford's moment in the sun though quickly turns into a nightmare ... unable to handle the celebrity of his arrest of Perry, the former policeman and active railroad detective will lose his job by excessively drinking, then shocking the citizens of New Jersey, will shoot to death the man that fired him, an act for which is hung on May 8, 1900 in an execution that is butchered, with Clifford not breaking his neck in the fall and taking eighteen agonizing minutes to slowly strangle to death). Keeping his face hidden from the light of the flames, Perry bolts when the detective calls for the assistance of a police officer. Finding a narrow path on a ledge of rock, the escapee is able to make it up the trail about a hundred yards before losing his footing and falling to the ground below with a badly sprained ankle (and feet that are so blistered and swollen by walking barefoot through the lime in a brickyard near Matteawan that he is barely able to walk, even without the sprain). Treating his new charge with kindness and respect, Weehawken Chief of Police, Simon Kelly (soon to be the town's mayor), gets breakfast for Perry, and has his feet bathed and bandaged. Back behind bars, with the okay of Kelly, watched by a jail full of guards, Perry gives his first interview in three years to a horde of reporters while smoking a cigar ... the fun though really begins when the outlaw is moved to the more secure Hudson County Jail in Jersey City to wait on his extradition back to New York.
Governor Morton
New Jersey Governor George Theodore Werts
News Report
Awaiting his return to Matteawan, still a favorite with reporters because of his "good" stories, Perry talks and talks and talks, putting the hospital on trial as he describes various methods of punishment he has seen while incarcerated, or experienced first hand ... a method of garrotting a prisoner from behind that leads to beatings from other keepers, a type of kicking that incapacitates the receiver, but leaves no telling marks on the sides, or stomach, various drugs being used to paralyze a patient's body and how these medicines would often be hidden in a prisoner's food, the brutality possible by hiring untrained keepers to watch over patients for $20 a month (ahead of the coming future for some notorious criminals, William Randolph Hearst's newspaper, "The World," will hire Perry to write his own story of his life). Dr. Allison of course refutes all of Perry's charges (his feet still a mess, Perry will be carried the 200 feet from the jail to the courthouse by an under-sheriff and a constable)! Called a "gentleman desperado' in print as he waits for the politics of the situation to be ironed out along with appropriate rewards for his capture made (it will come out that Perry's escape was helped along by Amelia Haswell and Matteawan keeper William Hopkins ... Hopkins is coerced with promises of immunity from prosecution into testifying against Haswell, but does so poorly, that a grand jury dismisses all charges against the woman) the jail is soon full of gifts from outsiders for Perry, books, flowers, cigars, boxes of fruit, and candies all make their way to Perry, who becomes a bit of a Santa Claus passing out goodies to both his fellow inmates and to his guards with even the sheriff becoming involved when he buys Perry a new suit of clothes. Eventually all the documentation sending Perry back to New York is authorized, and the bandit, in the company of Allison's Matteawan deputy, Dr. Robert Lamb, Police Chief Kelly, and several guards, take Perry back to the insane asylum. There are no incidents plotted by Perry upon his return, and Dr. Allison puts the convict in one of the hospital's general wards. Two months later, in June of 1895, breaking with Dr. Carlos Frederick MacDonald, President of the State Lunacy Commission (who has been defending the good doctor to the press), Dr. Allison declares Perry to be sane and states that as such, he will be returned to the Auburn prison. On July 2, 1895, Perry takes a long overnight journey back to the penitentiary, before being returned to the cell he was in before, the outlaw tells members of the press that meet him at the entrance to institution that he is a changed individual and that given his freedom, he will lead an "honest life," but that he will refuse to work for the prison unless he is paid an adequate wage (fearing reprisals from the veteran keepers at the prison, Perry will privately plead with Dr. Allison for a transfer to the new penal facility in Clinton County). Once again, responding to not getting his way, Perry will jump back on to the front pages of the many New York papers by September (his biggest offense is sneaking sand into his cell to make his own personal blackjack and getting in a fight).
Dr. MacDonald
Late in the evening of September 17, 1895, one of the night guards hears moaning coming from the cellblock and goes to investigate the sounds. What he finds is ghastly and causes him to immediately cry for help. Finally proving he is actually bat shit crazy, for a host of reasons as varied as hoping the governor will pardon him for his crimes and free him because what danger to society is a blind man, the self-inflicted torment recreates his bizarre take on Oedipus Rex, the authorities can't threaten him with a dark cell any longer. and other reasons that even he can't verbalize, Perry has designed and put into use a simple device with which to blind himself. Using a piece of wood with two large saddler's needles driven through it (in the tale that gets out to the press, Perry has built a "blinder" in his cell with wood, nails, cord, a candle, a small dumbbell, and a taste of opium ... the candle burns through a cord which releases the dumbbell to push the nails into his drug addled eyes) Perry repeatedly stabs both his eyes with the device, and keeps trying to inflict even more damage to himself as he has to be subdued by multiple guards and a bottle of chloroform. Round One of his self mutilation leaves Perry blind in one eye and with only partial sight in the other. Round Two puts Perry in darkness for the rest of his life as he uses a piece of glass the size of a dime in his seeing eye, and grinds away on his eyeball until he is totally blind. On November 1, 1895, Dr. Conant Sawyer, the prison physician, signs off on a new Certificate of Lunacy for Perry. The next day, the bandit is back in Matteawan (and the visits from "Ma" Haswell begin again). Back in the insane asylum, Perry puts the determination he has been known for all his life into coping with his blindness, and becomes a writer, a poet (with the help of a fellow convicts that transcribe his words, words mostly about love and freedom ... some of the work is good enough to be published in the "New York Journal" in 1901), and a protestor of the New York penal system (still trying for his freedom, Perry will hand the governor a signed petition for his release when Governor Benjamin Barker Odell Jr. visits the hospital in 1902 ... it does no good).
Governor Odell
Built to house 550 convicts, but actually holding over 700 souls by the time a new century arrives, on Wednesday, June 5, 1902, Perry and 34 convicts from Matteawan set off on a long train ride into the Adirondack Mountains and the village of Dannemora for their transfer into the Dannemora State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Built on the grounds of the third oldest (it opens in 1845) and biggest prison in New York in 1899, inside a box of 60-foot-high concrete walls (that still stand), the mental hospital is not a cheery place as its nicknames of "Little Siberia, "the Mountain Bughouse," "the Northern Bastille," and "the Dark Hole of Calcutta" connote. If his keepers think blindness will finally cause Perry to bend to their will, the staff at the asylum is sadly mistaken with the first point of contention being the prison hospital's food. Describing his meals as "... mush, mush, mush, or slush, slush, slush," convinced that he has nothing left to lose, on Thursday, November 19, 1903, begins a hunger strike. It does not take him long to be on death's door because of starvation, and the doctors at Dannemora are forced to put a tube up Perry's nose and pour a mixture of eggs and milk into the outlaw's stomach. For the rest of his stay at Dannemora, most of his meals will come by way of a feeding tube. Though certainly not the winner in his battle for better sustenance (the authorities rarely concede to Perry's food choices), the bandit next takes Dannemora to task for making him wear the shoddy uniform of a prisoner when he deserves something different and better because he is officially insane ... the result is that despite being housed in a cell with no heating that drops to below zero day and night during the winter, Perry's attire becomes the same as Hans Christian Anderson's emperor tale ... nudity (when visitors are about, he will wrap himself in a blanket and cover his mutilated eyes with a towel or dark glasses). And when the authorities don't take his tobacco away as a punishment (Perry uses his allocation to pay off the various convicts that transcribe his words on to paper) for one thing or another, he continues to write letters to friends, family, and the authorities reminding them that he has not yet been freed). Hopeful he is gaining a new ally with the arrival at the hospital of a new physician, Dr. Charles Henry North, Perry writes the man a welcoming poem, but soon discovers North is just one more enemy, a man unwilling to let him keep either the ring or the mandolin Haswell has gifted him with for Christmas (at the hospital in 1917, the 49-year-old North will be stabbed to death by a trustee wielding a sharpened chisel).
Dannemora Asylum
Dr. North With His Wife And Two Of His Children
Though the inmates at Dannemora riot in 1907, Perry takes no part in the mayhem and instead continues to write to the governor and other authorities about the conditions at the hospital, including accusing Dr. North of privately becoming wealthy on various graft games relating to the prison's supplies (and working on his "poems," some of which are considered obscene ... "There once was a pretty young miss, Who thought it the acme of bliss, To frig herself silly, With the stem of a lily, Then sit on a sunflower to piss."). The governor does not answer the missive from Perry, but that year he finally finds a member of the hospital's staff that actually tries to do right by the blind prisoner, Dr. Amos Baker. Trying to help where he can, Baker brings Perry one of his favorite foods, freshly baked pie, and he arranges for the convict to drink out of a water glass, arranges for him to use a guard's urinal instead of the standard convict chamber pot, finds him a small table for his cell, and gives him an old carpet to warm up his cold room. As a result of the kindnesses, Perry starts behaving better and at times actually wears clothes. In 1908 it appears he might be transferred back to a regular prison population when Cornelius V. Collins, the Superintendent of Prisons for New York (who eventually is forced to leave office when a Grand Jury indicts him on charges of forgery and larceny), writes Dr. North on the matter, which the doctor immediately shoots down (and a ruined visit by two members of the state's Parole Board that come calling and aren't introduced to Perry by one of the doctor's on the asylum staff as the men tour the facility). Stuck in Dannemora , with Dr. Baker's support, Perry tries to conform to his keeper's rulers (he will have a acrostic poem <a composition in which the first letter of each new line spells out a name or message> called "Independence Day" published in Sing-Sing Prison newspaper "Star of Hope," his call for reform, "Mountain Bughouse 216" however is rejected), but he reverts to form when Dr. Baker leaves the hospital in 1909.
Cornelius V. Collins
Perry's next protest begins accidentally when the hospital sewer becomes clogged. His sense of smell made more acute by his blindness, rather than using the chamber pot in his cell which can't be emptied until the following morning, the outlaw defecates on some paper, wraps the discharge, and gives the package to a guard to dispose of in one of the institution's functioning water closets. The only problem is that the guard decides to be funny and slips the package back into the blind man's cell later in the evening. Smelling the feces, Perry throws the waste out the window and once more gains the ire of Dr. Carlos MacDonald who has the convict placed in a room in the "violent" ward and orders that he use the hospital's regulation chamber pots henceforth. Perry responds by smashing the window into his cell, which the causes the doctor to have all the furniture removed from his room so he won't transform the materials into weapons to use against the guards. So Perry goes back to refusing to eat but adds a new element into his war with the authorities ... he will now only defecate if he is in his cell. Gloves off, through letters sent to Haswell, Haswell's brother-in-law, New York clergyman Reverend John Warren, and the state's newest governor, Charles Hughes, Perry will unleash a long list of complaints that include summer residences being built on the lakes of the North Country using lumber marked for the building of a new chapel and dining room at Dannemora (and stocked with provisions from the prison's supplies), the gift or purchase of handkerchiefs, soap, cheese, and peanuts being banned, the myriad of problems with the bathroom facilities of the prisoners, and being kept in his cell for four years. For the most part Perry is ignored and mostly forgotten.
Dannemora
In 1908, an article appears in The Railroad Man's Magazine about "Great American Train Robberies" by Burke Jenkins in which the author cites Perry as "the boldest railway bandit that ever existed," and because of his blinding and many wars with the penal authorities, gives the convict a new nickname, "the Samson of Dannemora" (the article will make popular for awhile people searching various locations in upper New York for treasure Perry is said to have buried while hiding from authorities ... despite the popularity of the searches, nothing is ever found of the outlaw's ill-gotten gains). And of course the authorities react as expected and suddenly Perry's book of poetry vanishes with everyone claiming not to know a thing about how such an event could have happened (the true culprit probably exposes himself when a put-upon Dr. North states that even if the book is found, he isn't sure he'd return it to the convict). Perry's ties to the world outside of his cell begin fray when he and Haswell have a falling out over God and faith, then come apart some more when his father slips on a frozen sidewalk outside his home, fractures his skull and dies without ever regaining consciousness. In 1917, on the 25th anniversary of Perry's second New York train robbery his tale gets another telling when a number of papers publish "Out of His Living Tomb Speaks Oliver Curtis Perry." The article does nothing however to get Perry out from behind the bars of his prison cell. On September 14, 1917 "Ma" Haswell dies and Perry has one less tie to the outside. The years continuing to tick away, in 1928, Daniel McInerney, the American Express messenger Perry shot back in 1892 passes away. No reward for being right, for many of the reasons Perry has documented and protested for years, at the end of 1928 and summer of 1929, a series of brutal riots break out at the Auburn and Dannemora facilities in which inmates will attack "keepers" with acid, a prison armory will be broken into, prison shops are set on fire, six buildings are destroyed, four convicts escape, Warden Edgar Jennings and six guards are taken hostage (five officers will be injured), three fireman will be wounded, state police and the National Guard will man the walls to assist the guards, 44-year-old Principal Keeper George A. Durnford is killed, as are ten prisoners (along with nine people being wounded), and later, three rioters will be charged, convicted, and executed in the Sing-Sing prison's electric chair for their roles in the uprising. Weary of it all after spending nearly 45 years behind bars, Oliver Curtis Perry, dies at 6:32 on the Friday morning of September 5, 1930, passing as a result of a "strangulated Left Inguinal Hernia," with contributory causes listed as the surgery he had three days before for the condition, a chronic heart infection, and his ongoing mental condition. Only 12 days away from his next birthday, Perry is 64-years-old when he passes.
Durnford
Headlines
His soul finally free to move on, Perry's physical remains still reside at Dannemora, interred on a remote part of the grounds with the bodies of prisoners deemed insane that died at the hospital but had no family to claim (willingly or otherwise) their remains. No names on the markers, Perry is buried in 1930 as Dannemora inmate #216 (the rest of the Perry clan save its wayward son, are all in a Syracuse cemetery buried beneath a large monument), but the markings have faded into nothingness and Perry for a final time has escaped the authorities (known as "Old Blind-Eye Perry," he is also said to haunt the corridors of the hospital, and has lent his name to a Utica childhood landmark known as "Perry's Cave"). For more on the life and crimes of Oliver Curtis Perry, read "Wanted Man" by Tamsin Spargo.
The Book
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