My life in prison

Written by Bernie Weisz Historian July 8th, 2010 Pembroke Pines, Florida contact: [email protected] Donald Lowrie's book "My Life In Prison" gives a fascinating account of the injustices witnessed by an inmate who served his time at "San Quentin State Prison" in the early 1900's. San Quentin State Prison is located on 432 acres on Point Quentin in Marin County, California, and is north of San Francisco. It was opened in July, 1852 and is the oldest prison in California. The state's male death row is located at San Quentin, as well as it's only gas chamber. In recent years, however, the gas chamber has been used to carry out lethel injections. Donald Lowrie, a down and out young man, started out the book by asking several questions to the reader, showing why he committed a crime of which he would be sentenced to 15 years! Lowrie asks the reader: "Have you ever been broke? Have you ever been hungry and miserable, not knowing when or where you were going to get your next meal, nor where you were going to spend your next night? Have you ever made holes in your shoes trying to get work, meeting rebuff and insults in return for your earnestness and sincerity, and encountering an utter lack of an understanding of your crying necessity in those with whom you have pleaded for a chance? Thousands of persons have felt these thoughts, have suffered these experiences, but very few have done what I did and then told about it, as I am going to tell". So what did Lowrie do? Lowrie starts out by explaining that when he was a little boy, some unknown prowler went into his house at night and stole his father's watch. Lowrie claims that since he was jobless, homeless and futureless, "that childhood incident came back to me, and the fact that I decided to emulate the unknown gentleman who had appropriated my father's watch tends to stregnthen the claim that man is a simon-pure imitative animal". Lowrie takes a coin and decides if it comes up heads, he would rob a house, if tails, he would do nothing. Doing the coin flip under a gas lamp, it came down "heads". Lowrie relates: "the head of "Liberty" stared me in the face. I flung the coin into the gutter and buttoned my coat. I had suddenly become a criminal". Next, Lowrie breaks into a house at night and discovers someone else in the house with him. Everytime he moves, someone moves simultaneously. Lowrie writes: "I must get to the window, and quickly. As I moved, I noticed a glare on my right. The next instant I realized what h

שנה

1912

שפה

English

הוצאה

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

מהדורות

7

עמודים

430

ISBN

9781463655594

מקור הנתונים: Wikidata