A Prison Comes to the Neighborhood

This summer, after almost 150 years in operation, the prison in West Concord (most recently known as MCI-Concord) was closed.  Near the Acton border, the prison has been a familiar sight to generations of Acton residents, especially commuters finding their way through the rotary traffic near its walls.  Many might not know much about its history.  Inspired by two pictures of the prison in its early days that are in our collection, we set out to learn more.

An article in the July 30, 1874 Boston Evening Traveller described plans for the new prison and its possible benefits to the area.  The booster-like tone at the beginning of the article makes one suspect that the reporter had an Acton source (possibly a Wetherbee of East Acton).  The article mentioned Acton’s flourishing villages, its Revolutionary War history, and its center “on an eminence, commanding a fine view of the surrounding country, and overlooking one of the best farming districts in the country” (quite a claim).  It also mentioned the long-lived Wetherbee Tavern that did business on the old stage route.  The tavern’s stable could house one hundred horses, and often a hundred teams would stop there to feed during the day.  There was a store and a post office, and along the road, “a hundred magnificent elms afforded shade for man and beast.”  The old grist mill was across the road.  The place had been unchanged for fifty years, but change was upon it.  A couple of elegant residences and a large mill had been built, and a railroad now went through it, intersecting with the Fitchburg Railroad in a place that was now called Concord Junction. 

In 1873, the Prison Commissioners had decided to build a new state prison near Concord Junction to replace the aging prison in Charlestown.  They bought 85 acres from Mrs. Elmira Cook and then took 27 more acres by eminent domain.  In choosing their site, they hoped that they could draw on two sources of water; pumping from Nashoba brook into a “stand pipe” and drawing water from “Magog Lake, a large sheet of water covering some six hundred acres, of a great average depth, about three miles from the prison grounds, with a fall of one hundred feet.  The water from both sources has been analyzed and pronounced remarkably pure.”  (The second source is now known as Nagog Pond, then also known as Lake Nagog, located in Acton and Littleton.)

Another advantage of the site was the railroad tracks that ran through the proposed prison grounds (Framingham & Lowell/Nashua, Acton & Boston) and nearby (Fitchburg Railroad).  Stone and brick could be brought right up to the site.  To show a Traveller representative how easily building materials could be delivered, Acton’s Daniel Wetherbee (director of the Framingham & Lowell Railroad) and John Fletcher helpfully arranged for a tour of the Fletcher & Reed quarry in Westford.  Another Acton businessman, George C. Wright, serving in the 1874 Massachusetts House, worked hard to get the votes needed to bring the prison to Concord, hoping to gain “a great advantage to the business interests of this vicinity,” according to his reminiscences.

The article did acknowledge that some in Acton and Concord were against building the State Prison there.  The author optimistically wrote that “The building will be a splendid specimen of architecture and highly ornamental, and from its sightly position will be a noted landmark and attract large numbers of visitors.  The buildings outside will also be of the best quality...  within ten years from the completion of the prison, there will be a village here of thousands of inhabitants, all of the better class of artizans and mechanics.  In a pecuniary point, the benefit to all the farmers for miles around will be immense, and such a public institution as our State Prison will give a celebrity to the towns of Acton and Concord that they will not be ashamed of.”

The State Prison Comes to Concord

Despite political opposition locally and from some across the state, plans moved forward.  The Oct. 2, 1877 Boston Journal described the work in process, giving us details that are illustrated by the prison pictures in our collection. 

Wardens' quarters, offices, wings, and octagon

The most prominent part of the prison buildings was an octagon from which wings radiated.  According to the article, the northern boundary of the prison enclosure (surrounding eight acres or more) consisted of the west wing, the octagon, the east wing, and a 180’ wall extending from the east wing.  In front of that, “facing the road, and outside of the walls, is a handsome brick house two stories high, with a French roof.  This house, [is] to be occupied by the Warden and his deputy, a portion being devoted to offices and sleeping apartments for some of the officers... [The wing] on the east is to be the Warden’s dwelling, the deputy taking the other. ... Each family will have its own front door, the entrances being quite elegant and approached by stone steps.”  A connecting building led from the center portion of the house to the octagon.  These central areas were used for administration and officers’ apartments, and there was a dining hall for State officials who might be visiting.  A driveway under the connecting building was used to deliver a convict to the prison.  A new prisoner would enter the warden’s office for registration, be brought to the guard room in the second story of the octagon, and then be taken to his quarters.  (There would also have been practical issues to deal with such a bath, a haircut, and the issuance of a new uniform before the prisoner joined the others.)  In the lower part of the octagon were eighteen solitary cells, “about five by seven feet in size, with a height of a little over seven feet, arranged to be perfectly dark, but thoroughly ventilated, the ventilating arrangements here and in all other parts of the building being excellent, securing a good supply of air to each cell, and at the same time guarding against all possibility of communication by means of the flues.”  Above the guard room in the octagon were the hospital and also tanks for storing and distributing water.

Wing of Concord Prison with Octagon

The second of our pictures shows the octagon and what was probably the east wing.  The article said that the east wing contained 175 cells, about 9 feet long by 6’4: wide and 7’6” high.  Their doors were grated and opened onto a corridor lighted by the large, barred windows in the exterior walls.  The cells, in double rows, were in the center of the building.  A 20” thick wall separated the rows of cells, and the individual cells were separated on the sides by 16” thick walls.  There were five tiers of cells on top of each other, with the ceiling of one cell (usually flag stone) serving as the floor of another.

The first prisoners were moved from Charlestown on May 16, 1878 and the remainder moved in during the following week.  Not surprisingly, problems arose.  A prisoner named Whelton escaped almost immediately.  Apparently, he was in one of the few cells that had a window and managed to find a weakness in the system of iron bars that reinforced the cell wall’s brickwork.  He used an iron window-weight to pound out brick-work near the window casement that had not been reinforced with iron.  Fortunately, Whelton only made it into the prison yard.  A more successful escape of five prisoners was orchestrated by George H. Proctor on September 30.  Proctor, the prison organist, had gained enough trust that he had unusual privileges, carrying messages among prison officers and running errands.  He had at some point assisted in replacing some cells' locks.  Having a machinist’s skills, he was believed to have used that experience to have created a key that could unlock cell doors.  His compatriots faked a scuffle that got them all confined to solitary cells.  Later that evening, Proctor, not having been missed, released them.  They got to the prison yard and made their way to the back where a gate allowed entry for deliveries via a sidetrack of the Framingham & Lowell Railroad.  Apparently, they found a plank that enabled them to climb an outer wall, force down the lever that opened the gate, and make their way out of the prison.  (At least some of them were recaptured, but it took months and, in Proctor’s case, years.)  These and other attempted escapes led to security enhancements in the early months of the prison’s existence. 

In July 1878, a fire burned down most of the 400’, three-story, brick workshop where many of the inmates labored during the day under contract to various manufacturers.  It was believed that the materials used in the picture frame manufacturing shop had spontaneously combusted.  The lack of an adequate water supply to fight the fire, despite proximity to a river, elicited a new set of complaints about the new facility and the people responsible for it.

Prison labor, whether under contract to outsiders or for needed work at the prison, contributed to balancing the prison budget.  The Acton Patriot of August 8 reported that inmates would, to the extent possible, be involved in rebuilding the workshop.  At the same time, prison labor was being used to build a 230’x25’ piggery outside the prison walls.  An unexpected historical tidbit was the Sept. 26 Acton Patriot‘s news that a dedication ball at the piggery was enjoyed by 75 couples until 1 am, when three cheers went up for prison officers who were in charge of the festivities.  Gates Band of Acton provided the music. 

Revelry aside, the most serious and long-lasting concerns about the new prison were about the adequacy of the implemented plans for obtaining fresh water and for sewage disposal.  Reading the complaints and proposed solutions is quite instructive about public health issues that we too often take for granted.  One of the complaints about the new prison in 1878 was the fact that there was a water-closet [toilet] in each prisoner’s cell, “which cost thousands of dollars and which he did not need.” (Springfield Republican, July 26, 1878, p. 8).  Pumping water to the prison was apparently more problematic than anticipated.  Wells were dug, but the need for more water was already being discussed in August 1878, with the town of Concord offering 200,000 gallons daily.  (Concord at the time was drawing water from Sandy Pond in Lincoln, not Lake Nagog.  The Warden favored getting Nagog water, it being “of some importance that the State would have the exclusive use of the water thus supplied, subject to no restriction or interference by any person or corporation.” Boston Journal, Nov. 27, 1878, p. 1)  Meanwhile, Concord residents were concerned about the possibility of prison sewage flowing into the river.  Remedial work began on waste disposal.  On November 22, 1878, the Boston Journal reported: “The alleged defect in the system of drainage, which gave the Concord people cause for complaint, has been remedied by the construction in the yard of a cistern eighteen feet deep, through which some 200,000 gallons of water passes per day, and is discharged into the Assabet river.  All the solid matter remains in the cistern, from which it is removed once a week, and buried in deep pits in the prison yard.  By this arrangement all danger of pollution of the waters of the Concord river is avoided.”

That assessment was evidently overly optimistic.  Complaints about sanitary conditions in the prison and the smells of sewer gases continued, leading to a health inspection in November 1880 and recommendations that the ventilation system be improved and that prisoners be required to scrub more carefully their water-closets and washbowls.  Problems persisted.  The State Prison report for 1881 mentioned that water for cooking and drinking was being obtained from wells on the prison grounds, and there was concern that sewage distributed nearby would contaminate the wells.  Despite earlier proposals about water availability, the Massachusetts State Prison report (Oct. 1882) stated that “The water-supply will never be satisfactory or sufficient until it is obtained either from Lake Nagog, by the State, or from the town of Concord.”  (p. 9)  The same report asserted that the prison had not been given enough money to improve its disposition of sewage unless the legislature would repeal its requirement that sewage be purified or cleansed before any discharge from the prison be allowed to go into the Concord River or its tributaries.  The Oct. 1883 report described a new system that had been designed, separating disposal of storm water (roof and surface drainage) from sewage.  The plan also dealt with water discharge from the gas-house (with its “pungent odor”), moulding shop (the output from its sinks and water closets that had been flowing through an open ditch), and hat shop (40,000-70,000 gallons mixed with felt fiber and dye refuse), all of which had apparently been draining into sink holes on the prison grounds.  The prison’s water-sourcing problem was solved in October 1883 by finally contracting with the Town of Concord to supply water.

The State Prison Goes Back to the City

The newspapers of the late 1870s and early 1880s reported extensively on the drama and political disagreement over the move of the state prison to Concord from Charlestown, what to do with the old prison, personnel changes, and whether the state had overspent on the new prison and continued to overspend on operations.   There were already calls in the summer of 1878 to send prisoners back to Charlestown.  Finally, a decision was made to return prisoners with longer sentences to the state prison in Charlestown and to turn the Concord facility into a Reformatory “for the more corrigible male offenders” (Prison Commissioners Report, Jan. 1885, p. 6), from the State and county prisons.  The change became official in 1884, but the bulk of the transition happened in the following year.

Despite the return of the State Prison to Charlestown, the rosy predictions of the 1874 Boston Traveller article did in some ways eventually come to pass.  Concord Junction (later West Concord) did indeed grow, in part because of prison employment.  Some Acton farmers and businesses benefited from the existence of a ready market nearby.  Lake Nagog, classified as a “great pond” and therefore not legally controlled by Acton and Littleton, became a source of water for the town of Concord and was piped along Acton’s Great Road in the early 1900s, providing water to some East Acton residents along the way.  Whether or not the high hopes of Acton’s proponents of the new prison were totally fulfilled, our sources do not tell us.

Some Sources Consulted:

• Acton Patriot, “State Prison Matters,” Aug. 8, 1878, p. unclear
• Acton Patriot, “State Prison Matters,” Sept. 26, 1878, p. 1
• Baltimore Sun, untitled news item about escapee, July 19, 1879, p. 1
• Boston Daily Advertiser, “Suburban News,” Aug. 27, 1878, p. 4
• Boston Daily Advertiser, “The State Prison,” April 19, 1882, p. 4
• Boston Daily Globe, “The New State Prison,” May 16, 1878, p. 4
• Boston Daily Globe, “The State Prison,” May 20, 1878, p. 2
• Boston Daily Globe, “The New State Prison,” May 21, 1878, p. 2
• Boston Daily Globe, “The New State Prison,” May 22, 1878, p. 1
• Boston Daily Globe, “Successfully Transported,” May 23, 1878, p. 2
• Boston Daily Globe, “The New Prison,” May 26, 1878, p. 6
• Boston Evening Traveller, “The New State Prison Site, Acton as it Was and as it Will Be,” July 30, 1874, p. 3
• Boston Evening Transcript, “Massachusetts News,” Aug. 27, 1878, p. 8
• Boston Herald, “The Concord Prison,” April 30, 1879, p. 6
• Boston Journal, “The New State Prison,” Oct. 2, 1877, p. 1
• Boston Journal, “Wholsale [sic] Jail Delivery,” Oct. 1, 1878, p. 2
• Boston Journal, “The State Prison at Concord,” Nov. 22, 1878, p. 1
• Boston Journal, “The State Prison,” Nov. 27, 1878, p. 1
• Boston Journal, “Another Escape from Concord,” Nov. 30, 1878, p. 3
• Boston Journal, “Where Can the State Prison Stay Put?,” Apr. 19, 1882, p. 2
• Boston Post, “Fire at the State Prison,” July 22, 1878, p.2
• Lowell Daily Citizen, “Shall We Have a New State Prison” June 25, 1875, p. 2
• Lowell Daily Citizen, “Fire at Concord State Prison” July 22, 1878, p. 2
• Lowell Daily Citizen, “Concord State Prison” Aug. 2, 1878, p. 2
• Lowell Daily Citizen, “Concord State Prison” Oct. 2, 1878, p. 2
• Lowell Daily Citizen, untitled article on whereabouts of escapee, Nov. 29, 1878, p. 3
• Lowell Sun Weekly, “Burglar Caught,” Dec. 27, 1884, p. 1
• New England Farmer, “Review of the Week,” May 25, 1878, p. 2
• New York Herald, “Burglar Bullard in Canada,” Dec. 4, 1878, p. 8
• Springfield Republican, “A Prisoner with Some Muscle,” May 22, 1878, p. 8
• Springfield Republican, “Our New State-Prison Investment,” May 31, 1878, p. 4
• Springfield Republican, “Our Boston Letter,” July 26, 1878, p. 8
• Springfield Republican, “Escape of Five Convicts from the State Prison,” Oct. 2, 1878, p. 6
• Springfield Republican, “Our Boston Letter,” Feb. 2, 1879, p. 8
• Springfield Republican, “The Removal of the State-Prison,” March 28, 1882, p. 4
• Worcester Daily Spy, “The Old or New Prison?,” April 28, 1882, p. 2
  

Also:

• George C. Wright.  Reminiscences of West Acton and of Personal Life.  Unpublished manuscript, written 1905-1910, copy in the collection of the Acton Historical Society.
  
• Tenth Annual Report of the Commissioners of Prisons of Massachusetts (including the annual report of the State Prison), for the 1880 year, published January, 1881
  
• Eleventh Annual Report of the Commissioners of Prisons of Massachusetts (including the annual report of the State Prison), for the 1881 year, published January, 1882
• Twelfth Annual Report of the Commissioners of Prisons of Massachusetts (including the annual report of the State Prison), for the 1882 year, published January, 1883
• Thirteenth Annual Report of the Commissioners of Prisons of Massachusetts (including the annual report of the State Prison), for the 1883 year, published January, 1884
• Fourteenth Annual Report of the Commissioners of Prisons of Massachusetts (including the annual report of the State Prison and the Massachusetts Reformatory), for the 1884 year, published January, 1885
• Fifteenth Annual Report of the Commissioners of Prisons of Massachusetts (including the annual report of the State Prison and the Massachusetts Reformatory), for the 1885 year, published January, 1886