Ours was a big general cell, it seemed, for the temporary
accommodation of all comers whose crimes were trifling.
Among us they were two Americans, two “Greasers”
(Mexicans), a Frenchman, a German, four Irishmen,
a Chilenean (and, in the next cell, only separated
from us by a grating, two women), all drunk, and all
more or less noisy; and as night fell and advanced,
they grew more and more discontented and disorderly,
occasionally; shaking the prison bars and glaring through
them at the slowly pacing officer, and cursing him
with all their hearts. The two women were nearly
middle-aged, and they had only had enough liquor to
stimulate instead of stupefy them. Consequently
they would fondle and kiss each other for some minutes,
and then fall to fighting and keep it up till they
were just two grotesque tangles of rags and blood and
tumbled hair. Then they would rest awhile and
pant and swear. While they were affectionate
they always spoke of each other as “ladies,”
but while they were fighting “strumpet”
was the mildest name they could think of—and
they could only make that do by tacking some sounding
profanity to it. In their last fight, which
was toward midnight, one of them bit off the other’s
finger, and then the officer interfered and put the
“Greaser” into the “dark cell”
to answer for it because the woman that did it laid
it on him, and the other woman did not deny it because,
as she said afterward, she “wanted another crack
at the huzzy when her finger quit hurting,”
and so she did not want her removed. By this
time those two women had mutilated each other’s
clothes to that extent that there was not sufficient
left to cover their nakedness. I found that one
of these creatures had spent nine years in the county
jail, and that the other one had spent about four
or five years in the same place. They had done
it from choice. As soon as they were discharged
from captivity they would go straight and get drunk,
and then steal some trifling thing while an officer
was observing them. That would entitle them to
another two, months in jail, and there they would
occupy clean, airy apartments, and have good food
in plenty, and being at no expense at all, they, could
make shirts for the clothiers at half a dollar apiece
and thus keep themselves in smoking tobacco and such
other luxuries as they wanted. When the two months
were up they would go just as straight as they could
walk to Mother Leonard’s and get drunk; and from
there to Kearney street and steal something; and thence
to this city prison, and next day back to the old
quarters in the county jail again. One of them
had really kept this up for nine years and the other
four or five, and both said they meant to end their
days in that prison. **—[**The former of
the two did.—Ed. Men.]—Finally,
both these creatures fell upon me while I was dozing
with my head against their grating, and battered me
considerably, because they discovered that I was a
Chinaman, and they said I was “a bloody interlopin’
loafer come from the devil’s own country to take
the bread out of dacent people’s mouths and
put down the wages for work whin it was all a Christian
could do to kape body and sowl together as it was.”
“Loafer” means one who will not work.
Ah
Song hi.