Penitentiary Pugilism

Posted by on Apr 15, 2020 in | Comments Off on Penitentiary Pugilism On a rainy night in 1978 in Lewisburg, Union County, 1,400 men crowded into a boxing arena. In the ring they watched Clarence Miller take on the reigning 125-pound state champ, Ronald “Bartender” Barr. Of the 10 matches that Saturday, this was the only championship matchup, and the crowd was dazzled by the thrilling fight. Barr narrowly defeated Miller and was voted outstanding boxer of the...
read more

Sydney Ware, Eastern State Penitentiary Artist

Posted by on Dec 17, 2019 in | Comments Off on Sydney Ware, Eastern State Penitentiary Artist Built in the 1820s as part of a new type of prison system, Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia was founded on the belief that prisoners could be rehabilitated during incarceration through separate confinement and industrious labor. During the penitentiary’s span of operation, 1829–1971, numerous records were compiled about the inmates and maintained at the prison, including statistics on...
read more

Doing Time in Dauphin County, 1842-1901

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Doing Time in Dauphin County, 1842-1901 They locked up Elias Nation on April 18, 1842, giving him official first place in Dauphin County’s new prison. (For the record, Jacob Stripe was registered nearly two weeks earlier, for assault and battery, but he was out before the prison’s grand opening.) Nation was twenty­-nine years old and looked “yellow,” wrote Keeper Wil­liam Watson; he underlined that fact in his...
read more

Aeronauts to Aviators: Pennsylvanians and Flight, 1784-1950

Posted by on Nov 30, 2013 in | Comments Off on Aeronauts to Aviators: Pennsylvanians and Flight, 1784-1950 Millions of us have used the airplane to earn a living, to travel from place to place or simply to amuse ourselves. Among twentieth-century innovations, the airplane has most dramatically changed the way we think about time and distance; people now consider transcontinental or transoceanic journeys in terms of hours rather than days or weeks. The airplane is a familiar technology. Yet historians...
read more

“Punishment, Penitence, and Reform”: Eastern State Penitentiary and the Controversy Over Solitary Confinement

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on “Punishment, Penitence, and Reform”: Eastern State Penitentiary and the Controversy Over Solitary Confinement In 1842, popular British novelist Charles Dickens traveled to Philadelphia to visit the mam­moth Eastern State Penitentiary. What he found caused him to lament the “picture of forlorn affliction and distress of mind.” Surrounded by an imposing thirty foot high stone wall joined by castle-like towers at rising at each corner and dominated by a grim, turreted entrance, the prison...
read more

Born a Leader for Pennsylvania

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Born a Leader for Pennsylvania The essence of life is unconditional, non-judgmental love,” explains George Michael Leader when asked to sum-up his philosophy. He writes poetry, models and advocates wellness, leads community humanitarian projects, reads extensively, and oversees a family corpora­tion he founded that includes nursing facili­ties and retirement communities. In his ninth decade he is, as he has always been,...
read more