A broken device which resembled a pillory was found in a storage area on Alcatraz during the institution’s transfer to the Bureau of Prisons in 1934. Although its use was never validated or proven it was an actual pillory, it did suggest that t method of punishment was used during the island’s early history as a military prison.

Prisons have been documented to exist for several centuries, but until the 1700’s they were grim places that served only for transitory confinement while prisoners were awaiting trial or punishment. The conditions in these jails were horrendous, with open sewers and diseased rodents that scurried across dirt floors on which the men were forced to sleep without bedding. But after the American Revolution, the newly formed United States sought to reformthose who violated public laws. The Pennsylvania Quakers initially introduced the concept of reforming criminals through time spent under confinement. The Quakers built a small prison, which was comprised of sixteen individual and fully isolated cells. This new concept was intended to achieve reform by forcing criminals to serve out their entire sentence in complete isolation and silence. The criminals were left only with a Holy Bibleand the reformers believed that this would help them to achieve penance. It was from this practice that the word “penitentiary” was cast into modern society.

Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was the world’s first true penitentiary. Eastern State opened in 1829, and was designed to inspire penitence in the criminals incarcerated there. The idea was to reform criminals through a Quaker-inspired system of strict isolation, which would allow for deep thought and remorse. It was from this philosophy of spiritual penitence that the term “penitentiary” was born. The medieval castle-like structure was intended to present a forbidding and haunted facade.

As a prison, Alcatraz would become a modernized and less barbaric form of the pillory. From its humble beginnings as a small military jail, it would eventually silence the most feared public adversaries, in the interest of maintaining the good order of society. It became both an icon and a societal pillar, a symbol of firm justice for America’s worst offenders.

The Early Years as a Military Prison

In August of 1861 the U.S. Military began sending Civil War prisoners to Alcatraz Island, which seemed perfect for this purpose because of its natural isolation. At this stage the island had no formal prison facilities, and prisoners were housed in a large damp cell located in the basement of the Guardhouse. Living conditions for the inmates were grim. Their jail was a crude structure, similar in many ways to a medieval dungeon and accessible only through a fortified ceiling hatch via a small ladder. The primitive cell was unheated and it accommodated approximately fifteen soldiers. There was no plumbing, and the inmates were forced to use buckets to relieve themselves. By day, the prisoners were assigned to exhausting hard-labor details, and by night, they were generally forced to sleep in cramped conditions on the ground, side-by-side. In a 1969 historical military report to the San Francisco Mayor’s Office, Herbert M. Hart described some of the problems that the commanders at Alcatraz were faced with in 1862.

A period photograph of the sallyport entrance. The support beams along the ceiling include both the base floor of the library and the distant passage is situated under the lower prison cellblock. At least one historical reference indicates that the gunroom on the immediate left was used as a dungeon cell for troublesome prisoners who were housed in the original jail, which was accessible through a hatch panel on the floor of the guardhouse.

An exterior view of the entrance leading to the lower prison in 1902. The blacksmith shop is seen on the right.

A modern view of the sallyport entrance as it appeared exactly 100 years later.

A 1903 photograph showing the blacksmith shop, the tool house under the wooden stairs, the library situated above the guardhouse, and an open latrine suspended over the water’s edge on wharf pilings. The “Overseer’s Squad Room” (seen here with the door ajar) is located on the upper floor above the sallyport entrance. Also visible is an armed sentry standing ready at the edge of the catwalk in the foreground.

He wrote:

The problem of prisoners was a pressing one from the early days of the war as pointed out on September 10, 1862, by Captain William A. Winder. He wrote to department headquarters that the “... caponiere at the entrance of the fortification, defending approach from the wharf, is occupied by the guard and prisoners; the latter being so numerous they entirely fill the casemate on the right of the entrance, rendering it necessary that the guard should occupy the one on the left. For this reason the howitzers intended for the defense have never been mounted, nor can they until some other arrangement is made for the care of the prisoners.”

Despite these difficulties, the military realized the potential of Alcatraz as an escape-proof prison for hard-core offenders. The first twenty arrivals were from Fort Point, and during the next year over a hundred more prisoners would be ferried to Alcatraz. In April of 1865, President Abraham Lincoln issued an executive order providing discretionary jurisdiction to arrest public activists for the Confederacy. Numerous sympathizers were arrested and sent to Alcatraz as punishment, and several of these offenders were prominent citizens and politicians.

As the role of Alcatraz began to evolve, the island’s defensive systems would eventually be redesigned. Major George Mendell from the Army Corps of Engineers filed a report that showcased flaws in the design of the original fortification. He illustrated that if canon shot were to strike any of the stone or brick structures, the post could suffer extensive casualties from the shard debris that would violently rain down on the soldiers. He submitted a new design that eliminated all exposed brick and rock, replacing it with sand and earthworks. The new plan would allow for better absorption of the powerful explosive debris, and would thus effectively reduce casualties among the soldiers. Using inmate labor, crews leveled many of the brick structures, and packed soft soil ferried from Angel Island in front of the gun placements.

In 1868, the Department Commander officially designated Alcatraz as a place of confinement for prisoners serving long sentences. In the same year, the Spanish-American War elevated the prisoner population from a mere twenty-six men to over four hundred and fifty. It wasn’t long before overcrowding and increasing demand gave cause to build a two-story brick jail structure with individual cells, and construction of this edifice was completed in 1867. The confinement conditions for inmates left much to be desired and the men would still be required to sleep on hard wooden pallets. A report submitted by the Assistant Surgeon General in 1870 described in detail the facilities at Alcatraz:

The buildings consist of a citadel, two brick barrack buildings for troops, and three prison buildings on the summit of the island, and the laundresses’ quarters, blacksmith and carpenter’s workshop, two boathouses, coal and wood house, and bowling alley and theater for the men, most of which are situated on the eastern face of the cliff.