Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 28, No. 3, November 12, 1927

Glad to be let off so easily, young Sinton pays the fine. He thinks he’s lucky, and he is, because if he hadn’t been able to pay it he would have been sentenced to scrub the entire inner corridor of the jail under the supervision of Limpy St. Clair, Rube Elbows and Kid Skirts, who have shown by experience that they can be trusted to see that the fresh fish does a good job.

Now, cleaning the inner corridor of a small jail doesn’t look like such an appalling job. But when you have three such taskmasters it’s something which can be very easily underestimated.

The fresh fish starts to work. When he’s through, St. Clair, with an expression of pained surprised, points to a dark spot in front of one of the cells. “It’s a shadow,” says the fish, who has at last found his tongue.

But St. Clair gives him a little lecture on such a patent attempt to dodge his work, admonishing him that only by doing his work well can he hope to progress in the world, and mentioning various well known captains of industry who owe their success to taking good care of the little jobs.

So Sinton scrubs on and after the lapse of a few moments his tormentor apologizes profusely, admitting that it is a shadow after all, and that it’s funny he should have made such a mistake.

Occasionally, of course, his honor makes a mistake and catches a tartar. I remember upon one occasion seeing a kangaroo court “judge” in a jail in Arizona looking like he had been run over by a threshing machine.

It turned out that he had sentenced to floor-scrubbing a scraggly-looking “bum” who turned out to be a former champion pugilist down on his luck. When the judge sentenced him to polish the bars the “fresh fish” replied with a smack on the jaw which made his teeth rattle.

His honor sat down on the cold stone floor to think over what to do next, as there was no precedent in kangaroo court procedure for handling such an emergency at the moment. The judge finally decided he would hit him back.

But there were three or four pugilists dancing in front of his buzzing eyes and he couldn’t decide which was the real one and which the figment of his disordered imagination. So he decided to adjourn court for the day.

I say there was no procedure for handling such an emergency at the moment. But there is a method of handling it ultimately, and no one prisoner who challenges the authority of the kangaroo court can hope to “get away with it.” I have known it to be tried on hundreds of occasions, and in only a very small percentage is it successful.

This is for the very simple reason, of course, that there are many against one. So, in the case of this pugilist, nothing was done at the time. But, if it had not been this fighter’s first taste of the stir, he would have thought better of antagonizing the court, as, in cases of the kind, reprisals are made when the refractory prisoner is asleep. This was exactly what was done in this case.

That night, while the pugilist was asleep, an “officer” of the court placed a twisted piece of paper between his bare toes and lighted it.

A moment after he had returned to his cell, ostentatiously snoring, there was a piercing scream which “awakened” all the other prisoners, who were lying, with ears tensed, waiting for it. No one, of course, knew anything about it. The prisoner’s foot was terribly burned and blistered, taking several weeks to heal.

I have seen numbers of prisoners who have been so treated when they incurred the enmity of their fellow-inmates. And in the majority of cases they will get little sympathy from the jail officials. If one complains he’ll probably be told by the jailer that it was his own fault, and that he should have obeyed the mandates of the court.

But it is when a “sucker” with plenty of money arrives that the kangaroo court stays in session almost continuously. A prisoner of this kind will be utterly amazed at the number of rules he can violate, notwithstanding his best efforts.

He will find that his cell is not clean, that he was seen spitting on the floor, that he left the shower turned on so that all the precious hot water ran away, that his bed was not properly made, et cetera.

If he takes the charges seriously and offers proof to offset them he will be charged with snoring and keeping the other prisoners awake. Quite naturally, he cannot deny this. For every such “offense” he’ll be haled before the kangaroo court, fined a dollar or two by the judge, who puts on a “this-hurts-me-more-than-you” expression for the occasion, and admonished to go and sin no more.

The money, of course, goes into the “pot” and the genial Irishman who has the cake and pie privilege at the jail, wonders where all the new business is coming from.

The formality which is gone through in bringing charges, and particularly the seriousness with which some of the prisoners take it, would seem screamingly funny to any outsider permitted to witness it.

But outsiders never are, and I never knew any one, outside of officials whose business takes them into jail, who had seen such a trial. These charges, which are often in writing, will recite that, “on the 19th day of June, A. D. 1927, one Daniel Haggerty, alias Postage Stamps, alias Red, alias Fat, did, knowing and willfully, with malice aforethought, indulge in uncalled-for politeness to a ‘screw’ by greeting him with the following words, to wit, that is to say: ‘Good morning, Mr. Ketcham,’ contrary to the form of the rules in such case made and provided, and against the peace and dignity of the Booneville County Jail.”