Heritage, Summer 2006 Page: 14
31 p. : ill. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
Extracted Text
The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
A Texas-Sized Dilemma
Women in The Texas Prison SystemBy Gary Brown
Historically, Texas justice has been seen
as quick and final. In the frontier days the
Texas Rangers, judges like Roy Bean, and
hastily tied nooses insured that perceived
injustice was dealt with decisively-usually
with no questions asked.
But imprisoning women in Texas has
never had that element of decisiveness.
In fact, it has been problematic to Texas
since the state prison system incarcerated
its first woman prisoner in 1854 for the
killing of a child.
This reluctance to imprison women may
date back to the earliest Anglo Texans,
immigrants from the American South
with a "Southern code of chivalry" advocating
the protection of women. Without
doubt, the concept of locking a woman in
a prison cell has historically never made
Texans comfortable.
And if incarceration has been a sensitive
issue, capital punishment has been
especially controversial. The world press
literally followed the events leading to the
lethal injection of female inmate Karla
Faye Tucker in 1998, 135 years since the
previous execution of Chipita Rodrfguez
in San Patricio in 1863. It requires serious
charges to warrant the execution
of a woman in Texas-ironically bothTucker and Rodriguez were alleged axe
murderesses. The controversy surrounding
Rodriguez' hanging continued until 1985
when the Texas Legislature passed a
resolution absolving her of the murder
charges. From 1924 through 1964 the
electric chair in Huntsville killed 361
men, but no female inmate ever "took
the seat."
By 1910 female inmates were assigned
to convict lease farm units including the
Thomason Farm, Bowden Farm, and the
Eastham Unit.
Prison records suggest that female convicts
were often a reflection of the segregated
Texas society at large. At the
Bowden Farm most female convicts
were black, sentenced for property offenses
and were usually assigned to work in
the fields, while the few white females
were all convicted of homicide and served
as domestics.
It was at the isolated and remote Eastham
Camp Two, north of Huntsville, that the
plight of women prisoners would again
become controversial news. In 1908 a
San Antonio Express reporter named
George Waverly Briggs had written
a series of columns exposing the
brutal conditions and corruption ofthe Texas prison system. Briggs' columns
are generally credited with leading to the
call for an investigation that resulted in
a sensational document published by
the Texas House of Representatives in
1910 mandating a massive restructuring of
the Texas prison system.
Few passages in the 1910 legislative
report had such devastating impact with
regard to the state prison system and convict
lease system as did the descriptions
of the female prisoners isolated on the
remote Eastham Camp Two:
"For the variable female population
of sixty to one hundred convicts in the
Texas prison there is not an official
matron. There is not a member of their
sex to attend to their needs and wants;
there is not a woman of sympathetic
mien and heart to minister to their
minds diseased; there is not a woman of
delicate sensibilities and modest demeanor
to perform the bodily examinations which
the law requires to be made of each prisoner
incarcerated..."
But few allegations in Briggs' column
had the impact with the Texas public as
did his report that three babies also lived
on the Eastham Camp Two. It appears
Briggs' conclusions directly influencedH E R I TAG E SUMMER 2006
Upcoming Pages
Here’s what’s next.
Search Inside
This issue can be searched. Note: Results may vary based on the legibility of text within the document.
Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.
Citing and Sharing
Basic information for referencing this web page. We also provide extended guidance on usage rights, references, copying or embedding.
Reference the current page of this Periodical.
Texas Historical Foundation. Heritage, Summer 2006, periodical, Summer 2006; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth45365/m1/14/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas Historical Foundation.