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Revision as of 23:08, 2 October 2005
- Alternative meaning: Sing Sing (band)
Sing Sing Correctional Facility is a maximum security prison in Ossining, New York. It is located in Westchester County approximately 30 miles north of New York City on the coast of the Hudson River. The name comes from the original name of the village of Ossining—though the penitentiary was first called Mount Pleasant when it opened in 1828.
"In 1825, the state legislature gave the job of building a new, more modern prison to Captain Elam Lynds, a prison warden from upstate New York. Lynds spent months investigating possible locations for the facility including Staten Island, the Bronx and an area called Mt. Pleasant on the shores of the Hudson River. He also visited New Hampshire where a prison was successfully constructed by inmate labor using stone that was available on site. For this reason, Lynds selected Mt. Pleasant, located near a small village in Westchester County with the unlikely name of Sing Sing. It was derived from the Indian words, "Sint Sinks" which translates to "stone upon stone." The legislature appropriated $20,100 for the land and the project soon received the official stamp of approval." Excerpt from "All about Sing Sing Prison, by Mark Gado - The Crime Library"
A different version of the origin of the name "Sing Sing":
"In 1825, $20,100 was appropriated to buy the 130 acre site, named after the Sint Sinck Native Americans. By May, Mr. Lynds had selected 100 convicts from the Auburn prison and brought them by barge along the Erie Canal to freighters down the Hudson River. They arrived in Sing Sing on May 14, "without a place to receive them or a wall to enclose them." "The History of Sing Sing Prison, by the Half Moon Press, May 2000"
It was the third New York prison built when, in 1825, the legislature appropriated $20,100 to buy the Silver Mine Farm, a 130 acre (0.5 km²) site with a quarry. The prison was to be self-supporting, and not require taxpayer funding.
Elam Lynds, warden of Auburn (the second New York prison), took 100 Auburn convicts to the site and used them to build the prison from the ground up. Other notable wardens besides Lynds were Lewis E. Lawes and Thomas Mott Osborne. Lawes in particular achieved a lot in cleaning up a scandal-ridden institution, putting an end to the worst of the brutality. However, even in its darkest days, conditions at Sing Sing were never as bad as in southern penitentiaries such as Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman Farm) in Mississippi or the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.
Gangster movies helped make the prison a legend far beyond New York - they included The Big House (1930) Castle on the Hudson (1940), and 20,000 years in Sing Sing (1932) - the latter based on a book by Warden Lawes.
Harris A. Smiler was the first person executed by electrocution at Sing Sing on July 7, 1891. From 1914 until 1971, only the electric chair at Sing Sing was used for executions. The last execution at Sing Sing was in August 1963. New York State abolished capital punishment two years later, later reinstating it in 1995. In June of 2004 it was abolished after being found unconstitutional by the New York Supreme Court.
On January 8, 1983, a riot began with 600-plus inmates in B-block taking 17 correction officers hostage and ended 53 hours later. Today Sing Sing houses more than 1700 prisoners. There are plans to convert the original 1825 cell block, which still stands, into a museum.
Notable prisoners
- Lepke Buchalter, a mobster who was executed there
- Albert Fish, a serial killer and cannibal
- James Larkin, Irish labour leader imprisoned from 1920 to 1923 for 'criminal anarchy' as a result of his left-wing writings
- The Rose Man, a former New York City newspaper editor doing life for murder
- Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, convicted spies of the Soviet Union and two of the last executions done at the prison.
- William H. Van Schaick, captain of the General Slocum, responsible for the worst maritime accident in New York's history
- Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez, electrocuted there after being found guilty for the murder of twelve
Trivia
Sing Sing is where one is going when one is "going up the river", as the prison is upriver from New York City.
According to some of the elder residents of Ossining, the electricity would flicker throughout the town as someone was being executed.
One of Sing Sing's hallmarks was its effective use of prison labor. Aside from building the prison itself, prisoners were also used in the stone quarry where they produced a popular product of the time known as Sing Sing marble. This stone was used in numerous construction projects throughout Ossining and surrounding towns.
The last recorded escape attempt from Sing Sing was on May 7th, 2003.