From the Desk of the
Chief Librarian

Researchers in the field of prison history know that penitentiary labor was a big business in the nineteenth century. Most correctional institutions showed a respectable profit from either their own businesses or revenues from leasing convict labor to private enterprise. It was only after the agitation of free labor over low wage convict competition that the federal government passed laws against interstate commerce of prison-made goods in the 1930s. Prison labor was responsible for producing all manner of items, and the convicts were frequently ill-treated in their jobs. But few of our readers would even guess that the prison cane industry in the Ohio Penitentiary depended on the skin of dead prisoners. Or so we are led to believe from a recent Sealy Library acquisition, the eight-page pamphlet Brutality and Barbarism! The Skinning of Dead Convicts in the Ohio Penitentiary (Columbus, OH, 1886). The anonymous writer claims that the Democratic Party in Ohio and its officers in charge of the Columbus penitentiary were responsible for “the skinning of the bodies of dead convicts, and the manufacture of the human hide thus obtained into canes....”

We are fairly sure that the pamphlet, with its closing poem (“When a party is on its last, last legs,/And of it very little remains,/ As a last resort it is not very strange,/That they want their little Democratic canes”), is a political satire; but given that a man known as John Brown, who was convicted in 1867 of being a vampire after having been caught sucking the blood out of two sailors on board a fishing boat, was imprisoned in the same penitentiary at the same time, can we be certain that convict skin was not in evidence?

On a different note, we are sorry to see Kathy Killoran leave the Library after several years of excellent service. We congratulate her and wish her well in her new position as Academic Director of Undergraduate Studies. Professor James Kuslan, a long-time adjunct in the Library, will serve as a Substitute Assistant Professor until September.

Larry Sullivan

A LIBRARY REMINISCENCE, OR, THE PROVOST REMEMBERS

The Lloyd Sealy Library provides the interlocking foundation for the work that we carry out as a knowledge based community. The entire community takes great pride in knowing that the Lloyd Sealy Library has achieved pre-eminence in its criminal justice collection, and that scholars and researchers from around the world gravitate to the extensive holdings and datasets that we have accumulated in recent years.

As a senior college of the City University of New York that is underfinanced, it was quite an undertaking to find the resources to provide the Library with the tools necessary to ensure that the collection served the needs of students and faculty. Revenue over-collection and the Technology Fee have provided the Lloyd Sealy Library with the resources needed to maintain excellence in holdings and in service.
The College can take great pride that every student survey pays tribute to the extraordinary abilities of the librarians. From the genesis of the College, we have been fortunate to attract librarians who were devoted to the mission of the College. The staff has been in the vanguard of the revolution taking place in the world vis-à-vis the storing and disseminating of knowledge in the 21st century. The electronic databases that are now available to the community simplify and facilitate research and the learning process.

The faculty and staff of the Lloyd Sealy Library will remain the jewel in our midst. It has been my good fortune to have worked and served you over the last sixteen years as your Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs.

Basil Wilson