It's Always Something.

Found some interesting documents about Florida prisons of a century ago.

They hanged juvenile killers. The youngest was 14.

Kids got 10 year sentences for playing in the streets. The charge was obstructing a public thoroughfare. The kids generally were leased to corporations as cheap labor.

One man got 15 years for stealing a box of soap. Another got 75 lashes with a whip for some minor transgression.

JAMESBJOHNSON said:

I live in Schlubville, but thanks anyway. We've been around here since 1839. One of my daughters works a block or two away from the hotel.

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Oh, so you are a local to Florida? Like many I am an import. Or, as I have heard tell tale, a "damn Yankee", opposed to a "Yankee". The difference being a Yankee who comes down and stays. You probably knew that already.
However, I have family that lived here back in the 50's.

Ever hear of "20 acre Hurley"? See? That's the sort of thing that doesn't get written down in history books nor newspapers.

BTW, not for nothing, I wasn't trying to wheel and deal you into telling me where you lived, I was just trying to say, without knowing, you have to help yourself.

It's cool that you have roots back that far though.

My family came to America before the revolution. Not a unique thing, I grant you. But I can even tell you what regiment my great great great grandfather fought in in General Washington's army and the lieutenant of that regiment. We fought on both sides of the civil war and supposedly one of my family had staked out a huge section of the Mississippi river valley. Unfortunately the stupid mook didn't understand you have to pay taxes on anything you own and lost it all. Then one of my family was on the Arizona when she went down.

Yup, lots of good stuff found in history...

Hope you find all you are looking for.

LWulf said:

Oh, so you are a local to Florida? Like many I am an import. Or, as I have heard tell tale, a "damn Yankee", opposed to a "Yankee". The difference being a Yankee who comes down and stays. You probably knew that already.
However, I have family that lived here back in the 50's.

Ever hear of "20 acre Hurley"? See? That's the sort of thing that doesn't get written down in history books nor newspapers.

BTW, not for nothing, I wasn't trying to wheel and deal you into telling me where you lived, I was just trying to say, without knowing, you have to help yourself.

It's cool that you have roots back that far though.

My family came to America before the revolution. Not a unique thing, I grant you. But I can even tell you what regiment my great great great grandfather fought in in General Washington's army and the lieutenant of that regiment. We fought on both sides of the civil war and supposedly one of my family had staked out a huge section of the Mississippi river valley. Unfortunately the stupid mook didn't understand you have to pay taxes on anything you own and lost it all. Then one of my family was on the Arizona when she went down.

Yup, lots of good stuff found in history...

Hope you find all you are looking for.

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We came to Florida during the Spanish Period.

Speaking of prisons, have you researched "Pea" Farm prisons. I know they had them in Louisiana as late as the 70's because there was one to the west of Shreveport. They grew their own food along with cash crops which paid for the prisons expenses.

I think there is still one in existence in Texas on the west side of Houston.

Did they have these in Florida?

TxRad said:

Speaking of prisons, have you researched "Pea" Farm prisons. I know they had them in Louisiana as late as the 70's because there was one to the west of Shreveport. They grew their own food along with cash crops which paid for the prisons expenses.

I think there is still one in existence in Texas on the west side of Houston.

Did they have these in Florida?

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Still do! The original, now known as Union Correctional Facility (on the site as Florida State Prison) was 30,000 acres of farm, timber, and livestock/poultry. The convicts had all kinds of industries on the site. Timber, turpentine, firewood, nurseries, tree farms, etc. They even furnished the guard staff for several years. Now the prison makes office furniture.

JAMESBJOHNSON said:

We came to Florida during the Spanish Period.

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Wow, really? Cool. 1/4 of my family is Portuguese (from the Azores) but I sadly don't know a lick about them.

JAMESBJOHNSON said:

My new story worked itself out well enough. The challenge was to create a story without any conscious premeditation. And it worked. Plus I learned something: What looks like writers block may simply be your brain working on the problem. So! When it looked like I was stumped I gave myself more time, and the solution came along (and isn't what I imagined).

Started reading two Victor Hugo novels, and tossed both. Boring. The aren't Les Miserables or The Hunchback. One of them is about 1/2 travelogue zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Started reading David Copperfield by Dickens, and its much better. 1000 pages? 1057 to be exact.

Hatched an idea for a strange romance serial set in the Old South. I'm an amateur authority on the subject so it wont require much research. Whats likely to disturb readers is how benign the slave system was, and I intend to depict it accurately, and contrast/compare it to how free subsistence farmers fared. I need a good title, how about SYLVAN ABBEY?

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If you define the slave system as benign, be sure to describe how all those benign mothers were sold away from their benign children and how all those whip marks found themselves so benignly on black persons backs. And don't forget the benign thousands of loving slaves who followed Sherman's army to the sea. i am also only an amateur, but am currently reading my 17th book on the slavery/civil war/ reconstruction era, and none of them, nor does any historian I ever heard of come to the conclusion that slavery was benign to anyone except lazy slave owners who thought they were privileged by god to own the bodies of others. How can someone benignly OWN someone else?

I also have personal experience, having lived in the south in the early 1960s and the relationship was still not benign then 100 years later. I was gassed, hosed, beaten, set upon by dogs, all by those wonderful benign southerners with their wonderful southern hospitality.

Yikes its a hornests neat of history rewriters and right wing wingnuts, I'm otta here

robertreams said:

If you define the slave system as benign, be sure to describe how all those benign mothers were sold away from their benign children and how all those whip marks found themselves so benignly on black persons backs. And don't forget the benign thousands of loving slaves who followed Sherman's army to the sea. i am also only an amateur, but am currently reading my 17th book on the slavery/civil war/ reconstruction era, and none of them, nor does any historian I ever heard of come to the conclusion that slavery was benign to anyone except lazy slave owners who thought they were privileged by god to own the bodies of others. How can someone benignly OWN someone else?

I also have personal experience, having lived in the south in the early 1960s and the relationship was still not benign then 100 years later. I was gassed, hosed, beaten, set upon by dogs, all by those wonderful benign southerners with their wonderful southern hospitality.

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At the start of the Civil War in 1861 average wages for farm labor was around $150 a year. A common soldier made around $130 a year. Slaves cost from $300 tp $1000 each most places. Then you had to feed, clothe, shod, shelter, and medicate them regardless of what came along. And if your slave was old or disabled or young they got the same level of care. Beating slaves make no sense at all if their health and labor matter to your prosperity.

Before the Civil War few slaves went to prison, because most places had no prisons. Felons were generally hanged, and few slaves were ever hanged, according to official records. They cost too much money to acquire, and their labor was too essential to the prosperity of the master. So how was it that slaves were beaten?

If a slave was a serious problem selling him was the easiest solution. Next best was leasing the slave to a sugar planter in some remote, hostile place like South Florida. Beatings were reserved for serious felonies such as murdering another slave, crippling another slave, killing and abusing mules, arson, child or wife abuse. I don't know but I imagine some got beatings for trying to elope with masters wife or daughter. The elopements are in the old newspapers if you look for them.

Sherman: One of the obscure facts of the Civil War was Lincoln authorized Sherman to destroy slaves who refused to leave the plantation. Lincoln argued that as slaves were legally livestock, and it was legal to destroy livestock, it was okay to murder slaves. And slaves either went with Sherman or died. Lincoln also sold plenty of former slaves back into slavery down in Central America. All those folks Sherman liberated gotta be fed. Sherman tried using blacks as soldiers to garrison places like Jacksonville, Key West, and Pensacola but blacks made piss-poor combatants where they were tried. And Lincoln got rid of the excess.

Roughed in the opening of my new tale, A GOOD DAY TO DIE. It opens with an old moonshiner leaving his cracker shack after some pussy and breakfast provided by a neighbor. He pays her $5 (its 1927 and times are already bad in Florida), she vanishes into the orange grove, and the old man is shot thru the head by a sniper concealed on a sandy knoll close to the shack. The neighbor runs back and steals the old man's wad of cash from his overalls. The shooter is a deputy sheriff with the Palmetto County S.O. sent to send a message to all the moonshiners not to fuck with the VIP bootleggers in town.

So I spent the afternoon looking for a great 1926 police car, and found this:
http://www.hemmings.com/hcc/stories/2011/10/01/hmn_feature3.html