Thomas Mott Osborne (1859–1926) was an American prison administrator, prison reformer, industrialist, and New York State political reformer, who was so inspired by Donald Lowrie’s 1912 book, My Life in Prison, and its call to action concerning prison reform, that he convinced the governor of New York to appoint him chairman of a new State Commission on Prison Reform. Then, on behalf of that commission and to better understand “the prison problem” firsthand, Osborne voluntarily entered Auburn Prison as “Tom Brown,” No.

33,333x, for one week in 1913 to live as a prisoner — even going so far as having himself thrown into solitary confinement. The 1914 publication of that electrifying experience, Within Prison Walls, shocked the world and made him the most prominent and respected prison reform crusader of his day.

We Heathens have striven to enhance the text that you’re about to experience as much as possible, with the first enhancement being the upgrade of some hyphened words to their current equivalents to render them palatable for modern eyes: to-day is now today, to-morrow has become tomorrow, and so on. We’ve also corrected a few errors that existed within the original text.

One example is at the beginning of Chapters 8 and 9 where Osborne incorrectly identified Wednesday as October 2, when it was actually October 1. Additionally, we have corrected some of the prisoner names after comparing the information Osborne supplies within the narrative against the original Auburn Prison registry entries.

Two examples are Laflam was La Flam (two words, not one), and Joseph Matto was actually Joseph Russo (who was actually McNulty — you’ll understand soon enough). To enhance your reading of the text, we’ve added nearly one hundred footnotes to define slang and literary or archaic terms, provide English translations for foreign words or phrases, and to supplement Osborne’s narrative with context, clarification, and commentary as needed.

The original text also featured 15 footnotes by Osborne which we have retained and set apart from our own. To further enhance the story, we have interspersed the entire book with facsimile excerpts from over three dozen original newspaper articles extracted from newspapers all over the United States and specific to the week that Osborne was locked up in Auburn.

We believe these add-ons lend authenticity to the narrative and contribute sometimes interesting, sometimes confounding insight into the media’s portrayal of Osborne and his week of voluntary incarceration as it unfolded. .