**CLPRA scripts are working drafts for recording sessions. Recorded performances may vary due to editing for broadcast.** Links key: CLP Atlas Informational (with hover) Online Books CLP Author page CLP Intern

Donald Lowrie (ND-1925) http://tinyurl.com/Lowrie

Click the below to hear radio segment.

Humanitarianism

From My Life in Prison, 1912. Read Online Download PDF

Reader: Kevin Hearle

California prisons have often served as subject and setting in literary works, which often take as their theme the brutality of conditions within prison walls. But once in awhile, a prison writer points out the humanity that occasionally flourishes there.

Donald Lowrie was an alcoholic burglar sentenced to a stretch in San Quentin when he came to the notice of newspaperman Fremont Older, a crusader for better prison conditions. With Older's encouragement, Lowrie wrote his 1912 serial My Life in Prison a detailed account of San Quentin life that includes a portrait of a humanitarian warden who earned the respect of prisoners.

Why had the men responded? Well . . . on Christmas Eve, the Warden had come inside the prison and had been much surprised to see socks hanging from nearly every wicket. It had been an amusement for the old-time prison officers to see socks hung out on Christmas Eve, but to Warden Hoyle it was something more than amusing. He promptly sent an officer to San Quentin Point and bought every bit of confection and fruit in the town; and when the officer got back with his load it was distributed in the socks at midnight.

Next morning when the prisoners awoke and found that they had at last been remembered it struck deeply. It was not the first instance of the new Warden's humanitarianism, but it made a deeper impression than anything else he had done.

Lowrie's book earned him respect as a writer, and he continued to publish stories after his success. Unfortunately he couldn't stay out of prison and served time in Arizona and Pennsylvania.