“Some men you just can’t reach,” the
warden said to you as he informed you that you’re not only going to spend some time
in the Prison’s notorious “Hole”, but you’ll be staying in the most feared cell
nicknamed “The Oriental.” You are stripped naked and pushed into this
inhumane dungeon, and there you will stay, shivering day and night, sitting in the dark
having to breathe in an unearthly stench. The guards occasionally give you some bread
and water, and when that wants to come out of you, all you have is a hole in the floor
in which to defecate and urinate in. You can’t even flush it away... the guards
control that mechanism... and so to torture you even more, they don’t flush often. After a few days you stop screaming, and just
sit on the concrete floor, rocking back and forth, on the verge of literally losing your
mind. What we just described to you was perhaps
the worst aspect of Alcatraz, and you have to bear in mind that prisoners sent there
were usually deemed “unmanageable.” One of the reasons people got this way of
course was because of the conditions inside other parts of the prison. Alcatraz was no walk in the park, that’s
for sure, and today you’ll see why. But first let’s give you a little bit of
history, because we’re sure all our dear viewers are not all experts on America’s
most notorious prison. Ok, so the nickname of the place was “the
Rock” and that is because the prison stands on an island about 1.25 miles (2.01 km) off
the coast of San Francisco. Before it became a regular prison it was a
military prison, and it wasn’t until 1934 that civilian convicts started arriving there. It was said to be “inescapable”, but as
you’ll later find out, that’s still a matter being disputed today. The idea was to send men who had escaped from
other prisons to this fortress on a rock, and that would ensure that they would never
escape again. Some of the new arrivals in 1934 were called
by the authorities “The incorrigibles”, meaning they just kept getting in trouble,
or kept escaping or trying to escape. That line we used at the start, “Some men
you just can’t reach,” is actually from a classic prison movie called “Cool Hand
Luke”, and the warden in that film believed that Luke was incorrigible. The warden tries to break him by putting him
in isolation and fitting him with leg irons. We mention this movie because Alcatraz was
the kind place where a man was supposed to be broken. Don’t get us wrong, the wardens at this
prison weren’t all about making men lose their minds, but they wanted to break their
will, to kind of exorcise the criminal out of them. All the first guys that arrived in ’34,
shackled together and watched over by countless agents and U.S, Marshalls, were said to be
dangerous and unpredictable. These guys were what you might call hardened
criminals, and Alcatraz was a kind of experiment to cure them, or at least ensure they couldn’t
escape or cause any more harm. The dungeon we described at the start was
real enough, but generally most people stayed in cells that were on B Block and A block
and those cells usually measured 9 feet (2.7 m) by 5 feet (1.5 m) and 7 feet (2.1 m) high. You didn’t get much in the cell, besides
a basin to wash in, a bed to lie on and a toilet to pee in. You also got a desk. The thing with Alcatraz, though, and why it
was so notorious, was this thing about breaking the wills, or crushing the souls of men. As one writer put it, the prison was, "the
great garbage can of San Francisco Bay, into which every federal prison dumped its most
rotten apples.” The authorities didn’t mind mistreating
a bunch of rotten apples. Sure, prisoners got a visit, but only once
a month, and if they fell ill, there was a prison hospital. They could even get a job - usually a hard
job we should say - and they could get books from the library…So how come doing time
there was so hard? Well, it was all about the rules, and you
could find them in the not-so-glossy brochure called, “REGULATIONS FOR INMATES U.S.P.,
ALCATRAZ.” You guys might watch prison shows today, and
while there is violence, you see inmates laughing and joking with each other and you see some
of them playing cards, watching TV, or even having a game of basketball. In the beginning there was nothing like this
at Alcatraz. You see, there was what was called a “strict
code of silence”, and it is this that broke a lot of men. The code was relaxed in the later years, but
at the start men just had to keep quiet almost all of the time. If they didn’t, they would be reprimanded
and likely sent to an isolation cell. When they ate they weren’t even allowed
to speak, although one former prisoner once said, “Although talking at meals is prohibited,
the men do manage to speak in a grumbling monotone out of the corners of their mouths.” He said when he took his first meal there
he was sat next to none other than Machine Gun Kelly... We guess they didn’t talk much. This former inmate also said that there were
no clocks in the prison, so the only way inmates knew what time it was, was when those whistles
blew. This was another thing that made the men feel
less than human. They were living outside of real time. He said during his last year on the Rock there
were only 314 prisoners, but 14 of them went “violently insane.” It’s not surprising, either. When the guys were in their cells, they had
to keep quiet. They weren’t even allowed to talk to themselves,
and they were continually watched over by the guards. The same went for work, there was no talking
at work. During recreation they could chat, but the
rule was they couldn’t stand together in groups. This drove some men insane, as did the hard
work, and that’s why some guys just said enough is enough and killed themselves. One guy slit his own throat, another climbed
up a 75 foot fence and jumped to his death. Another, out of sheer madness, cut off his
fingers on one hand with a hatchet. One the first governors at Alcatraz said he
didn’t believe in psychological illnesses, and he said those quivering men were just
trying to get out of work. It was cold, too, almost all of the time. Taking a shower wasn’t a pleasant experience
at all, especially in the winter, because the water was freezing cold. That was for the first thirty years or so,
until they added hot water to the prison system. There were bars on the cells, so if a guy
wanted to take a dump he didn’t exactly get much privacy. In fact, there wasn’t much privacy at all. These men were watched virtually all of the
time, and it drove them nuts. It was run so strictly that men had to stand,
sit, walk in single file, eat, stop eating, all at the blow of a whistle. Before a man could even take a bite of his
food he had to sit with his hands by his side, and then when the whistle blew, he could eat. They had twenty minutes to finish the food,
and not a second more. After that, they had to place their tray,
knife, fork and spoon in the position that was part of the rules. They then had to sit quietly with their hands
at their sides while guards checked if any of the utensils were not in the proper position. You have to remember that the so-called “Iron
men” that ran the prison had a zero tolerance regarding not breaking these very strict rules…Oh,
what’s that? A spoon pointed slightly to the left when
it should be at a 180 degree angle. That could get a man in trouble. Mess up with a fork two days later or scratch
an itch when your arms are supposed to be at your side, and wow, what have we got here,
a man we just can’t reach. One former guard said they treated the men
like animals. Counting them all day. Not allowing them to speak. Forcing them to do hard work, and then marching
them around in lines like cattle. He said his job was more like working at a
zoo. There were many other rules, too, such as
no “TRADING, GAMBLING, SELLING, GIVING, OR LOANING.” That’s the same in prisons today, but c’mon,
who doesn’t have hustles in a modern penitentiary? It’s what keeps some men sane in this day
and age, but in Alcatraz back in the early days the prisoners really had nothing to do
but follow the rules, work, sleep, and do the same again every day. It was hard to sleep at times, too, because
at night the guards liked to do some target practice on dummies outside the cell gates. This wasn’t just so they could achieve a
better aim, but it was to mentally torment the men who heard the shots. Sometimes the guards would leave the dummies,
all riddled with bullets, for the men to see when they came out of their cells. That was a warning to the inmates, just a
reminder of what would happen to them if they tried to escape
This regime literally drove prisoners insane, but the thing was, when a man lost his mind
and just cracked, he would likely be sent to isolation. He wouldn’t exactly become more mentally
balanced there. This was D Block and was actually called the
“Treatment Block.” There the inmates’ meals were delivered
to their cells and the guys were only allowed out for two showers a week. Cells 9–14, were known as “The Hole”,
and in there prisoners were allowed just one shower a week and only an hour a week on the
exercise yard, provided they were alone. The very worst was the cell we described at
the start, which was also called the “Strip Cell.” This is how one former prisoner described
his experience in this cell: “There is no soap. No tobacco. No toothbrush. The smell – well you can describe it only
by the word 'stink.' It is like stepping into a sewer. It is nauseating. You have no shoes, no bed, no mattress-nothing
but the four damp walls and two blankets.” He said in 13 days he got two proper meals,
and the rest of the time the guards gave him a few slices of bread and some water each
day. He said he was not allowed to wash, and had
to just stink in the stink. He knew of one man who’d been in there that
got a shower, and that was when a guard threw a bucket of cold water over him. Can you imagine life in the strip in the middle
of the winter? Other allegations made by prisoners, but not
supported in official documents, is that inmates that went on hunger strike because of the
brutal conditions were force-fed by having a rubber tube put down their throat and having
milk and eggs poured into it. Wardens at the prison always denied that prisoners
were beaten by guards, although one inmate later wrote guards would sometimes knock inmates
unconscious with lead clubs covered with rubber; weapons called “Blackjacks”. People tried to escape of course, and in 1938
three men tried that after clubbing a guard to death. They were shot, and one of them died. Some other inmates later tried to escape and
drowned in the bay. The most notorious escape attempt was in 1946. This led to what is called “The Battle of
Alcatraz.” That’s because a bunch of men overpowered
the guards and managed to get to the weapons’ room and get themselves some guns. The rest should have been simple... just force
the guards to open the doors. Their plan was to do that and then escape
by boat. But they couldn’t get out of the main door,
and instead of just giving up their weapons, they shot some of the guards. The U.S Marines were called in and killed
three of the prisoners, while 17 people were injured in total. Two of the inmates who’d used the weapons
were later sent to the gas chamber. Did anyone escape? Well, you all likely know about the 1962 escape,
an elaborate plan that led to three men just disappearing. They were never seen again, and if they survived
is still an issue talked about today. Ok, we should tell you that over the years
the conditions at Alcatraz did improve a bit. With the violence and suicides and poor mental
health conditions of prisoners, it seemed that the tactic to keep them quiet and treat
them like animals wasn’t exactly rehabilitating them. In the later years, the 50s and until the
prison closed in 1963, the silent treatment had all but been abolished and prisoners were
allowed things like musical instruments. The Gangster Al Capone famously played a banjo
in Alcatraz. Prisoners could even listen to the radio and
see a movie on the weekends. The place was less “Hellcatraz” in those
years, and we should say that the food at Alcatraz was arguably the best food ever served
in any U.S. prison. That was one of the problems actually. The food was expensive, but so were all the
guards that had to keep watching over the men 24/7. Not only that, the building was old and it
needed constant repairs. Running Alcatraz was three times more expensive
than running the average prison in the USA. And that was the end of America’s most notorious
prison. Do you love strange, unexpected, stories that
defy belief, but are completely true? Then you'll love "I Am." Fascinating tales told from the perspective
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