January 13, 2025
Tag: penal reform
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Inside Sing Sing Prison and The Mutual Welfare League
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Forty miles north of New York City, “up the Hudson River,” Sing Sing Prison got a new warden in 1915. Thomas Mott Osborne ushered in a wave of penal reform. Out went the lockstep, in came (limited) prisoner self-governance. T. Fred Robbins, a nearby photographer and constable, was allowed to document many of the changes…
Past Article
July 9, 2020 3 Comments
In the early spring of 1950 signs like this one started to appear in the front windows or on the front doors of homes across America. This one from Connecticut and ones like it appeared as warnings that a quarantine was in affect designed to prevent the spread of polio. Postcard History’s guest contributor, Sandy Cobb relates how the flu epidemic of 1918 and the polio pandemic of 1950 were dealt with in her home state of Virginia.