Established 2023
The Editors of The Umpire
Wednesday, December 11, 2024
Taryn Flaherty
6 years. 52 issues. Over 4,000 articles. Over 350 identified authors. And the four editors that made it all possible.
These editors were identified in The Umpire by their inmate IDs: B-2331, B-6591, B-7413, and B-8266. But their real names were William Kane, William Mitchell, Charles Kinlock, and Clarence Alexander Rea Wray. These men were not just editors; they were writers, teachers, mediators, and leaders in the Eastern State community. Although we may not know everything about them, by studying The Umpire, I hope to provide a deeper insight into the relationships between these editors and education and prison administration.
Education
The characteristic that unified the editors was their exceptional education. These men were highly educated. Almost all of them spent 12-14 years in a mix of public and private schools throughout their childhood. The quality of public education drastically varied depending on the region, city, or even school district. The school districts of Philadelphia, Camden, and a couple of other surrounding urban areas in the Mid-Atlantic region were known to be among the “failing” school districts. White wealthy families pulled away from public education and led the charge to create separate schools more befitting of their status as they saw fit. Thus, around the turn of the twentieth century in the United States, the American education system saw the rise of private and independent schools as an alternative to failing public education. Many of these non-public schools were created to include a specific cultural education, one that matched their race, class, gender, or religion.
It was within this rise of independent schools that private Catholic schools began to amass, separating into girls' and boys' schools. The intent was to intertwine their religious practices into their children’s education without the distraction of students of other faiths or genders. William Mitchell, The Umpire editor in 1913, spent all 13 years of his education in private school. Although there was no place to specify the kind of school he attended, William came from a Catholic family. It is likely that it was Catholicism that motivated his parents to send him to Catholic school, allowing him access to a high-quality education.
This level or quality of education was not particularly common among their peers in Eastern State, although the ability to read and write was commonly shared among white men. The only exception was William Kane who had only 6 years of public education; yet, he was the youngest editor at age 22 while the others were 35-45 years old. Taking on the large responsibility of The Umpire at a young age reflects the high level of leadership and skills he had to earn his position as editor. For other editors, their education level and professional experience, as Clarence and William M. were journalists and writers before ESP, likely contributed to these men’s assent into the leadership of The Umpire.
Although formal education was out of reach for many inmates, informal education was not entirely. It was highly dependent on individuals and much less ingrained into the structure of the prisons. However, some skilled incarcerated folks could share and teach their skills to others. William Mitchell, editor in 1913, taught lessons on the Pitman systems to train his fellow ESP residents how to be stenographers.
To have leaders with skills, such as William, was crucial to having an internal education system in the ESP community. Looking at untraditional education and opportunities for professional development, The Umpire’s writing reveals a community-based form of leadership and enrichment from those like William.
Newspapers and Prison Administrators
“Moral” education and literacy were long accepted in prisons, first introduced around the 18th century. The rise of self-published newspapers in the early twentieth century in prisons wasn’t immediately rejected or shut down; they flourished. In the early 20th Century, about half of US prisons had their own newspapers. The Umpire was Eastern State Penitatary’s self-published newspaper for a relatively short time from 1913 to 1919.
Although these newspapers can be seen as a mode of inmate empowerment, literacy and skill development, and leadership, they can also been seen through their usefulness to prison administrators. The Umpire’s leadership had to work with the prison administration to get publish the newspaper; thus, on some level, administrators had a say on what was published in the paper. This wasn’t uncommon for many of the prison newspapers at the time; many of these papers had precarious relationships with their prison administrators, oftentimes being subjected to some level of censorship. As these newspapers were usually well-read by their inmates, they held a level of soft and indirect power, leading to prison administrators using these newspapers to spread their own agenda within the prison.
While Charles Kinlock was editor in 1916, he regularly published what seemed to be proverbs or moralistic phrases. He wrote, “What men wants is not talent, it is purpose to achieve—the will to labor" (ID: 2522) as shown below on the left and another saying, "The man knows his strength until occasion proves them" (ID: 2617). These philosophical one-line proverbs supported an intrinsic motivation for labor, service, and proving one’s self. These qualities appeal to ESP’s original mission of forcing penance and impressing deep reflection on one’s actions as a form of punitive measures. The publishing of these articles gives a glimpse into how The Umpire might’ve been used as a mouthpiece of sorts for the ESP’s administrators.
William Mitchell as editor acknowledged the role of prison administrators in prison newspapers in an article called “Prison Papers” in 1916 as shown above on the right. Mitchell explicitly stated The Umpire was dedicated to their inmates first and foremost, believing that “teach[ing] some little good to only one man” was a success in and of itself. While the relationship between newspaper leadership and prison administrators could’ve varied from editor to editor, it was clear that the writers of the newspapers were well aware of the power imbalance and not just passive subjects of administrators. Editors and writers actively chose whether or not to address issues. Regardless of the role of ESP’s administrators in censorship, the newspaper still belonged to the inmates and was used as a mode of self-expression and community building among the incarcerated community.
Conclusion
The history of the four editors of The Umpire—William Kane, William Mitchell, Charles Kinlock, and Clarence Alexander Rea Wray—reveals a history of education and agency in early twentieth-century prisons. Their personal education, beliefs, and leadership led to six years of newspaper publications, striving to provide a platform for incarcerated folks to build community in and out of the prison. These editors alongside their fellow inmates motivated each other to become writers, teachers, students, and more. Driven to bring just a “little good” to their ESP community, these men left a legacy of enrichment of their fellow inmates within the pages of The Umpire.
References
The Umpire, Vol 2 Issue 1 Page 1 (1913)
The Umpire, 856 (1913)
The Umpire, 841 (1913)
The Umpire, 2522 (1917)
The Umpire, 2617 (1917)
Works Cited and Further Reading
https://prisonjournalismproject.org/prison-newspaper-project/
https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/private-independent-schools/
https://blackstone.edu/the-history-of-inmate-education/
