Membership certificate for the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons containing a bust-length portrait vignette of "Bishop White Presdt. 50 Years" and a "bird's-eye view of the Building's-Grounds and Environs" of Eastern State Penitentiary. Filigree surrounds the oval-framed portrait. View shows the prison built 1823-1836 after the designs of John Haviland at 2101-2199 Fairmount Avenue. Individuals walk and a horse-drawn wagon travel within the prison grounds that are surrounded by a brick wall with Gothic-style entrance gate. The grounds include garden plots. Pedestrians, including a man pushing a hand-cart, a carriage, and men on horseback travel in the streets outside of the penitentiary. Undeveloped land and cityscape, including Girard College, border the prison building. Also includes a descriptive paragraph about "This institution known as Cherry Hill State Prison 'At Philadelphia as the Model Prison of' The Pennsylvania System of Prison Discipline' or "Separate System' ..." Text describes the Separate System of incarceration where "each convict occupies a single cell or workshop" in addition to the construction, dimensions, and utilities of the building, including "seven corridors of cells," gas, "heat by hot water," and "water in each cell.", Issued to John McAlister [sic] Jr. on November 11, 1856. Signed by John B. Lytle, Secy. and James J. Barclay, Presdt., Attributed to James Queen., Contains blindstamp of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons., Philadelphia on Stone, POS 597, Wainwright retrospective conversion project, edited., Historical Society of Pennsylvania:, Free Library of Philadelphia: Oversize Philadelphiana - Societies, Certificates, Probably originally part of a McAllister scrapbook.
Creator
Queen, James Fuller, 1820 or 21-1886, artist
Date
[ca. 1855]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department *W396 [P.2214]
