The Connecticut Prison Association and the Search for Reformatory Justice. Gordon S. Bates
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his doctor for a physical examination. Perhaps concerned about his physical limitations and a future that promised little relief, he sat at his desk for a few hours; made a few phone calls, one to his wife; and did some paperwork. At noon, in the thirty-fourth year of his work with the CPA, he took a revolver from a drawer in his desk and, without a warning, ended his life with a bullet to his brain.
According to his obituary, few (including his wife) had detected any unusual depression or discouragement in the days and weeks prior to his suicide. Perhaps he felt that his weakened condition might lead the CPA directors to replace him. Perhaps he feared being further debilitated by another stroke. It’s very likely that the strain of over three decades of working with highly troubled and unpredictable clients, a population with a high percentage of failures, had finally begun to weigh on his mind. Whatever the reasons, he left no explanation by which others might rationalize his action and make it more palatable. He left behind only his dedicated work and his belief that his efforts as a friend of the inmates he served were not in vain.
Unfortunately, the devastating impact of suicide on those close to the deceased was as underestimated then as it has been until very recent times. The fact that we have no direct descriptions of the emotional reactions to his passing is neither mysterious nor unexpected. Only in the past forty years has suicide become an acceptable topic of academic research and public education. On the basis of the increased understanding of human psychology gained by the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is probable that suicide a century earlier was even more demoralizing, discouraging, and frightening than it is today.
It was a tribute to Taylor’s reputation as a veteran and as a criminal justice specialist that the taboo about suicide was put aside in Connecticut. John Taylor was given a hero’s send-off at a well-attended funeral. His Civil War compatriots as well as his CPA and criminal justice friends were present, and he received full military honors at his graveside service. It is disappointing but not surprising that the same national American Prison Association ignored the suicidal aspect of his death. Despite the widely known thirty-two years of exemplary service rendered by Taylor to Connecticut through the CPA, and to the nation through his four years in the military, his passing went unnoticed at the national level. Francis Wayland, on the other hand, had been eulogized among those listed as the “veterans of the prison cause” along with Charles Dudley Warner in a reflection on the early reform leaders by Frederick H. Wines of Illinois at the 1906 American Prison Association Congress in Indianapolis, Indiana.52
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