A brief history of the Workhouse in the 19th century

Update, April 22:

The Missouri History Museum recently made available two additional photos of the old Workhouse. Below, find them.  

Original story:

The Medium Security Institution, commonly called the Workhouse, has been in the news recently again, as activists continue to fight for its closure. But the history of the prison, now located on Hall Street, goes all the way back to 1843, when the city was still young and operating a whole host of different institutions that are now closed. At one time, the City of St. Louis operated its own hospitals, cemetery, house for prostitutes, retirement homes—either codified in the municipal charter or by ordinance. One by one, St. Louis divested itself of these businesses, allowing the private sector to take over. Only the Workhouse remains as the last of the major civic initiatives from the earliest days of city government.

While the charter and ordinances for the penal institution date to the 1840s, the most famous location did not open until 1853, on 50 acres at the southeast corner of Meramec Street and Carondelet Road (present-day South Broadway). The legislation called for the purchase of one half of Block Number Three in the St. Louis Commons at a place on the Mississippi River known as Point Breeze. The land must not have been very valuable, and it was far from population centers of the time; Compton and Dry’s Pictorial St. Louis published in 1876 cuts the Workhouse’s location off to the north. The terrain nearby that does appear in Pictorial St. Louis shows rocky bluffs and deep gullies that penetrate hundreds of feet into the landscape, pockmarked with sinkholes and clay deposits. The Iron Mountain Railroad ran below the bluffs, providing easy access to the otherwise remote site.

The purpose of the Workhouse was simple: If you were convicted of a crime that required the payment of a fine or penalty that you could not pay, you were incarcerated for a period of time to work off the debt. Prisoners could not be held longer than six months, and they were paid 50 cents a day. While that might not sound like much, by comparison, a worker in Adam Lemp’s highly successful Western Brewery and Eberhard Anheuser’s giant soap factory were each paid around $1 a day in the same era. Interestingly, while today prison guards are notoriously underpaid, a jailer was paid a competitive wage of $1 a day, the same as working at a flourishing private enterprise in the same era. The guards also were provided with a barracks on the grounds due to the isolation of the Workhouse. The superintendent lived in a villa close to Carondelet Road, while prisoners lived in cell blocks.

The average stay of a prisoner at the Workhouse was only a month or so, but it was a grueling one. Like something out of a Hollywood movie, the prisoners were marched down into the yawning mouth of a giant quarry in between the cell blocks and river every morning after breakfast at 7, stopping only for lunch, before working late into the evening. With the exception of some women who were adept as seamstresses, both men and women worked in the quarry. Ten-hour days were the norm. While chained in manacles, the workers would break stones with sledgehammers. The small rocks would then be hauled in wagons by mules to two rock crushers, where they would be ground down into “macadamized stone.” The stone was hardpacked into the street beds of the city. The Schweer Brick Company sat a block away, no doubt taking advantage of the ancillary harvesting of clay from the Workhouse property. A Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from 1908 shows vegetable gardens, a chicken coop, and pigsties. A Workhouse superintendent, Henry Stussel, had boasted that he had achieved self-sufficiency (and a tidy profit) in his 1876 report to the mayor and city council. Over several decades of the 19th century, the Workhouse cost around $20,000 to operate.

The St. Louis Globe-Democrat paid a visit to the Workhouse in 1875, describing the conditions of the complex. The reporter certainly went in with some preconceptions, stating:

“A man has reached the foot of the social ladder when he finds his way to the Work-house, for he need not go there as long as he can pay his fine or get friends to intercede for him. He must be bankrupt both in means and reputation if he gets there, and his associations in many respects will be disagreeable and degrading.”

The Globe-Democrat goes on to describe one of the cell blocks, with rooms that are 12 by 16 feet, holding on average six prisoners. The setting, with leafy trees and well-mowed lawns, was attractive on the day of the visit. All the women prisoners smoked, apparently, and bathing was required once a week in two spacious bathrooms. Before remarking on the pleasant rural setting and beautiful river views from the quarry, the reporter left with the following conclusion:

“The Work-house seems to be well managed, and its inmates treated with kindness, though strict discipline is not neglected.”

That ringing endorsement and Superintendent Stussel’s glowing self-evaluation faced a glaring affront in 1878 when the Post-Dispatch reported on the death of George Stevens, “one of those lousy idle characters who roam around the streets at daytime” in a melee in the rock quarry. After several days in the Workhouse pretending sick to avoid work, he struck guard Christian Kleb over the head with a sledgehammer, nearly killing him. Locked in the “black hole” intended for punishing prisoners, he was eventually tied to a pole to prevent him from yelling at guards.

When he was finally let out and put back to work in the quarry, things were quiet for a while. But when a guard, William Merkel, turned his back to Stevens, the prisoner threw a rock at his head, nearly killing him. As guards rushed toward Stevens, he hurled more rocks, striking more of his attackers. At least one returned fire with his Colt revolver, possibly striking Stevens in the arm. Other guards grabbed their shotguns from a nearby hut, and fired wildly, striking two inmates dozens of feet away not involved in the fracas. Finally, a bullet from a pistol struck Stevens in the chest, and he died within 10 minutes. When the dust settled, several more guards had nearly been killed after suffering severe head injuries. 

The newspaper articles and reports of mismanagement begin to trickle in the following decades. In 1886, a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter sneaked into the Workhouse to investigate conditions, as the superintendent no longer wanted outsiders looking in. While the primary purpose of the Workhouse was the same, working off a fine averaging $5-10, there was a notable contingent of mentally ill prisoners who had been “dumped” there by their families. Ultimately, people were primarily there because they were poor and could not pay small fines, something that most residents of St. Louis could do. As the article remarks:

“A miserable wretch who climbs into an empty freight car on a rainy night and is fined $25 will have to do seventy-two days of hard labor to make up for his indiscretion. This is very near a mockery of justice…”

Likewise, the Globe-Democrat reported in 1890 on some curious accounting on the part of the Workhouse management and questionable spending on ammunition and vegetables:

“Judging from the report as to the amount of powder and ball used, last month the Work House must have been undergoing a state of siege as $41.53 worth of ammunition was consumed. A well-known city official said upon reading the list: ‘Auditor Brown may have made a mistake by condemning in such severe language the use of asparagus, but he might justly object to so much cannonading at the Work house.’”

Escapes were also apparently out of control, as a diamond thief explained to a Post-Dispatch reporter in 1895. Before he escaped after nine weeks, “Thief Smith, alias Wilson, alias Walsh,” stated he had known of at least 11 men absconding from the Workhouse. Escaping was as easy as simply walking out into the streets of the rapidly growing Dutchtown neighborhood, or along the railroad tracks or even hiding in stone carts leaving the quarry. The Sanborn map showed only a 7-foot-high fence. One teenaged girl who was assigned to clean the superintendent’s house put on one of his daughter’s dresses and walked out the front door. Theoretically, the superintendent was fined the lost penalty of every inmate who escaped.

By 1911, problems at the Workhouse had seeped out into the public, with the release of a report by the Civic League, declaring it “very badly managed and subject to all kinds of political and personal influence, both in its management and in the admission and discharge of its inmates.” The records, when found, revealed that a substantial number of repeat admissions were alcoholics who were arrested for public drunkenness, and one woman having been reincarcerated for 18 of the last 30 years for small fines in stints ranging from two weeks to four months.

While all the women had been moved indoors to sewing jobs, the men were still working in the quarry, and rain would suspend their ability to work off their debts, leaving them idle inside all day, further extending their jail sentences. Likewise, the report noted that breaking up rock in a quarry did little to prepare the men for stable employment once they were released. And besides, much larger and more efficient mechanized quarries in St. Louis county were replacing old and manual labor-intensive ones in the city. The report recommended treatment for alcoholism and better conditions for prisoners, who were still living in the original buildings from the 1850s. The “dungeons” should be abolished, varied industries introduced, and a competent chef hired for the kitchen were further suggestions.

By mid 20th century, many of the same buildings were still in use, and a riot broke out in those now 100-year-old cell blocks in June 1955. Angered by restrictions on visitors, the inmates attacked their guards, throwing debris and lighting mattresses on fire. It took less than two hours to bring the revolt under control, but it brought further attention to the aging facility. Interstate construction loomed as well: Interstate 55, then known as the Ozark Expressway, was planned to run straight through the property.

When the new Medium Security Institution was built in 1966, the workhouse name stuck. Today, Interstate 55 passes over the majority of what was the location of the buildings for the workhouse. To the east of the interstate, the City still owns the land of the now-filled in quarry and uses it for the storage of Forestry Division trucks. A grassy lawn covers the site of what was once the gaping hole in the earth, wisely devoid of new construction. The new workhouse on Hall Street no longer requires its prisoners to work off its debt, but it like its predecessor, continues to face calls by reformers for its closure.