On the one hand, the prison is an integral part of the town of Concord, particularly West Concord. On the other hand, it is, as Renee Garrelick described it, ". . . an alien institution within Concord." But there was one product of life at the Massachusetts Reformatory that brought the outside world to incarcerated inmates; at the same time allowing those in the community to understand something about the men who lived within its walls: a newspaper.

From 1909 until 1947 Concord inmates wrote, edited, typeset, and printed Our Paper, a weekly newspaper. Its pages contained world, national, and local news, essays and poems, an update on the number of inmates received and released, and prison library news. Articles were excerpted from a variety of publications, including The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, Popular Mechanics and the more obscure Literary Digest and Zion’s Herald. Also excerpted were stories from periodicals like Youth’s Companion, some chosen for their moral content, others just to entertain- either way they were meant to fill with substantive reading the long, idle hours that are a part of prison life.

Current and world events were not splashed across the top of the paper as headlines, instead they were apparent through the selection of articles, and by the general flavor of the newspaper. Before and during World Wars I and II there was a heavy emphasis on patriotism. War-related articles brought news from the front and homefront during both conflicts, including the preparedness debate prior to World War I and America’s growing defense efforts in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor.

Our Paper brought the outside world inside the prison walls through articles such as "A Review of the War," "First U.S. Soldier Dead Buried in France," and "Boulder Dam on the Way," alternating with lighter news, "Fifty Years of Kodak," and "Montreal Beats Boston Bruins 5-3." There was an extensive obituary for Thomas Edison, an account of the Halifax disaster, a look back at the sinking of the Lusitania.

The paper contained fewer items of local interest than might be expected, but that could be indicative of the nature of prison life itself. Incarcerated behind prison walls, unable to see any further than the surrounding roads and fields, maybe Concord was just a narrow slice of experience and not very real. The paper occasionally included brief articles telling the news of Concord and other area towns, and marking the passing of local luminaries such as Ellen Emerson and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn. Emerson's quotes were liberally scattered throughout the paper.

Just as Our Paper let prisoners know what was happening on the outside, it allowed a glimpse of life inside the prison to residents of West Concord and beyond through the sale of subscriptions. Both the content and the quality of the paper are impressive, and distributing it throughout the neighborhood may have contributed to improving public relations between the prison and the town.

From the beginning there was plenty of sports coverage, including in-depth game analysis, team standings, and scores. Most of the focus was on baseball (or base ball, as it was called in the early years of publication), later hockey, football, and especially boxing became popular. By the mid-thirties there was detailed coverage of prison baseball teams, which were members of the Reformatory League and featured the Ramblers, the Pilgrims, the Wanderers, and the Orioles. Correspondents described the games and players in as much colorful detail as they did the Red Sox!

Beginning in the late thirties the paper began to reflect societal changes. The writers were allowed more autonomy and a personal presence, using bylines instead of being identified only by their inmate numbers or writing anonymously. J.R. Flaherty wrote serial fiction, entitling one of his stories, "Manhattan at Midnight: A Coincidence, a Fog, a Man, and a Girl Who Found Success and a Man Who Lost it". Others wrote editorials, poems, and an entertainment column. John Monahan wrote on sports. At this time the inmates also began producing illustrations for the front page of each issue that were created using linoleum block prints. Covers might illustrate a season, a holiday, or just the creative whim of the artist- but each one is an eye-catching work of art that evokes amazement at the creative expression emerging from the shadows of the Massachusetts Reformatory.

Looking over the news and short stories, the inspirational quotes and essays, the sports reporting, poems, and profiles compiled diligently each week over a span of nearly forty years, it is clear that Our Paper provided a vital link between these young prisoners and the world outside the walls of Concord's prison.

Bibliography

• Garrelick, Renee. Concord in the Days of Strawberries and Streetcars. Concord: Concord Historical Commission, 1985.

• Massachusetts Department of Correction website for Concord MCI. (Online)

• Massachusetts Reformatory (Concord, Mass.), "Prison Newspaper (1909-1947)," Massachusetts Archives, Boston, Massachusetts.

Drawings: From various issues of Our Paper, courtesy of the Massachusetts Archive.
Backgrounds: Word of Mouth Design.