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Prisoner Custody in the 1800's Prisoner Custody in the 1880's:
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In most cases, the courts of the United States were held in buildings belonging to individuals or to the counties, cities, or parishes of the respective states. |
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U. S. Marshals, similar to today, relied upon local sheriffs for jail
space in the early to mid-1880's. The marshals also rented the
places in which court was held and prisoners were housed. Generally
during this period, the federal government did not build or maintain its
own courthouses, preferring to lease county courtrooms or other
facilities annually. The government refused to rent office space for the
marshals and U.S. attorneys, though it did agree to pay for space for
clerks to keep court records.
A prisoner wagon used by Marshals and local sheriffs in Boston in the 1890's. Each marshal and attorney was expected to arrange and pay for his own office. In addition, the marshals and attorneys cleaned their own rooms; payments to janitors were not allowed. Jail space was rented by the week from the local sheriff. Occasionally the local jails caused the marshals problems. In October 1821, Marshal Morton Waring of South Carolina reported the escape of two federal prisoners from the county jail. "The Marshal," he complained to the secretary of state, "has no
control over By the early 1850s, Attorney General Caleb Cushing considered the
lack of adequate courthouses and prisons "a serious evil demanding the
attention of the Government." He pointed out to President Franklin
Pierce that "in most cases. the courts of the United States are held in
buildings belonging to individuals or to the counties, cities or
parishes of the respective states upon whom the United States are thus
made to depend for their necessary accommodation. This dependence, in
the matter of prisoners, is particularly
However, construction of the facilities did not begin in earnest
until after the On February 23, 1846. Secretary of the Treasury R.J. Walker polled
the Marshal Thomas Fletcher of Mississippi informed the Treasury that in
fifteen
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