5. FORTY-EIGHT YEARS A PRISONER.
John Hicks is the veteran penitentiary convict of the United States.
Under an alias he served one term in the Missouri penitentiary. Most of
his time has been spent in prisons further east. He is now eighty-four
years of age, and quite recently was released from the Michigan City
penitentiary. Prison authorities have compared notes and find that he
has actually served forty-eight years of prison life. He
is the oldest living criminal in this country. He has served ten terms,
the greater portion of them being in Indiana. His first crime was
committed in 1839. In some way he learned that a man named Bearder had
$360 in his house. While the family were at church Hicks rifled the
house and stole their money. A marked coin led to his conviction, and he
got a three years' sentence. He was never, afterward, out six months at
a time, and was sent up successively for burglary, criminal assault,
robbery, larceny, cattle-stealing and horse-stealing. At the expiration
of his fifth term, at Michigan City, he made his way to the office,
where the directors were in session. He begged them to allow him to
build a shanty in a part of the prison in which he could sleep and call
his home. All that he asked was that the scraps from the table be given
him for food. The board refused to allow him this, and Hicks bade them
good-by. He walked to a small town near by, where he soon was arrested
for thieving, and was taken to prison to serve what he declared to be
his last term. His head is as white as snow, and in keeping with his
long, flowing beard, and he looks like a patriarch, yet is not stooped a
particle. His
desire now is to secure honest work, that will guarantee him a home. He
wishes to spend the rest of his days a free man. Had this man been
assisted just a little at the expiration of his first term, he might
have become a useful citizen, but as it was, his life was spent behind
the bars. When once the feet find themselves walking in the pathway of
crime, it is very difficult for them ever to walk in paths of honesty
and uprightness thereafter.
