Because of the whaling industry, cloth manufacturing, and the invention of such practical things as the interchangeable drill bit, for most of the 19th Century New Bedford was the richest city per capita in the United States.
With the city’s rich people’s money and those things that come from the government to an important city, New Bedford has a number of governmental building that were built to reflect the affluence and importance of the city.
Taunton may have been prominent for its jewelry and silver business and Fall River for its mills, but New Bedford was Lucem Diffundo, and that brought prestige by way of people, events, and architecture.
Among the buildings like the Central Public Library and the main post office, built to impress, when it came to a county jail, only the most up to date facility was worthy of placement in New Bedford, so in 1888 the old county jail that had been built on the edge of town in 1829 was replaced with the current jail.
The first part of the jail was built in 1828 when John Quincy Adams was president, two additions to the jail were built when Grover Cleveland was president, and in 1920, when Woodrow Wilson was president, the jail got a dining hall, so inmates no longer have to eat standing up in the yard.
Because it is still up and running, used by the current sheriff to house inmates with proximate court dates, it is the oldest continuously running jail in the United States.
In 1893, during her trial and acquittal, Lizzie Borden was held there.
In its history, certain changes were made to upgrade the jail with the introduction of indoor plumbing (most recently in 1984 when county officials finally complied with a 1981 court order to install toilets in some cells and stopped using certain other cells) and the end of public hangings, but beyond that, the old building is showing its age, and the resulting unpleasantness and demeaning conditions for those placed there feed into the County Sheriff, Thomas Hodgson’s weird need to torture those under his supervision.
It has already been established by an investigation of his ICE detention center housed on the campus of the Bristol County House of Corrections in Dartmouth MA that the sheriff has a propensity toward sadistic treatment of his inmates by using excessive force, endangering the inmates’ safety, and denying them their civil rights. It is not surprising, therefore, that, in spite of the cells at Ash Street being only 8 feet by six feet (the average grave is 6 feet by three feet) and his having had two inmates per cell until a court restricted a cell to one, the lack of air conditioning, the methane build up in the ancient sewage system, poor food and medical care, the sheriff claims such conditions are important as such bad conditions eliminate any hint of a country club environment so returning to jail would not be attractive. This justification falls short, however, because in reality he has the highest rate of returning inmates than any other county jail in the state, and some of those are more humanely run.
Concerned citizens have been calling for the closing of the outdated jail. Boston did it with the Charles Street Jail, and, rather than a jail with razor wire trim sitting in a neighborhood with historic architecture on one side and low-income housing on the other, a hotel with restaurants would be a great touch, if the building can be converted as opposed torn down.
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He might condemn those advocating for the closing of the Ash Street jail as unpatriotic, anti-law enforcement, pro-criminal, Socialist, outlaw sympathizers who are out to get him for his political beliefs so their complaints are personal and political, but, for the record, in 1937, former FBI agent and Bristol County Sheriff Patrick H. Dupuis called the jail “antiquated and a menace” to the welfare of inmates and wanted it replaced.
Sheriff Hodgson’s immediate predecessor, David R. Nelson, who oversaw the construction of the Dartmouth campus to replace the Ash Street jail called for the jail’s closing pointing out,
“I’ve spoken with the governor for an addition to the Dartmouth jail to close the Ash Street facility, which was supposed to have been done five years ago when we opened up Dartmouth.”
So, any of the sheriff’s claims that the calls for closing the jail are clearly some new, radical, anti-whatever-the-sheriff-believes-in recent movement are just empty claims as they are merely the continuation of the call beginning 84 years ago when sheriffs weren’t into mistreating inmates.
Also, as far as any claim that people are only now bringing up the closure of yet another poorly run facility under his supervision, times have changed from when he could be the macho lone-wolf who was a kingdom unto himself, and people have begun looking into the sheriff’s past and his actions in the present.
Like the Ash Street jail his usefulness is over.
And like the Ash Street jail, he needs to go.
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