Succeeded by Robert Wiltse | Name Elam Lynds | |
 | ||
Children Cornelia Lynds DeForest Died 1825, New York City, New York, United States | ||
Captain Elam Lynds (1784–1855) helped create the Auburn system, which consisted of congregate labor during the day and isolation at night, starting in 1821 and was Warden of Sing Sing from 1825 to 1830.
Contents
Early life
Elam Lynds was born in Litchfield, Connecticut in 1784. His parents moved to Troy, New York, when he was an infant. He learned the hatter's trade and worked at it for some years.
War of 1812 service
In the War of 1812 he held a captain's commission in a New York regiment.
Auburn State Prison
When the Auburn State Prison was opened in 1817, Captain Lynds was made the first principal keeper, and four years afterwards he became Warden of Auburn State Prison. He made many experiments with a view to furnishing better occupation and to improving the general condition of the prison. He devised the main features of what is now known as the Auburn System of imprisonment. When it was proposed to erect a new state prison at Mount Pleasant, New York on the Hudson River, Captain Lynds was selected to take charge of the enterprise. He began this work in 1823 and successfully prosecuted it for four years with prison labor, when the Sing Sing Prison was completed according to the original plan. In 1821, in the first riot of its kind, ordinary citizens took to rioting at Auburn State Prison in New York to protest against the kind of treatment inmates were subjected too. The warden of Auburn, Elam Lynds was notoriously brutal and was said to have often whipped the prisoners, even his own staff was against his brutal methods. So one day three of the guards who refused to flog the prisoner were shot dead and when the news reached the local folks, all hell broke loose. The angry mob took hold of Lynds, poured tar over him and then adorning him with feathers, paraded him. Meanwhile the prisoners trying to take advantage of the situation, set fire at some places in the prison. But in spite of all that, Warden Lynds managed to prevail and ultimately brought the situation under control.
Retirement and death
After his retirement from the prison service he lived in New York City, where he died in 1855.