Background
Recently unearthed information shows that his birth name was Charles Donald Lowrie and he was born on March 26, 1875, probably in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Recently unearthed information shows that his birth name was Charles Donald Lowrie and he was born on March 26, 1875, probably in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
He became a well-known advocate of prison reform work upon the release of his book "My Life in Prison", in which he reflects on his ten-year incarceration in San Quentin State Prison north of San Francisco, California. Accounts on Lowrie"s life prior to imprisonment are scarce. The birth date is corroborated by his World War I Draft Registration Card and the 1900 Federal Census entry that finds him as an inmate in the Middlesex County (Massachusetts) House of Correction and Jail in Cambridge, Massachusetts Lowrie held various jobs, ranging from bookkeeping and stenography to working as a traveling salesman.
Eventually, Lowrie was out of money and without shelter.
After three days, Lowrie had exhausted his resources in looking for work and determined that either suicide or crime was the only way out. Having a nickel in his pocket, he decided to flip a coin.
If tails, Lowrie, living in San Francisco at the time, would throw himself into the San Francisco Bay. If heads, Lowrie would commit a crime.
The coin turned heads and two hours later Lowrie found himself entering the house of a well-to-do family, stealing a sleeping man"s watch and a purse containing sixty dollars.
Within a short time, Lowrie was arrested for burglary and sent to jail. Conviction and imprisonment Convicted of burglary, Lowrie was sentenced to fifteen years in San Quentin State Prison, where he remained for ten years until his early release on good behavior in 1911. Another five years of parole ahead, Lowrie started to write down his prison story under the auspices of the San Francisco Bulletin.
On December 4, 1917, Lowrie married twenty-five-year-old Mildred Irene Dean in Brooklyn, New New York
Death and legacy After serving a few months for another burglary conviction, Lowrie was released on parole from Arizona Penitentiary. Two weeks later, on June 24, 1925, he died at the Phoenix, Arizona home of a local architect, R. B. Dick Redington, who housed him at the time.
With "My Life in Prison", Lowrie defined a new category of writing, which tried to make a connection between the failure of individuals and their social class, thereby presaging some the writings of black radicals of the 1960s and 1970s.