Background
Elam Lynds was born in 1784, in Litchfield, Connecticut, United States. While he was still an infant, his parents moved to Troy, New York.
Elam Lynds was born in 1784, in Litchfield, Connecticut, United States. While he was still an infant, his parents moved to Troy, New York.
Lynds learned the hatter's trade at Troy, New York and worked at it for some years. In 1808 his name appeared among the lieutenants of Lieutenant-Colonel Adam Yates's regiment from Rensselaer County and by 1812 he had risen to major's rank as aide-de-camp of the commander of the 8th Infantry Division. He entered the federal service April 30, 1813, as captain in the 29th Infantry and was honorably discharged June 15, 1815.
When the Auburn state prison was established in 1817, he became its principal keeper and four years later he succeeded to the agentship of the prison, only to be forced out in 1825 because of certain scandals arising from his severe disciplinary methods. His executive ability, however, caused him to be placed that same year in charge of the construction and management of the new Mount Pleasant state prison--now Sing Sing. After four years, during which he employed only prison labor, the institution was completed.
In 1838, he was again called to Auburn, and once more he aroused such public indignation by his disciplinary measures that he was compelled to resign in 1839 under circumstances which included a grand jury indictment. This episode did not deter the board of inspectors of Sing Sing from engaging him a few years later (1843) as principal keeper, but his experience in that position was short-lived, for in 1844 he was removed on charges of cruelty and misappropriation of state property. Apparently he held no other public office until his death in South Brooklyn a decade later.
The interview with him which G. A. de Beaumont and Alexis de Tocqueville published in 1833 pictured Lynds as a man of undoubted courage, an autocrat who brooked no interference from political superiors, whose philosophy of punishment was as rigid as his backbone. He was a great believer in the lash, which he considered the least harmful and the most efficient of all disciplinary means. All prisoners were to him cowards, who should be "tamed" and bent to submission. The interviewers reported as characteristic a story they had heard at Sing Sing. When Lynds learned that a certain prisoner had threatened to kill him, he called that individual into his bedroom, made him shave him, and sent him away saying, "I knew you wanted to kill me, but I despised you too much to believe that you would ever have the courage to do it. Alone and unarmed, I am still stronger than all of you. "