The Bishop, the Convicts, and the Sparring Match
Bishop Wells insists a prisoner-run entertainment at the penitentiary was decorous and proper—not the prizefight rumor made it out to be.
The story, cleaned up
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THE BISHOP SAW IT. Entertainment by the Convicts Was Entirely Proper.
SPOKANE, Sept. 15.—[Special.]—Bishop Wells was seen today in regard to the matter of prizefighting at the penitentiary.
'Did you attend an entertainment there last summer, and what was its nature?' he was asked. The bishop replied: 'In June the prisoners were permitted to get up an entertainment in honor of Dr. Wall, one of the rectors in my diocese, who had been acting as chaplain to the penitentiary. He had been conducting services there regularly, and had frequently taken his choir with him to participate. The prisoners felt very grateful for this, and by permission of Warden Coblentz gave an entertainment, which I attended. It was not on Sunday, as has been stated, but was on a week day. There was no prizefighting, or anything in the least derogatory to the discipline of the institution. It was a very creditable performance, on the whole, consisting principally of songs, speeches and recitations. It was a perfectly proper entertainment in every way.'
'You say there was no prizefighting. Was there a boxing contest or anything of that sort?'
'Yes; there was a sparring exhibition given by some of the prisoners. It was not a prizefight or anything like it. There was nothing brutal or unseemly about it. It was merely an exhibition of skill and was quite proper and decorous. I think there is an effort being made to make it appear that Mr. Coblentz has permitted unseemly exhibition of physical force by the prisoners, but I can assert positively that there was nothing of the sort on the occasion in question, the only time I attended any entertainment at the penitentiary. Prisoners alone took part in it. None of the officials had anything to do with it. It was gotten up entirely by the prisoners, to do honor to Dr. Wall. That in itself should be a sufficient guarantee that it was entirely proper in every respect.'
“There was no prizefighting, or anything in the least derogatory to the discipline of the institution.”
Debates over what happens inside prisons—whether boxing, recreation, or religious programming is discipline or indulgence—still flare today. Wells's defense of the prisoners' own show also reminds us that incarcerated people have long built their own culture behind the walls.
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