A Convict Hangs Himself at McNeil's Island — and No One Comes for Him
Charles Carlson, forty, serving eight months for selling whisky to Indians at North Yakima, is found hanging in a water-closet at the federal penitentiary. The warden cuts him down minutes too late.
Vancouver, Feb. 18. — Special. — Convict Charles Carlson, aged 40, committed suicide at the Federal penitentiary on McNeil's Island this afternoon by hanging himself. He fastened a small but stout cord around the top of a water closet door casing, hung his head in the loop, bent his knees and strangled to death. He was inside at the time and had the door fastened by another piece of string. He had been hanging fifteen minutes when the other convicts saw the string through a wide aperture between the top of the door and the casing. Warden Perry was notified, and promptly cut the body down. The man had been dead several minutes. For several days he had been acting in a peculiar manner, and it is thought he was insane.
Carlson was committed November 10 at Walla Walla for selling whisky to Indians at North Yakima, and received a sentence of eight months. So far as known Carlson had no relatives in this country. For three months he has been a trusty, employed in the laundry.
“"So far as known Carlson had no relatives in this country."”
McNeil Island held federal prisoners from 1875 until the corrections center closed in 2011; the cell blocks still stand on an island that is now a wildlife refuge. Carlson's death — a short sentence, an untreated mind, a body nobody came to claim — is exactly the kind of life the archive preserves in a single paragraph and nowhere else. Washington still struggles with mental illness and isolation inside its prisons, and with who is left to bury the people who die there.
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