This horrid hallway once housed hundreds of prisoners in the cells that line both floors on either side. Each cell on the first floor measured 12 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 10 feet high with an open-air small yard for exercise. Convicts would spend 23 hours a day inside of their cell, only being allowed yard access for 1 hour a day. The rooms on the second story were slightly smaller and without an accompanying yard. In exchange for the yard, the prisoners would use a second cell for daily exercise. In 1842, the most famous writer in the world, Charles Dickens (1812-1870), visited the prison. After seeing the living conditions and interviewing inmates, he included his impressions in his 1850 book “American Notes For General Circulation”. He describes the INTENTIONS of the prison were “kind, humane and meant for reformation”. To the contrary, he admits that the men who created this system, as well as those to uphold the strict rules for constant solitary confinement, “do not know what it is they are doing”. Most prisoners were unable to survive the abuse, causing them to go mentally ill. Dickens observed “I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body...”.