Michigan's Giant Walled Prison Created This City

“Tonight, to use an old saying, you could hear a pin drop.”

Nightkeeper John H. Purves recorded those words on June 21, 1882, while keeping watch at Michigan’s state prison in Jackson.

At the time, the Jackson State Prison was described as the largest walled prison in the world, housing more than 2,000 inmates. Behind its imposing walls, prisoners faced overcrowding, strict discipline, and the dull routines of prison life.

Purves documented it all in his nightkeeper’s reports, recording everything from minor disturbances to the deeper challenges facing Michigan’s prison system.

Collected in the 1954 book The Nightkeeper’s Reports 1882, his accounts offer “a glimpse behind scenes of prison life that never was intended for the naked public eye.” Originally published in The Spectator, the prison’s inmate newspaper, the reports give a firsthand look at the—often brutal—realities of prison life in Michigan’s largest prison.

The Prison at the Heart of Jackson

Michigan authorized its first state prison in Jackson in 1838—just one year after becoming a state—and the first 35 prisoners arrived in 1839 to a wooden fort. A permanent structure followed in the early 1840s.

As the 20-acre Jackson State Prison took shape, so did the surrounding community. Jackson was first incorporated as a village in 1843, and the city and prison were always closely intertwined. Much of the prison’s work operated under a contract system, in which private businesses employed incarcerated men in manufacturing shops while the state collected revenue from their labor. At its peak, the system made the prison entirely self-supporting.

As Michigan grew, so did the prison. When Purves arrived in 1872, the prison held 703 inmates. By 1875, the population exceeded the number of available cells. In 1876, approximately 150 men slept on cots in corridors. Crowded conditions made supervision difficult and often led to conflicts between inmates, which Purves highlights throughout his reports.

“The overcrowding of the prison is becoming a hazardous thing,” Purves said in a Sept. 11, 1882, entry. “The important thing is to get the building up so as to take care of the crowded condition soon, or I fear a situation will develop that will cause more trouble then we can handle.”

Despite continued expansion, the prison struggled to keep pace with its growing population. By 1882, it housed more than 2,000 inmates.

Prison life in the 1800s was governed by strict rules. Inmates wore black-and-white striped uniforms, were expected to remain silent, and had restrictions on reading materials, smoking, and outside time.

Punishments included the loss of writing privileges, whipping with a leather strap, solitary confinement, and hanging by the wrists.

Purves’s reports often touched on these problems of prison life, with some of his observations foreshadowing reforms that would take many decades to become standard in prisons.

This can be seen in a Sept. 10, 1882, entry regarding one inmate—who turned out to be just 14 years old.

“Murray, No. 817, is a trouble maker for all his youthful years,” Purves said. “Methinks he is striving to build up a tough reputation amongst the older convicts . . . As a consequence he has become an insolent upstart and must be dealt with accordingly, although he is but fourteen years of age. What is really needed is a separate place where these youngsters cannot meet and mingle with the older, more toughened characters such as we have here.”

In the 1954 foreword to The Nightkeeper’s Reports 1882, William H. Bannan, then warden of the State Prison of Southern Michigan, recognized Purves’ “clairvoyant thoughts.”

“Oddly enough, many of the new, modern methods are some of the ideas advocated by the old Nightkeeper nearly 75 years ago,” Bannan wrote.

Life on the Night Watch

A Scotsman and Civil War veteran, the 43-year-old’s entries could be stern, sarcastic, and even unexpectedly compassionate depending on his mood and the happenings of his watch.

After a decade of serving as a prison guard, he eventually became nightkeeper and captain of the night guards, responsible for monitoring overnight activity and reporting incidents to the warden.

On July 5, 1882, Purves recorded a recurring disturbance in the East Wing cellhouse just before lights out.

“There was a minor disturbance in East Wing cell-house tonight just before lights out. It seems someone is imitating a crow. Every night at the time lights are to be turned out, he lets out several shrill calls then settles back and goes to sleep,” he described. “Guard Sims has reported this same disturbance to me before, but says he has tried in vain to find the guilty person. The party responsible for this noise resides somewhere on the second gallery.”

Other entries captured the ingenuity prisoners used to circumvent the rules. On Aug. 13, 1882, Purves described a cigar butt being smuggled by an unlikely messenger.

“A cigar butt had been tied to the back of a cock-roach that was laboriously transporting it down the aisle past an empty cell to an occupant one cell removed from its point of orgin,” Purves said. “A long length of thread kept the roach from journeying too far.”

Purves was impressed enough by the scheme to overlook it, writing that he “pretended not to notice the cupidity of the convicts involved.”

But the humor in these accounts existed alongside more serious concerns. Purves’ reports documented a prison where fights, attempted suicides, gang-related tensions, and illnesses—though sometimes feigned—were commonplace. Overcrowding and heat only exacerbated those issues, though Purves had little sympathy.

“There is a constant drone of complaints about the oppressive heat from most of the convicts,” he wrote on Aug. 16, 1882. “I feel the heat too, but can't sympathize much with the convicts who wouldn't be here if they knew how to behave themselves. It's their own fault they're here, so let them feel sorry for themselves, which oddly enough, is the one thing they do with remarkable unity.”

Yet, Purves’s reports also reveal moments of unexpected compassion. In a Christmas Eve entry from 1884, he described an incident with a prisoner known as Hannibal, the Bear, a farmer and lumberjack who frequently broke prison rules. Hannibal had knitted Purves a scarf.

“The package contained a knit scarf, and my old eyes were as near to tears as ever they have been, when I realized all the trouble I had made for him while he determinedly finished a Christmas gift for me,” Purves wrote.

Later, he gave Hannibal a cigar and promised not to report him for smoking it.

“‘Thanks,’ was all he could say, but I know his heart was as full as mine.”

Purves left the prison in 1888 to open a grocery store in Jackson, returned in 1894 and remained a prison guard until retiring in 1912. He died in 1923.

From the Old Prison to the New

The state legislature eventually determined that the “Old Prison” within Jackson’s city limits was outdated and too small to meet the state’s needs. Construction on a new facility north of the city began in 1924 and was completed a decade later, in 1934, the same year the original prison closed.

Renamed the State Prison of Southern Michigan, the new facility once again made Jackson home to the world’s largest walled prison.

“Jackson owes almost 200 years’ worth of growth and success to something many people wouldn’t suspect: prisons,” says Experience Jackson tourism website. “Early penitentiaries led to railroads—the largest stop between Chicago and Detroit—and those railroads led to an economic boom in the 19th century and beyond.”

Today, it is still Michigan’s oldest continuously operating prison.

The Old Prison later served as a Michigan National Guard armory. Today, the historic buildings have been given new life as apartments, art galleries, a concert venue, shops, and more.

For years, guided tours invited visitors to explore the historic prison grounds and hear stories—many of which originated from Purves’ own reports.

Though the tours are no longer offered, the remaining walls stand as an impressive reminder of the prison’s place in Michigan’s history.