Alcatraz by David Ward

cells under D block were also used. But the guys over in A didn’t see them come out so they figured “Geez, they must have died or been swept out to sea.” When [prisoners] were in there they got bread and water, the first six months we handcuffed them—there was a lot that went on down there. 21
    Constructed with brick walls, ceiling, and floor, the dungeon cells were fronted by a set of bars with a grill door in the middle that was secured by a chain and padlock. They contained no toilet, no running water, no light fixture, no mattress or furnishing of any kind. When they were first used, some prisoners were handcuffed in a standing position to the crossbarsin the front of the cell. The only light, when it was turned on, came from a dim bulb in the ceiling of the hallway in front of each set of alcoves. The prisoners were dependent on guards to allow them to take their waste buckets to be emptied in a hallway toilet. During 1934 and early 1935 the only sustenance was bread and water, but by 1936 regulations called for a meal to be provided every third day—at the discretion of guards and custodial officials. No exercise outside the cell was allowed, no reading materials were permitted, and once the hall light was turned off and steel doors over the stairways leading back to the main floor of the cell house were closed, sounds of protest could not be heard by the prisoners in the cell house. 22
    The first man to be sent down to what was variously cited in prison records as “basement solitary” and “lower solitary” was Leo McIntosh whose low number, 74, indicates that he was one of the first federal prisoners on the island. McIntosh was serving a relatively short sentence of five years for auto theft. He earned a trip to Alcatraz based on his escape from a Florida prison where he was serving a life sentence for murder and escapes twice more from chain gangs. Sent to Atlanta for transporting a stolen vehicle across state lines during his latest escape, he annoyed the staff by filing numerous complaints and thus was placed on the first train that took Atlanta convicts to Alcatraz. McIntosh arrived on August 8, 1934, and one month later, September 8, after his refusal to stop talking in the cell house, he was placed in D block isolation, where he continued yelling to other prisoners. He was then removed to a lower solitary cell under D block where he remained for nineteen days. McIntosh kept a record of his time by scratching a line for each day on the wall of the cell. His was not only the first but also the longest stay in lower solitary by any Alcatraz prisoner. 23
    On October 1, 1934, John Stadig was sent to lower solitary for two days as punishment for circulating a petition among the prisoners. On December 3, a group of prisoners were taken down to dungeon cells. One of them, Charlie Berta, was cited for “sending out defamatory comments, agitating and promoting trouble, making slanderous remarks about guards and hollering at officers on the wall.” Berta described his experience in a lower solitary cell under D block:
    You came in at A block and you came out by D block. There was no beds, you slept on the bricks, but it was warm. I had a jumpsuit. You didn’t need nothing. You got bread and water, but there was no running water. You had a shit bucket but after a couple of days you had no bowel movement because you didn’t take nothing in. The light was a not very strong lightin the hall; no guards were stationed down there. When they’d come down you’d know it—there was a slight draft—you could feel it—and you knew somebody was coming down. They tried to sneak in on you. I was handcuffed to the door in daytime during working hours. You couldn’t sit down or lay down. If you had to go to the bathroom, you just went. The dungeon was better than the cells in A block where all they done was pour some concrete over the bars because you’d get the fluctuation of the weather but in the dungeon the