READERSVOICE.COM aims to give a few samples from interesting old books I’ve come across.

John N. Reynolds made a positive out of a negative situation. In 1887 he was sentenced to 18 months for using the mails for fraudulent purposes. He served 16 months in the Kansas penitentiary.  He dug coal for six months in the prison coal mines. There he talked to many Kansas prisoners eight hundred feet below the surface. He also shared cells with prisoners who had been in the Missouri prison and learned their stories. Later he became a prison clerk. He was allowed writing materials. In the evening he would return to his cell and write down stories he had heard. He used short-hand, so prison officials could not read his notes and did not know what he was doing.  He recorded the histories of 500 prisoners. When he was released, he visited the Missouri prison to verify stories. The result is the memoir The Twin Hells, published around 1890. These are factual stories, with fast, uncluttered plots, recording a vanished way of life.  

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