Thomas Mott Osborne

Thomas Mott Osborne (September 23, 1859 – October 20, 1926) was a U.S. prison reformer, industrialist and New York State political reformer. He was also known as "Tom Brown," a name he gave himself when he spent a week in the Auburn Prison in New York state in 1913.

Osborne grew up in Auburn, New York, a hotbed of progressive political activity, particularly anti-slavery activism before and during the American Civil War. His family included a number of pre-eminent reformers, particularly his grandmother, Martha Coffin Wright (m. David Wright) and her sister, Lucretia Coffin Mott, (m. Thomas Mott) who were both organizers of the world's first women's rights conference, the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention,with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, in Seneca Falls, New York. Grandmother, Martha Coffin Wright was an unofficial guardian of Harriet Tubman, who spent her late years in Auburn. Martha's home in Auburn was part of the Underground Railroad where she harbored fugitive slaves. Both women frequented the Osborne household during Thomas Mott Osborne's upbringing. The third if the Coffin sisters, Ellen, or as she is known to her descendants, Nella, married William Lloyd Garrison, of abolishonist note. Thomas Mott Osborne's mother, Eliza Wright Osborne, (m. David Munsen Osborne) was also a feminist activist, though of lesser note.

Martha Coffin Wright and her daughter Eliza Wright Osborne's examples have been the benchmark for the women of the Osborne lineage for achievement down through the generations to the present day. Throughout the Osborne family of the present day, this kind of tireless belief in the value in human dignity is being honored. It is the example of those who lived in the past, Martha Wright, Thomas Osborne, Eliza Osborne, Lucretia Mott, Helen Osborne Storrow, that has generated the inspiration of the current generations to give to humanity their own young lives and life's work to fight against injustice.

In 1886, Osborne was made president of his family's manufacturing company, DM Osborne & Co., which was one of the nation's largest makers of agricultural implements. In 1903, the family sold the company to the International Harvester Trust, leaving Osborne to pursue his interests in social reform and public service. He was elected mayor of Auburn, and in 1913, he was picked by New York Governor William Sulzer to chair a new State Commission on Prison Reform.

His most famous effort on behalf of the Commission was his decision to experience the conditions of a New York State prison first-hand. On September 29th, Osborne began a week in the general population in New York's Auburn Prison under the name of "Tom Brown," Inmate number 33,333x. In spite of the pseudonym, his identity in the prison system was not a secret; he addressed the prison officials and inmates and explained his mission at the beginning of his week inside.

His diary of those experiences, published as "Within These Walls", made him a prominent crusader for improvement of prison conditions. Osborne then formed the Mutual Welfare League with released prisoner Jack Murphy; the League succeeded in having the prison "rule of silence" then in effect lifted, and in eliminating the so-called "Blue Sunday" rule, which kept inmates locked in their cells in honor of the Sabbath (except while attending church services).

Osborne was appointed warden of Sing Sing prison in Ossining, New York on December 1, 1914. He resigned in 1917.

After Sing Sing, Osborne was put in charge of the "Alcatraz of the East" - the Portsmouth Naval Prison in Kittery, Maine. In that post he sought to improve prison life within the Navy's correctional system.

Osborne retired from Portsmouth in 1920; he died on October 20, 1926, at the age of 67, and was buried in a Portsmouth prison uniform.

In 1932, the Mutual Welfare League and several other organizations Osborne had created were merged and re-organized as the Osborne Association. The Association still exists today, and is devoted to helping released inmates adjust to their lives post-incarceration.

Among Osborne's other proteges were Progressive Era journalist John Silas Reed and Louis McHenry Howe, who became FDR's political strategist. FDR, Howe and Osborne were Upstate New York's best-known foes of Tammany Hall and William Randolph Hearst.

References

Introduction to excerpts from Thomas Mott Osborne's "Within These Walls", by Frederick R-L Osborne. Available online at http://www.correctionhistory.org/auburn&osborne/tombrown/html/wpw_intro.html

External links

The Osborne Association Website at www.osborneny.org