Prison Paper

The state prison at Wethersfield, Conn., is better than most. It is strikingly clean and kept in good repair by the inmates. Each cell has individual toilet facilities and a catalogue of the prison library of 5,000 volumes. There is also a baseball field, a brass band, a monthly newspaper of which Sheriff Simeon Pease is inordinately proud. Last week, two newspapermen took up residence behind Wethersfield walls, were forthwith made editors of the prison paper. Their flamboyant history led the inmates to anticipate a paper that would be edited with imagination, gusto, craftiness.

One of the editors, Raymond E. ("Spike") Delaney,* had been a police reporter on the Bridgeport Telegram. He would rob a house and return to police headquarters, hear of the same robbery, cover the story. He would re-enter the house through the front door, give the policeman suggestions concerning the crime, return to his typewriter and write a florid story. He was a good friend, almost an assistant, of Bridgeport bluecoats. When a New Haven merchant suspected him of selling stolen jewels and telephoned for a Bridgeport policeman to come down, the policeman arrived to greet Mr. Delaney like a long-lost buddy, was surprised to find his buddy a crook. Thus Mr. Delaney went to jail.

The other editor, John D. Lawson, 42, Dartmouth graduate, husband of a sculptress, had been an idealist-propagandist-publisher in Westport, Conn.* He was respected, if laughed at, by his neighbors. Then he insured his life for $75,000, picked up a family-less boarder in Manhattan, took him to Westport to paint the Lawson house, drugged him. Mr. Lawson went out to chat with a neighbor, taking care to establish the fact that he was going back home to spend the evening. Then he set fire to his own home and left for Manhattan. The police were to find the bones of the drugged boarder charred beyond all recognition; Mrs. Lawson was then to collect her husband's $75,000 insurance. But the boarder regained consciousness in time to jump out of a window; and Mr. Lawson went to jail.

* No relative of Bridgeport's famed fisticuffer, Jack Delaney, whose real name is Ovila Chapdelaine.

* Famed arty town; home of Hendrik Willem Van Loon, Rose O'Neill, Alan Dinehart, William McFee, etc.