and for the community than a retributive system, but he never disavowed the need for punishment. He thought systemically as well as about the care of the individual. His support of the indeterminate-sentence system never wavered, and he fought fiercely for the first probation law in Connecticut. With other members of the CPA, he contributed his leadership constantly to a number of improvements in prison conditions, including the abolition of shaved heads, striped uniforms, the ball and chain, the lockstep, and meals given in cells. Illness slowed him down from 1895 until his death in 1904. Rev. Henry Thompson assumed the presidency of the agency immediately afterward, holding the agency steady until William Bailey was installed in 1909.51
John Taylor’s contribution, on the other hand, laid not so much in his intellect as in the force of his personality and in his people skills, sharpened during his Civil War experiences. He had considerable natural organizing skills and a sturdy, indefatigable physical constitution. He appears to have been one who related easily to all the prisoners he dealt with, young or old, in a forthright and effective way. Entering the army as a youth, he had mustered out a mature man ready to deal with hardcase inmates. As a married man, Taylor was able to present himself as a father figure to the many younger prisoners whose care was in his hands.
Taylor held to the deeply engrained cultural value of giving all people, including ex-offenders, the benefit of the doubt until proven wrong. Informed consent was not part of his approach. Consequently, he did not reveal a prisoner’s background to a prospective employer very often, and he defended that approach under criticism at the national level. Taylor wanted his discharged offenders to have all the opportunities possible for restarting their lives. Although he was aware of the number of those returning to prison (his estimate of recidivism stabilized at 50 percent, approximating the average that has persisted into modern times), he was never a pessimist about his work. If he was ever discouraged, he never let it show. Along with all the other assistance he offered, Taylor fought consistently for the restoration of forfeited rights for discharged offenders who had stayed crime-free for one year. The multitude of thank-you letters he received sustained him to the end.
SUICIDE IN THE STATE CAPITOL
On the morning of October 4, 1909, John Taylor came to work after visiting his doctor for a physical examination. Perhaps concerned about his physical limitations and a future that promised little relief, he sat at his desk for a few hours; made a few phone calls, one to his wife; and did some paperwork. At noon, in the thirty-fourth year of his work with the CPA, he took a revolver from a drawer in his desk and, without a warning, ended his life with a bullet to his brain.
According to his obituary, few (including his wife) had detected any unusual depression or discouragement in the days and weeks prior to his suicide. Perhaps he felt that his weakened condition might lead the CPA directors to replace him. Perhaps he feared being further debilitated by another stroke. It’s very likely that the strain of over three decades of working with highly troubled and unpredictable clients, a population with a high percentage of failures, had finally begun to weigh on his mind. Whatever the reasons, he left no explanation by which others might rationalize his action and make it more palatable. He left behind only his dedicated work and his belief that his efforts as a friend of the inmates he served were not in vain.
Unfortunately, the devastating impact of suicide on those close to the deceased was as underestimated then as it has been until very recent times. The fact that we have no direct descriptions of the emotional reactions to his passing is neither mysterious nor unexpected. Only in the past forty years has suicide become an acceptable topic of academic research and public education. On the basis of the increased understanding of human psychology gained by the beginning of the twenty-first century, it is probable that suicide a century earlier was even more demoralizing, discouraging, and frightening than it is today.
It was a tribute to Taylor’s reputation as a veteran and as a criminal justice specialist that the taboo about suicide was put aside in Connecticut. John Taylor was given a hero’s send-off at a well-attended funeral. His Civil War compatriots as well as his CPA and criminal justice friends were present, and he received full military honors at his graveside service. It is disappointing but not surprising that the same national American Prison Association ignored the suicidal aspect of his death. Despite the widely known thirty-two years of exemplary service rendered by Taylor to Connecticut through the CPA, and to the nation through his four years in the military, his passing went unnoticed at the national level. Francis Wayland, on the other hand, had been eulogized among those listed as the “veterans of the prison cause” along with Charles Dudley Warner in a reflection on the early reform leaders by Frederick H. Wines of Illinois at the 1906 American Prison Association Congress in Indianapolis, Indiana.52
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