Elam Lynds


Captain Elam Lynds was a prison warden. He helped create the Auburn system, which consisted of congregate labor during the day and isolation at night, starting in 1821 and was Warden of Sing Sing from 1825 to 1830.

Early life

Elam Lynds was born in Litchfield, Connecticut in 1784. His parents moved to Troy, New York, when he was an infant. He learned the hatter's trade and worked at it for some years.

War of 1812 service

In the War of 1812 he held a captain's commission in a New York regiment.

Auburn State Prison

The Auburn State Prison's South Wing was opened in the Spring of 1817, and fifty-three prisoners were transferred there from nearby counties. Captain Lynds was made the first principal keeper, and four years afterwards he became Warden of Auburn State Prison.
Lynds devised the main features of what is now known as the Auburn System of imprisonment. When Lynds took charge of the Auburn in 1821, he felt that discipline there was lax, with guards only interested in preventing escape. Lynds concluded that chaining prisoners in a dungeon failed to produce "a good state of discipline" and resorted, exclusively, to beatings. Speaking in 1826 to commissioners directed by the act of 17 April 1826, to visit the State-Prison at Auburn, Lynds said:
In 1821, ordinary citizens took to rioting at Auburn State Prison in New York to protest against the kind of treatment inmates were subjected to. The warden of Auburn, Elam Lynds was notoriously brutal and frequently flogged and whipped the prisoners. Even his own staff objected to his brutal methods. In the Spring of 1821, keepers refused to flog a prisoner. The keepers were fired and a blacksmith named Jonathan Thompson carried out the flogging. When he left the prison, he was tarred and feathered by a crowd. Henry Hall, in The History of Auburn, described the scene this way:

Retirement and death

After his retirement from the prison service he lived in New York City, where he died in 1855.