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 Robert Stroud, known as the Birdman of Alcatraz for his
painstaking study of birds while in federal prison, wrote a
four-part book about brutality, sex, bribery and what he saw as the
monumental failure of prisons to rehabilitate inmates.
Part I "Looking Outward, A Voice from the Grave," has recently been
published in E-book form.
Stroud's book about prison life, totaling more than 2,000 pages,
languished in a basement long after his death in 1963, with
publishers concerned about libel balking at a book that named brutal
guards and supposedly on-the-take wardens.
"To sadistic-minded persons, helplessness is always an invitation to
cruelty," Stroud wrote.
The stacks of manuscripts stored at Stroud's former lawyer's house
in Springfield, Missouri, have been converted into the book "Looking
Outward: A History of the U.S. Prison System from Colonial Times to
the Formation of the Bureau Prisons."
"If there is anybody who could write about federal prisons, it was
him," said J.E. Cornwell of Springfield, the book's publisher.
 Stroud entered federal prison in 1909 at age 19 after being
convicted of manslaughter for killing with his bare hands a man in
Alaska who allegedly beat up a prostitute. He spent the next 54
years in four different federal facilities.
In 1916, Stroud knifed a guard to death at the federal penitentiary
in Leavenworth, Kansas, over a dispute about visiting privileges for
Stroud's mother. He served the next 43 years in solitary
confinement.
Stroud began studying birds at Leavenworth and wrote two heralded
scientific books on bird diseases, which led to a 1962 movie about
his life called "Birdman of Alcatraz" starring Burt Lancaster.
"Here is a guy with a third-grade education who somehow educated
himself to write books on birds that were followed around the
world," said his lawyer, Dudley Martin, 80. "My father raised
gamecocks and he used Stroud's book when they got sick."
PUBLISHERS WARY
After his transfer to Alcatraz in 1942, Stroud turned his attention
to researching the history of federal prisons and interviewing
inmates and guards.
"Nobody else had written this stuff and the federal prison system
did not want it out," Martin said.
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Stroud spent years trying to get his book published, finally suing
the U.S. Bureau of Prisons in 1962 to allow publication.
But Stroud died in 1963 before the lawsuit was resolved. And it took
21 years for Martin, the administrator of Stroud's will, to get
legal possession of the manuscripts from probate.
Martin's secretary put Stroud's hand-written notebook manuscripts
into type, more than 2,000 pages single-spaced. Martin sent the book
to three New York publishers, all of whom turned it down, concerned
about libel suits.
The manuscripts went into storage at Martin's house in the
mid-1980s. Some 30 years later, the people named in the book have
died and the statute of limitations on libel has expired, Martin
said.
In the first volume, Stroud also reveals that he was gay, though he
had married a woman while in prison who was his partner in a
bird-related business on the outside.
More of his writings are to come, with the volumes tracing the rise
and degeneration of the prison reform movement and how sex in prison
contributed to character destruction.
Stroud spent the last four years of his life at the federal medical
center prison in Springfield. Martin took over as his lawyer after
Stroud's transfer from Alcatraz and met him only once, in court.
"He was a great big, tall man," Martin said. "I had to look up at
him."
Martin said Stroud would be pleased to know the public is finally
able to read his account of the prison system.
"He'd be honored," Martin said. "He would feel appreciated for what
he had done."
(Editing by Gunna Dickson)
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