Sodomy was rife, as was violence between the convicts, and vicious punishments were regularly meted out by the overseers. Each day was spent in chains, working underground ‘in a vast labyrinth of black rock tunnels, shared only by dozens of dirty mules and squadrons of desperate men’. Life in Pratts coal mine was a desperate affair. For this the company, a subsidiary of the giant US Steel, paid the county the considerable sum of $12 a month. Instead he was sentenced to work for the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company for three months of hard labour, plus an extra three months and six days’ work to pay off the costs of his arrest and sentencing. The purpose of this legal charade was not to lock Cottenham up in prison. “The leasing of prisoners to corporate interests by the state was a well-established activity in 19th-century America.”
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