The Officers’ Dining Room, located upstairs and across from the prison Chapel and Auditorium.
Inmates (seen here in uniform) worked as stewards in the Officers’ Dining Room.
Inmate Theodore “Blackie” Audett serving “Jailhouse Chili” in the officers’ kitchen.
Warden Madigan is seen greeting an officer’s family member inside the Officers’ Dining Room. Inmate Theodore Audett (one of the stewards) is seen here assisting Madigan.
Alcatraz Barbershop
The dining area, or “Gas Chamber” as the inmate population referred to it, was considered the most dangerous section of the prison. Nearly the entire prison population (with the exception of D Block inmates) would assemble into one space, which could mean a congregation of more than 300 inmates at one time. For this reason, tableware was issued to inmates on a need only basis. This was a critical element in minimizing inmates’ access to potential weapons, because sharp eating utensils and even food could be used in this way. Hot coffee could be used to incapacitate an opponent with burns, and the sharp bone from a T-bone steak could easily be used like a knife. All of the cooking and cutlery tools were kept in locked cabinets and carefully guarded. Butcher knives were all stored in a wooden case with painted silhouettes behind the utensils, so that guards would quickly notice if anything was missing.
To maintain order, fourteen fixed teargas dispensers were permanently mounted on ceiling structure beams. The switches used to discharge the toxic gases could be remotely operated by a guard stationed on the exterior catwalk, who was able to observe all interior activities from a secure position. The Armory officer also had control of two of the dispensers in the entrance area. Former inmate Jim Quillen stated that the mere threat of “being gassed by a screw” seemed to have a quieting effect on most of the inmate population.
At mealtimes, inmates entered the Mess Hall and stood in a single serving line, and then seated themselves by order of their cell assignment. The men were seated side by side at bench tables, with five places set on each side. This system was replaced in 1961, and from then on small cafeteria-style tables allowed inmates to sit with whomever they wanted, with only four places at a table. After Warden Johnston abolished the rule of silence in 1937, the inmates were allowed to talk quietly among themselves at their tables during meals. In the early years of the prison, inmates had been required to wear special pocket-less coveralls to minimize the concealment of contraband, but this rule also was later lifted. The officer positioned in the West Gun Gallery had a large rifle port that allowed him to supervisor activities, and also to represent a show of force.
Quality food was considered an essential right, and the food at Alcatraz was considered the best in the entire prison system, with menus prepared under the supervision of civilian stewards. Inmates were allowed to fill their trays with as much food as they wanted, but under strict order that no waste would be permissible. They were not allowed to rise from their tables until all of the eating utensils were counted and reckoned. At the end of each meal, the utensils would be passed to the end of the table for counting by the officer on duty. Once the count was confirmed, the men would rise in unison and then walk in military formation back to their cells.
During the Christmas season, inmate Morton Sobell recalled that Bing Crosby’s White Christmaswas amplified throughout the cellhouse and the Dining Hall would be decorated. After the breakfast meal on Christmas Day, the inmates would each receive a care package from the Bureau of Prisons. In a report to the Bureau Director on December 25, 1942 it was stated that every inmate had received the following package, at a total cost of only .62 cents per inmate:
2 packages of filtered cigarettes
1 Uno Chocolate Bar and 1 Baffle Bar
3 Cellophane bags of salted peanuts
1/ 2Lb. bag of hard candy
1 Package of Fig Newton’s, 17 cookies to a package
On select holidays, the prison band would entertain the inmates. Quillen remembered that on every Fourth of July, T-bone steaks would be served along with a carbonated beverage such as Coca Cola and apple pie for desert. In his memoir On the Rock, former inmate Alvin Karpis recalled the first Christmas tree at Alcatraz in 1948:
As I file into the dining hall this morning, I witness a sight never before seen inside these walls. Her soft scent, which has not aroused my nostrils for more than twelve years, reawakens strange emotions long forgotten. In the middle of the mess hall stands the first Christmas tree ever to be erected at Alcatraz.
The culinary detail was a prime work assignment for inmates. The men on this detail were allowed daily visits to the recreation yard, and were allotted daily showers if requested. It was a non-paying assignment, but inmates serving life or unusually lengthy sentences didn’t seem to mind. At Alcatraz, “lifers” had no use for money. Inmates assigned to the culinary detail were also granted benefits that were not always available even to the correctional staff. Alvin Karpis described the access to “unlimited food, ” commenting: “we have our choice of the food supplies and can prepare appetizers whenever we crave them rather than being regimented to strict meal hours like the general population or the guards.” Karpis would also claim that the kitchen detail was a haven for sexual encounters among the inmates. He indicated that the basement was a “labyrinth of vegetable rooms, showers, freezers, and storerooms, where... delights are exchanged frequently and freely.” In the best-selling classic Escape from Alcatraz, J. Campbell Bruce describes the acquisition of alcoholic beverages at Alcatraz:
... generally the inmates had to make their own booze and the best place for such an illicit operation was the bakery in the basement beneath the kitchen. Here the yeasty aroma of a fermenting brew was so akin to that of rising dough that the making of pruno [an exotic prison homemade cocktail] went undetected for a long time... The recipe was simple: put raisins and other dried fruit to soak in a crock, add yeast to speed up the fermentation, and cover the crock with flour sacks. The bakers realizing they had a good thing going, drank in moderation, an aperitif before meals.
Former inmate Darwin E. Coon was also assigned to the kitchen during his incarceration on The Rock, and he recalled some of the special meals inmates were served at Alcatraz in his memoir Alcatraz – The True End of the Line:
Whenever the inmates saw the chef’s meal on the menu board, they knew that they were in for a special dinner. We usually had a chef’s meal about once every three months... Some of the really special meals that I remember were when the striped bass were running in the Bay. The officers caught them by the wheelbarrow load and wheeled them into the kitchen. The cooks cleaned and cooked them and the inmates got all the fish he could eat. We would stuff the small ones, one to two pounders, with a nice gumbo and bake them. The bigger ones were cut into steaks and fried. The bass run would last about a month and since Friday was traditionally fish day, we could have four or five of these fish meals.
Coon would also remember a group of inmates that were nicknamed the “animals.” These men had appalling eating habits, and would always sit at the same table in the Mess Hall. Coon recalled that when these men entered the hall, they would be booed by all of the other inmates.