Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 19.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

This is a phenomenon of prison social life to which we can only call the attention of our readers, and leave for a longer experience or more profound and skillful annotations to explain.

As our knowledge of the great world outside is fast becoming traditionary, or, at best, confined to ‘fresh fish stories,’ our news will be necessarily of a purely local character. Though it cannot be denied that the operators on our great Grapevine Telegraph sometimes manage to get up some wonderful and startling dispatches.

In our humble efforts to portray the prison times at this place we shall labor to keep our readers posted upon all incidents occurring in our midst worthy of record, and afford them every facility of letting them know who is here and what is being done.

Trusting that the difficulties of conducting an enterprise of this kind, under the circumstances, are duly appreciated by an intelligent public, we send forth this our first number, hoping that ere we have time to publish many numbers our Prison Times will be discontinued forever and our patrons and ourselves be far away in our loved sunny South.