The Dark Story of Eastham, the Texas Prison Bonnie and Clyde Raided
Behind The Walls History
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The Dark Story of Eastham, the Texas Prison Bonnie and Clyde Raided
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In 1934 the Eastham prison farm sat on twelve thousand seven hundred and ninety acres of Trinity River bottom in Houston County, Texas, land cleared by enslaved people before the Civil War and leased to the state penitentiary in the 1890s at fourteen dollars and fifty cents a month per man. It was the farm that received the prisoners other Texas farms would not keep.
Men went to the fields before daylight in squads of sixteen, ringed by guards with shotguns and watched from a distance by a mounted rifleman. The legal limit on a convict's day was ten hours; during one harvest the system's general manager worked men fifteen. Punishment was recorded: one hundred and twenty-eight prisoners officially flogged in a single six month period in 1931, with a legal maximum of twenty lashes. Across the Texas farms, prisoners cut their own heel tendons and amputated their own toes to be taken off the line.
One of them was Clyde Barrow, who left Eastham on crutches in February 1932 after paying another convict to take two toes off his foot with an axe. On the sixteenth of January 1934 he came back with Bonnie Parker and a Browning automatic rifle, and four men went over the fence.
This account is built from the Texas prison system's own records, state archival material, and the published testimony of the men held there.
📚 SOURCES
East Texas Historical Journal, Counteracting Reform: Lee Simmons and the Texas Prison System, 1930-1935, 1992, https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/ethj/v...
HistoryNet, The Raid on Eastham, American History magazine, 2000, https://www.historynet.com/the-raid-o...
Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Fear, Force, and Leather: The Texas Prison System's First Hundred Years, 1848-1948, https://www.tsl.texas.gov/exhibits/pr...
Texas State Historical Association, Handbook of Texas, History of the Texas Penitentiary System, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/e...
Texas Historical Commission, Eastham Prison Farm historical marker number 10987, 1996, https://atlas.thc.texas.gov/Details/5...
Texas Department of Criminal Justice, J. Dale Wainwright Unit, unit directory, https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/unit_direc...
Ruiz v. Estelle, 503 F. Supp. 1265, United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, 1980
John Neal Phillips, Running with Bonnie and Clyde: The Ten Fast Years of Ralph Fults, University of Oklahoma Press, 1996
Lee Simmons, Assignment Huntsville: Memoirs of a Texas Prison Official, University of Texas Press, 1957
Texas Observer, Texas' Plantation Prisons: Inside a 200-Year History of Forced Labor Shrouded in Secrecy, 2024, https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-p...
Paris Evening News, front page, January 16, 1934, via East Texas History, https://easttexashistory.org/files/sh...
KTRE, TDCJ renames Eastham Unit prison, June 28, 2021, https://www.ktre.com/2021/06/28/tdcj-...
🔖 TOPICS COVERED
#bonnieandclyde #prisonhistory #texashistory #clydebarrow #easthamprisonfarm #prisonfarm #1930s #greatdepression #texasprisons #huntsville #americanhistory #truecrimehistory #documentary #behindthewallshistory
🏛️ ABOUT THIS CHANNEL
Behind The Walls History reconstructs one year inside one American institution. The prison farms. The penitentiaries. The reformatories and the workhouses the country built and stopped talking about.
What the cell measured. What the ration weighed. What the punishment book recorded, and what the people held there wrote down about it.
Every video is built from the records those institutions were required by law to keep. No ghost stories, no legends, and no figure without a document under it.
🔔 SUBSCRIBE. One institution. One year. Reconstructed from the record. @behindthewallshistory
One institution. One year. Reconstructed from the record.
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The Dark Story of Eastham, the Texas Prison Bonnie and Clyde Raided
Behind The Walls History
14,778 views
The Dark Story of Eastham, the Texas Prison Bonnie and Clyde Raided
🔔 SUBSCRIBE for a new institution every week. @behindthewallshistory
In 1934 the Eastham prison farm sat on twelve thousand seven hundred and ninety acres of Trinity River bottom in Houston County, Texas, land cleared by enslaved people before the Civil War and leased to the state penitentiary in the 1890s at fourteen dollars and fifty cents a month per man. It was the farm that received the prisoners other Texas farms would not keep.
Men went to the fields before daylight in squads of sixteen, ringed by guards with shotguns and watched from a distance by a mounted rifleman. The legal limit on a convict's day was ten hours; during one harvest the system's general manager worked men fifteen. Punishment was recorded: one hundred and twenty-eight prisoners officially flogged in a single six month period in 1931, with a legal maximum of twenty lashes. Across the Texas farms, prisoners cut their own heel tendons and amputated their own toes to be taken off the line.
One of them was Clyde Barrow, who left Eastham on crutches in February 1932 after paying another convict to take two toes off his foot with an axe. On the sixteenth of January 1934 he came back with Bonnie Parker and a Browning automatic rifle, and four men went over the fence.
This account is built from the Texas prison system's own records, state archival material, and the published testimony of the men held there.
📚 SOURCES
East Texas Historical Journal, Counteracting Reform: Lee Simmons and the Texas Prison System, 1930-1935, 1992, https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/ethj/v...
HistoryNet, The Raid on Eastham, American History magazine, 2000, https://www.historynet.com/the-raid-o...
Texas State Library and Archives Commission, Fear, Force, and Leather: The Texas Prison System's First Hundred Years, 1848-1948, https://www.tsl.texas.gov/exhibits/pr...
Texas State Historical Association, Handbook of Texas, History of the Texas Penitentiary System, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/e...
Texas Historical Commission, Eastham Prison Farm historical marker number 10987, 1996, https://atlas.thc.texas.gov/Details/5...
Texas Department of Criminal Justice, J. Dale Wainwright Unit, unit directory, https://www.tdcj.texas.gov/unit_direc...
Ruiz v. Estelle, 503 F. Supp. 1265, United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas, 1980
John Neal Phillips, Running with Bonnie and Clyde: The Ten Fast Years of Ralph Fults, University of Oklahoma Press, 1996
Lee Simmons, Assignment Huntsville: Memoirs of a Texas Prison Official, University of Texas Press, 1957
Texas Observer, Texas' Plantation Prisons: Inside a 200-Year History of Forced Labor Shrouded in Secrecy, 2024, https://www.texasobserver.org/texas-p...
Paris Evening News, front page, January 16, 1934, via East Texas History, https://easttexashistory.org/files/sh...
KTRE, TDCJ renames Eastham Unit prison, June 28, 2021, https://www.ktre.com/2021/06/28/tdcj-...
🔖 TOPICS COVERED
#bonnieandclyde #prisonhistory #texashistory #clydebarrow #easthamprisonfarm #prisonfarm #1930s #greatdepression #texasprisons #huntsville #americanhistory #truecrimehistory #documentary #behindthewallshistory
🏛️ ABOUT THIS CHANNEL
Behind The Walls History reconstructs one year inside one American institution. The prison farms. The penitentiaries. The reformatories and the workhouses the country built and stopped talking about.
What the cell measured. What the ration weighed. What the punishment book recorded, and what the people held there wrote down about it.
Every video is built from the records those institutions were required by law to keep. No ghost stories, no legends, and no figure without a document under it.
🔔 SUBSCRIBE. One institution. One year. Reconstructed from the record. @behindthewallshistory
One institution. One year. Reconstructed from the record.