26 Insane Inmates
Taken From Prison
To State Hospital

    Twenty-six insane convicts, 15 of whom are serving life terms for murder, were transferred from the State Prison to the Norwich State Hospital Wednesday in a bus which made the long trip over icy roads without mishap.
    Their going means the end of the insane ward at the prison, a change welcomed by Warden Charles S. Reed and the prison directors and made possible by a law passed by the last General Assembly.
    Among the prisoners who were transferred was George Bassett of Bridgeport, the State's oldest convict. A youth of 24 when he was sentenced in April, 1879 for the murder in company with Mrs. Lorena E. Alexander, of "Stuttering Jack" Weinbecker, in a plot to sell the victim's body to the Yale Medical School, Bassett is now a harmless old man of 77, who has been allowed to wander almost at will through the prison, where he has spent 53 years of his life. Mrs. Alexander, who was convicted with him, died several years ago in an asylum.
    The total prison population, including 80 men at the Enfield Farm, now stands at 721. With the departure of the 26 insane prisoners, the number at the main prison was reduced to 641. There now is no danger of overcrowding, Warden Reed said Wednesday, pointing out that the prison can accommodate more than 700.
    Six officers in charge of Deputy Warden Burton J. Caswell superintended the transfer of the prisoners.

Source:

Unknown, "26 Insane Inmates Taken From Prison To State Hospital," The Hartford Courant, Hartford, Connecticut, Thursday, 11 February, 1932, Page 4.