On View
On viewLocks
Dateca. 1789
Terms
- Locks
- Steel
- Birmingham
Dimensions46.32 × 25.38 × 3.81 cm (18 1/4 × 10 × 1 1/2 in.)
Credit LineCell lock, unkown maker, Birmingham, England, about 1789. Concord Museum Collection, Gift of Cummings E. Davis; M2081.
Object numberM2081
DescriptionCell lock. Steel T-shaped lock and key. There are small holes at each end, presumably for securing the lock to the cell or wall.
The essay "Civil Disobedience" is organized around Thoreau's account of the night he spent in prison. He had been arrested for non-payment of the poll tax, a flat tax owed by every individual older than sixteen years. Thoreau refused to pay the tax on the grounds that it went to support a government that supported slavery. He wrote in Walden what happened: "One afternoon [July, 1846], near the end of the first summer when I went to the village to get a shoe from the cobbler's, I was seized and put into jail, because, as I have elsewhere referred, I did not pay a tax to, or recognize the authority of, the state which buys and sells men, women, and children, like cattle at the door of its senate-house." Thoreau acknowledged the symbolic value of the lock that held him in a continuation of the passage. In a reference to his house at Walden, he contrasted the State's need for locks with his own ability to do without.
Thoreau's jailer in 1846 was Sam Staples, a constable and later sheriff of Middlesex County. Staples had a number of roles in Concord's commercial and civic life, from taverner to School Committee member and he was a state representative. But it is usually as Thoreau's jailer that he is recalled. He was respected and admired by many in town, including Henry Thoreau, who found him "quick, clear, downright, and on the whole a good fellow, especially good to treat with rougher and slower men than himself, always meaning well." Edward Emerson reported that Thoreau said of Staples, "I like Sam Staples; he has no hyporcrisy [sic] about him."
The essay "Civil Disobedience" is organized around Thoreau's account of the night he spent in prison. He had been arrested for non-payment of the poll tax, a flat tax owed by every individual older than sixteen years. Thoreau refused to pay the tax on the grounds that it went to support a government that supported slavery. He wrote in Walden what happened: "One afternoon [July, 1846], near the end of the first summer when I went to the village to get a shoe from the cobbler's, I was seized and put into jail, because, as I have elsewhere referred, I did not pay a tax to, or recognize the authority of, the state which buys and sells men, women, and children, like cattle at the door of its senate-house." Thoreau acknowledged the symbolic value of the lock that held him in a continuation of the passage. In a reference to his house at Walden, he contrasted the State's need for locks with his own ability to do without.
Thoreau's jailer in 1846 was Sam Staples, a constable and later sheriff of Middlesex County. Staples had a number of roles in Concord's commercial and civic life, from taverner to School Committee member and he was a state representative. But it is usually as Thoreau's jailer that he is recalled. He was respected and admired by many in town, including Henry Thoreau, who found him "quick, clear, downright, and on the whole a good fellow, especially good to treat with rougher and slower men than himself, always meaning well." Edward Emerson reported that Thoreau said of Staples, "I like Sam Staples; he has no hyporcrisy [sic] about him."
Collections
- Henry David Thoreau Collection
Object number: D2087.0004
Object number: TH10a.1
