The West Virginia State Penitentiary at Moundsville opened in 1876. Prior to this prisoners in the state were usually either kept in county jails or sent out of state for confinement, neither of which were adequate solutions.
The Moundsville prison kept the inmates busy with a carpentry shop, a stone yard, a paint shop, wagon shop, brickyard, tailor shop, bakery and even a prison coal mine. All these activities led to the state prison gaining enough revenue to be self-sufficient and conditions were said to be fairly good for the prisoners.
As time went by, though, that all changed.
More prisoners were sent to Moundsville, leading to increased overcrowding at the prison. New construction temporarily relieved the overcrowding, but never eliminating it or the bad conditions overcrowding caused.
On this day in 1973 everything boiled over at Moundsville.
Inmates at the prison staged a riot over inadequate living conditions and poor treatment at the hands of the guards. Three guards took an inmate to the showers, not realizing he had a homemade knife hidden on him. Once there he managed to cut one of the guards and overpower the other two, after which he took the keys to the main hall that one of the officers had. The inmates locked the doors to the hall to keep other officers out.
They had seized control of the prison, the three original guards and two others who were there.
Negotiations began between officials and the prisoners, with Governor Arch Moore soon joining in directly. The prisoners had twenty demands, mainly about their treatment at Moundsville. In the end the Governor agreed to all their demands and the inmates released the captured guards in return.
There were other riots over the years, mostly over the same conditions, and the West Virginia Supreme Court finally shut down the penitentiary after another riot in 1986 protesting overcrowding and disease. The Court ruled that confinement in Moundsville’s 5 by 7 foot cells was cruel and unusual punishment and thus unconstitutional. The prison was finally shut down for good in 1995.
