ONE SUMMER DAY IN 1920 ROBERT F. STROUD found a nest of fledgling sparrows which had fallen from a tree. One bird had suffered a broken leg; Stroud nursed it back to health, thus beginning a distinguished career in the study of bird pathology. In the following years he learned more about the diseases of birds than any amateur investigator before or since. His work attracted the interest of bird lovers and ornithologists throughout the world. Suddenly, in 1942, Stroud's studies were terminated. Today, alone and in ill health, he sits in a room on Alcatraz Island.

One friend has made a point of keeping in touch with Stroud. He is Thomas E. Gaddis of Los Angeles. "Robert Stroud," writes Gaddis, "resists classification. He can properly be called an amateur, because he has never accepted payment for his scientific work. But in Stroud's world our standards and values rarely exist. He is a prisoner.

His incarceration spans the 20th century. In 1909 he received a sentence of 12 years for manslaughter (he had killed a man in a fight). When he entered jail, Theodore Roosevelt was President; Admiral Peary had yet to reach the North Pole; plans for the ill-fated Titanic had not even been drawn. Since before the U.S. entered World War I, Stroud has been isolated from other prisoners. He lived in solitary confinement longer than any other prisoner in the annals of Federal prison system.

"When Stroud first went to prison he was a 19-year-old youth in Alaska. He had a third-grade education. Today he a tall, thin, bald man with intense blue eyes. He wears metal-rimmed glasses under an old green eyeshade held together with adhesive tape. He is rational and articulate, though he has not broken bread with another human being since 1917. His meals are brought to him on a tray.

"Once a week he is taken down the hall by two guards to have a shower bath. He never gets a breath of fresh air under the open sky; his only exercise is what he gets by pacing his room, which has a handsome view of San Francisco harbor. When no fog shrouds 'the Rock,' he can watch passing ships through his barred window. When the wind is right he can hear the sounds of city traffic. (He once wrote: 'I know as much about driving a car, or modern traffic regulations, as a Berkshire hog knows about the quantum theory.')

"From his rocky cage Stroud can also see the wheeling gulls and hunting pelicans of the Pacific Coast. But they are far out of reach, and only serve to remind him of the past. For Stroud once lived in a world of birds.

"In the spring of 1920 a gallows was made ready for Stroud in the yard of the Federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan. He was scheduled to be hanged for killing a guard in an altercation before 1,100 prisoners After four years and three trials, Stroud had been sentenced to death. President Wilson commuted the sentence. Stroud was then placed in solitary confinement for life.

"Such isolation usually turns an uneducated prisoner into a human vegetable. When Stroud first entered prison, he could scarcely read or write. During the next 7 years, before he was separated from other prisoners, he had achieved remarkably high grades in correspondence courses. He had taken instruction in mathematics, astronomy and structural engineering without prerequisite training. He had become an avid reader. In his isolation cell Stroud now taught himself to draw and paint, working under a lone 25-watt bulb. Then came the incident in 1920 which changed his life.

"One day, while he was taking his allotted hour of exercise in a small yard of the prison, a violent storm came up. A branch was torn from a tree beyond the wall and blown into the yard. Under the branch Stroud found a broken nest and three drenched young sparrows. Gathering the fledglings into his handkerchief, he took them inside and warmed them in an improvised incubator-his first piece of scientific apparatus. It consisted of a sock which was hung close to the 25-watt bulb.

"Two of the birds were soon hopping about, but the third could use only one claw. Examination disclosed that it had suffered a broken leg. Stroud set the break and secured it with a splint made from a match and bit of thread. All four of the principals profited by the experience. Although he was confined within a space measuring nine by twelve feet, Stroud had discovered a vast new realm.

"His guards now permitted him to have a male and female canary. Working inside his own cage with a piece of glass and a razor blade, Stroud made a large birdcage out of wooden crates. He was allowed to keep the offspring of his birds; soon his isolated cell was a teeming aviary.

"Stroud quickly discovered that keeping birds on the resources available to a prisoner in solitary confinement invited just about every problem in the book, and some that were not to be found in books. When his birds developed rickets, he learned about vitamins. Friendly guards gave him birdseed, bits of lettuce, bottles, chemicals and hospital pans. He obtained a book on birds, old texts on zoology and bacteriology, and government bulletins. He acquired a magnifying glass. He cultured microorganisms. When one of his birds died, he dissected it with his fingernails, studied its anatomy, and made orderly observations in a notebook.

"During the early 1920s many of Stroud's birds died of avian septicemia, a highly contagious disease. Stroud got no help from his books; they stated that the disease was invariably fatal. After a long series of experiments, he discovered that the tolerance of sick birds for oxygen-liberating compounds was greater than that of mammals. He also learned that chemicals of the citrocarbonate type would restore the alkaline balance lost in avian septicemia. By means of these observations he developed a treatment for the disease. Avian septicemia is often accompanied by skin lesions, these he learned to treat by the external application of potassium permanganate. Stroud was soon working his way through the problem of 'secondary invaders'-other diseases which descend upon a bird weakened by the first illness.

"Stroud was deeply affected by his long surveillance of dying birds. In a book which he published some years later he wrote: 'The lives of literally thousands of birds, the heartbreaks of hundreds of blasted hopes have gone into these pages.... For every truth I have blundered through a hundred errors. I have killed birds when it was almost as hard as killing one's children.... I have dedicated my book to the proposition that fewer birds shall suffer because their diseases are not understood.'

"Prison officials were impressed by Stroud's earnestness; he was granted privileges and allowed to have more visitors. As his knowledge increased, he began to share it with others by publishing articles in bird journals. He studied English composition. He wangled permission to use a battered typewriter, and taught himself the touch system. His mail privileges were extended. His correspondence multiplied. He gave free advice on how to care for sick birds and how to feed and breed healthy ones.

"Stroud found that all bird infections of the hemorrhagic septicemia group could be controlled by the same methods that were known to be effective in avian diphtheria; he discovered and described a typhoid-like disease of canaries; he demonstrated that apoplectiform septicemia, which sickens poultry, was also a disease of canaries, and that the source of infection lay in egg material; he suggested that psittacosis was a pox-virus infection in modified form; he isolated and identified the organisms associated with three forms of pox-virus diseases, demonstrating that most of the fatalities due to the disease were the result of secondary invasion.

"He embarked upon a study of fowl paralysis that was to last for years, and he set up experiments proving that the disease is developed and transmitted by green-plant food. In these experiments he described his methods and invited others to verify his results. His articles were now appearing regularly in bird journals.

"Inevitably Stroud thought of freedom. He wanted to increase the scope of his experiments. He yearned for a microscope, and for more room. He knew he had turned President Wilson' clemency to good advantage. In the years since his life had been spared, his behavior had been exemplary. He wrote friends that he hoped he could start his life again outside prison.

"Then, in 1981, Stroud was ordered to dispose of his birds within 60 days. This was the result of a regulation of the newly formed Federal Bureau of Prisons. Stroud appealed for outside help, enlisting the aid of a bird lover named Della Jones. The case received considerable publicity. Ultimately the Bureau of Prisons allowed Stroud to keep his birds. Moreover, he was provided with an extra cell to house them. He was given new laboratory equipment, multiple electric outlets, dissecting instruments and, most important of all, a pair of spectacles to correct his poor vision. He was promised a microscope. He was assured of serious consideration for a parole in 1937.

"Stroud's hopes were never fulfilled. Subsequently his freedom of correspondence was restricted. He was no longer allowed to correspond with his energetic friend Della Jones. In 1937 his application for parole was denied.

"Stroud still had many friends. A prison official who had resigned arranged to have Wesleyan University give him an old Spencer microscope.

The gift was one of the high points of his life. In a letter of thanks to the University Stroud wrote: 'I once read a newspaper account of a man, blind since birth, whose sight had been suddenly restored. I wondered how this man must have felt as he gazed for the first time upon the world in which he lived, a mystery shrouded in darkness. I know now.'

"Stroud focused his new eye on feathers, microorganisms, blood, gland and bone. His working knowledge of bacteriology soon flowered into practical techniques for making smears and mounting specimens. He grew adept in the use of Gram stains. He made an intensive study of the blood of birds. He drew 26 illustrations of bird blood-cells, described their cytological detail and later published his drawings in a treatise.

"One day Stroud was given some old slides of tissue sections that had been properly cut and mounted. He plunged into an excited study of histology. He tried again and again to make slides of his own, but was stumped by the difficulty of making tissue sections thin enough to see through. He resolved to build a microtome to cut the necessary slices.

"After two years he succeeded. Writing to a lifelong friend in 1989, Stroud described what is probably the most impressive 'do-it-yourself' feat ever achieved by a prisoner:

"'I type this letter,' he wrote, 'with sore fingers, but the microtome is finished. For material I had a few pieces of hard wood, some glass, a piece of half-inch rod with threads on it, a tin can, scraps of sheet copper, black enamel and wood screws. I built a machine that cuts down to two microns....

"'The big problem was to get smooth, uniform motion. I accomplished that by binding all moving and bearing surfaces] with tin and copper and polishing them. The screw presses a thin copper wedge under a tin-covered block that is forced up between the glass guides upon which the razor blade, held in a plain oak block, slides and does the cutting. The tissue is embedded in wax and fastened to the top of the block that comes up between the glass surfaces. Since two microns are equal to 1/12,000th of an inch, you can see that any lost motion would upset the whole operation. An irregularity of 1/1,000th of an inch would give sections you could not see through.'

"Stroud plunged deeper into his work. He also struggled against isolation. To the annoyance of prison officials, he managed on several occasions to get his story into the newspapers and on the radio. In the fall of 1940 his health, which had been declining for several years, fell to a new low. He almost died of pneumonia. But the articles and letters he wrote during this period showed that his mind retained its vigor.

"In 1938, when he was raising pure white Yorkshire canaries, Stroud experimentally fed them anthraquinone dyes. This resulted in lavender and pink canaries, but, more important, it also proved to be an effective treatment for aspergillosis, a fungus disease of birds.

"Later Stroud followed with intense interest the development of sulfanilamide, also a dye, as a therapeutic agent. He concentrated his full energy on anthraquinone, hoping to establish similar properties for this drug. His target was the tubercle bacillus. He lacked facilities for the work, but his efforts attracted the interest of a bacteriologist at the University of Iowa, who visited him in his cell.

"'He was doing an admirable piece of work under restricted conditions,' the bacteriologist reported. He agreed to carry Stroud's investigation forward.

"Stroud now began work on a book, illustrated with his own drawings, of everything he knew about the care, treatment and diseases of cage birds. Into it went not only the facts he had learned by experiment, but also related observations which come naturally to men who live in cages: Under the title, 'Cages,' he wrote: 'I am qualified to speak for but one group of birds on this subject, the small seedeaters. I want to go on record against that very popular and very stupid abomination, the round canary cage. That a bird is able to live in one of these contraptions says much for his adaptability.... Birds like corners for the same reasons you like them: they give a sense of protection. This may be a throwback to the time when both of us crawled out of the sea and hid under a rock, but it is so very real that much of humanity would go mad if compelled to live in round rooms.'

"By 1941 prison officials had grown less tolerant of Stroud's extraordinary activities. It was no longer easy for him to get what he needed for his work. When he was unable to obtain an occasional piece of ice, Stroud wrote the warden of his prison:

"'As you know, for the last five years I have devoted time to the study of avian pathology and have cut thousands of sections from canary tissue. I am sure that some of my pathological drawings will perform a service long after we are both dead. But under the best conditions the work is not easy. It is so difficult that they do not attempt it in the hospital but send all such work to the Hygienic Laboratory in Washington.

"'One great difficulty is the fact that the cutting can only be done at the correct temperature. On the outside it is done in air-conditioned rooms where temperature is thermostatically controlled. I overcame this difficulty by putting my microtome in the icebox until the wax is chilled, and then making the cuts during the few moments when it is just right. But to do this I have to have ice. I have had an order for ice, first issued by Warden White. In the last few years I have been able to get it simply by explaining the need to the guards who understood my work and were sympathetic. Under a change in detail here these conditions no longer exist.'

"The appeal did not succeed. In another letter in which Stroud asked for permission to continue receiving a few simple chemicals, he wrote:

"'You [the warden] have always been extremely kind and considerate in granting my requests for reagents, though I have little doubt that at times my desires have seemed to you insatiable and beyond reason. But this has only been because the problems involved in the study of bird diseases are no less complex than those in human diseases and of a nature to tax human ingenuity to the limit, even under the best of circumstances. I have felt you realized this and that it was a prompting motive behind your many kindnesses. In appreciation I have been meticulous and diligent in applying these reagents to the sole purpose for which they were granted me. Since these items were not of an objectionable nature, the presumption is created that maybe my own conduct has been in some manner objectionable. If this is the case, I would like to know it and correct the matter.'

"'The new order,' replied the warden, 'in no way reflects against your conduct.'

"But subsequently, when a congressman appealed to the Bureau of Prisons in Stroud's behalf, Director James V. Bennett replied, '. . . The story of a man like Stroud being interested in birds is, of course, an appealing one, but we are dealing with a very difficult individual who has been a constant source of trouble and agitation since he has been in our institutions, involving incidentally a very considerable expense to the Government. Under the circumstances, I am convinced that it would be decidedly inadvisable to permit Stroud to engage in any such project.' The project was a proposed revision of Stroud's book.

"The effect of such restrictions was reflected in Stroud's health and disposition. After he had had a critical bout with pneumonia, an old kidney disease returned. Under these pressures he tried again to bring his situation to the attention of the outside world. He placed copies of a long and bitter letter addressed to his brother in the hands of three prisoners due for release. Two of the copies were intercepted.

"In December of 1942 Stroud was transferred from Leavenworth to Alcatraz. Behind him he left perhaps the strangest collection of objects ever found in a prison cell: half a ton of laboratory, office and bird equipment, including 44 boxes of microscope slides. He also left 22 live birds.

"In Alcatraz Stroud was continued in solitary confinement. Although he was without birds or equipment, he was allowed to complete his book. Today Stroud's Digest of the Diseases of Birds is a well-thumbed volume in public libraries and on the shelves of bird breeders.

"Stroud now began an intensive study of penology and law. Ultimately he wrote a 100,000-word analytical history of the Federal penal system from 1790 to 1980. It was confiscated by the Bureau of Prisons. Stroud petitioned the Federal courts for its release, but without success.

"In 1953 Frank Dittrich, who had purchased the copyright of Stroud's Digest, requested the Bureau of Prisons a J permit Stroud to work on a new edition. This permission was denied.

"My full-length biography of Stroud, Birdman of Alcatraz, was published in 1955 by Random House. It has been reprinted in England, West Germany, France and Japan, received wide notice in the press throughout the world and is soon to appear in the U. S. and England in a paper-backed edition. Stroud has never been allowed to read it.

"Article VIII of the Bill of Rights states: '...nor (shall) cruel and unusual punishments be inflicted. 'To keep a any man in isolation from his fellows for more than four decades in this nation of presumed enlightenment would seem to constitute punishment as unusual as it is cruel.

"The Federal Bureau of Prisons was invited this past October to explain its handling of Stroud's case. In response an official of the Bureau stated that he neither could nor would release any facts concerning the prisoner. 'In the opinion of the Bureau,' he said, 'Stroud belongs where he is and he will stay where he is unless his sentence is commuted by the President.'"

Bibliography

BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ: THE STORY OF ROBERT STROUD. Thomas E. Gaddis. Random House, 1955.

STROUD'S DIGEST ON THE DISEASES OF BIRDS. Robert Stroud. Webb Publishing Co., 1943.

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