Alcatraz - Birdman of Alcatraz

Robert Franklin Stroud (January 28, 1890 – November 21, 1963), known as the

"Birdman of Alcatraz", was a federal American prisoner who reared and sold birds and became an ornithologist. Despite his nickname
, he actually only kept birds at Leavenworth penitentiary, prior to being transferred to Alcatraz, where he was not allowed to keep pets. Robert Stroud had moved to Alaska and begun a relationship with a cabaret dancer named Kitty O'Brien. According to Stroud, on January 18, 1909, while he was away at work, an acquaintance of theirs, F. K. "Charlie" Von Dahmer, viciously beat O'Brien. After finding out about the incident that night, Stroud confronted Von Dahmer and a struggle ensued, resulting in the latter's death from a gunshot wound. Stroud went to the police station and turned himself and the gun in. However, according to police reports, Stroud had knocked Von Dahmer unconscious, then shot him at point blank range. Although Stroud's mother Elizabeth retained a lawyer for her son, he was convicted of manslaughter on August 23, 1909 and sentenced to 12 years in the federal penitentiary on Puget Sound's McNeil Island.

While at McNeil Island, Stroud assaulted a hospital orderly who had reported him to the administration for attempting to obtain morphine through threats and intimidation, and also reportedly stabbed a fellow inmate who was involved in the attempt to smuggle the narcotics. On September 5, 1912, Stroud was sentenced to an additional six months for the attacks and transferred from McNeil Island to the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. While there, Stroud was reprimanded by a guard in the cafeteria for a minor rule violation. Although the infraction was not a serious one, it could have annulled Stroud's visitation privilege to meet his younger brother, whom he had not seen in eight years. Stroud stabbed and killed a guard, Andrew F. Turner, on March 26, 1916. He was sentenced to execution by hanging on May 27, and was ordered to await his death sentence in solitary confinement. The trial was later invalidated and in a later trial he was given a life sentence. That trial also was invalidated after reaching the U.S. Supreme Court,which ordered a new trial set for May 1918. On June 28 he was again sentenced to death by hanging. The Supreme Court intervened, but only to uphold the death sentence, which was scheduled to be carried out on April 23, 1920.

At this point Stroud's mother appealed to President Woodrow Wilson and his wife, Edith Bolling Wilson, and the execution was halted. Stroud's sentence was again commuted to life imprisonment. Leavenworth's warden, T. W. Morgan, did not approve of the decision, and ordered that Stroud was to be held in segregation for the complete duration of his imprisonment. Stroud was transferred to Alcatraz on December 19, 1942, where he spent six years in segregation and another 11 confined to the hospital wing. In 1959 Stroud was transferred to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, where he stayed until his death in 1963.

While at Leavenworth, Stroud found injured sparrows in the prison yard and kept them. He started to occupy his time raising and caring for his birds, soon switching from sparrows to canaries, which he could sell for supplies and to help support his mother. Soon thereafter, Leavenworth’s administration changed and the prison was then directed by a new warden. Impressed with the possibility of presenting Leavenworth as a progressive rehabilitation penitentiary, the new warden furnished Stroud with cages, chemicals, and stationery to conduct his ornithological activities. Visitors were shown Stroud's aviary and many purchased his canaries. Over the years, he raised nearly 300 canaries in his cells and wrote two books, Diseases of Canaries, and a later edition, Stroud's Digest on the Diseases of Birds, with updated specific information. He made several important contributions to avian pathology, most notably a cure for the hemorrhagic septicemia family of diseases. He gained respect and also some level of sympathy in the bird-loving field.