Harold A. Littledale

Harold Aylmer Littledale (1885–August 11, 1957) was a Welsh-born American journalist. He emigrated to Canada to work as a cattle rancher but moved to the United States around 1906 to find work in journalism. After a period in Chicago, he moved east to work for the New York Evening Mail. In 1913 Littledale switched to the New York Evening Post where he was assigned to report on the New Jersey prison system. He visited all of the state's prisons and worked undercover as a prisoner at the New Jersey State Prison. Littledale reported "medieval" conditions with some prisoners chained to walls in "dungeons" and given bread and water twice a day. His 1917 report led to a state inquiry that recommended reform of the entire system. Littledale had enlisted in the British Army and served in the Tank Corps towards the end of the First World War. He was on the Western Front when he learned he had been awarded the 1918 Pulitzer Prize in Reporting -- only the second such prize to be awarded -- for his prison work.

Littledale returned to the New York Evening Post after the war. His reporting on neglect of wounded US Army veterans led to a Congressional investigation and creation of the Veterans Bureau. Littledale joined the New York Times in 1924 reporting on a number of aircraft stories before being promoted to suburban editor in 1928 and then to assistant to the managing editor. He was paralysed in a 1941 air crash and retired shortly afterwards. In 1952 Littledale wrote a book entitled Mastering Your Disability.

Early life and Pulitzer Prize

Littledale was born in Wales in 1885; his father was a professor of mathematics at the University of Wales. Littledale was educated at Winchester College. He emigrated to Canada to work as a cattle rancher but moved to Chicago in the United States around 1906 to work as a journalist. Shortly afterwards he moved to the east coast to work on the New York Evening Mail. From 1913 Littledale was assistant cable editor at the New York Evening Post. Littledale described conditions at the prison as "medieval" with some rooms, known as dungeons, where prisoners were chained to the walls and given only bread and water twice a day. He documented illegal overcrowding, abusive work conditions (with legally mandated pay withheld from the prisoners) and poor food. In closing his reports, published in early 1917, he channelled 19th-century English prison reformer Elizabeth Fry, asking his readers whether prisoners should have the right to sunlight and to eat at a table rather than "having their food thrust into cages as if they were wild and dangerous beasts". This commission, led by Dwight Morrow, reported within four weeks. It supported all but two of the eleven recommendations made by Littledale in his reports and noted that the prison labor system was an almost complete failure. News of the award had been slow to reach him because of censorship of the cable messages. One of his first reports there was on the plight of wounded veterans of the war. His exposure of neglect led to a Congressional investigation, during which Littledale was threatened with a summons for contempt of the Senate for refusing to disclose his sources. The investigation led to complete reform of the system and creation of the Veterans Bureau. He was struck down by a long-lasting illness and died on August 11, 1957, in a rest home in the town at the age of 72.