Malachi Martin (born 1822) was the prison warden at

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

's first state penitentiary in Chattahoochee, Florida and a state legislator. He was renowned for barbarity and corruption including the use of prison labor for his personal benefit. Another account blames changing politics for the most horrific accounts. He served as speaker of the

Florida House of Representatives The Florida House of Representatives is the lower house of the Florida Legislature, the state legislature of the U.S. state of Florida, the Florida Senate being the upper house. Article III, Section 1 of the Constitution of Florida, adopted ...

. Martin, a Republican, was friends with Samuel Fleischman who consulted with him before being murdered by the

Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and ...

. Malachi was put in charge of Florida's first state prison in 1871. He used prisoners to build houses for his profit and to tend his

vineyard A vineyard (; also ) is a plantation of grape-bearing vines, grown mainly for winemaking, but also raisins, table grapes and non-alcoholic grape juice. The science, practice and study of vineyard production is known as viticulture. Vineyards ...

s. The book ''The American Siberia; or, Fourteen years' experience in a southern convict camp'' (1891) by J. C. Powell described the abuse he carried out. After the prisoners were relocated in 1876 to a prison at Raiford, Florida, the prison was renovated for use as Florida State Hospital, where mental patients were incarcerated.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Martin, Malachi 1822 births Year of death missing Speakers of the Florida House of Representatives Republican Party members of the Florida House of Representatives 19th-century American politicians Irish emigrants to the United States (before 1923) American prison wardens