Stroud’s position was unique. He lived with the birds in a single room twenty-four hours a day and was unable to leave his study. Gradually the bird-fancying community began to take notice of this interesting new enthusiast named Bob Stroud. By late 1929 he was breeding his birds in a lucrative business, and he was able to fully support his mother. In addition to his bird sales, Bob also began marketing Stroud Effervescent Bird Saltsand Stroud’s Prescription and Salts No.1,which rapidly became popular remedies for bird ailments. He claimed that the Stroud Specificremedies were the first treatments ever marketed to treat avian diphtheria. Stroud performed detailed autopsies to study the causes of death for his stricken birds and composed amazingly detailed illustrations of their organs and anatomy. What the public didn’t know was that the name and address in Leavenworth, Kansas, belonged to a twice-convicted murderer working from a solitary confinement cell in federal prison.
Della Mae Jones was a widowed middle-aged bird lover who exchanged letters with Stroud after he won a bird that she had offered in a magazine contest. She became intrigued when she learned that the seemingly gentle bird enthusiast who had written so many articles on bird ailments was actually a federal prisoner. Bob and Della began a steady stream of correspondence and quickly developed a close friendship. After a few years of exchanging letters, Della traveled to Kansas to meet Stroud in April of 1931. After one visit, she immediately began making plans to move to Kansas City and help with the bird business. She moved into the same building as Elizabeth, but soon she found herself in conflict with Stroud’s dominant mother.
In late August of 1931, Leavenworth Warden Thomas White was directed by the newly formed Bureau of Prisons to disband Stroud’s mail order business and to revoke all privileges that allowed him to keep birds in his cell. It was a serious blow to Stroud to have all of his avian studies brought to a halt by prison bureaucracy. He pleaded directly to the B.O.P. with little success. Della and Elizabeth flooded newspaper and magazine offices with plaintive appeals and sorrowful press releases that Bob had written from his cell. Bob’s plight drew national attention and public empathy forced the B.O.P. to change its position. The Bureau’s newly appointed Director, James V. Bennett, who was only thirty-seven years of age, was sent to Leavenworth to negotiate new terms with Stroud. After Bennett’s visit, the Bureau modified its ruling to state that Stroud would no longer be able to conduct private business ventures from his prison cell. His profitable business of bird remedies and breeding would now fall under the umbrella of prison industries. As a result, Stroud would go from making nearly ten dollars per bird to earning only ten dollars a month as a noncommissioned salary.
An article written by Della Mae Jones in 1931, petitioning for leniency and a reinstatement of privileges so that Stroud could keep his birds while in prison.
Hollywood Actress Betty Field’s original contract to play the role of Stella in the motion picture Birdman of Alcatraz. The character was based on Della Mae Jones.
Though this was widely considered to be a harsh ruling, the Bureau did make some concessions. They classified Stroud as a special prisoner of the Bureau and provided him with an additional cell adjacent to his own which included additional electrical outlets to help accommodate his research. The prison even went so far as to hire a construction crew to jackhammer a doorway between the two cells. Stroud once again became engrossed in his research and his self-taught explorations into avian behavior, illness and scientific theory.
Stroud’s cell with birdcages strewn about, as it was depicted in the biographical film, looked quite similar to his actual solitary cell at Leavenworth.
In 1933 Stroud’s first book, entitled Diseases of Canaries,was published by Canary Publishers. It was based on his magazine articles and his independent research techniques, and was intended to be marketed as a comprehensive and authoritative text on canary care for owners and breeders. His well-written reference was as meticulously researched and structured as an avian encyclopedia. The book was, however, not without its critics. Some of the remedies were later found to be harmful to birds. It also drew skeptical responses from some circles in the veterinarian community. Stroud and his publisher E.J. Powell soon clashed over the book’s lack of success. Stroud argued that it was Powell who had been responsible for the book’s failure and later attempted to file a lawsuit against him.
Meanwhile Stroud and Della grew closer and they sought to marry, even though Stroud was incarcerated for life. After reading an out-of-date law book from the prison library, Stroud interpreted the Treaty of Paris, struck in 1803, as granting inhabitants of the Louisiana Purchase (which also included the Kansas territory) the right to marry by signing an officiated contract. Stroud typed the contract on the old Remington typewriter he had in his cell, and the following day their unofficial marriage was published in the Kansas City Star, in October of 1933. Della Mae then started penning her name as Della Mae Stroud. Prison officials were furious that Stroud was publicly maneuvering around prison regulations and it was around this time that rumors started to surface regarding his eventual transfer to Alcatraz.
During the next few years, Stroud would lose many of his closest contacts and would leave the cell that had been his home and laboratory for so long. In 1934 Elizabeth Stroud ceased her efforts to support the cause of her son and relocated back to Metropolis, Illinois, along with her daughter Mamie. Elizabeth would have no further contact and she died only four years later in August of 1938. Meanwhile, prison officials began to complicate the visiting procedures for Stroud and Della. By 1936, their relationship had also dissolved. To make matters worse, Ida Turner, the widow of the slain guard, had publicly criticized the Prison Bureau for giving Stroud special liberties and had established a small group of followers.
In spite of these setbacks, the intrepid prisoner continued to conduct and expand his avian research. Stroud had been given professional tools to perform his autopsies, including scalpels and other sharp instruments. He had educated himself in the use of an old microscope that had been donated to the prison by Wesleyan University and claimed that he had logged more than 3,000 hours at the eyepiece. It was also reported that Stroud had made a microtone from scraps of metal and a discarded razor blade which could slice tissue to 1/12,000 of an inch – and that he had studied literally thousands of homemade slides. He had spent countless hours sketching his observations in detailed pen-and-ink illustrations.
Stroud spent hundreds of hours studying and sketching his avian observations in detailed pen-and-ink illustrations. These sketches were assembled for his book Digest on the Diseases of Bird,” published in 1943.