USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York, Vol. II > Part 6
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" Wine and some other things were sent in by our gov- " ernment for the sick ; the British furnished nothing. I "then lay perfectly easy and free from pain, and it " appeared to me that I never was so happy in my life, "and yet so weak that I could not get out of my bunk, " had it been to save the Union. The doctor (who was " an American surgeon and a prisoner, had been taken "out of prison to serve in the hospital) told me that "my blood was breaking down and turning into water " from the effects of the small pox. Ile said I must " have some bitters. I gave him what money I had, and " he prepared some for me ; and when that was gone he " had the kindness to prepare some for me once or twice " at his own expense. I began slowly to gain, and finally " to walk about. While standing one day in March by " the side of the church, in the warm sun, my toes began " to sting and pain me excessively. I showed them to " the surgeon when he came in ; he laid them open ; they
" had been frozen, and the flesh wasted till only the bone 'and the tough skin remained. I had now to remain ' here for a long time on account of my feet. And of " all places, that was the last to be coveted ; disease and " death reigned there in all their terrors. I have had " men die by the side of me in the night, and have seen " fifteen dead bodies sewed up in their blankets and laid " in the corner of the yard at one time, the product of " one twenty-four hours. Every morning, at 8 o'clock,
" the dead-cart came, the bodies were put in, the men "drew their rum, and the cart was driven off' to the " trenches of the fortifications that our people had made. " Once I was permitted to go with the guard to the
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" place of interment, and never shall I forget the scene " that I there beheld ; they tumbled them into the ditch " just as it happened, threw on a little dirt, and then "away. I could see a hand, a foot, or part of a head, " washed bare by the rains, swollen, blubbering, and " falling to decay.
" I was now returned to the prison, and from this " time forward I enjoyed comfortable health to the close "of my imprisonment, which took place in the May fol- " lowing. One day, as I was standing in the yard near " the high board fence, a man passed in the street close " to the fence, and without stopping or turning his head, " said in a low voice, 'General Burgoyne is taken with "'all his army ; it is a truth, you may depend upon it.' " Shut out from all information as we had been, the news " was grateful indeed, and cheered us in our wretched " prison. Knowing nothing of what was taking place " beyond the confines of our miserable abode, we had " been left to dark forebodings and fears as to the result " of our cause, and the probabilities of our goverment " being able to exchange or release us. We knew not " whether our cause was progressing, or whether resist- "ance was still continued. Our information was " obtained only through the exaggerations of the British "soldiery. But this gave us the sweet consolation that "our cause was yet triumphant, and the hope of final " liberation. Had our informant been discovered, he " might have had to run the gauntlet, or lose his life for " his kindness."
Such were the horrors of the Old Sugar-house in Lib- erty street. Rhinelander's and the other sugar-houses
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in the city were also filled with prisoners, but as the Old Jersey ranked foremost among the prison-ships, this seems to have taken the precedence of all the rest. Columbia College was used as a prison for a short time only. The City Hall was converted into a guard-house for the main guard of the city, the dungeons below being filled with prisoners. During the latter part of the war, the court-room in the second story was granted to the refugee clergy for service in lieu of their churches.
Another prison was the Bridewell, in the Commons, a cheerless, jail-like building of grey stone, two stories in height, with a basement and pediment in front and rear, which is still remembered by many of our citizens. This building had been erected in 1775, just in time to serve as a dungeon for the patriots of the Revolution. At this time, it was scarcely finished, the windows were yet unglazed, with nothing but iron bars to keep out the cold ; yet, despite the excessive inclemency of the weather, more than eight hundred of the unfortunate prisoners of Fort Washington were thrust within its walls on the day of the capture and left there for three days without a mouthful of food. "We were marched to New York," says Oliver Woodruff, one of the prisoners, who died not long since at the age of 90, "and went to differ- "ent prisons-eight hundred and sixteen went into "the New Bridewell, I among the rest ; some into " the Sugar-house ; others into the Dutch Church.
" On Thursday morning, they brought us a little pro- " vision, which was the first morsel we got to eat or drink " after cating our breakfast on Saturday morning. We
" never drew as much provision for three days allowance
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The Bridewell.
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" as a man would eat at a common meal. I was there " three months during that inclement season, and never " saw any fire, except what was in the lamps of the city. " There was not a pane of glass in the windows, and " nothing to keep out the cold except the iron grates." This statement is confirmed by N. Murray, who says that the doctor gave poison powders to the prisoners, who soon died. Every indignity which human ingenuity could invent was heaped upon the wretched prisoners in the furtherance of the policy which hoped thus to crush the spirit of the army by disabling those that had been taken prisoners for future service and terrifying the remainder by the possibility of a similar fate. In the first part of of their project they succeeded but too well ; on the 6th May, 1778, when an exchange of some of the prisoners took place, of the three thousand men who had been cap- tured at Fort Washington, but eight hundred were report- ed as still living. But this wanton cruelty only deepened the indignation of the patriots ; instead of bringing them humbled and submissive to the feet of Great Britain, it estranged them more widely from the once loved mother country, and forever destroyed all hope of reconciliation.
The most notorious dungeon, perhaps, of all, was the New Jail or Provost, so called from' having been the headquarters of the infamous Cunningham, the provost- marshal of the Revolution. Through the influence of General Gage, he had succeeded to this post on the retirement of William Jones in 1775, and from the fact that he retained it until the close of the war, we may judge that his conduct was pleasing to his superiors. The injuries which he had received the preceding year at
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the foot of the Liberty-Pole, had never been forgotten, and he eagerly availed himself of this opportunity to wreak his vengeance on his defenceless prisoners. Among these were the most distinguished of the American captives ; Ethan Allen, the hero of Ticonderoga ; Majors Wells, Payne, and Williams ; Captains Randolph, Fla- haven, Vandyke, Mercer, and Bissell ; John Fell, a member of the Provincial Congress of New Jersey, with many other prominent men and officers, who, after having been released on parole, had been arrested again upon frivolous pretexts and thrown into a dungeon with the vilest criminals, where their brutal jailer heaped every possible indignity upon them, even amusing the young English officers, who were his frequent guests, at the conclusion of their drunken orgies, by parading his helpless prisoners through the courtyard of the jail as specimens of the rebel army. Not content with seeing them die a slow death from cold and starvation, he is said to have poisoned many by mingling a preparation of arsenic with their food, then continued to draw their rations as before, giving rise to the sarcasm that he fed the dead and starved the living ; and to have boasted that he had thus killed more of the rebels with his own hand than had been slain by all the king's forces in America. The cruelty practised towards the inmates of the Provost and the other prisons of the city rivals all that may be found in the annals of Christendom, and stamps the gene- ral who permitted it with far deeper disgrace than the subordinate who was only the instrument of his will. Mr. Pintard, one of founders of the New York Historical Society, at that time a young man, the clerk of his uncle,
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Elias Boudinot, who had been appointed Commissioner of Prisons by the Continental Congress, has left us a graphic picture of the scenes of which he was himself an eye witness.
The New Jail, now the Hall of Records.
" The Provost," says he, in a published document, " was destined for the more notorious rebels, civil, naval, " and military. An admission to this modern Bastile was "enough to appall the stoutest heart. On the right hand " of the main door, was Captain Cunningham's quarters "opposite to which was the guard-room. Within the
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" first barricade was Sergeant O'Keefe's apartment. At " the entrance door, two sentinels were always posted, " day and night ; two more at the first and second bar- " ricades, which were grated, barred, and chained, also at " the rear door, and on the platform at the grated door "at the foot of the second flight of steps, leading to " the rooms and cells in the second and third stories. "When a prisoner, escorted by the soldiers, was led into " the hall, the whole guard was paraded, and he was " delivered over with all formality to Captain Cun- " ningham, or his deputy, and questioned as to his "name, rank, size, age, etc., all of which were entered "in a record-book. What with the bristling of arms, "unbolting of bars and locks, clanking of enormous iron " chains, and a vestibule as dark as Erebus, the unfortu- " nate captive might well sink under this infernal sight " and parade of tyrannical power, as he crossed the " threshold of that door which probably closed on him " for life.
" The northeast chamber, turning to the left, on the "second floor, was appropriated to officers and charac- "ters of superior rank and distinction, and was christened "Congress Hall. So closely were they packed, that " when their bones ached at night from lying on the " hard oak planks, and they wished to turn, it could "only be done by word of command, 'Right, Left,' " being so wedged and compact as to form almost a solid "mass of human bodies. In the day-time, the packs and " blankets of the prisoners were suspended around the "walls, every precaution being used to keep the rooms "ventilated, and the walls and floors clean, to prevent
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"jail-fever, and as the Provost was generally crowded "with American prisoners or British culprits of every "description, it is really wonderful that infection never " broke out in its walls."
The following graphic list of the grievances endured by the prisoners, which was sent to General Jones by Mr. Pintard, reveals a terrible tale of suffering : "Close "confined in jail, without distinction of rank or charac- "ter ; amongst felons (a number of whom are under "sentence of death), without their friends being suffered "to speak to them, even through the gates. On the " scanty allowance of 2 lbs. hard biscuit and 2 lbs. raw "pork per man per week, without fuel to dress it. Fre- "quently supplied with water from a pump where all "kinds of filth is thrown that can render it obnoxious "and unwholesome (the effects of which are too often "felt), when good water is as easily obtained. Denied "the benefit of a hospital ; not allowed to send for medi- "cine, nor even a doctor permitted to visit them when "in the greatest distress ; married men and others who "lay at the point of death, refused to have their wives "or relations admitted to see them, who, for attempting " it, were often beat from prison. Commissioned officers " and other persons of character, without a cause, thrown "into a loathsome dungeon, insulted in a gross manner, "and vilely abused by a provost marshal, who is allowed "to be one of the basest characters in the British army, "and whose power is so unlimited that he has caned an "officer on a trivial occasion, and frequently beats the " sick privates when unable to stand, many of whom are "daily obliged to enlist in the new corps to prevent
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" perishing for the necessaries of life. Neither pen, ink "nor paper allowed (to prevent their treatment being "made public), the consequence of which, indeed, the "prisoners themselves dread, knowing the malignant " disposition of their keeper."
These statements are amply confirmed by the testi- mony of eye-witnesses as well as of the sufferers them- selves ; and it is not strange that the name of Cunning- ham became a by-word of horror in the annals of the times. It was afterwards reported and currently believed that he was executed at Newgate for forgery ; and a dying speech and confession, purporting to be his, was published in 1791 in a Philadelphia paper and copied thence into the Boston journals of the day ; but the Newgate Calendar, examined by Mr. Bancroft, con- tains no record of any such name. The Americans were willing to believe all things possible from a man who had shown himself capable of such barbarity, and rumors of this sort found ready credence. But the odium of this cruelty must forever rest on Howe, who was cognizant of all its details, and to whom the provost marshal was but a tool-a cat's paw, as he is called by the indignant Ethan Allen-to execute his vengeance upon the detested rebels. The sufferings of the captives excited universal sympathy, and considerable aid was afforded them by the citizens ; yet this was not encouraged by the British commandant, and Mrs. Deborah Franklin was even banished from the city in 1780 for her unbounded liberality to the American prisoners. Remonstrances would have been in vain. The American officers who were free on parole shrunk from visiting the prisons to
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witness the sufferings which they could not relieve, and dared not appeal to Howe for aid, lest this audacity should doom them to a similar fate. In 1777, after the successes of Washington in New Jersey, a portion of the prisoners were exchanged ; but, exhausted by suffering, many fell dead in the streets ere they reached the vessels destined for their embarkation, and few long survived their return to their homes. The churches and sugar- houses were gradually cleared of their inmates during the course of the war, but the Provost and the old City Hall were used as prisons till Evacuation Day. " I was in New York, Nov. 26th," says Gen. Johnson, "and at the Provost about ten o'clock A.M. A few " British criminals were yet in custody, and O'Keefe " threw his ponderous bunch of keys on the floor and "retired, when an American guard relieved the British "guard, which joined a detachment of British troops, " then on parade in Broadway, and marched down to the "Battery, where they embarked for England."
Not less deplorable was the condition of the sailor- captives on board the loathsome prison-ships .* The first of these vessels were the freight-ships which brought the British troops to Staten Island in 1776; in these, as
* For further details respecting the prisons as well as the prison-ships of New York, the reader is referred to " Narrative of Col. Ethan Allen's Captivity," Burling- ton, 1838; "Onderdonk's Incidents of the British Prisons and Prison-Ships at " New York," New York, 1849; "Life of Jesse Talbot ;" "Life of Ebenezer Fox, of " Roxbury," Boston, 1838; " Recollections of the Jersey Prison-Ship," by Capt. Thomas Dring, Providence, 1829 ; " The Old Jersey Captive," by Thomas Ar mov, Boston, 1838, "The Interment of the Remains of 11,500 American " Prisoners at the Wallebocht," New York, 1808 ; Freneau's " Poem on the Prison- " Ship," und Guines', Rivington's, and other papers of the day.
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they lay anchored at Gravesend Bay, the prisoners taken at the battle of Long Island were confined for a few days until the conquest of the city, when they were transferred thither and the vessels reserved for the cap- tured seamen. The Good Hope and Scorpion were then anchored in the North River off the Battery, whence the bodies of the prisoners who died were conveyed to Trinity Churchyard for burial. Some time after, they were taken round to the East River and moored in the Wallabout Bay, where a dozen old hulks, among which were the Good Hope, Whitby, Falmouth, Prince of Wales, Scorpion, Strombolo, Hunter, Kitty, Providence, Bristol, Jersey, etc., lay anchored in succession, usually two or three at a time, to serve as floating prisons for the British commanders. Of all these, the Jersey gained the greatest notoriety ; christened "the hell afloat " by her despair- ing inmates, her name struck terror to the hearts of every American sailor. A 61-gun ship which had been condemned in 1776 as unfit for service, she had been stripped of her spars and rigging and anchored at Tolmie's Wharf to serve as a storeship. In 1780, when the prisoners on board the Good Hope burnt the vessel in the desperate hope of regaining their liberty, the chief incendiaries were removed to the Provost, and the remainder transferred to the Jersey, which was thence- forth used as a prison-ship until the close of the war, when her inmates were liberated, and she was henceforth shunned by all as a nest of pestilence. The worms soon after destroyed her bottom, and she sunk, bearing with her on her planks the names of thousands of American prisoners. For more than twenty years, her ribs lay
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exposed at low water ; she now lies buried beneath the United States Navy Yard.
Though the Jersey has gained a bad eminence as a prison-ship, which would naturally lead many to suppose that her prisoners alone were subjected to suffering and privation, the testimony of those confined in the other hulks proves clearly that their treatment was every- where the same. The chief difference lay in the fact that the Jersey was larger than the others, and con- tinued in the service for a longer space of time. David Sproat, the British Commissary, denied, indeed, that any suffering existed, and, painting the situation of the captives in glowing colors, brought documents signed by them to testify to the truth of his assertions ; but as these were forced from them almost at the point of the bayonet, and universally retracted as soon as they were frec, the papers in question are not worth much in evidence.
The life on board the Jersey prison-ship may be regarded as a fair sample of the life on all the rest. The crew consisted of a captain, two mates, a steward, cook and a dozen sailors, with a guard of twelve marines and about thirty soldiers. When a prisoner was brought on board, his name and rank were registered, after which he was searched for weapons and money. His clothes and bedding he was permitted to retain ; how- ever scanty these might be, he was supplied with no more while on board the prison-ship. He was then ordered down into the hold, where from a thousand to twelve hundred men were congregated, covered with rags and filth, and ghastly from breathing the pesti-
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lential air ; many of them sick with the typhus fever, dysentery and smallpox, from which the vessel was never free. Here he joined a mess of six men, who, every morning, at the ringing of the steward's bell, received their daily allowance of biscuit, beef or pork and peas, to which butter, suet, oatmeal and flour were occasionally added. The biscuit was moldy and lite- rally crawling with worms, the butter and suet rancid and unsavory to the highest degree, the peas damaged, the meal and flour often sour, and the meat tainted, and boiled in the impure water from about the ship in a large copper kettle, which, soon becoming corroded and crusted with verdigris, mingled a slow poison with all its contents. Yet for these damaged provisions, the highest prices were charged to the king by the royal commissioners, who, by curtailing the rations and substi- tuting damaged provisions for those purchased by the government, amassed fortunes at the expense of thou- sands of lives ; and, when accused, forced their prisoners by threats of still greater severity, to attest to the kind treatment which they received at their hands.
The prisoners were confined in the two main decks below ; the lower dungeon being filled with foreigners, who were treated with even more inhumanity than the Americans. Every morning the prisoners were aroused with the cry, " Rebels, turn out your dead !" The order was obeyed, and the bodies of those who had died during the night were brought up upon deck and placed upon the gratings. If the deceased had owned a blanket, any prisoner was at liberty to sew it around the corpse, after which it was lowered into a boat and sent
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on shore for interment. Here, a hole was dug in the sands, and the bodies hastily covered, often to be disin- terred at the washing of the next tide.
The prisoners were suffered to remain on deck till sunset, when they were saluted with the insulting cry of " Down, rebels, down !" This order obeyed, the main hatchway was closed, leaving a small trap-door, large enough for one man to ascend at a time, over which a sentinel was placed, with orders to permit but one man to come up at a time during the night. These sentinels were often guilty of the most wanton cruelty. William Burke, a prisoner for fourteen months in the Jersey, says that one night while the prisoners were huddled about the grate at the hatchway to obtain fresh air, awaiting their turn to go on deck, the sentinel thrust his bayonet among them, killing twenty-five of their number ; and that this outrage was frequently repeated. But these acts of cruelty, instead of crushing the spirit of the rebels, as their enemies had fondly hoped, only incited them to new acts of daring ; those already free, fought with the more desperation, choosing rather to face death than the dreaded prison-ship ; while the prisoners, constantly seeking to escape, cherished life that they might one day take vengeance for their sufferings. How terrible sometimes was the retribution, may be gleaned from the following extract from the Life of Silas Talbot :
"Two young men, brothers, belonging to a rifle " corps," says the author of the narrative, " were made " prisoners, and sent on board the Jersey. The elder " took the fever, and in a few days became delirious.
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" One night (his end was fast approaching) he became " calm and sensible, and, lamenting his hard fate and " the absence of his mother, begged for a little water. " His brother, with tears, entreated the guard to give " him some, but in vain. The sick youth was soon in "his last struggles, when his brother offered the guard " a guinea for an inch of candle, only that he might see " him die. Even this was refused. 'Now,' said he, "drying up his tears, 'if it please God that I ever "regain my liberty, I'll be a most bitter enemy.' He "regained his liberty, rejoined the army, and when the " war ended, he had eight large and 127 small notches " on his rifle-stock !"
To prove that the Jersey prison-ship was not an exceptional one, we will quote the testimony of pri- soners on board the others. Freneau has given a graphic poetical account of his treatment on board the Scorpion and the hospital-ship .* Another says : " The
* We subjoin as a curiosity the following extract from Freneau's poem on the "Prison Ship "-a work which is now exceedingly rare :
" Two hulks on Hudson's stormy bosom lie, Two further south affront the pitying eye ; There the black Scorpion at hier moorings rides, There, Strombolo swings, yielding to the tides, Here bulky Jersey fills a larger space, And Hunter, to all hospitals disgrace. Thou, Scorpion, fatal to thy crowded throng, Dire theme of horror and Plutonian song, Requir'st my lay-thy sultry decks I know, And all the torments that exist below. The briny wave that Hudson's bosom fills, Drained through her bottom in a thousand rills ; Rotten und old, replete with sighs and groans,
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"greatest inhumanity was experienced in a ship, of "which one Nelson, a Scotchman, had the superintend- "ence (the Good Hope, afterwards burned by the pri- 'soners, described by Sproat as the best prison-ship in "the world). Upwards of three hundred were confined
Scarce on the waters she sustains her bones. IIere, doomed to toil, or founder in the tide, At the moist pumps incessantly we ply'd ; Here, doomed to starve, like famish'd dogs we tore The scant allowance that our tyrants bore.
When to the ocean dives the western sun, And the scorch'd Tories fire their evening gun, ' Down, rebels, down !' the angry Scotchmen ery, ' Damn'd dogs, descend, or by our broudswords die !' Hail dark abode ! what can with thee compare ? Heat, sickness, famine, death and stagnant air- Swift from the guarded decks we rush'd along, And vainly sought repose-so vast our throng. Three hundred wretches here, deny'd all light, In crowded mansions pass th' infernal night. Some for a bed their tattered vestments join, And some on chests, and some on floors recline ; Shut from the blessings of the evening air, Pensive we lay with mingled corpses there ; Meagre and wan, and seorch'd with heat below, We look'd like ghosts, ere death had made us so. How could we else, where heat and hunger join'd, Thus to debase the body and the mind, Where cruel thirst the parching throat invades, Dries up the man, and fits him for the shades ? No water ladled from the bubbling spring, To these dire ships the war-made monsters bring ; By planks and pond'rous beams completely wall'd, In vain for water, and in vain, I call'd- No drop was granted to the midnight prayer, To Dives in these regions of despair I The loathsome cask a deadly dose contains, . Its poison circling through the languid veins.
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