“The inexpressible Horrors of that Den of Death!”

At the end of February 1774, Connecticut’s New-Gate Prison was once again ready to house convicted criminals.

The first prisoner sent there had escaped after only a couple of weeks, but the colony paid to block off the shafts to the underground prison, a former copper mine.

On 3 March, the Norwich Packet newspaper reported:

We hear from Windham, that William Johnson Crawford, Zephaniah Ramsdale and John Roberts, all natives of this Country, were last week severally convicted of Horse-Stealing before the County Court then sitting, sentenced to four years confinement in New-Gate, and conducted thither accordingly.

N.B. Two of the above, it is said, are New-Hampshire men.

We hear that John Roberts, one of the above-mentioned unhappy Felons, destined to reside in the subterraneous New-Gate, at Simsbury; upon his Arrival at the Sink of that Infernal Mansion, dropped, or, as it is suspected, willfully plunged headlong into it: His Skull was so miserably fractured, that although those Men who conducted him there remained two Hours after the Accident happened, he was at their Departure unable to articulate a Word, and they imagine that his Peregrinations are completed.---FREEBOOTING HORSE JOCKIES beware, for a Gibbit is comparatively a Toy to the inexpressible Horrors of that Den of Death!

Shorter articles appeared in the 4 March Connecticut Gazette out of New London and the 11 March Connecticut Journal from New Haven. Those papers had nothing to say about John Roberts’s plunge.

On 7 April, the Norwich Packet added two more men to the roster of prisoners:

At the Session of the Superior Court of this Colony, which ended here on Friday last, Daniel Humphry, a Simsbury Man, convicted of breaking into the Cabin of a Vessel, in New-London Harbour, and stealing a Quantity of Coffee, was sentenced to six Years hard Labour and Confinement, in the Copper, Mine, at the Place of his Nativity.--

At the same time James Williams, a Ruffian, for assaulting Zachariah Whipple, on the Road between Norwich-Landing and Preston, and robbing him of a Bottle of Rum, received Sentence to be confined two years in the Newgate Prison at Simsbury.

In early April, therefore, the New-Gate Prison had at least five inmates, sentenced to serve from two to six years. (And apparently stealing a “Quantity of Coffee” was a worse crime than attacking someone for a “Bottle of Rum.”)  

On 12 April, Hartford’s Connecticut Courant told readers:

Last Saturday Night Daniel Humphrey and William Crawford, committed last Week to Newgate Prison, as mention’d in our last, broke out of said Prison and made their escape

It’s heart-warming how a horse thief from New Hampshire and a coffee fiend working a southern Connecticut waterfront were apparently able to run away together.

But that still left three men in New-Gate, right? Or maybe two and a half, if John Roberts was badly injured. 

TOMORROW: Escape methods.