As awful as we might think of being imprisoned underground in an old, dank copper mine, the colony actually opened that prison as a reform measure. It was an alternative to corporal and capital punishment. And enforced labor might even make that mine profitable.
From December 1773 to April 1774, Connecticut courts sent six convicted criminals to the prison in Simsbury, to be locked down under the eye of keeper John Viets.
By that April, all six had disappeared, either to parts unknown or under the rubble of a collapsed tunnel.
In a comment on my last posting Mike asked:
Did it occur to the people of Connecticut that Mr. Viet may have been a less than adequate overseer?That’s a good question, and here are some thoughts grappling for an answer.
First, the official “overseers” of the prison were three members of the Connecticut legislature who supervised Viets. They had the responsibility to hire the keeper, but they were also responsible for securing him the resources necessary to do that job.
Second, long-term incarceration was still an experiment. If the Connecticut legislature wanted its prison to work (and the government had already sunk a fair amount of money into converting the old mine), it needed to get the budget and rules right. The legislators might have expected (or accepted) a period of adjustment.
Finally, the overseers had probably hired John Viets because he was convenient. He owned a tavern right next to the mine. That was the infrastructure for feeding the prisoners, housing the guards, and keeping someone on site watching for disturbances and escapes. Hiring a new keeper and setting him up in Simsbury would have been a big expense.
Viets knew that an unfortunate pattern was developing. His 26 April advertisement began “New Gate Prison was again broke open…” But he remained on the job.
TOMORROW: A hardened criminal appears.
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