[Editor’s note: Guest writer, Peter Dickson, lives in West Sussex, England and has been working with microfilm copies of The Duncan Campbell Papers from the State Library of NSW, Sydney, Australia. The following are some of his analyses of what he has discovered from reading these papers.

Dickson has contributed many transcriptions to the Jamaica Family Search website (now in the hands of University College London) and has also contributed information to UCL’s growing database on plantation owners. He says, “I am now retired, hence the time I have on my hands. I am not an academic, nor a historian.”

At the end of May 1773, London merchant Duncan Campbell wrote to merchants Somervell & Noble and their sometime partner Hugh Lennox to advise that he had consigned particular freight on board their brig, Hanover Planter: ninety three convicts sentenced in England to transportation overseas. The voyage was heading for Jamaica to collect sugars and mahogany, but now it would first call at Baltimore, Maryland to unload its freight for Mathew Ridley, Campbell’s Baltimore agent, who was instructed to “take away the convicts as expeditiously as possible” leave the owners and Captain McCulloch a free hand. The whole affair was a sudden opportunity that had offered, sandwiched as it was between regular departures of Campbell’s own ships. The Thornton had left London with a similar cargo only four weeks earlier, and the Tayloe was due to sail with another batch of convicts in July. From letters written before each voyage, the mechanics of Campbell’s transportation business can be teased out.

Campbell’s first outlay for the “people” on the Hanover Planter was thirty shillings per head as freight, with £139.10 shillings being the total sum credited to the Somervell & Noble account on his books. As a private convict contractor, the rate he demanded from the various sentencing courts for transportation was £5 per head, subject to a contract and to bonds being given to him. He was paid when copy of the court order for each convict, together with a bill of loading, could be certified. The difference between the £465 he would have been paid by the authorities for this shipment and the amount he credited to Somerville & Noble equates to seventy percent. If freight was his only cost here, the profit on it would have been immense, but he had also provisioned the vessel with water and victuals for the voyage. His own ships habitually stopped briefly at Gravesend, Kent, on their way out to sea down the River Thames. Here, slop seller James Base supplied new slop clothing in order to dress convicts on arrival in their new guise as “servants.” Even though there are no letters to confirm that Hanover Planter stopped at Gravesend on this occasion, it is more likely than not that it did.

            Campbell’s usual outlay on freight, provisioning, and new clothing may have left him with little change from the £5 per head he charged for transport, but the real profit was made if presentable, healthy servants could be produced on arrival, a point which local newspaper notices of sale were keen to state, if only to conform to local laws.

Convicts to Maryland: Sales

            In July 1767, the ship Thornton, owned by London merchants Stewart & Campbell lay in the Ferry Branch of the Patapsco River at Baltimore. On board were one hundred and fifty two convicts sentenced in England to transportation overseas and now ready to be sold as “seven years servants.” The ship’s master, Christopher Reed, and its surgeon, John Campbell, had testified to the Naval Officer for the port of Annapolis that the convicts were free from any “dangerous distempers.” The presence of a surgeon during the voyage signified the value of a cargo by which the ship’s owners could profit handsomely. Since a head bounty for transportation, paid by the government authorities at the time, usually covered costs of freight, victualling, and perhaps new clothing, the money generated by the sale of convicts in America were clear profit. An average on-ship sale price on arrival of, say, £12 each, would gain Stewart & Campbell upwards of £1,800, while the return trip would add charges for freight on tobacco and commission on its sale in London to overall earnings. But if there was money to be made by the ship’s owners, there was also profit in store for local enterprise.

A sale on board the Thornton was advertised in the Maryland Gazette by one Alexander Stewart, who also assured prospective buyers that “proper boats well manned” would be on hand to ferry them from and to the shore. It is unclear whether Stewart was acting as a commission agent for the consigners, or whether he was an independent middle man who had already bought the whole shipment and had the opportunity to sell as many as possible on board before finding buyers for the remainder around the countryside. Four years later, Alexander Stewart–a namesake from Staunton, Virginia–had given bonds for the purchase of an entire cargo of convicts from Thomas Hodge, the Stewart & Campbell agent in Virginia. Coincidentally, the number of convicts on this occasion was the same. A surviving account book by Alexander Stewart details the sale of eighty four of these people who were hawked around seven counties in northern Virginia, which realized a total of £1,865 over the course of three months. While prices for this batch of forty-seven men, twenty one women and sixteen boys ranged from only £5 for “woman” to £30 for a “cooper’s boy,” the average per head was just over £22.4. If this average is applied to the remaining sixty three of the whole lot (four had died and one ran away since landing), Stewart would have realized a total figure of some £3,200. A large profit margin was thus available to dealers in America prepared to take a chance, “on the road” costs for a dwindling number taken on country trails notwithstanding.

            After Duncan Campbell took on the business alone following John Stewart’s death in 1772, four ships were making annual voyages by 1775. At the end of that year, both individuals and dealers owed Campbell at least £10,000 for convict purchases over the previous three years.

Convict transportation: Duncan Campbell Letters, A Selection

To Evan Nepean [Under Secretary of State for Home Affairs, 1782-1791]

29 January, 1787

                        It cost me some time to find out a paper which would enable me to answer your letter effectually & which I have this moment laid my hand on, which caused my delay in answering yours sooner. It happens by a calculation I made for the information of the House of Commons some years since that upon an Average of Seven Years viz. from 1769 to 1775 both inclusive I transported 547 convicts Annually from London, Middlesex, Bucks. & the four counties of the Home Circuit & that 117 of those transports were women. I always looked upon the numberfrom theother partsof the kingdom to be equal to what was transported by me. With Great Regard

Notes:

Bucks is the county of Buckinghamshire. There were six Assize Court Circuits in England and four in Wales. The Home Circuit usually comprised the counties of Hertfordshire, Essex, Kent, Surrey and Sussex.

At the time of writing, Evan Nepean was involved in the preparation of ships and people for the first fleet taking convicts to Australia; it left four months later.

* * *

To James Base [Slop seller at Gravesend]

14 July 1775

            Underneath I send you a list of sundry slops which I desire you will have ready by Thursday 20^thInst. by which time my ship the Salt Spring, Capt. Ogilvy will be at Gravesend.

                        5 doz. Canvas frocks  

                        5 doz. Trusers 

                        3 doz. Milled Capes 

                        24 Stript [striped] Cotton Waistcoats 

                        24 Dowlas Shifts

                        12 Petticoats 

                        4 gowns

                        6 Linen Handkfs.

You may have a few more Shifts & Petticoats ready in case they should be wanted.

Notes:

Most convicts were embarked at Blackwall, on the east side of the Isle of Dogs, from where Campbell’s ships moved downriver towards the sea, stopping briefly at Gravesend to collect new slop clothing, and where any prisoners from the gaol at Maidstone, Kent, would also be taken aboard. This order to James Base was for the very last convict shipment by Campbell to the Chesapeake. Salt Spring arrived in early October with one hundred and twenty people.

* * *

To Mr John Mason, Sandwich [Clerk of the Peace]

6 Dec. 1773

            This day I received your favour of yesterday’s date. I have a ship which will be ready to sail middle of next week and by her I send the convicts now in Maidstone gaol under sentence of transportation. I think the surest way would be for you to send the two people you mention there about the 14 or 15 current and put them under the care of the keeper who will have regular notice from me when to bring them and his own prisoners to Gravesend. The terms I take them upon is £5 each, and if you are at any loss in forming the necessary Bonds and Contracts, I beg leave to recommend your applying to Mr Jerome Knap who is the Clerk to Assizes of the Home Circuit. I am…

Notes: 

The ship on this occasion was the Justitia. Nine days after this letter, Campbell wrote the Keeper of Maidstone gaol to bring the prisoners up to Gravesend. He was particular to add the postscript, “You will not forget to bring with you the Orders of Court.”

Anyone with an interest in crime history must visit Alcatraz while in San Francisco (My daughter said after our tour, “Of all the prisons I have visited, this one definitely ranks in the top three!”).

But if you decide to take the boat from Pier 33 at Fisherman’s Wharf out to the island, you should also plan to stroll down to Pier 45 and visit the Musée Mécanique, where you will find spectacles of crime and punishment that may rival anything you find at “the Rock.”

The Musée Mécanique is a working museum of antique coin-operated arcade machines, and many of them involve themes of crime and punishment (see below). But even if these displays are too gruesome for you, there are plenty of other old-fashioned games and amusements that will definitely strike your fancy.

With so much information on the Web about Alcatraz, I feel little need to write about my recent visit to this historical prison. But given my latest articles on prison food, I can not pass up posting some of the pictures I took of the kitchen.

Prisoner meals were governed by “Alcatraz Regulation #33: DINING ROOM RULES”:

Meals are served three times a day in the dining room. Do not exceed the ration. Do not waste food.

Working in the kitchen was one of the best jobs a prisoner could have (although I would certainly be nervous if they had easy access to the knives).

Alcatraz.

Breakfast menu.

As a follow-up to my last post on “A Foodie Look at Early Prison Food,” I decided to find out more about food served in early American prisons. During my research, I came across a description of the meals served to convicts in New Yorkâ€s Newgate Prison in a 1799 Report of the Inspectors of the State-Prison:

The diet served to the convicts is, for breakfast, cocoa shells boiled, and sweetened with molasses, and rye bread; dinner, ox-head soup, and the meat attached to the head, with potatoes and rye bread, some times salt meat and peas; supper, mush and molasses. The cost of the breakfast, dinner and supper, is from 5 to 6 cents per man per day.

From this description of the food served to prisoners, I tracked down recipes for these meals in cookbooks from around the same time period. The recipes may not exactly reflect what was served to the prisoners–my guess is that less care and fewer quality ingredients went into the preparation of their meals–but they should give an idea of what the prisoners regularly ate.

Location of Newgate Prison, New York (NYPL Map Division – http://nyplmaps.tumblr.com)

Newgate Prison was one of the earliest penitentiaries in the United States. It was located on what is now 10th St. and Washington St. in New York City, with Charles St. and Christopher St. marking the north and south borders of the prison, respectively. The prison was founded in 1797 and lasted until 1828, when prisoners were transferred to the newly built Sing Sing Prison further up the Hudson River in response to overcrowding and frequent riots at the old state prison.

I do not know if the food served at Newgate Prison figured into any of the unrest, but with these recipes you can recreate for yourself the diet of convicts who served time there and decide for yourself.

The Recipes

Breakfast

• Cocoa Shells, from Mrs. Lincolnâ€s Boston Cook Book:

  Steep one cup of shells in one quart of boiling water three or four hours, adding more hot water as it boils away. Strain, and serve with hot milk, or cream and sugar. [Note that the description from the prison report says that the boiled coca shells are sweetened with molasses.]

• Rye Bread

Newgate Prison, New York, 1801

Dinner

• Ox Cheek Soup [Ox-Head Soup], from The New Art of Cookery:

  Take half an ox head, and cut the cheek clean from the bones, break the bones to pieces, and put them in a large pan of water all night to soak out the blood; in the morning wash them clean out, and put them into a pot with six quarts of water, when the scum rises skim it well; take six onions, six heads of cellery, about four leeks and two turneps, well washed and cut in two, with a bundle of sweet herbs, a spoonful of all-spice, some cloves and mace, and a little salt; put in two palates, and stew them till tender, then take them out and throw them into cold water, and take off the skins; cut them into square pieces, stew the head five hours, try if the head is tender, if not stew it gently till it is; then take it out, and strain the soup into a pan to settle, skim it well, and pour it from the settlings; put a quarter of a pound of butter in a stew-pan and melt it, put two large spoonsful of flour in, and stir it about till it is smooth; by degrees put the soup in, keep stirring for fear it should go into lumps, if it does you must strain it through a sieve, put in half a pint of white wine, and season it with Cayan pepper and common pepper and salt, nearly as hot as mock turtle; in the mean time cut a carrot and two turneps in dice, four heads of cellery and two leeks about half an inch long, toiled in water till tender, strain them in a sieve, and put them to the soup; cut the cheek in square pieces and put it in with the palates, and two spoonsful of browning, stew it gently for half an hour, and skim the fat off clean; put it into a soup-dish or tureen, with crispt bread in a plate.
  N.B. You may put the cheek whole in a large soup-dish, if you like it best, and the soup over it.

• Potatoes, from The New Art of Cookery:

  Wash them very clean, put them into a sauce-pan, nearly cover them with cold water, put in a little salt, cover them close, and boil them very gently, but look at them often; when the skins begin to break try them with a fork, and if they are done strain the water from them, cover them close to steam for a few minutes, then peel them, and put them in a dish, with melted butter in a boat. Or thus: pare them first, wash them clean, and put them into a sauce-pan with a little cold water, cover them close, boil them very gently, and look at them often, that they do not break to pieces; strain the water off, and put them into a dish, with melted butter in a boat.

• Rye Bread

Or,

• Pickled Pork [Salt Meat], from The New Art of Cookery:

  As many people have various ways in pickling pork, it is almost impossible to give directions for pickling it; some people love it pickled with plain salt, legs especially; others in this manner: have a tub, and lay a layer of salt at the bottom; then mix one third of salt-petre beaten with two thirds of white salt; cut your pork in pieces, rub it well with the salt, and lay it close in the tub, with a layer of salt between every layer of pork, till the tub is full; then have a cover, just large enough to fit the inside of the tub, put it on, and lay a great weight at the top, and as the salt melts it will keep it close; when you want to use it take a piece out, and mind to put the cover on again, and it will keep good a long time.

• Green Peas, from The New Art of Cookery:

  Have your peas shelled as near the time you want to dress them as possible: have boiling water in a sance-pan, put in the peas, a little salt, a small knob or two of sugar, and a sprig or two of mint, boil them quick, and when they dent they are done; strain them in a sieve, take out the mint, and put them in a dish; have a little mint boiled by itself chopped fine and put round: or you may put some butter in the dish, and stir them up till it is melted. You may broil some thin slices of ham and lay round if you please.

Supper

• Oatmeal Mush for Children or Invalids, from Mrs. Lincolnâ€s Boston Cook Book:

  1 cup granulated oatmeal
  ½ teaspoon salt
  1 scant quart boiling water
  Put the meal and salt in the double boiler, pour on the boiling water, and cook two or three hours. Remove the cover just before serving, and stir with a fork to let the steam escape. If the water in the lower boiler be strongly salted, the meal will cook more quickly. Serve with sugar, or salt, and cream. . . . Coarse oatmeal is not suitable for any form of water brash, acidity, or bowel irritation. It often causes eruptions on the skin in warm weather. [Note that the description from the prison report says that the mush is served with molasses, presumably to sweeten it.]

Sources

• Briggs, Richard. The New Art of Cookery, According to the Present Practice. Philadelphia: W. Spotswood, R. Cambell, and B. Johnson, 1792. Database: Americaâ€s Historical Imprints: Readex/Newsbank.
• Emmet, Thomas Addis, “Newgate Prison, Greenwich Village, 1801,” Greenwich Village History, accessed October 1, 2014, http://jonreeve.com/dev/gvh2/items/show/559.
• Lincoln, D. A. Mrs. Lincolnâ€s Boston Cook Book: What to Do and What Not to Do in Cooking. Carlisle, MA: Applewood Books, 1833 [reprint].
• Report of the Inspectors of the State-Prison. Albany, NY: Loring Andrews, [1799]. Database: Americaâ€s Historical Imprints: Readex/Newsbank.

Curious about what early prison food was like? This 3:43 minute video from Zagat’s “Bizarre Bites: Prison Food Taste Tests” takes viewers on a brief tour of American prison food from the 1830’s to the present day.

The clip takes place at the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia and includes some great shots of prison cells and kitchen facilities from this historic prison. It also explains how food can be used as punishment!

If you are having trouble playing the video, or if it does not appear below, try clicking on this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exuAHANeGds.

Amazon.com (Paperback and Kindle e-book)

Barnes and Noble (Paperback and Nook e-book)

Smashwords (All e-book formats)

Amazon.co.uk (United Kingdom)

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ISBN: 978-0-9836744-2-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014948997
378 pages (i-xx + 356, including index)
Retail price: $17.99 paperback; $7.99 e-book

Most books about crime in colonial America focus on blasphemers, adulterers, and witches burning at the stake. Not this book. In Early American Criminals, crime historian, Anthony Vaver, examines early Americaâ€s most notorious criminals: burglars, murderers, pirates, counterfeiters, and other offenders who would be recognized as criminals even by todayâ€s standards.

Vaver uncovers the dark, compelling, and even humorous stories from Americaâ€s earliest criminal underworld: a New England burglar who walked through the unlocked door of a goldsmith to rob his store a second time; a man who sat all morning on his roof in fear that someone walking by might harm him, but who ended up committing murder by dayâ€s end; a transported convict who charmed her young lover into selling himself into servitude to raise money for her release from prison.

In telling the stories of these and other criminals, Vaver shows how early Americans both thought about and punished criminals differently than we do today. Poor parenting, abusive masters, and the influence of “The Devil” were often cited as motives for criminal behavior. Punishments that included the pillory, whipping, and hanging all took place in public so as to warn others not to follow a criminal path. Nowadays, we look to psychology to explain criminal behavior, and we punish our criminals behind closed doors. But, as Vaver makes clear in his book, even though our treatment of criminals differs from the past, the crimes that early Americans worried about are strikingly familiar to us today.

Anthony Vaver is the author of the Amazon bestseller, Bound with an Iron Chain: The Untold Story of How the British Transported 50,000 Convicts to Colonial America and writes and publishes the blog EarlyAmericanCrime.com. He has a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and an M.L.S. from Rutgers University.

It has been a long time since I have posted on this website, but that is because I have been hard at work writing my next book. Now, I am thrilled to announce the forthcoming publication of Early American Criminals: An American Newgate Calendar, Chronicling the Lives of the Most Notorious Criminal Offenders from Colonial America and the New Republic from Pickpocket Publishing. The book should be available within the next couple weeks, if not sooner.

Here is the book’s description:

Most books about crime in colonial America focus on blasphemers, adulterers, and witches burning at the stake. Not this book. In Early American Criminals, crime historian, Anthony Vaver, examines early Americaâ€s most notorious criminals: burglars, murderers, pirates, counterfeiters, and other offenders who would be recognized as criminals even by todayâ€s standards.

Vaver uncovers the dark, compelling, and even humorous stories from Americaâ€s earliest criminal underworld: a New England burglar who walked through the unlocked door of a goldsmith to rob his store a second time; a man who sat all morning on his roof in fear that someone walking by might harm him, but who ended up committing murder by dayâ€s end; a transported convict who charmed her young lover into selling himself into servitude to raise money for her release from prison.

In telling the stories of these and other criminals, Vaver shows how early Americans both thought about and punished criminals differently than we do today. Poor parenting, abusive masters, and the influence of “The Devil” were often cited as motives for criminal behavior. Punishments that included the pillory, whipping, and hanging all took place in public so as to warn others not to follow a criminal path. Nowadays, we look to psychology to explain criminal behavior, and we punish our criminals behind closed doors. But, as Vaver makes clear in his book, even though our treatment of criminals differs from the past, the crimes that early Americans worried about are strikingly familiar to us today.

Anthony Vaver is the author of the Amazon bestseller, Bound with an Iron Chain: The Untold Story of How the British Transported 50,000 Convicts to Colonial America and writes and publishes the blog EarlyAmericanCrime.com. He has a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and an M.L.S. from Rutgers University.

Click image to read more Early American Criminals

Constable Mr. Van Gelder was just about to abandon his search. He had recently been sent to New Haven, CT to find Francis Personel by New York City mayor Whitehead Hicks, who had learned that Personel was possibly hiding out in that city. But what Van Gelder did not know was that at the same time he was dispatched to New Haven, Personel was on his way back to New York City to test the safety of his return home and, if necessary, retrieve some of his possessions.

Whitehead Hicks, New York City Mayor

Six weeks earlier on May 16, 1773, Personel had clubbed Robert White, Esq. in the head with a bar from a door near St. Paulâ€s Church (which is still standing at 209 Broadway, between Fulton and Vesey Streets in Lower Manhattan). The blow fractured Whiteâ€s head in several places, leaving him speechless and senseless. Several days later, White died from the wound, and Personel was charged with murder.

While Van Gelder fruitlessly searched for the accused murderer in New Haven, Personel determined that it was not yet safe for him to remain in New York City, so he hopped on a ship and headed back to Connecticut. The trip turned out to be remarkably quick, which must have lifted Personelâ€s spirits at the time. Except that the short journey helped deliver Personel right into the arms of Van Gelder, just as he was preparing to return to New York empty-handed.

On June 25, 1773, Personel was back on a ship–albeit this time in irons–and two days later he arrived again in New York City. Reports of Van Gelderâ€s capture of Personel appeared in many newspapers, but the salacious details and true motivation behind the murder only came out later, when Personel wrote An Authentic and Particular Account of his life.

A Strained Relationship

Francis Burdett Personel was originally from Ireland and was an only child to “careful and industrious parents.” He attended school for eight years but did not learn as much as his parents felt he should have within that time, so they bound him as an apprentice. Once he became master of his trade, he moved to England, but after his father died, he returned to Ireland to be with his mother.

The relationship turned out to be strained: “my mother being a passionate woman, could never be content with me; do what I could, I might have done it better.” One night, a friend who knew of the situation took Personel on a “frolic.” They met a young woman, went out for drinks, and ended up staying out late. Personel confessed, “She was the first lewd woman I was ever in company with” and from that point on he “was guilty of pleasing the sinful appetites of the flesh many times.”

Eager to get out of the reach of his mother, Personel traveled to America, where he stayed for eighteen months before returning to Ireland in a “poor and miserable condition.” After his return, his mother proposed that it was time for him to settle down and find a wife, and when Personel agreed and said that he would begin a search as soon as possible, she responded that she had already found one for him.

Personel was not the least attracted to his motherâ€s pick, and even though he resisted the match, his mother implored him day after day to marry her. Their disagreement eventually came to an end when the woman decided to marry another, but the episode was enough to drive Personel away from his mother permanently. He bound himself as an indentured servant and ended up in Baltimore County in Maryland.

Maryland

Personelâ€s new situation in Maryland turned out to be miserable, because his master mistreated him by depriving him of adequate clothing, a not uncommon situation for indentured servants. After serving eighteen months out of his four contracted years, Personel decided to run away. He grabbed an ax, headed into the woods, and traveled to within a mile of Baltimore. By then he was cold, wet, and hungry. He thought about returning, but he remembered his master saying once that he would treat a runaway servant who returned of his own volition worse than one who tried his best to get away, so he continued onward.

At mid-day, Personel ventured into town worried that someone would question him and ask for a pass from his master, which legally would have allowed him to travel alone as a servant. But no one seemed to notice him. Unable to procure a meal in Baltimore, he continued down a road that led to Annapolis when he was stopped and interrogated by two men. Personel told them that he belonged to Charles Carroll, who owned several plantations in the area and so everyone knew that his servants regularly traveled from one property to another. The men accepted Personelâ€s answer and did not question him any further.

Personelâ€s experience in Annapolis was similar to that in Baltimore: no one took any notice of him, but he could not find any food either. He left town feeble and hungry and was eventually stopped and questioned by another man. Personel said that he was recently set free from his master, who refused to pay him his freedom dues, so he traveled to Annapolis to find a friend, who had unfortunately left town before he arrived. The man told him that his brother was in need of laborers, so Personel took advantage of the opportunity and signed up to work for four months under the name “James Alkins.”

Personel worked through the harvest, but fearful that his new master might turn him in to his old one now that his services were no longer needed, he forged a pass under the name “Patt Percy” and left. He managed to find a job as a schoolmaster, but eventually two men began to suspect that he was a runaway, so he left the area. He later met a widow in Virginia and became engaged to her, but one day he took a mare, bridle, and saddle from her on the pretense of going to town and never came back. After traveling 100 miles, he sold the horse and headed to New York. [The editor of Personelâ€s Account notes that at this point, Personel may have been tried along with another man for horse theft in Lancaster, PA, but that the incident could not be verified.]

New York

After arriving in New York, Personel finally took a wife whom he loved, even though he “knew she had followed a loose way of life.” The morning after they had been “married and bedded,” Personel allowed her to pursue “her old habitation” until she could pay off some debts that now fell to him. But he soon could not bear the thought of this arrangement, and he vowed to work hard to satisfy all her needs. Not long afterward, he fell ill and could not work. Personel and his wife made a fateful decision: “we concluded unanimously, that we must either perish, or she take to her old course; accordingly, she prostituted her body as usual.”

On her first night out after making this decision, Personelâ€s wife returned home in a cheerful mood and reported that she had run into a young woman who lent her some money and thereby was able to avoid any interaction with men that night. The next night she returned home again, with money and a similar story. Personel eventually recovered from his illness, but his wife continued to go out at night any chance she got–with his encouragement. To keep up a show of respectability in front of the neighbors, some nights he would accompany his wife partway, visit a friend until nine or ten oâ€clock, and then meet up with her at an appointed place to return home.

On May 16, Personel visited his wifeâ€s father and expected to stay the night, but instead he decided to return home. Thinking that her husband was sleeping over at her fatherâ€s, his wife stayed out much later than usual, so when it came time for Personel to go to bed and she had not returned, he decided to go out and search for her.

Personel went to the public house where he believed she was, but was told that she was not there, even though he heard his wifeâ€s laugh in another room. He went around to the window where he had heard her and listened in as she conversed with two men. One of the men, a Mr. Gl—-r, left the room for fifteen minutes, and when he returned, the three of them headed outside. Personel believed that his wife would now take leave of the two men, and she could then return home with him. Instead, she continued down the street with one man on each of her arms.

St. Paul’s Church, New York City, close to where Robert White’s murder took place.

Furious with jealousy, Personel went into the house where he had seen them, grabbed the nearest weapon he could find, which happened to be the wooden bar of the door, and pursued the threesome. When he caught up to them, he brought the bar down on the head of Robert White, who fell to the ground. As Personelâ€s wife ran off, he tackled Gl—-r, who begged for his life.

Gl—-r asked Personel why he had struck White, and Personel replied, “For being in company with my wife, in a bad house at an unseasonable hour.”

“Upon my honor,” responded Gl—-r, “I had no connection with her, nor have I reason to believe that Mr. White had.”

Personel said that if indeed the two were innocent, then he was sorry that he had struck them. Personel then noticed that White had not moved since falling to the ground. Seeing that some people were now approaching the scene, he ran off. Personel arrived home before his wife, spent the night, and then fled to New Haven.

Next to the Liberty Pole

After Personel was captured by Van Gelder and brought back from New Haven, the New York Supreme Court found Personel guilty of murder and sentenced him to be executed on September 10.

The editor of Personelâ€s Account notes that towards the end of his life Personel “appeared very cheerful and resigned to the will of God.” At the gallows–next to the Liberty Pole on the Common (where City Hall now stands, along with a replica of the Liberty Pole)–Personel addressed the crowd “with much composure, and resigned himself to the King of Terrors.”

Liberty Pole Marker – City Hall Park, New York City (City of New York Parks and Recreation)

Sources

• “Extract of Another Letter from the Same Place.” Pennsylvania Packet, August 9, 1773, vol. II, issue 94, p. 3. Database: Americaâ€s Historical Newspapers, Readex/Newsbank.
• “New–Haven, June 25.” Connecticut Journal, June 25, 1773, issue 297, p. 3. Database: Americaâ€s Historical Newspapers, Readex/Newsbank.
• New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury, June 28, 1773, issue 1131, p. 3. Database: Americaâ€s Historical Newspapers, Readex/Newsbank.
• “New-York, July 1.” New-York Journal, July 1, 1773, issue 1591, p. 3. Database: Americaâ€s Historical Newspapers, Readex/Newsbank.
• “New-York, June 24.” Pennsylvania Chronicle, June 28, 1773, vol. VII, issue 23, p. 304. Database: Americaâ€s Historical Newspapers, Readex/Newsbank.
• “New-York, September 13.” New-York Gazette, September 13, 1773, issue 1142, p. 3. Database: Americaâ€s Historical Newspapers, Readex/Newsbank.
• Personel, Francis Burdett. An Authentic and Particular Account of the Life of Francis Burdett Personel, Written by Himself. New York, 1773. Database: Americaâ€s Historical Imprints, Readex/Newsbank.

The punishment of forcing convicts to step on a treadmill–a large, long rotating cylinder with steps attached along the outside–failed to take hold in America, even though England used it successfully for years in its prisons. Proponents of the punishment argued that the treadmill turned prisoners into productive citizens by making them work and provide food for themselves. Critics contended that the punishment had the tendency “to enfeeble or mutilate the human body” and “send [convicts] in a worse moral or physical conditions from the prison than when they entered it.”

Reservations over the use of the treadmill in prisons were strong enough to prompt politicians and prison officials to look for alternatives. In 1823, one year after the invention of the treadmill, Sir John Hippisley, a member of the British parliament, came up with the idea of the crank mill, which he believed produced the same effect as the treadmill, but with added benefits.

From the Baltimore Patriot, December 4, 1823 (From Early American Newspapers, an Archive of Americana Collection, published by Readex (Readex.com), a division of NewsBank, inc.)

Rather than using their legs to rotate a cylinder in a stepping motion, convicts at the crank mill would use their arms to rotate a long bar in a vertical circular motion. Any number of bars could be connected to, and radiate out from, a central shaft that, like the treadmill, could turn stones for grinding corn. The seeming advantage of the crank mill is that convicts could situate themselves in a number of positions. They could stand with their right foot forward or their left. They could use one arm or two. They could even face one another as they rotated the bar. These variations would presumably reduce fatigue and put convicts less at risk to injury.

Hippisley also maintained that the crank mill could essentially police itself by means of a counter connected to the machine, so that the inspector could see the number of times the convicts rotated the crank during his absence (although such a device could just as easily be connected to the treadmill).

Even though the crank mill seemingly minimized the potentially injurious effects of the treadmill, its inventor admitted that its use could “be extended to a dangerous excess, without good vigilance on the part of the superintendants.” And for this reason, Hippisley recommended that female convicts be exempt from using both the crank mill and the treadmill.

The New York Evening Post published an engraving of Hippisleyâ€s crank mill, which was then reprinted in several other American newspapers. But the idea did not go far. As with the treadmill, American politicians and prison officials had little interest in adopting the mechanism. And neither did the politicians and prison officials in England.

In 1822, when the American press began to circulate articles praising the use of a new invention in England that would instill fear in convicted felons and turn them into productive citizens, politicians, prison officials, and the press in America took notice. The invention was a treadmill, a large, long cylinder equipped with steps that prisoners would cause to rotate in a motion akin to walking up stairs that would grind corn, pump water, or perform other tasks that required mechanical power.

A few prisons in America quickly adopted the idea, and officials from other prisons eagerly waited to see if the treadmill as a punishment would match the glowing reports of its use that were coming out of England.

Adoption of the Treadmill in America

One of the first prisons to adopt the treadmill was the Bellevue County Penitentiary in New York City, located where 26th Street meets the East River, in 1822. Thirty-two convicts on two machines rotated the barrel-like contraptions through stepping motions, and every completed rotation of a cylinder caused a bell to ring. With this device, the convicts could grind 40-60 bushels of corn, which fed both the prisoners and residents of an almshouse.

The idea of using treadmills in prisons intrigued the Governor of Massachusetts, who called for an investigation into its possible use during his annual address to the Massachusetts Legislature in 1823. As a follow-up to this inquiry, an official at the Bellevue Penitentiary declared that early indications show the treadmill to be “one of the most successful of inventions.” He reported that while the prisoners were engaged on the treadmill, they hardly spoke a word to each other, and that even when they were resting they were too fatigued to engage in conversation. He described the atmosphere created by the treadmill as “orderly and submissive” and added that it required little supervision. He concluded that when the treadmill is combined with solitary confinement, the two punishments “furnish the most salutary punishment and the most powerful detriment from crime that the lenient spirit of our laws admits.”

Elsewhere, in the spring of 1823, the Connecticut Legislature passed a resolution to appropriate $3,000 to erect a treadmill in the Newgate state prison in Simsbury, CT. In general, convicts at this prison spent their time behind bars practicing traditional crafts, such as blacksmithing, shoemaking, and stone cutting. Prisoners who did not ply a trade usually worked as waiters and common laborers, but now they could also be put on the treadmill.

Newgate Prison, CT – 1890

In a report commissioned by the Connecticut Legislature on the prisonâ€s conditions one year later, the committee contended that use of the treadmill in the prison was too new to draw firm conclusions about its effects, but it did acknowledge that it is a “powerful instrument” that could easily be used to abuse prisoners if put in the hands of the wrong supervisor. The committee asked a physician to assess the treadmillâ€s health risks, and he concluded that there were none. The report pointed out that the treadmill was particularly useful for employing convicts who were scheduled for short stays in the prison–where setting them up with a trade would be a waste of time–and concluded that the treadmill was an effective mode of punishment, because it is “peculiarly irksome; requiring a severe exertion of the body, but furnishing no employment of the mind.”

Bad Reviews

For the most part, newspaper reports about the use of treadmills in prisons were generally positive if not glowing. But a few reports also appeared that questioned the effectiveness of the punishment.

In March 27, 1823 the Baltimore Patriot published a report out of England about the first time a treadmill was put into motion in a prison in Reading. All appeared to be going well during the first few days of its operation until 1:00 p.m. on a Monday, when all 32 of the prisoners refused to go on the wheel unless they received more food and leather-bottomed shoes. The article reported that the men were under the impression that the worst punishment that would befall them for their work stoppage would be confinement in their cells, but the prison keeper and his assistants used “arms and bludgeons” to compel the men to return to work.

One year later, another report from England appeared in an American newspaper that highlighted the negative aspects of treadmills. The criticism came from the Edinburgh Review in its assessment of the use of treadmills in a prison in North Riding of Yorkshire in northern England. The reviewer called treadmills the “new magistrates plaything” and went on to write a scathing critique of its use:

The labour of the tread-mill is irksome, dull, monotonous, and disgusting to the last degree. A man does not see his work, does not know what he is making; there is no room for art, contrivance, ingenuity and superior skill–all which are the cheering circumstances of human labor. The husbandman sees the field gradually subdued by his plough, the smith beats the rude mass of iron by degrees into its meditated shape, and gives it its mediated utility: the tailor accommodates his parallelogram of cloth to the lumps and bumps of the human body, and holding it up, exclaims, ‘this will contain the lower moiety of an human being.†But the treader does nothing but tread; he sees no change of objects, admires no new relations of parts, imparts no new qualities to matter, and gives it no new arrangements and positions; or if he does, he sees and knows it not, but is turned at once from a rational being, by a justice of peace, into a primum mobile [literally, “first moved”: the outer moving sphere of a geocentric model of the universe], and put upon a level with a rush of water or a puff of steam.

Such critiques of treadmills in American newspapers, though, were rare. But the enthusiasm of the press in the use of treadmills did not translate into their broad adoption in American prisons. Indeed, only four prisons in America ever employed treadmills, and in three of the four cases, the prisons quietly left their treadmills behind only a few years later when new prison facilities opened up to replace them.

Failure

England widely embraced the use of treadmills in its prisons from the time of its invention in 1822 to the early 20th century. In 1895, Oscar Wilde was even put to work on a treadmill after he was convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to a two-year prison term. But if the treadmill was successfully adopted in England and showed so much promise in regulating the behavior and work of prisoners, then why did it fail to take hold in America?

David H. Shayt from the Smithsonian Institute believes the answer lies in the different need for work and the different attitudes toward prison labor between the two countries. After the Revolution, as America broke away from England and its influence on the American criminal justice system, American reformers in the early nineteenth century looked to Enlightenment philosophy for new ways to address the problem of crime and criminals. As a result, corporal and capital punishment was replaced by long periods of incarceration, where criminals spent their time reflecting on their bad behavior and interacting only with “good men”—i.e., members of the clergy and prison staff—in an attempt to reform them.

In a country like America, where liberty is highly valued, spending long periods of time behind bars was increasingly seen as an appropriate form of punishment for serious crimes. Attention now focused on how prisoners spent their time, with a preference for isolation, silence, and rigorous manual labor to keep them from sinking into idleness.

In both England and America, prison officials sought to use the labor of their convicts to offset the costs of housing them, and perhaps even to make a profit. In America, prisoners spent most of their time locked in their cells performing handicrafts to earn their keep. The idea was to turn the convicts into productive members of society by the time they finished their sentences.

The treadmill had the advantages of being able to regulate and measure precisely the productivity of convicts–longer intervals between the ringing of the bell meant their pace was slackening–and no special skills were required to operate it. But here is where the treadmill failed miserably in America. This latter “advantage” in the eyes of the American criminal justice system was perceived as a liability. The treadmill could not demonstrate any long-term benefit for the prisoner, who merely served as a power source. It did nothing to turn that prisoner into a productive worker.

Treadmills also turned out to be a poor use of potentially productive prison labor, especially in America where any form of labor was relatively scarce at the time. Convicts in America were already producing shoes, clothing, hardware, furniture, and other goods from raw or semi-finished goods brought into the prisons. To take this highly productive labor force and put them on a relatively inefficient treadmill would have seemed like folly.

In the end, treadmills turned out to be more of a psychological tool–by making prisoners mindlessly turn a large wheel for hours at a time–than a productive one and functioned more as a means for retributive justice than for reforming convicts. Americans valued productivity so much that even wasting it in the form of convict labor was an idea that simply could not take hold.

Postscript

The advantages of the treadmill as a device that requires great physical effort with little necessary skill–and that measures accurately the productivity of its users–did not entirely go to waste. Today, treadmills (now known as Stairmasters or stepping machines) are staples at gyms and health centers, where users can measure the number of steps they take, the speed in which they take them, the calories they burn, and more. Few people realize that these popular pieces of exercise equipment trace their beginnings back to early prisons and punishment.

The original users of treadmills in the nineteenth century were compelled to rotate their cylinders; today, people seeking physical fitness pay for the privilege to do so.

The author on today’s “Treadmill”

Sources

• American Mercury, February 28, 1826, vol. XLII, issue 2174, p. 2. Database: Americaâ€s Historical Newspapers: Readex/Newsbank.
• Independent Chronicle and Boston Patriot, January 4, 1823, vol. LVII, issue 4351, p. 4. Database: Americaâ€s Historical Newspapers: Readex/Newsbank.
• “The Reading Tread-Mill.” Baltimore Patriot, March 27, 1823, vol. XXI, issue 66, p. 1. Database: Americaâ€s Historical Newspapers: Readex/Newsbank.
• Salem Gazette, June 6, 1823, vol. I, issue 45, p. 2. Database: Americaâ€s Historical Newspapers: Readex/Newsbank.
• Shayt, David H. “Satairway to Redemption: Americaâ€s Encounter with the British Prison Treadmill. Technology and Culture 30:4 (Oct., 1989), 908-938.