clothes and fetters again just as the guards came down the
ladder. A few nights later he finished his work and, with several
other prisoners, escaped through the drain.

Some of the Tories in Newgate were well-known and educated men.
One was a clergyman named Simeon Baxter. He preached a sermon,
one Sunday, to his companions in the mine, in which he advised
them, if they could, to assassinate Washington and the whole
Continental Congress. This sermon was printed afterward in London
and proves how bitter the feeling was in those days between the
Americans and the Tories.

After the Revolution, Newgate was the state prison of the State
of Connecticut until 1827. New workshops and other buildings were
added from time to time as they were needed. The wooden
guardhouse was replaced by one of brick, and a strong stone room
over the mouth of the shaft went by the nickname of the "stone
jug." There was a chapel and a hospital, but the hospital was
seldom used because there was very little sickness. The pure air
and even temperature in the mine, where it was never too hot in
summer nor too cold in winter, kept the prisoners well in spite
of darkness and confinement, and men who were sent there in a bad
state of health often recovered.

At one time there was a strong wooden fence, with iron spikes on
its top, around the enclosure, but in 1802 it was replaced by a
stone wall twelve feet high, with watch-towers at the corners and
a moat below it. Some of the prisoners helped to build this wall,
and when it was finished they were allowed to take part in a
celebration. One of them, an Irishman, gave this toast at the