A century in captivity
Subtitle: the life and trials of Prince Mortimer, a Connecticut slave
By: Denis R. Caron.
Publisher: University of New Hampshire Press
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Durham, N.H
Language: eng
Number of pages: 188
ISBN-13: 9781584655398; 9781584655404
Subjects: Mortimer, Prince, d. 1834.; Mortimer, Prince, d. 1834 -- Trials, litigation, etc.; Newgate Prison (East Granby, Conn.); Slaves -- Connecticut -- Biography.; African Americans -- Connecticut -- Biography.; Trials (Murder) -- Connecticut.; Prisoners -- Connecticut -- Biography.; African Americans -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- Connecticut -- History.; Prisoners -- Connecticut -- Social conditions.; Prisons -- Connecticut -- History.
Genres: Biography.
Description: On December 21, 1811, a Middletown, Connecticut judge sentenced Prince Mortimer, a sickly eighty-seven-year-old slave, to life imprisonment for attempting to poison his master by lacing his chocolate drink with arsenic. Prince spent the next sixteen years in Connecticut's notorious Newgate Prison, a colonial copper mine that had been converted into America's first state prison. In 1827 the dungeons at Newgate were closed forever, and the prisoners were transferred to the newly constructed Wethersfield State Prison. Wethersfield was supposed to be modern and progressive, but prisoners suffered there every bit as much as at Newgate. In 1834, Prince died there in his 31/2-by-7-foot cell, reportedly at the age of 110. From his capture into slavery as a child in Guinea in about 1730, through his more than eighty years as a slave and twenty-three years as a prisoner, Prince had endured more than a century in captivity.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.