Tales from the crypt: Prison, legal authority, and the debtors' constitution in the early republic

T | *HESE lines accompanied a drawing of the New York debtors' prison in several issues of Forlorn Hope, a short-lived newspaper published in I8oo by one of the debtors confined there.' The prison, sometimes referred to as the New Gaol, stood in the northeast corner of the present City Hall Park, then known as the Commons or, more popularly, the Fields. Built in 1757-1758 in the style of domestic architecture that typified most public buildings before the 1790s, the prison was a three-story structure topped by a cupola and surrounded by a fence, with a central entry and barred windows. After the Bridewell opened in 1775 a few hundred feet to the west on the other side of the Alms House, the New Gaol primarily housed debtors as well as a few convicted misdemeanants and accused criminals awaiting trial for minor offenses.2