Jails in those days were deemed as good places as any for insane
persons, and in fact were the only places available, so that, besides
those whom long confinement had brought almost to the point of
imbecility, there were several entirely insane and idiotic individuals
among the prisoners. One of them went around in a high state of
excitement declaring that it was the resurrection morning. Nor was the
delusion altogether to be marvelled at considering the suddenness with
which its victim had exchanged the cell, which for twenty years had
been his home, for the bright vast firmament of heaven, with its
floods of dazzling light and its blue and bottomless dome.
Another debtor, a man from Sheffield, as a prisoner of war during the
revolution, had experienced the barbarities practiced by the British
provost Cunningham at New York. Having barely returned home to his
native village when he was thrust into jail as a debtor, he had not
unnaturally run the two experiences together in his mind. It was his
hallucination that he had been all the while a prisoner of the British
at New York, and that the victorious Continental army had just arrived
to deliver him and his comrades.
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