Nearly half the prisoners
taken on Long Island died. The privates were treated with great
inhumanity, without fuel, or the common necessaries of life, and were
obliged to obey the calls of nature in places of their confinement."
It is said that the British did not hang any of the prisoners taken in
August on Long Island, but "played the fool by making them ride with a
rope around their necks, seated on coffins, to the gallows. Major Otho
Williams was so treated."
"Adolph Myer, late of Colonel Lasher's battalion, says he was taken by
the British at Montresor's Island. They threatened twice to hang him,
and had a rope fixed to a tree. He was led to General Howe's quarters
near Turtle Bay, who ordered him to be bound hand and foot. He was
confined four days on bread and water, in the 'condemned hole' of the
New Jail, without straw or bedding. He was next put into the College,
and then into the New Dutch Church, whence he escaped on the
twenty-fourth of January, 1777. He was treated with great inhumanity,
and would have died had he not been supported by his friends. * * *
Many prisoners died from want, and others were reduced to such
wretchedness as to attract the attention of the loose women of the
town, from whom they received considerable assistance. No care was
taken of the sick, and if any died they were thrown at the door of the
prison and lay there until the next day, when they were put in a cart
and drawn out to the intrenchments beyond the Jews' burial ground,
when they were interred by their fellow prisoners, conducted thither
for that purpose.
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