“Lieutenant Catlin, taken September 15th, ‘76, was confined in prison with no sustenance for forty-eight hours; for eleven days he had only two days allowance of pork offensive to the smell, bread hard, mouldy and wormy, made of canail and dregs of flax-seed; water brackish. ‘I have seen $1.50 given for a common pail full. Three or four pounds of poor Irish pork were given to three men for three days. In one church were 850 prisoners for near three months.’” “About the 25th of December he with 225 men were put on board the Glasgow at New York to be carried to Connecticut for exchange. They were aboard eleven days, and kept on coarse broken bread, and less pork than before, and had no fire for sick or well; crowded between decks, where twenty-eight died through ill-usage and cold.” (This is taken from the “History of Litchfield,” page 39.) EXTRACT FROM A LETTER DATED NEW YORK, DEC. 26, 1776 “The distress of the prisoners cannot be communicated in words. Twenty or thirty die every day; they lie in heaps unburied; what numbers of my countrymen have died by cold and hunger, perished for want of the common necessaries of life! I have seen it! This, sir, is the boasted British clemency! I myself had well nigh perished under it. The New England people can have no idea of such barbarous policy. Nothing can stop such treatment but retaliation. I ever despised private revenge, but that of the public must be in this case, both just and necessary; it is due to the manes of our murdered countrymen, and that alone can protect the survivors in the like situation. Rather than experience again their barbarity and insults, may I fall by the sword of the Hessians.” Onderdonk, who quotes this fragment, gives us no clue to the writer. A man named S. Young testifies that, “he was taken at Fort Washington and, with 500 prisoners, was kept in a barn, and had no provisions until Monday night, when the enemy threw into the stable, in a confused manner, as if to so many hogs, a quantity of biscuits in crumbs, mostly mouldy, and some crawling with maggots, which the prisoners were obliged to scramble for without any division. Next day they had a little pork which they were obliged to eat raw. Afterwards they got sometimes a bit of pork, at other times biscuits, peas, and rice. They were confined two weeks in a church, where they suffered greatly from cold, not being allowed any fire. Insulted by soldiers, women, and even negroes. Great numbers died, three, four, or more, sometimes, a day. Afterwards they were carried on board a ship, where 500 were confined below decks.”