It is said that William IV, who was then the Duke of Clarence, came to New York during the Revolution and was in charge of Admiral Digbie on whose ship he was an officer. He was fond of skating on the Collect Pond when off duty, and would have drowned there on one occasion, having broken through the ice, were it not for the quick action of Gulian C. Verplanck, one of New York’s distinguished citizens. Mr. Verplanck was afterwards President of the Bank of New York, which position he filled for twenty years. He died in 1799. In 1805 the City Council gave orders that the Collect Pond should be filled in with clean dirt from the hills that surrounded it, as it had become a menace to the health of the city because of the filth that had been dumped into it for several years. But little had been done towards carrying this order into effect. The winter of 1807-8 was one of great distress and poverty in this city. To add to the misery of the poor, business was at a standstill and hundreds of men were out of employment. In January, 1808, the unemployed made a demonstration in front of the City Hall and called upon the Mayor and Common Council to give them bread for themselves and their families who were then in a starving condition. After a thorough discussion of the situation money was appropriated and several hundred men put to work to fill in the Collect Pond as a public improvement. After many months the work was completed. In the year 1830 the Common Council again took up the matter of erecting a new prison. The population of the city had increased by this time to over 200,000. The old Bridewell which had been erected before the Revolution, situated west of the City Hall, had become a nuisance and was unfit any longer for use as a prison. For several years the agitation was kept up without any definite results. At last in 1835 the erection of the Tombs Prison on a part of the old Collect Pond was decided upon and work begun. For over a year the construction of the new building was slow, as the filling in of the pond had not been properly done. The ground was so wet and “springy” that the foundation of the new prison had to be laid on pine logs fastened to the ground by spiles. The old Tombs was said to contain the purest specimen of Coptic architecture outside of Egypt and was admired as a splendid work of art. The style of this prison was decided on soon after the publication of a new book of travels by John L. Stevens, of Hoboken. Mr. Stevens had just returned from a visit to Egypt and the Holy Land and had given to the public the result of his impressions abroad in a handsome volume. As the author was well known in New York, his book became widely popular. On the front page was a picture of an Egyptian Tomb. Some suggested that the new city prison be built after this design. The Common Council accepted the suggestion. Ever since the city prison has been called “The Tombs.”