THE  DEBTORS' PRISOtN

BUT a trifle more than sixty years ago one of
the most agreeably edifying sights of this
town—to which country relatives come up for a
holiday might be taken with a pleasurable advan¬
tage— was the Debtors' Prison. This structure
stood (and in a revamped state still stands, being
the present Hall of Records) at the northeast cor¬
ner of what now is the City Hall Park ; but before
it came to be employed in wdrat, for a prison, was
so genteel a fashion it had led but a shabby, and
in one period of its existence an even execrable,
career.

In the early decades of the past century the
criminals of New York were lodged (with a
shrewd thrust of prophetic sarcasm) in the City
Hall: which building then stood on the site now
occupied by the United States Treasury on Wall
Street. As early as the year 1724 the impossi¬
bility (even more conspicuously obvious at a
later date) of confining the City Hall criminals
within that edifice became apparent, and in 1727
four men were appointed " to watch it to prevent
escapes." But in 1740 complaints were made
that even the walls and the watchers together
did not suffice to restrain the prisoners; and at
last, in the year 1756, an Act of Assembly was
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