Sugarhouse Prison

Part II: War & Occupation

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The British quickly captured many rebels. But these P.O.W.’s raised two sets of questions. Where could they be held, safely? And what kind of food, shelter, and general living conditions would they get? The answers played out disastrously in New York, which quickly became not just a “compleat garrison” but a city of gruesome prisons. 

Almost overnight, the British filled the debtor jails on the Common, including the new Bridewell, now the largest building in the city. But the sheer number was overwhelming: perhaps 30,000 captives by the end. Because many “dissenting Protestants” supported the rebellion, the government turned virtually every non-Anglican church into a prison. And it did the same with the sugar warehouses of rich families accused of rebel sympathies, like the Van Cortlandts and the Livingstons. The barred window you see here, between the Municipal office-building and NYPD headquarters, is the last remnant of a five-story sugarhouse Henry Cuyler built near the Barracks, which served as one of these dungeons — according to urban legend.

Sugarhouse Prison

  • But housing was already scarce because of the fires and the giant waves of soldiers and refugees. Unable to defend the large, sparse, coastal areas of Staten Island and Long Island, the British thus decided to store most P.O.W.’s on ships anchored in Brooklyn’s swampy Wallabout Bay, off the East River. And because the military regarded the colonists as petty insurgents, the soldiers enjoyed as little protection as rebels in Scotland, Ireland, or Jamaica had in the past. British generals were asked to defeat a treasonous insurrection, while also caring for an enormous population of civilians that fell under their ward, on a relatively strict budget.

    Consequently, as many as 18,000 P.O.W.’s died from starvation, malnutrition, overcrowding, and disease — bones washing ashore for many years later, with skulls lying on the beach “about as thick as pumpkins in an autumn cornfield.” For every rebel soldier who died on the battlefield, three to four died in British captivity, mostly in New York — a higher proportion than in any subsequent US war.

    As printers spread (and exaggerated) this news, British authority declined everywhere in the colonies — even though Loyalist, Native, British, and Hessian captives perished in rebel hands at nearly the same rate. Altogether, roughly half of the P.O.W.’s on each side died from purposeful neglect or worse — nearly 7 million, if we calculate the number proportionally, using the lowest estimates of the dead.

    The scale of this brutality was unprecedented for the century, and only fueled demands for more of it — but mostly in one direction. Rebels used P.O.W. experiences to condemn the King’s forces in America, winning over many neutral colonists and even Loyalists.

    Part of the reason is that Occupation meant a harsher police state for everyone. Under martial law, offenses that would have been punished with a fine or a day in the stocks now carried the penalty of imprisonment, whippings, and even death. The British hoped that empowering lower-ranking civilians would give the ruled a stake in the new order. And these bureaucrats — and the military itself — often strived to care for New York’s huge population. But they consistently failed. Over time, almost everyone found themselves drawn into law-breaking to meet everyday needs, blurring political lines and further weakening the British cause.

Elizabeth Burgin

One of the most spectacular figures in this area was Elizabeth Burgin, a refugee from New York and suspected rebel widow who volunteered to bring food and supplies to P.O.W.’s.

Very little is known about this woman, but she may have assisted in the escape of no less than 200 prisoners from the city’s makeshift jails. Precisely how remains unclear. But Washington claimed that she was “indefatigable for the relief of the prisoners and in measures for facilitating their escape.” Elizabeth’s charity work and gender most likely enabled her to operate above suspicion. Officials rarely denied women petition to cross enemy lines.

But the occupation government issued a $26,000* reward for her capture in July 1779, when the wife of a co-conspirator betrayed her to investigators as one of the smugglers. Burgin was forced to leave behind all her possessions — including three young children — fleeing to Connecticut from Long Island, where the Culper spies usually transmitted intelligence to rebels stationed outside the British headquarters.

  • She managed to get to Philadelphia and retrieve her family, but was left destitute in her mid-twenties. Eventually, she appealed to Gen. Washington, who urged the government to provide her with rations. Congress ignored the letter, plus her requests for employment over the next two years. But in late 1781, they provided Elizabeth with a yearly pension of $1,500,* until 1787.

    Others would similarly die poor and largely forgotten, perhaps none more unjustly than Haym Salomon, the Jewish immigrant from Poland — a member of Sheareth Israel, the oldest synagogue in the US, which largely fled before the invasion of 1776 because they supported the rebellion. Held on a prison ship for 18 months as a spy, Salomon was released in 1778, then sentenced to death, and had to escape New York. He died in a debtors prison, after raising an enormous $16 million* for the Revolution.

    *Adjusted for inflation

Did you find the old sugarhouse window?


This one is also easy to miss, but it lies just east of the Chambers St. subway station, between the Municipal office building and NYPD Headquarters. You can find another remnant of this warehouse in Van Cortlandt Park, in the Bronx — although it probably did not store any prisoners (it was owned by a Loyalist, Henry Cuyler). There is a monument for the ones that did in the northeast corner of Trinity Church graveyard, and one vaguely worded brief marker for the Provost on Centre St., between City Hall and Tweed Courthouse.


But the largest memorial for P.O.W.’s lies atop Ft. Greene Park in Brooklyn. There is no tomb or plaque for most of the 11,500-18,000 buried along Wallabout Bay (today’s Navy Yard).