The New York Tombs Inside and Out! / Scenes and Reminiscences Coming Down to the Present. A Story Stranger Than Fiction, with an Historic Account of America's Most Famous Prison.

by John Josiah Munro

But the whole scene was such a gruesome spectacle that no refined person cared to see it, and a large number of people considered it a godsend when the hangman’s job was given to the State Electrician and the work transferred to the death house at Sing Sing.

The first and earliest Tombs homicide that attracted much attention and excited the people of this city, was that of John C. Colt, charged with the murder of Samuel Adams. Colt was a professional penman and teacher of bookkeeping; he had an office on the second floor of a building on the corner of Broadway and Chambers Street. Samuel Adams, a printer, was in the same building. Colt had written a work on bookkeeping and Adams had printed it.

On September 17th, 1841, Adams came into Colt’s office, where the two men had a heated discussion over the printing bill which Adams was trying to collect. Several hard words passed between the men, such as liar, cheat and so forth. Then Colt up with a hammer which lay on the table and rained several blows on Adams’ head. There was a brief struggle after which the printer lay on the floor in a pool of blood.

In the next room a man named Wheeler was busy at work. He had heard the loud words between the two men and the struggle; he was curious to know what it all meant. In a few minutes he went to Colt’s door in the hall, peeped through the key hole, and was startled with what he saw; he returned to his room, but said nothing to any one. After a few days Wheeler reported what he saw to the authorities and became an important witness for the State. Next day Colt put Adams’ body in a box and shipped it to New Orleans.

The vessel was delayed for a week by storms. Before the ship reached its destination, passengers and crew were overcome by a terrible stench that came from the hold of the vessel. After a thorough investigation, Adams’ body was found in a box among the freight. The authorities were notified and the box traced back to where it came from. As a result Colt was arrested and indicted for murder in the first degree. Colt, after he had been in the Tombs for a few weeks, made a confession, saying the crime was done in self defence. The trial lasted ten days. The jury brought in a verdict of murder in the first degree, and Colt was sentenced to be hanged November 18th, 1842.

On the day of his execution, when the Sheriff went to Colt’s cell to prepare him for the last struggle, he was startled to find him dead. Just then the cry of fire was raised, which caused intense excitement among the officials and prisoners in their cells.

The lurid glare which came from the burning cupola and which cast a shadow on all sides, attracted wide attention and a great crowd of people. After the fire was extinguished and order once more restored, Colt was found in his cell in a pool of blood. Many persons in the city believed that the burning of the cupola was a well designed scheme to save Colt from the gallows, and in the midst of the excitement Colt escaped through one of the side doors by the aid of powerful friends and a dead body from one of the hospitals was substituted in his place. A few years ago Charles Wesley Smith, a resident of New York, informed the writer that he was present at the burning of the Tombs cupola, November 18th, 1842. A great crowd came to witness the raising of the black flag which was to be the final act in the hanging of Colt and which announced to those on the outside that the sentence of the law had been carried out, but it failed and the general opinion was that Colt escaped.

Mr. Smith says that he stood in front of a blacksmith’s shop, opposite the prison, in Centre Street, with many others, when he saw dense smoke coming from the Tombs cupola. In a few minutes there was great excitement in and outside of the building. In the prison yard it is said pandemonium reigned supreme, the shrieks and yells of the prisoners begging to be taken out of the building could be heard a block away. Soon after the firemen reached the prison they played a small stream of water on the fire, which quickly extinguished the flames, and it was all over in half an hour. The general prevailing opinion among the people of the city at the time was that a scheme had been carried out successfully which permitted Colt to go scot free. And that the cupola fire, which was a put-up job, aided him greatly in his flight.

During all of these years the regular hangings took place in the Tombs yard, and usually occurred between six a. m. and twelve noon. Hundreds and sometimes thousands of people waited on the street, or squatted on the roofs of buildings to see the sights, which were accompanied by drunkenness and disorderly conduct. On the site of the present Criminal Court Building, on Centre Street, was the Freight House of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company, on the roof of which were often gathered a hundred persons waiting to see the black flag rise as soon as one was executed.

On August 21st, 1888, Dannie Lyons was executed. He had been a member of the “Whyo Gang,” who hung out around Leonard and Centre Streets. They had put up a strong fight to save their comrade, Dannie, but it failed. The gang numbered about thirty or forty persons and was made up of some of the worst desperadoes in the city. And when all their efforts failed they had threatened to make trouble in the “Bloody Sixth Ward.” On the night of August 20th, they spent the time in a low dive on Mulberry Street near the Bend. They were in front of the Tombs early on the morning of August 21st. Most of them had booze and were in a sullen frame of mind and were ready for trouble. The presence of the Elizabeth Street Police overawed them and everything passed off quietly. Dannie Lyons’ father was at the prison and appealed to the Warden for the privilege of seeing his son executed, but his appeal was denied.