On December 21, 1811, a Middletown, Connecticut judge sentencedPrince Mortimer, a sickly eighty-seven-year-old slave, to lifeimprisonment for attempting to poison his master by lacing hischocolate drink with arsenic. Prince spent the next sixteen years inConnecticut's notorious Newgate Prison, a colonial copper mine thathad been converted into America's first state prison. In 1827 thedungeons at Newgate were closed forever, and the prisoners weretransferred to the newly constructed Wethersfield State Prison.Wethersfield was supposed to be modern and progressive, butprisoners suffered there every bit as much as at Newgate. In 1834, Prince died there in his 3-1/2 -by-7-foot cell, reportedly at the age of110