From the Richmond Dispatch, 8/11/1864, p.1, c. 6

Escaped from Yankee Persecution. – Two men, named Walter Magill, of Southampton county, Virginia, and Francis Marion, of Frederick county, Virginia, who have recently escaped from the Lunatic Asylum at Williamsburg, arrived in this city yesterday. From the severe treatment which they have received at the hands of the Yankee governors of that institution ever since their occupation of Williamsburg, they had some time since made up their minds to escape, and accordingly, under a pretext of going fishing one day last week, they kept on with the boat up to a convenient point, where they landed, and then pursued their journey by land to this place. One Dr. P. Wager is the surgeon of the Asylum, who is represented as a drunken incompetent brute, while the general superintendence is given up to a number of Yankee negroes. The two gentlemen who have reached here represent that they were inmates of the Asylum for near two years; that they were about being discharged at the time the Yankees took possession, but that since that time they had been compelled to remain and undergo the most cruel treatment which it is possible to conceive of.

• Prev
• Next