air and exercise
– 1. a short term of imprisonment, hence “two stretches of air and exercise” means two years in prison; 2. working in the stone quarry at Blackwell’s Island or at Sing Sing.
State Prison at Sing Sing, New York, 1855 – Image via Wikipedia
In England, air and exercise originally referred to someone being [...]
Note: This post is part of a series on Convict Transportation to the American colonies.
On July 15, 1751 the New-York Gazette, or Weekly Post-Boy reported that Onesiphorus Lucas was executed in Annapolis in a follow-up to a newspaper story that appeared two weeks earlier about how Lucas was found guilty of burglary and sentenced to [...]
