“A story is told of an inmate of Greenwich Prison who had been sentenced to die on the gallows, but at the last moment, through the influence of the Society of Friends, had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment, and was placed in charge of the shoe shop in the prison.  The Quakers worked for his release, and, having secured it, placed him in a shoe shop of his own.  His business flourished, and he was prominently identified with the progress of the times.  He had an itching palm, however, and after a time he forged the names of all his business friends, eloped with the daughter of one of his benefactors and disappeared from the earth, apparently.  ‘Murder will out’ A few years after the forger returned to the city, and established himself under an assumed name in the making of shoes, forgetting, however, to maintain complacency, and thinking that no one would recognise him.  In a passion at what he considered the carelessness of one of his workmen regarding the time some work should have been delivered, he told the man he should not have promised it, as it caused disappointment.  ‘Master,’ said the workman, ’you have disappointed me worse than that.’  ‘How, you rascal?’ ’When I waited a whole hour in the rain to see you hanged.’”

In 1828 and 1829 the prisoners were transferred to Sing Sing, and the site passed into private hands and the Greenwich State Prison was no more.  I believe there’s a brewery there now.

It is an odd coincidence that the present Jefferson Market Police Court stands now at Tenth Street,—­though a good bit further inland than the ancient State’s Prison.  The old Jefferson Market clock has looked down upon a deal of crime and trouble, but a fair share of goodness and comfort too.  It is hopeful to think that the present regime of Justice is a kindlier and a cleaner one than that which prevailed when the treadmill and the dark cell were Virtue’s methods of persuading Vice.

Someone, I know not who, wrote this apropos of prisons in Greenwich: 

    "In these days fair Greenwich Village
      Slept by Hudson’s rural shores,
    Then the stage from Greenwich Prison
      Drove to Wall Street thrice a day—­
    Now the sombre ‘Black Maria’
      Oftener drives the other way."

But I like to think that the old clock, if it could speak, would have some cheering tales to tell.  I like to believe that ugly things are slipping farther and farther from Our Village, that honest romance and clean gaiety are rather the rule there than the exception, and that, perhaps, the day will sometime dawn when there will be no more need of the shame of prisons in Greenwich Village.