Early Philadelphia’s prison population mixed free blacks and destitute European immigrants at the bottom

Evidence

The inmates of the jail were a cross section of the proletariat: laborers, seamen, factory operatives, and service workers. They included a large number of Afro-Americans: of 1,248 men committed between 1818 and 1824, 421, or slightly over one-third, were listed as colored. In addition, there was a significant number of foreigners among them: the Visiting Committee of the Pennsylvania Prison Society reported that of 603 men who were in the prison in 1820, 108 were foreign-born. The report went on to explain, “Penna. joins 3 Slave States and affords an asylum for their Free Blacks and runaway slaves, many of whom, being ignorant (a concomitant of vice) and profligate, soon fall into temptations. This city has been a great landing place for Emigrants from Europe. Some of these linger in the City and after spending their little all, not finding their expectations answered and having no friends, adopt a course of life that brings them to Prison.” — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 163

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: One in twelve poor Philadelphia workingmen served time in the insurrectionary jail — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 161