Richmond Stories: Lumpkin’s Jail
By: Colin Muldoon Univ 112
Lumpkin’s Jail Origins
• Robert Lumpkin came into
possession of what some may call
“The Devil’s Half Acre” on
November 27th, 1844.
• Previously owned by two other
slave traders before Lumpkin.
• Located in the Richmond district
of Shockoe Bottom.
Conditions of the Jail
• The Conditions in the Jail were
horrible
• Prisoners were tied up stretching
across the floor and then flogged.
• The jail served as a sort of demented
purgatory for slaves who caused
trouble between sales and purchases.
• Housed a room solely for the purpose
of whipping slaves.
• Slaves were fed rotting meat and
many died of disease and injuries
during captivity.
Location:
• “The Devil’s Half Acre” was only three
blocks from where the current Virginia
Capitol building stands today.
• Was just recently rediscovered under a
patch of interstate 95.
• After the abolishment of slavery, Lumpkin
died and the land was acquired by the
Baptist Theological Seminary, who turned
the site into a school for free slaves.
Anthony Burns:
• Anthony Burns was a slave who escaped
captivity to try and reach Boston but was
brought back to Richmond under the Fugitive
Slave Act of 1850.
• Burns was held in Lumpkin’s Jail in Richmond for
four months, experiencing the awful conditions
firsthand.
• He was kept in a room only about eight or six
feet square only that only was accessible by a
latch on the second floor.
• His bracings and cuffs caused his feet to swell
and he had very little free range of movement.
• The floor riled with worms and other creepy
bugs and creatures that thrive in the muddy soil
underneath him.
Citations:
Abigail Tucker. “Digging up the Past at a Richmond Jail:The excavation of a notorious jail recalls Virginia's leading role in the slave trade”
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/ web Smithsonian Magazine March, 2009
Lumpkin’s Jail A History of the Richmond Theological Seminary, With Reminiscences of Thirty Years' Work Among the Colored People of the South
Photograph http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/media_player?mets_filename=evr7292mets.xml web LC2852 .R4 T3 1895
Blatt Martin. “The Price of Freedom: Anthony Burns and the Fugitive Slave Act”. The Journal of American History, Vol. 91, No. 1 (Jun., 2004), pp.
189-19. Print.
Doody David M. “Archaeologists excavated the jail had to cope with groundwater that filled trenches as fast as they were dug” 2009 Photograph
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/digging-up-the-past-at-a-richmond-jail-50642859/?no-ist web