rtainly took place both in the prison yards and
elsewhere; though we have some evidence of subsequent provocation
given to the military, and resistance to the turnkeys in shutting
the prisons, and of stones being thrown out from within the prison
doors.

The subsequent firing rather appears to have arisen from the state
of individual irritation and exasperation on the part of the
soldiers, who followed the prisoners into their yards, and from
the absence of nearly all of the officers who might have
restrained it as well as from the great difficulty of putting an
end to a firing when once commenced under such circumstances.
Captain Shortland was from this time busily occupied with the
turnkeys in the square, receiving and taking care of the wounded.
Ensign White remained with his guard at the breach, and
lieutenants Ayelyne and Fortye, the only other subalterns known to
have been present, continued with the main bodies of their
respective guards.

The time of the day, which was the officers' dinner hour, will in
some measure explain this, as it caused the absence of every
officer from the prison whose presence was not indispensable
there. And this circumstance which has been urged as an argument
to prove the intention of the prisoners to take this opportunity
to escape, tended to increase the confusion, and to prevent those
great exertions being made which might perhaps have obviated a
portion at least of the mischief which ensued.

At the same time that the firing was going on in the square, a
cross fire was also kept up from several of the platforms on the
walls round the prisoners where the sentries stand, by straggling
parties of soldiers who ran up there for that purpose. As far as
this fire was directed to disperse the men assembled round the
breach, for which purpose it was most effectual, it seems to stand
upon the same ground as that in the first instance in the
square.--That part which it is positively sworn was directed
against straggling parties of prisoners running about the yards
and endeavoring to enter in the few doors which the turnkeys,
according to their usual practice, had left open, does seem, as
stated, to have been wholly without object or excuse, and to have
been a wanton attack upon the lives of defenceless, and at that
time, unoffending indiv