[Mill Prison, Plymouth]
Januy. 1st. 1778 Thursday raw cold wr. Recd. for New Years day for Each Mess a plum Pudding & a Six penny Loaf as a Present from Mr. Heath & his Parish & by him we Learn that there is a Subscription raising for the relief of the American Prisoners confined in England.! Blessed News to a Starving People.1
Our Friends in London have Employ'd a Gentln. to Come down in Order to see & Inspect into Our treatment & Provisions, & Capt. Hy. Johnson & Mr. Shoemaker2 went into offices to Inform him of the particulars
D, MeHi, Jonathan Haskins Journal.
1. On the subscription for the relief of the American prisoners, see Almon's Remembrance at 8 Jan., below, and Cohen, Yankee Sailors, 83-84. Deacon Robert Heath (1741-1800), merchant of Plymouth Dock and deacon at the Calvinist Methodist Plymouth Tabernacle, had begun visiting and dispensing aid to the prisoners at Mill Prison by the autumn of 1777. Cohen, Yankee Sailors, 79-83, and Sheldon S. Cohen, "The Preachers and the Prisoners," Essex Institute Historical Collections 126 (Jan. 1990, No. 1): 1-26.
2. Capt. Henry Johnson, Continental Navy, and Anthony Shoemaker.
