Dr. Mudd's Cell

Dr. Mudd's Cell. . During and after the Civil War, the US government used Fort Jefferson as a prison for hundreds of military deserters and convicts, but a civilian was the fort's most famous prisoner. Dr. Samuel A. Mudd arrived at the fort in July 1865 with three other conspirators in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. Over his four years here, Dr. Mudd lived in several locations in the fort, but he was kept in this (now open) casemate for most of his imprisonment. Mudd swept bastions, worked in the fort's carpenter shop, and in 1867 helped treat many victims of a yellow fever epidemic. President Andrew Johnson pardoned Mudd in 1869., Imagine one loaded down with heavy chains, locked up in a wet, damp room twelve hours out of every twenty-four during working days, and all day on Sundays and holidays. , Samuel Mudd, January 22, 1866, (captions) , In his writings, Mudd mentioned looking at the evening stars through these "loopholes" in the wall above the sally port., Dr. Mudd, serving a life sentence, was closely guarded after he tried to escape aboard a ship prisoners were helping to unload and load., This 1898 photo shows the door to another prison cell in the fort called the "dungeon.", Mudd and his fellow prisoners carved some of the trenches in the floor to drain water that dripped into their cell. "After every rain," Mudd wrote on August 8, 1866, "it's not unusual to dip up...ten and twelve large buckets of water daily."

Dr. Mudd drew and labeled this illustration of Fort Jefferson: , 1. our quarters , 2. lighthouse , 3. officers' quarters , 4. prison quarters , 5. Loggerhead Light , 6. turtle on "Hog Island," now known as Bush Key.