The site of the first state prison in Illionus, at Broadway and Williams Sts., now a vacant lot, is marked only by a fragment of one cell tier.
The first Illinois State Prison became the center of a violent controversy that eventually ended in a legislative investigation and the construction of a new prison at Joliet. Badly situated in a spot too near the river, undrained and ungraded, it aroused the insistent criticism of Dorothea Dix, pioneer in prison reform, and others. With the outbreak of the Civil War the plan to discontinue its use was abandoned, and it became a military detention camp.
Overcrowding and the lack of sanitation culminated in a smallpox epidemic in 1863, which raged uncontrolled for weeks for want of prison doctors. Prisoners died at the rate of six to ten a day. At the demand of citizens all stricken prisoners were transported to an uninhabited island in the Mississippi, where a deserted dwelling was converted into a hospital.
There is no evidence that any of the victims ever returned, and although no record of deaths was kept, it has been estimated that several thousand persons died and were buried on the island during 1863-64. Many of the Confederate soldiers who died during the epidemic are buried in the CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS’ CEMETERY, Rozier and State Sts., in North Alton, After the war the prison was evacuated, sold, and razed.
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