A sudden rain fell on Richmond, Virginia that autumn day in 1862, surprising the public women in Capitol Square and forcing them back into their bawdy houses. Inside the house on 10th Street, one of the younger women - still a girl yet, still pretty - undid her blouse and stood, half-clothed, in front of a window. Directly across the way, from his hospital bed a wounded Confederate soldier watched as she made an unmistakable gesture of invitation. Despite his condition the soldier considered, for a moment, if he should risk joining her for the afternoon. 1

A few blocks away at 18th Street and Cary, the roof of Castle Thunder Prison had started leaking again. 2  In Whittock's Warehouse, the wing that housed the women, one prisoner had just finished her daily ration of meat. In the morning at seven o'clock, it had been a little corn bread and bean soup; now at one o'clock there were a few ounces of pork. It was all she would have to eat that day. 3

Once again her mind returned to the letter she had written to President Jefferson Davis. "My Honorable President," it had begun:

A rat scurried by, postponing his inevitable fate as someone's dinner. Mr. President, she thought miserably, I beg you.

Formerly Greanor's Tobacco Factory, the three-and-a-half-story, three-building brick warehouse had been converted into a prison in August 1862, when the existing prisons had grown too full to accommodate all the new prisoners pouring into Richmond. During the hasty conversion, an assortment of prisoners of war, common criminals, and suspicious persons were thrown together. A Union private held in Libby Prison described it in a poem:

On Cary street, in Richmond, there is a mongrel den
Of thieves, sneaks and cowards mixed up with gentlemen.
Oh what a living shame to huddle in together
Men and beasts, wild and tame, like birds of every feather!
The Reb. authorities scared up this greatest wonder,
Made it a prison, and named it Castle Thunder. 5

Captain George W. Alexander was put in charge. An eccentric character, Capt. Alexander had served in the U.S. Navy for nearly 13 years before enlisting in the Confederate States Army. Not especially well liked, the Maryland native nonetheless rose from lieutenant to captain. Reputed to be a corrupt and cruel disciplinarian, Alexander was said to have a heart as dark as the clothing he wore. Indeed, he was fond of dramatic apparel, often dressing in tight black trousers buckled at the knee, black stockings and a flowing black shirt with a white collar. He rode a black horse and kept a large black dog, a hound called Hero by some and Nero by others. The dog was so intimidating to prisoners that he was rumored to be meaner than a bear in a fight. 6

Early in 1862 another Maryland native, Provost Marshal General John H. Winder, had made Alexander commandant of Castle Godwin Prison, formerly the "Negro jail." In the summer of that year Alexander was moved with his prisoners to a larger building. Christening this facility "Castle Thunder," Capt. Alexander wanted the name to convey an image of Olympian vengeance. Criminals sent to the prison were deemed "Thunderstruck"; their crimes included murder, theft, desertion, and espionage.

Of the women housed in Castle Thunder Prison, most were considered disloyal, depraved or worse. The common prostitute was here as was the uncommon Unionist Dr. Mary Edwards Walker. The Yankee spy shared the floor with the Southern woman who had dressed as a man to fight for the Confederacy. In 1862 the best a Thunderstruck woman could hope for was parole, exchange or escape.

For some prisoners, the Castle would be their last home before they faced the hangman's noose. One of these unfortunates was Timothy Webster. A detective with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, Webster had become one of the most accomplished secret service operatives in gathering intelligence on the Confederacy. Married to Charlotte Sprowles, Webster hid his wife and children in Onarga, Illinois while he worked out of Allan Pinkerton's Chicago office. In 1860 Webster was sent to Baltimore to pose as a Southern gentleman and was so successful in this ruse that he managed to become a member of a secessionist group known as the Knights of Liberty.

Early in 1861 Webster uncovered a plan to assassinate Abraham Lincoln as the President-elect traveled to Washington for his inauguration. Webster alerted Pinkerton's agents, who were able to foil the assassination plot. The next year Webster was sent to Richmond to continue his espionage. While crossing the Potomac River he was stricken with inflammatory rheumatism, a condition that necessitated several weeks of bed rest. During his recuperation, Webster was too ill to communicate with his agency. In response, Pinkerton sent two operatives, Pyrce Lewis and John Scully, to locate the missing agent.

At the same time the Confederate spy Rose O'Neil Greenhow, newly released from a Union prison, was on her way to a hotel in Richmond. As it happened, Lewis and Scully had been the agents responsible for her imprisonment. In an unfortunate coincidence, Lewis and Scully booked themselves into the same hotel. Upon her arrival, Greenhow recognized the two agents and alerted the authorities. Lewis and Scully were arrested on the charge of espionage and incarcerated in Castle Godwin. Eventually Scully revealed incriminating information that proved fatal for Timothy Webster.

After trusting Webster as one of its sons, the Confederacy was humiliated by his betrayal. Webster was arrested, along with a woman identifying herself as his wife. A quick trial resulted in a guilty verdict for both, with a death sentence for Webster.

Now it was President Lincoln's turn to save Webster's life. Lincoln sent a message to the Confederacy, threatening that if Webster were hung, he would reciprocate by hanging a Confederate spy. But the Confederacy ignored the threat, and on April 29, 1862 Timothy Webster faced the hangman. 7

A reporter for the Richmond Dispatch watched as a black hood was placed over Webster's head and a cotton rope slipped around his neck. The trap was released but the knot slipped, and Webster fell to the ground. The stunned man was forced to climb to the scaffold a second time. The noose held this time and Webster died on the gallows, making him the first spy to be executed by the Confederacy. 8

No one was more horrified by the hanging than the woman arrested with him. Posing as Mrs. Webster, she was in reality another Pinkerton agent known as Hattie H. Lawton, alias Hattie Lewis. Lawton was part of Pinkerton's Female Detective Bureau, formed in 1860 to "worm out secrets" by means unavailable to male detectives. Lawton's true identity was kept secret even from Richmond's most accomplished Union spy, Elizabeth Van Lew. A seemingly harmless eccentric from a prominent Richmond family, "Crazy Bet" had been granted permission by the Confederates to perform the humanitarian gesture of bringing food and medicine to Union prisoners. During these visits, Van Lew was able to gather information that she then transported north to General Ulysses S. Grant through a network of couriers.

It was not considered unusual for Van Lew to petition on behalf of the prisoners in Richmond. After Webster's death, Van Lew visited Hattie Lawton to request her release. In her diary Van Lew wrote:

And so on a rainy, autumn day in 1862, Hattie Lawton waited on her best hope of release, permission from President Davis on the advice of Secretary of War G. W. Randolph. Late in October, word finally arrived.

It was decided by the Secretary some time since to release Mrs. Webster and send her home, but the Secretary, upon having been told that Mrs. Webster would compromise many friends in Maryland, directed that she should be retained until further orders. 10

She would continue to wait.

A few months later another woman believed to be a Union spy was brought to Castle Thunder. The Cuban-born widow of a Confederate soldier, Loreta Jancta Velazquez had disguised herself as Lieutenant Harry T. Buford to organize a Confederate infantry unit called the Arkansas Grays. Eventually detected, she described her arrest in her memoirs, A Woman In Battle:

"... almost immediately upon my arrival in Richmond I fell under the surveillance of Winder as a suspicious character, and was called upon to give an account of myself... There was, evidently, something suspicious and mysterious about me... and the result was, that I was arrested on the charge of being a woman in disguise, and supposably a Federal spy, and was conducted to Castle Thunder, to reflect upon the mutabilities of fortune, until I could give a satisfactory account of myself. 11

Unlike Van Lew, Velazquez found Capt. Alexander entirely to her liking: "[He is] a gentleman who, ever since I made his acquaintance through being committed to his custody as a prisoner, I have always been proud to number among my best and most highly-esteemed friends. 12

According to Velazquez, Alexander not only arranged for her release but also recommended her to General Winder. Winder offered her a position in the Confederate secret service with the suggestion that she resume the "proper costume of her sex." Reluctantly she agreed, embarking upon a new career as a Confederate spy using her feminine wiles and the alias Mrs. Alice Williams.

Loreta Jancta Velazquez was not the only woman in Castle Thunder known to wear a man's uniform. On April 10, 1864 Union surgeon Dr. Mary E. Walker of the 52nd Ohio Infantry accidentally walked into a group of Confederate soldiers commanded by General Daniel Harvey Hill. Gen. Hill delivered the unconventional surgeon, in full military uniform, to Richmond.

Dr. Mary E. Walker

An easy target for Confederate humor, Walker insisted on dressing in male attire, wearing trousers under her skirt and a man's uniform jacket. During her imprisonment in Castle Thunder, the local press ridiculed Walker at every opportunity, as in this story appearing in the June 29, 1864 Richmond Examiner:

... Recently [Walker] got mad, pitched into several of her room-mates in long clothes, and tore out handsfuls of auburn hair from the head of one of them. Then she proclaimed secession, and went into another apartment, where she is now lady and lioness of all she surveys. Sometimes she exhibits herself in costume on the balcony of the Castle... It is said she has a Yankee Major lover among the prisoners at the Libby prison, which is one square below the astle, and within easy signal range. 13

Because of her position - and perhaps temper - Walker was soon given a room to herself and allowed extra privileges. Prison chaplain Rev. J. L. Burrows recalled: " [Walker]... was sometimes permitted to stroll into the streets, where her display of Bloomer costume, blouse, trousers and boots secured her a following of astonished and admiring boys. She was quite chatty, and seemed rather to enjoy the notoriety of her position. 14

Even with these privileges, Walker desperately wanted release. "Sensible female," the Enquirer editor commented. 15

Not all the women in Castle Thunder appropriated characteristics of the male. Some used their femininity to survive the increasingly desperate economic conditions brought on by the war. In Richmond prostitution had grown increasingly common, with numerous brothels employing thousands of prostitutes. Elizabeth Van Lew owned several buildings on Locust Alley, a notorious bawdy house district. The proprietress of one of these brothels, Clara A., kept a diary account of the sexual services she provided to prominent military men, including a certain Marylander. Information gleaned during these encounters may have been passed along the espionage network. 16

Complaints about bawdy houses appeared regularly in local newspapers like the Richmond Dispatch:

Even Mayor Joseph Mayo lamented the decline of the city, in particular Richmond's Capitol Square, which had become a favorite spot for the city's working girls. "Go on the Capital Square any afternoon," he said, "and you may see these women promenading up and down the shady walks jostling respectable ladies into the gutters." 18

Media and public pressure resulted in periodic police raids on the city's bawdy houses. In 1862 Anna Thompson was arrested along with ten employees of her bordello. 19 In 1863 Clara A. recorded, "Rednose Mayo had some of his bully police break in 7 houses around the corner last night." 20

Also arrested were the women known as "camp followers" who, according to the Richmond Examiner, were given a room of their own in the Castle:

"A department is devoted at Castle Thunder to the detention of a number of depraved and abandoned women, to prevent their following the army and contributing by their pestilential presence to the destruction of the moral of the soldiers. Several of them are yet good looking, and may at one time have been beautiful. It has been found necessary to keep them in constant confinement, as once at liberty they follow and hover in the tract of an army like carrion crows that snuff a field of slaughter." 21

Ironically, female prisoners were entrusted to the care of Capt. Alexander, who was rumored to be particularly fond of loose women. A male prisoner attested to Alexander's carousing in a letter dated August 10, 1863, published in the New York Herald:

"[Alexander's] whole night is spent in drinking, gambling, etc., in which women are allowed to participate. After each of these bacchanalian revels, if the Captain has been successful, he is all smiles and liberality; if he has been on the other hand, unfortunate - which it is usually his luck to be - he is as profane and brutal as a pirate, and orders half a dozen niggers flogged, and twice as many prisoners tied up by the thumbs, or bucked and gagged, and manages in the course of a few hours to outrage every inmate of the Castle." 22

Despite his reputation as a drunkard and bully, Capt. Alexander found his defenders. Among them was the prisoner Charlotte Gilman, involved in a counterfeiting charge, who asserted under oath: "I have always been well treated. All the ladies there [at Castle Thunder] spoke of Captain Alexander in the highest terms. All like him." 23

But, she added, "I know nothing of the treatment of the other prisoners."

One of these prisoners gave birth during her stay at Castle Thunder. Mary Lee, imprisoned for disloyalty, named her baby "Castellinna Thunder Lee." The July 21, 1863 Richmond Examiner reported, "[the baby is] gay and healthy as if [she] had been born in a palace."

The respectable ladies of Richmond gossiped among themselves about the women who visited "Chateau de Tonnerre," as they called it. Among the prisoners were: Margaret Underwood, from Washington, D.C., who had disguised herself as a Confederate soldier; Anna Scott, a milliner, accused of being a spy; Laura J. Johnson, from North Carolina, who told a fantastic tale of following her beau from Raleigh; Millie Bean, who had served in the 47th North Carolina regiment for more than two years before being discovered; Elizabeth Needham of Lynchburg, a suspicious character. By the end of the war, a hundred women had been imprisoned in Castle Thunder. 24

April 3, 1865 was a dark day for the Confederacy. As Richmond burned that Monday morning, the 81st New York Volunteer Infantry marched into the capital. Colonel Mattison pulled the flag of Dixie from the Capitol Square roof and raised the flag of the United States of America in its place. He then led his troops to Castle Thunder Prison and opened the door, liberating about four hundred Union prisoners. 25

And what became of the women of Castle Thunder?

"Mrs. T. Webster" was exchanged for a Union soldier early in 1863. Like the professional operative she was, she vanished without a trace. 26

The real Mrs. Webster, with the help of Elizabeth Van Lew, recovered the body of her husband and had it brought to Onarga, Illinois. Three months after his father's execution, Webster's 19-year-old son joined the Union Army. Timothy Webster, Jr. was wounded in the Battle of Brices Crossroads and taken to a Confederate prison in Mobile, Alabama, where his leg was amputated. He died there on July 4, 1864. His body was transported north and buried in the Onarga Cemetery, next to his father. 27

Loreta Jancta Velazquez was released as Mrs. Alice Williams on July 16, 1863. A reporter for the Richmond Dispatch ventured a guess as to her future. "It is hardly probable," he wrote, "that this brave but eccentric woman will be kept out of the fights in Mississippi." Indeed, if her memoirs are to believed, she lived to love and fight again. 28

Dr. Mary E. Walker was exchanged, "man for man," for a Confederate officer on August 12, 1864. She returned to the war effort, practicing medicine at a women's prison in Louisville and at an orphan's asylum in Tennessee. She was honored in November 1865 with the Congressional Medal of Honor, becoming the first woman ever to receive the award. 29

Mary Lee returned to Castle Thunder on many occasions to show off Castellinna. During its 44 months of operation, Castle Thunder allowed no woman to escape; neither was any woman executed. As for the camp followers and prostitutes, many continued their wartime behavior in the brothels that survived the war.

Capt. Alexander was investigated by a special committee of the Confederate House of Representatives in April 1863. Prisoners testified that they had endured or witnessed floggings, thumb-hangings, sweat rooms, and other torture. After a month-long hearing, the committee found in favor of Alexander, stating "the charges [are] not sustained by the evidence." When Richmond fell, Capt. Alexander found it expedient to flee the country to Canada. His dog was captured by Union soldiers and taken to Washington where, the Whig reported, "he has taken a fancy to his captors, and is trying to be a good, loyal, Union dog." 30

The key to Castle Thunder was passed to Col. Mattison's heirs. In August 2000 Northeast Auctions put it up for sale to the highest bidder. 31

FOOTNOTES

1. Richmond Dispatch, April 6, 1862.

2. War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series II, Vol. VII, pp 204-205.

3. ibid; The Libby Chronicle, August 28, 1863. "Our soup is much too weak to please a very high liver/Tis made of beans, bugs and rice with extract of James river."

4. O.R., Series II, Vol. IV, pp 917.

5. The Libby Chronicle, August 28, 1863.

6. Lonnie Speer, Portals to Hell (Mechanicsburg, PA, 1997), 94.

7. Pinkerton Company Information, Pinkerton History (2000).

8. Richmond Dispatch, April 30, 1862.

9. David D. Ryan (ed.), A Yankee Spy in Richmond (Mechanicsburg, PA, 1996), 44-45.

10. O.R., Series II, Vol. IV, pp 917.

11. Madame Loreta Janeta Velazquez, The Woman in Battle (Hartford: T. Belknap, 1876), 278.

12. ibid, 279-280.

13. Richmond Examiner, June 29, 1864.

14. Rev. J. L. Burrows, "Recollections of Libby Prison," Southern Historical Society Papers, XI (1883), 89-93.

15. Richmond Enquirer, June 10, 1864.

16. Thomas P. Lowry, The Story the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell (Mechanicsburg, PA, 1994), 156.

17. Richmond Dispatch, April 6, 1862.

18. Encyclopedia of the Confederacy, 1993, s.v. "Prostitution."

19. Thomas P. Lowry, The Story the Soldiers Wouldn't Tell (Mechanicsburg, PA, 1994), 71.

20. ibid, 157.

21. Richmond Examiner, July 19, 1864.

22. Richmond Whig, August 24, 1863.

23. O.R., Series II, Vol. V, pp 894.

24. Sandra V. Parker, Richmond's Civil War Prisons (Lynchburg, VA, 1990), 26-27;
Richmond Examiner, February 20, 1862;
Richmond Enquirer, September 5, 1862.

25. Maine Antique Digest, "Northeast Auctions August 19-20, 2000, Lots 1-125"

26. Donald E. Markle, Spies & Spymasters of The Civil War (New York, 1994), 187-188.

27. Pinkerton Company Information, Pinkerton History (2000).

28. Richmond Dispatch, July 16, 1863.

29. Donald E. Markle, Spies & Spymasters of The Civil War (New York, 1994), 188.

30. Richmond Whig, May 19, 1865.

31. Maine Antique Digest, "Northeast Auctions August 19-20, 2000, Lots 1-125"

Copyright © 2002 Priscilla Rhoades
All rights reserved

About the Author

         Priscilla Rhoades is a writer of short stories, poetry and features whose work has appeared in The San Francisco Bay Guardian, The Long Beach Press-Telegram, The Iowa Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, In Posse Review, and other publications. A transplanted Californian, she now lives on two acres in the mountains of western North Carolina.
 
Images courtesy American Memory Collection, Library of Congress. Call numbers availabe upon request.

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