A Union officer formerly held prisoner in the Confederates’ Libby Prison in Richmond has written a letter to the newspaper’s editor describing the miseries suffered by the hundreds of Union prisoners there.

‘The three rooms on the upper floor contain at least two hundred Union soldiers each.

Four small-sized windows at each end of these rooms admit a limited amount of light for about 25 feet, leaving about 40 feet in the centre of each [dark].

There are ill-constructed water-closets [flush toilets] in the rooms, which, owing to the continual breaking of the waste pipes, emit a most intolerable effluvia.

In addition to all this, the whole place is one nest of the most abominable vermin.

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