Conditions

    Many prisoners suffered from a lack of warmth.  A big coal stove every fifty feet was always kept red hot.  But for these stoves th most of them would have frozen to death.  Around each stove was a chalk mark five feet from each stove marking the distance that they should keep so that everyone would stay warm.  By the end of August almost ten thousand men were confined there, many of them sleeping in the open in tattered clothing and without blankets.  Whhen southern families sent clothes and blankets for the prisoners, Hoffman would allow only items that contained the gray color to be distributed.  Clothes and blankets in other colors were burned while the male family members,for whom they  were intended literally froze to death. At the end of the war , two thousand nine hundred sixty three  Elmira prisnors were dead.
 
 
 

    Another situation was starvatoin.  The prisoners rations for food were only ten ounces of bread and two ounces of meat per day.  They invented all kinds of traps and deadfalls to catch rats.  Every day Northern ladies would comeinto the prison, some followed by dogs or cats, which the boys would slip aside and choke to death.  The ribs of a stewed dog were delicious.
 
 

   One of the worst cases was disease.  The over crouded population ensured that any disease introduced to the malnourishment of the prisoners would spread rapidly.  Without meat and vegetables, the prisoners quickly succumbed to scurvy, with 1,870 cases reported by September 11.  The scurvy was followed by an epidemic of diarrhea, then pneumonia and smallpox.  Bt the end of the year,1,264 prisoners had died , and the survivors nick named the prison "Hellmira".