Of course, as we have seen over and over again, prisoners rarely if ever received the quantity or quality of rations to which they were supposedly entitled. On the Jersey or
in the Sugar House, all of them must have lost weight rapidly, some dangerously so.
In conjunction with poor to nonexistent sanitation, rapid weight loss accelerated the
spread of scurvy, typhus, dysentery, and other diseases. Men who survived even a month
under these conditions would have been reduced to listless, vermin-infested skeletons.
Few appear to have lasted more than six months, and it was only the rare prisoner
who managed to hang on for a year or more... the overall mortality rate (percentage of
prisoners who died) was almost certainly in the range of 50 to 70 percent.