Both types of the token, 3 A as well as 3 B, have on the obverse below the left corner of the fence, the initial L, representing the name of the engraver, George H. Lovett, who is listed in the New York City Directory of 1859 as die-sinker at 131 Fulton Street. He executed all the Sage tokens and several very pretty Washington medals.
The medallic picture of the “Old Provoost” is undoubtedly based on Alexander J. Davis’s (1803-1892) drawing that was engraved by Alexander Anderson (1775-1870) and reproduced in _The New York Mirror_ of September 10, 1831, in John Pintard’s article, “The Old Jail.”
The site of this “modern bastille” was City Hall Park. It was built as the second jail, in succession, in the City of New York in 1757 and completed in 1759. In the revolutionary period it was memorable during the occupation of the City by the British forces, from 1776 to 1783, as a British military prison, known as “Provost” and later as “Martyr’s Prison”, still later as “Debtor’s Prison”. In 1830 it was reconstructed and fitted to receive public records, henceforth known as “Register’s Office” or “Hall of Records”. It was finally demolished in 1903 to make way for the Subway. Coins, buttons, and human bones were found in the excavation. A tablet, erected in 1907, on a granite monument in the Park still marks the site of the “Old Provost.”
This British military prison, under the superintendence of the ill-famed Captain Cunningham, Provost-Marshall—from whom it took its name—and his deputy, Sergeant Keefe, was the scene of great brutalities to American, or, in the language of the times, “rebel” prisoners during the Revolution. The Provost was destined, as John Pintard, the meritorious New York historian, tells us, for the more notorious rebels, civil, naval, and military. An admission into this prison was enough to appall the stoutest heart. On the second floor, called derisively “Congress Hall,” prisoners of note were confined, citizens of distinction and many American officers, among them the famous Colonel Ethan Allen and Judge Fell, of Bergen county, New Jersey. Could these dumb walls speak, John Pintard exclaims, what scenes of anguish, what tales of agonizing woe, might they disclose. In his aforementioned article he gave a vivid account of the “Old Jail’s” history well known to him from the personal reminiscences of many a distinguished prisoner still living in his day.