Lumpkin's Jail, also known as "the Devil's half acre", was a holding facility, or slave jail, located just three blocks from the state capitol building. More than five dozen firms traded in enslaved human beings within blocks of Richmond's Wall Street (now 15th Street) between 14th and 18th Streets between the 1830s and the end of the American Civil War. It's final and most notorious owner, Robert Lumpkin, bought and sold slaves throughout the South for well over twenty years, and Lumpkin's Jail became Richmond's largest slave-holding facility.
Over the twenty years the Lumpkin Jail was in operation, thousands of slaves passed through the complex. The most famous inmate was Anthony Burns, who had escaped slavery in Virginia, but was arrested in Boston and tried under the Fugitive Slave Law. Though many lobbied for his release, he was sent back to Lumpkin's Jail and held for four more months until abolitionists raised sufficient funds to buy his freedom. Once freed, he returned to the North and became a pastor.
