4. The prisoners in the Black Hole of Calcutta were only held there overnight
The name of the Black Hole of Calcutta brings the image to mind of a dungeon in which prisoners were held under the harshest imaginable conditions for what seemed to be an eternity. The conditions, according to survivors, were indeed harsh, with a disputed number of British prisoners of war, employees of the East India Company, and Anglo-Indian soldiers, forced into a cramped, unlit dungeon at Fort William in Bengal. The dungeon measured about 14′ by 18′, and according to one account, 164 men were forced into the room. Two windows to the outside were so heavily barred that ventilation was restricted. The following morning 143 of the prisoners were dead of suffocation.
The bodies of the dead were disposed of in a ditch outside of the fort’s walls, and the remaining prisoners were held for another two days before being released to work. Other survivors of the Black Hole were transferred to other prisons. Robert Clive’s successful expedition to retake Calcutta resulted in the overthrow and death of the Bengal Nawab history holds responsible for the death of the prisoners, Siraj ud-Daulah, though some of the survivors of the Black Hole recorded that in their opinion the Nawab had been unaware of the imprisonment. None of the accounts of the tale agree regarding the number imprisoned, the number of dead, and the length of the imprisonment, but the Black Hole of Calcutta became synonymous with the direst of circumstances.