Beverly; Or, The White Mask

# Beverly; or, The White Mask by Mansfield Tracy Walworth (1872)

This novel by Walworth, author of Warwick and Hotspur, opens with an unnumbered, non-fictional chapter documenting torture practices at Sing Sing prison in New York. The account describes a young prisoner named William Burke being suspended by his thumbs from a pulley for refusing to work due to reported heart pain, enduring multiple hoists until fainting. The ordeal is interrupted by state Senator Delancy, who orders the convict's release and subsequently advocates—unsuccessfully—for abolishing these torture instruments. The narrative proper then begins with Chapter I, set during a midnight storm in New York, depicting a man at a window overcome with tears and emotional anguish. The text positions itself as both social critique and romance, with the prison episode claimed as essential background for the fictional plot development.