"[4] Similarly, in 1832 a Welsh newspaper reprinted several slave-trade ads from the Washington Intelligencer, including one by Jilson Dove and one of Robey's, and commented that they would be read with "astonishment and disgust.

"[5] Together with Williams brothers' Yellow House, and the slave jail of Franklin & Armfield in Alexandria, District of Columbia, the national capital of the United States was one of the busiest and most prominent slave-trading hubs in the country by the 1830s.

"[7] Robey's jail was in use in December 1830 when the Genius of Universal Emancipation described a procession of "colored human beings handcuffed in pairs, and driven along by what had the appearance of a man on a horse!

A similar scene was repeated on Saturday last; a drove consisting of males and females chained in couples, starting from Robey's tavern on foot, for Alexandria, where, with others, they are to embark on board a slave-ship in waiting to convey them to the South.

[11] Robey's jail was visited in 1833 or 1834 by a British traveler named E. S. Abdy, who later described it in his book about the United States:[12] One day I went to see the 'slaves' pen'— a wretched hovel, right against the Capitol, from which it is distant about half a mile, with no house intervening.

The outside alone is accessible to the eye of a visitor; what passes within being reserved for the exclusive observation of its owner, (a man of the name of Robey,) and his unfortunate victims.

It is surrounded by a wooden paling fourteen or fifteen feet in height, with the posts outside to prevent escape, and separated from the building by a space too narrow to admit of a free circulation of air.

At a small window above, which was unglazed and exposed alike to the heat of summer and the cool of winter...two or three sable faces appeared, looking out wistfully, to while away the time and catch a refreshing breeze; the weather being extremely hot.

"[13] In September 1833, a man named Robert Thomas petitioned the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia for a writ of habeas corpus as he claimed he was legally free and "entitled to his freedom & is unlawfully held in confinement" in the jail of Washington Robey.