Quote
Journal of Occurrences in my Voyage to Philadelphia on board the Berkshire, Henry Clark, Master, from London.
Wednesday, July 27th, 1726
The people of Portsmouth tell strange stories of the severity of one Gibson1, who was governor of this place in the Queen’s2 time, to his soldiers, and show you a miserable dungeon by the town gate, which they call Johnny Gibson’s Hole, where, for trifling misdemeanours, he used to confine his soldiers till they were almost starved to death.
— Sparks, Jared (1882) The Works of Benjamin Franklin3. Whittemore Niles and Hall, Boston. source
“Johnny Gibson’s Hole”. I’ve got this funny feeling Ben Franklin didn’t completely understand the local sense of humour.
The Chronicles of Portsmouth by Henry and Julian Slight quotes Franklin in 1828. Those are the only two pre-1900 sources I can find.