She was only one of many who followed the same trade. David James Dignum was convicted in 1777 of pretending to sell places under Government, and sentenced to hard labour on the Thames. Dignum’s was a barefaced kind of imposition. He went the length of handing his victims, in exchange for the fees, which were never less than a hundred guineas, a stamped parchment duly signed by the head of the public department, with seals properly attached. In one case he got £1000 for pretending to secure a person the office of “writer of the ‘London Gazette.’ ” Of course the signatures to these instruments were forged, and the seals had been removed from some legal warrant. When the time came for Dignum’s departure for the hulks, he resolved to go to Woolwich in state, and travelled down in a post-chaise, accompanied by his negro servant. But on reaching the ballast lighter on which Dignum was to work, his valet was refused admittance, and the convict was at once “put to the duty of the wheelbarrow.” He made a desperate effort to get off by forging a cheque on Drummonds, which he got others to cash. They were arrested, but their innocence was clearly shown. Dignum had hoped to be brought up to London for examination. He had thought to change his lot, to exchange the hulks for Newgate, even at the risk of winding up at Tyburn. But in this he was foiled, as the authorities thought it best to institute no prosecution, but leave him to work out his time at the hulks.

That the dishonest and evilly-disposed should thus try to turn the malversation of public patronage to their own advantage was not strange. The traffic in places long flourished unchecked in a corrupt age, and almost under the very eyes of careless, not to say culpable, administrators. The evil practice culminated in the now nearly forgotten case of Mrs. Mary Ann Clarke, who undoubtedly profited liberally by her pernicious influence over the Duke of York when commander-in-chief of the army. The scandal was brought prominently before the public by Colonel Wardle, M.P., who charged her with carrying on a traffic in military commissions, not only with the knowledge, but the participation, of the Duke of York. A long inquiry followed, at which extraordinary disclosures were made. Mrs. Clarke was proved to have disposed of both military and ecclesiastical patronage. She gave her own footman a pair of colours, and procured for an Irish clergyman the honour of preaching before the King. Her brokership extended to any department of state, and her lists of applicants included numbers of persons in the best classes of society. The Duke of York was exonerated from the charge of deriving any pecuniary benefit from this disgraceful traffic; but it was clear that he was cognizant of Mrs. Clarke’s proceedings, and that he knowingly permitted her to barter his patronage for filthy lucre. Mrs. Clarke was examined in person at the bar of the house. In the end a vote acquitted the duke of personal corruption, and the matter was allowed to drop. But a little later Colonel Wardle was sued by an upholsterer for furniture supplied at his order to Mrs. Clarke, and the disinterestedness of the colonel’s exposure began to be questioned. In 1814 Mrs. Clarke was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment for a libel on the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer.

A clever scheme of deception which went very near success was that perpetrated by Robert Jaques. Jaques filled the post of “clerk of the papers” to the warden of the Fleet, a place which he had himself solicited, on the plea that he was a man of experience, able to guard the warden against the tricks incident to his trust. Jaques admitted that his own antecedents were none of the best, that he had been frequently in gaol, but he pleaded that “men like himself, who had been guilty of the worst offences, had afterwards become the best officers.” No sooner was Jaques appointed than he began to mature a plot against his employer. The warden of the Fleet by his office became responsible for the debt of any prisoner in his custody who might escape. Jaques at once cast about for some one whom he might through a third party cause to be arrested, brought to the Fleet on a sham action, and whom he would assist to escape. The third party’s business would then be to sue the warden for the amount of the evaded debt. Jaques applied to a friend, Mr. Tronson, who had been a servant, an apothecary, a perfumer, and a quack doctor. Tronson found him one Shanley, a needy Irishman, short of stature and of fair complexion, altogether a person who might well be disguised as a woman. Jaques next arranged that a friend should get a warrant against Shanley for £450. Upon this, Shanley, who was easily found, being a “dressy young gentleman, fond of blue and gold,” was arrested and carried to a spunging-house. While there a second writ was served upon Shanley for £850, at the suit of another friend of Jaques. Shanley was next transferred to the Fleet on a Habeas, applied for by a fictitious attorney. The very next Sunday, Jaques gave a dinner-party, at which his wife, a brother, Mr. John Jaques, and his wife, with some of the parties to the suits, and of course Shanley, were present. Later in the day Shanley exchanged clothes with Mrs. John Jaques, and, personating her, walked out of the prison. It was at a time when an under turnkey was on duty at the gate, and he let the disguised prisoner pass without question. By-and-by Mrs. Jaques got back her clothes, and also left. Shanley had meanwhile proceeded post haste to Dover, and so reached the continent.

As soon as the escape was discovered, suspicion fell on Jaques’s friends, who were openly taxed with connivance. The matter looked worse for them when they laid claim to the money considered forfeited by the disappearance of the debtor, and the law stepped in to prosecute inquiry. The head turnkey, tracking Shanley to Calais, went in pursuit. At the same time a correspondence which was in progress between the conspirators on either side of the Channel was intercepted by order of the Secretary of State, and the letters handed over to the warden’s solicitors. From these the whole plot was discovered, and the guilt of the parties rendered the more sure by the confession of Shanley. Jaques was arrested, tried, and convicted at the Old Bailey, receiving the sentence of three years’ imprisonment, with one public exposure on the pillory at the Royal Exchange. A curious accident, however, helped to obtain the premature release of Jaques from Newgate. A Sir James Saunderson having been robbed of a large sum in cash and notes, portion of the stolen property was brought into Newgate by some of the thieves, who were arrested on another charge. The notes were intrusted to Jaques, who pretended he could raise money on them. Instead of this, he gave immediate notice to their rightful owner that he had them in his possession. Jaques afterwards petitioned Sir James Saunderson to interest himself in his behalf, and through this gentleman’s good offices he escaped the exposure upon the pillory, and was eventually pardoned.

A peculiar feature in the criminal records of the early part of the present century was the general increase in juvenile depravity. This was remarked and commented upon by all concerned in the administration of justice: magistrates of all categories, police officers, gaolers, and philanthropists. It was borne out, moreover, by the statistics of the times. There were in the various London prisons, in the year 1816, three thousand inmates under twenty years of age. Nearly half of this number were under seventeen, and a thousand of these alone were convicted of felony. Many of those sent to prison were indeed of tender years. Some were barely nine or ten. Children began to steal when they could scarcely crawl. Cases were known of infants of barely six charged in the courts with crimes. This deplorable depravity was attributable to various causes: to the profligacy prevailing in the parish schools; the cruel and culpable neglect of parents who deserted their offspring, leaving them in a state of utter destitution, or were guilty of the no less disgraceful wickedness of using them as instruments for their nefarious designs; the artfulness of astute villains—prototypes of old Fagin—who trained the youthful idea in their own devious ways. The last-named was a fruitful source of juvenile crime. Children were long permitted to commit small thefts with impunity. The offence would have been death to those who used them as catspaws; for them capital punishment was humanely nearly impossible; moreover, the police officers ignored them till they “weighed their weight,” or had been guilty of a forty-pound crime.[15] The education in iniquity continued steadily. They went from bad to worse, and ere long became regular inmates of “flash houses,” where both sexes mixed freely with vicious companions of their own age, and the most daring enjoyed the hero-worship of their fellows. When thus assembled, they formed themselves into distinct parties or gangs, each choosing one of their number as captain, and dividing themselves into reliefs to work certain districts, one by day and by night. When they had “collared their swag,” they returned to divide their plunder, having gained sometimes as much as three or four hundred pounds. A list of these horrible dens prepared about this date showed that there were two hundred of them, frequented by six thousand boys and girls, who lived solely by this way, or were the associates of thieves. These haunts were situated in St. Giles, Drury Lane, Chick Lane, Saffron Hill, the Borough, and Ratcliffe Highway. Others that were out of luck crowded the booths of Covent Garden, where all slept promiscuously amongst the rotting garbage of the stalls. During the daytime all were either actively engaged in thieving, or were revelling in low amusements. Gambling was a passion with them, indulged in without let or hindrance in the open streets; and from tossing buttons there they passed on to playing in the low publics at such games as “put,” or “the rocks of Scylla,” “bumble puppy,” “tumble tumble,” or “nine holes.”

Still more demoralizing than the foregoing was the pernicious habit, commonly, but happily not invariably followed, of committing these young thieves to Newgate. Here these tyros were at once associated with the veterans and great leaders in crime. Old house-breakers expatiated upon their own deeds, and found eager and willing pupils among their youthful listeners. The elder and more evilly experienced boys soon debased and corrupted their juniors. One with twenty previous convictions against him, who had been in Newgate as often, would have alongside him an infant of seven or eight, sent to gaol for the first time for stealing a hearth-broom. It was as bad or worse for the females. Girls of twelve or thirteen were mixed up with the full-grown felons; one of the latter, as in a known case, who was what we should style in these days an habitual criminal, and who had been committed thirty times to Newgate, residing there generally nine months out of every twelve, was the wardswoman or prisoner-officer, with nearly unlimited power.

The crying evils of the system had moved private philanthropy to do something in remedy. Charitable schools, the forerunners of our modern reformatories, or the germ and nucleus of time-honoured institutions still flourishing, and worthy all praise, were started. I shall refer to these more particularly in a later chapter.[16] Other well-meaning people, each with their own pet scheme, began to theorize and propose the construction of juvenile penitentiaries, economical imitations mostly of the great penitentiary which was nearly completed at Millbank. But juvenile crime still grew and flourished, the offences were as numerous as ever, and their character was mostly the same. The most favourite pastime was that of picking pockets. Boys then as now were especially skilful at this in a crowd; short, active little chaps, they slipped through quickly with their booty, and passed it on to the master who was directing the operations. Shop-lifting, again, was much practised, the dodge being to creep along on hands and feet to the shop fronts of haberdashers and linen-drapers, and snatch what they could. Again, there were clever young thieves who could “starr” a pane in a window, and so get their hands through the glass. But there were boys convicted of highway robbery, like Joseph Wood and Thomas Underwood, one fourteen and the other twelve, both of whom were hanged. Another boy, barely sixteen, was executed for setting his master’s house on fire. The young incendiary was pot-boy at a public-house, and having been reprimanded for neglect, vowed revenge. Another boy was condemned for forming one of a gang of boys and girls in a street robbery, who fell upon a man in liquor. The girls attacked him, and the boys stripped him of all he had.

Perhaps the most astounding precocity in crime was that displayed by a boy named Leary, who was tried and sentenced to death at thirteen years of age for stealing a watch and chain from some chambers in the Temple. He began at the early age of eight, and progressed regularly from stealing apples to burglary and household robbery. He learnt the trade first from a companion at school. After exacting toll from the tart-shops, he took to stealing bakers’ loaves, then money from shop counters and tills, or breaking shop windows and drawing their contents through. He often appeared at school with several pounds in his pocket, the proceeds of his depredations. He soon became captain of a gang known as Leary’s gang, who drove about, armed with pistols, in a cart, watching for carriages with the trunks fastened outside, which they could cut away. In these excursions the gang was often out for a week or more, Leary’s share of the profits amounting sometimes to £100. Once, the result of several robberies in and about London, he amassed some £350, but the money was partly stolen from him by older thieves, or he squandered it in gambling, or in the flash houses. After committing innumerable depredations, he was captured in a gentleman’s dining-room in the act of abstracting a quantity of plate. He was found guilty, but out of compassion committed to the Philanthropic School. He was recaptured, however, and eventually sentenced to transportation for life.

The prevailing tastes of the populace were in these times low and depraved. Their amusements were brutal, their manners and customs disreputable, their morality at the lowest ebb. It is actually on record that little more than a hundred years ago a man and his wife were convicted of offering their niece, “a fine young girl, apparently fourteen years of age,” for sale

WHIPPING AT THE OLD BAILEY.
WHIPPING AT THE OLD BAILEY.

at the Royal Exchange. Mr. and Mrs. Crouch were residents of Bodmin, Cornwall, to which remote spot came a report that “maidens were very scarce in London, and that they sold there for a good price.” They accordingly travelled up to town by road, two hundred and thirty-two miles, and on arrival hawked the poor girl about the streets. At length they “accosted an honest captain of a ship, who instantly made known the base proposal they had made to him.” The Crouches were arrested and tried; the man was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment in Newgate, but his wife, as having acted under his influence, was acquitted.

Traffic in dead bodies was more actively prosecuted. The wretches who gained the name of Resurrection men despoiled graveyards to purvey subjects for the dissecting knife. There were dealers who traded openly in these terrible goods, and, as has been seen in the chapter on executions, their agents haggled for corpses at the foot of the gallows. Sometimes the culprits were themselves the guardians of the sacred precincts. I find that the grave-digger of St. George’s, Bloomsbury, was convicted, with a female accomplice, of stealing a dead body, and sentenced to imprisonment. They were also “whipped twice on their bare backs from the end of King’s Gate Street, Holborn, to Dyot Street, St. Giles, being half a mile.” To this crime, and its development in the persons of Burke and Hare, I shall recur on a later page.

Disorderly gatherings for the prosecution of the popular sports were of constant occurrence. The vice of gambling was openly practised in the streets. It was also greatly fostered by the metropolitan fairs, of which there were eighty annually, lasting from Easter to September, when Bartholomew Fair was held. These fairs were the resort of the idle and the profligate, and most of the desperate characters in London were included in the crowd. Another favourite amusement was bull-baiting or bullock-hunting. Sunday morning was generally chosen for this pastime. A subscription was made to pay the hire of an animal from some drover or butcher, which was forthwith driven through the most populous parts of the town; often across church-yards when divine service was in progress, pursued by a yelling mob, who goaded the poor brute to madness with sharp pointed sticks, or thrust peas into its ears. When nearly dead the poor beast rejoined its herd, and was driven on to Smithfield market. A system of bull-baits was introduced at Westminster by two notorious characters known as Caleb Baldwin and Hubbersfield, otherwise Slender Billy, which attracted great crowds, and led to drunkenness and scenes of great disorder.

Towards the close of the eighteenth century a still lower and more debasing amusement sprang suddenly into widespread popularity. The patronage of pugilism or prize-fighting was no doubt supposed by many to be the glorification of the national virtues of courage and endurance. It was also greatly due to the gradual disuse of the practice of carrying side-arms, when it was thought that quarrels would be fought out with fists instead of swords. Hence the “noble art of self-defence,” as it was styled magniloquently, found supporters in every class of society. Prize-fights first became fashionable about 1788, following a great encounter between two noted pugilists, named Richard Humphreys and Daniel Mendoza, a Jew. Sporting papers were filled with accounts of the various fights, which peer and pickpocket attended side by side, and which even a Royal Prince did not disdain to honour. These professional bruisers owned many noble patrons. Besides, the Prince of Wales, the Dukes of Clarence and York, the Duke of Hamilton, Lords Barrymore and others, attended prize-fights and sparring matches at theatres and public places. A well-known pugilist, who was summoned for an assault at Covent Garden Theatre, brought forward in his defence the terms of intimacy he was on with noted people; the very day on which he was charged, that he had dined at the Piazza Coffee House with General Gwynne, Colonel McDouel, Captains Barkley and Hanbury, after which they had all gone to the theatre. These aristocratic friends were, moreover, ready to be useful at a pinch, and would bail out a pugilist in trouble, or give him their countenance and support. At the trial of one William Ward, who had killed a man in a fight, the pugilist was attended by his patrons in court. The case was a bad one. Ward, on his way to see a fight in the country, had been challenged by a drunken blacksmith, and proved to him after a few rounds that he was no match for the trained bruiser. The blacksmith did not like his “punishment,” and tried to escape into the bar, when his antagonist followed him, and actually beat him to death. At the trial Ward was found guilty of manslaughter, fined one shilling, and only sentenced to be imprisoned three months in Newgate. Yet the judge who inflicted this light punishment condemned boxing as an inhuman and disgraceful practice, a disgrace to any civilized nation.

To the foregoing categories of undoubted criminals must be added another pretty numerous class of offenders, who were at least so deemed by contemporary codes, and who now frequently found themselves relegated to Newgate. These were days when the press had far from achieved its present independence; when writers, chafing under restraints and reckless of consequence, were tempted into licence from sheer bravado and opposition; when others far more innocent were brought under the same ban of the law, and suffered imprisonment and fine for a hardly unwarrantable freedom of speech. It is to be feared that the frequent prosecutions instituted had often their origin in political antipathy. While ministerial prints might libel and revile the opponents of the governments, journals which did not spare the party in power were humiliated and brow-beaten, difficulties were thrown in the way of their obtaining intelligence, and if they dared to express their opinions freely, “an information ex officio,” as it was styled, was issued by the Attorney-General. Prosecution followed, protracted to the bitter end. Even what seems to us the harmless practice of parliamentary reporting was deemed a breach of privilege; it was tolerated, but never expressly permitted. Offending journalists were often reprimanded at the bar of the House, and any member who felt aggrieved at the language attributed to him was at liberty to claim the protection of the House. When legislators and executive were so sensitive, it was hardly likely that the great ones, the supposed salt of the earth, should be less thin-skinned. Any kind of criticism upon princes of the blood was looked upon as rank blasphemy; the morals of a not blameless or too reputable aristocracy were guaranteed immunity from attack, while the ecclesiastical hierarchy was apparently not strong enough to vindicate its tenets or position without having recourse to the secular arm.

As time passed, the early martyrs to freedom of speech, such men as Prynne Bastwick and Daniel Defoe, were followed by many victims to similar oppression. One of the first to suffer after Defoe was the nonjuring clergyman Lawrence Howell, who died in Newgate. He was prosecuted about 1720 for writing a pamphlet in which he denounced George I. as a usurper. He was tried at the Old Bailey, convicted, and sentenced to pay a fine of £500 to the king, to find sureties for an additional sum, to be imprisoned in Newgate for three years, and during that term to be twice whipped. He was also to be degraded and stripped of his gown by the common executioner. Howell asked indignantly of his judges, “Who will whip a clergyman?” “We pay no deference to your cloth,” replied the court, “because you are a disgrace to it, and have no right to wear it.” The validity of his ordination was also denied by the court, and as Howell continued to protest, the hangman was ordered to tear off his gown as he stood there at the bar. The public whipping was not inflicted, but Howell died soon afterwards in Newgate.

Next came Nathaniel Mist, who was sentenced in 1721 to stand in the pillory, to pay a fine, and suffer imprisonment for reflecting upon the action of George I. as regards the Protestants in the Palatinate. His paper, the ‘Weekly Journal’ or ‘Saturday’s Post,’ was notoriously Jacobite in its views. Soon afterwards he came under the displeasure of the House of Commons for instituting comparisons between the times of the ’15 rebellion and those which followed, and was committed to Newgate for uttering a “false, malicious, and scandalous libel.” This interference by the House with Mist’s publications in a matter which did not concern its privileges is characterized by Hallam as an extraordinary assumption of parliamentary power. Tom Paine, whose rationalist writings gained him much obloquy later on, was one of the next in point of time to feel the arm of the law. In 1724 he was convicted of three libels on the Government, fined £100, and imprisoned for a year. A clergyman, William Rowland, was put in the pillory in 1729 for commenting too freely in print on two magistrates who had failed to convict and punish prisoners charged with unnatural crimes. Mr. Rowland was pilloried in his canonical habit, and preached all the time to the multitude, complaining of the injustice of his sentence, “whereupon the people, and amongst them were several women, made a collection for him.”

About 1730, newspapers were especially established for purposes of political party warfare, and each side libelled or prosecuted the other in turn. The ‘Craftsman’ about this date sprang into the first rank for wit and invective. Its editors were constantly in trouble; the statesmen who supported it had to defend their bantling with their swords. In 1738 the printer, Henry Haines, was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for producing the paper. In 1759 Dr. Shebbeare was fined, put in the pillory, and imprisoned for three years, his offence being the publication of what was deemed a scandalous libel in his ‘Sixth Letter to the English People.’ Four years later, John Wilkes, M.P., started the ‘North Briton,’ a Liberal print, in opposition to Smollet’s ‘Briton,’ a Tory paper, which was subsidized and supported by Lord Bute, then in power. John Wilkes was no doubt assisted by Lord Temple and John Churchill the satirist. The ‘North Briton’ had been intended to assail Lord Bute’s government, but it was not until its forty-fifth number that the dash and boldness of its contributors attracted general attention. In this number a writer rashly accused the king of falsehood.[17] The matter was at once taken up; proceedings were instituted against printer and publisher, who were arrested, as was also Wilkes. These arrests subsequently formed the subject of lengthy lawsuits; they were in the end declared illegal, and all three got heavy damages. Wilkes was, however, expelled from the House, by whose order the offending numbers of the ‘North Briton’ were burnt by the common hangman. But these measures did not extinguish the ‘North Briton,’ which was continued as far as the two hundred and seventeenth number, when Mr. William Bingley, a bookseller, who at that time owned it, was committed to Newgate, and kept there a couple of years for refusing to reply to interrogatories connected with an earlier number of the paper. Wilkes, who had fled to France to escape imprisonment, next fell under the displeasure of the House of Lords. The ‘London Evening Post,’ a paper which had already come into collision with the Commons for presuming to publish reports of debates, committed the seemingly venial offence of inserting a letter from Wilkes, in which he commented rather freely upon a peer of the realm at that time British Ambassador in Paris. The House of Lords could not touch Wilkes, but they took proceedings against the printer for breach of privilege in presuming to mention the name of one of its members,[18] and fined him £100. The precedent soon became popular, and in succeeding sessions printers were constantly fined whenever they mentioned, even by accident, the name of a peer.

Journalism was in these days an ill-used profession. The reign of George III. must always be remembered as a time when newspapers and those who wrote them were at the mercy of the people in power. Grant[19] declares that the despotic and tyrannical treatment of the press during the several administrations under George III. had no parallel in English history. The executive was capriciously sensitive to criticism, and readily roused to extreme measures. No newspaper indeed was safe; the editors of Liberal prints, or their contributors, who touched on political subjects were at the mercy of the Attorney-General. Any morning’s issue might be made the subject of a prosecution, and every independent writer on the wrong side went in daily dread of fine, the pillory, or committal to Newgate.[20] Among the early records of the great organ which custom has long honoured with the title of the “leading journal,” are several instances of the dangers journalists ran. The ‘Daily Universal Register,’ started by the first Mr. John Walter in 1785, became the ‘Times’ in 1788. On the 11th July, 1789, the publisher—at that time Mr. Walter himself—of the paper was tried and convicted of alleged libels on three royal dukes, York, Gloucester, and Cumberland, whose joy at the recovery of the king the ‘Times’ dared to characterize as “insincere.” The sentence decreed and inflicted was a fine of £50, imprisonment in Newgate for one year, and exposure on the pillory at Charing Cross. A second prosecution followed, intended to protect, and if possible rehabilitate, the Prince of Wales, and Mr. Walter, having been brought from Newgate for the trial, was sentenced to a further fine of £100, and a like sum for a libel on the Duke of Clarence. Mr. Walter remained in Newgate for eighteen months, and was released in March 1791, having been pardoned at the instance of the Prince of Wales.

Nor was the law invoked in favour of our own princes alone. A few years later a foreign monarch obtained equal protection, and the editor, printer, and publisher of the ‘Courier’ were fined and imprisoned for stigmatizing the Czar of Russia as a tyrant among his own subjects, and ridiculous to the rest of Europe. The House of Peers, including the Bench of Bishops, continued very sensitive. In 1799 the printer of the ‘Cambridge Intelligence’ was brought to the bar of the House, charged for reflecting on the speech of the Bishop of Llandaff concerning the union with Ireland. Lord Grenville moved that the printer should be fined £100 and committed to Newgate; Lord Holland protested, but it was justified by Lord Kenyon, and the motion was carried. Lord Kenyon did not spare the unfortunates arraigned before him for libel. One Thomas Spence, who published a pamphlet called ‘Spence’s Restorer of Society,’ in which the abolition of private ownership of land was advocated, and its investment in parishes for the good of the public at large, was brought before Lord Kenyon, and sentenced by him to twelve months’ imprisonment and a fine of £50. Another peer, Lord Ellenborough, who prosecuted Messrs. White and Hart for a libel in 1808, obtained a conviction against them, and a sentence of three years’ imprisonment.

In 1810 the House of Commons distinguished itself by a prosecution which led to rather serious consequences. At a debate on the Walcheren expedition, a member, Mr. Yorke, had insisted from day to day upon the exclusion of strangers, and another, Mr. Windham, had inveighed violently against press reporting. Upon this a question was discussed at a debating society known as the “British Forum,” as to whether Mr. Yorke’s or Mr. Windham’s conduct was the greater outrage on the public feeling. The decision was given against Mr. Yorke, and the result announced in a placard outside. This placard was constituted a breach of privilege, “comment upon the proceedings of the House being deemed a contravention of the Bill of Rights.” A Mr. John Gale Jones confessing himself the author of the placard, he was forthwith committed to Newgate. Sir Francis Burdett took Jones’ part, and published his protest, signed, in Cobbett’s ‘Weekly Register.’ The House on this ordered the Sergeant-at-arms to arrest Sir Francis and take him to the Tower. Sir Francis resisted, and was carried off by force.[21] A riot occurred en route, the crowd attacked the escort, and the troops fired, with fatal consequences, upon the crowd. Sir Francis appealed to the law courts, which in the end refused to take cognizance of the questions at issue, and he was released, returning home in triumph. Mr. John Gale Jones claimed to be tried, and refused to leave Newgate without it; but he was got out by a stratagem, loudly complaining that he had been illegally imprisoned, and illegally thrust out. Jones was sentenced in the autumn of the same year to twelve months’ imprisonment in Coldbath Fields Gaol. Another and a better known writer found himself in Newgate about this time. In 1810 William Cobbett was tried for animadverting too openly upon the indignity of subjecting English soldiers to corporal punishment, for which he was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in Newgate, and a fine of £1000. This was not his first prosecution, but it was by far the most serious. Shorter sentences of imprisonment were imposed on his printers and publishers, Messrs. Hansard, Budd, and Bagshaw.

Some other notable criminals found themselves in Newgate about this date. In 1809 it became the place of punishment for two Government officials who were convicted of embezzlement on a large scale. The first, Mr. Alexander Davison, was employed to purchase barrack-stores for the Government on commission. He was intrusted with this duty by the barrack-master general, as a person of extensive mercantile experience, to avoid the uncertainty of trusting to contractors. Mr. Davison was to receive a commission of 2½ per cent. Instead of buying in the best and cheapest markets, he himself became the seller, thus making a profit on the goods and receiving the commission as well; or, in the words of Mr. Justice Grose, Davison, when “receiving a stipend to check the frauds of others, and insure the best commodities at the cheapest rate, became the tradesman and seller of the article, and had thereby an interest to increase his own profit, and to commit that fraud it was his duty to prevent.” Davison disgorged some £18,000 of his ill-won profits, and this was taken into consideration in his sentence, which was limited to imprisonment in Newgate for twenty-one months. The other delinquent was Mr. Valentine Jones, who had been appointed commissary-general and superintendent of forage and provisions in the West Indies in 1795. A large British force was at that time stationed in the West Indian Islands, which entailed vast disbursements from the public exchequer. The whole of this money passed through the hands of Mr. Jones. His career of fraud began directly he took over his duties. Mr. Higgins, a local merchant, came to him proposing to renew contracts for the supply of the troops, but Mr. Jones would only consent to their renewal on condition that he shared Mr. Higgins’ profits. Higgins protested, but at length yielded. Within three years the enormous sum of £87,000 sterling was paid over to Jones as his share in this nefarious transaction. Mr. Jones was tried at the King’s Bench and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment in Newgate.

Soon afterwards a person of very high rank was committed to Newgate. This was the Marquis of Sligo, who was convicted of enticing British men-of-war’s men to desert, and sentenced to imprisonment, with a fine of £5000. Lord Sligo went to Malta soon after leaving College, and there hired a brig, the ‘Pylades,’ intending to make a yachting tour in the Grecian Archipelago. The admiral at Malta and other naval officers helped Lord Sligo to fit out the ‘Pylades,’ and he was welcomed on board the various king’s ships. From one of these several trusty seamen were shortly afterwards missing. Their captain trusted to Lord Sligo’s honour that he had not decoyed these men, and that he would not receive them; but at that moment the deserters were actually on board the ‘Pylades,’ having been enticed from the service by Lord Sligo’s servants. The ‘Pylades’ then went on her cruise along the Mediterranean. Suspicion seems to have still rested on Lord Sligo, and after leaving Palermo the ‘Pylades’ was chased and brought to by H.M.S. ‘Active.’ A boat boarded the ‘Pylades,’ her crew was mustered and examined, but the deserters had been securely hidden in the after hold, and were not discovered. A little later Lord Sligo sailed for Patmos, where some of the crew landed and were left behind; among them were the men-of-war’s-men, through whom the whole affair was brought to light. Lord Sligo was arrested on his return to England, and tried at the Old Bailey. The evidence was conclusive. In the course of the trial a letter was put in from Lord Sligo, to the effect that if the business was brought into court he should do his best to defend himself; if he did not succeed, he had an ample fortune, and could pay the fines. No money, however, could save him from incarceration, and in accordance with the sentence of Sir William Scott, who was supported on the bench by Lord Ellenborough and Mr. Baron Thompson, the Marquis of Sligo was sent to Newgate for four months.

CHAPTER II.

NEWGATE DOWN TO 1818.

UNDER the conditions referred to in the previous chapter, with criminals and misdemeanants of all shades crowding perpetually into its narrow limits, the latter state of Newgate was worse than the first. The new gaol fell as far short of the demands made on it as did the old. The prison population fluctuated a great deal, but it was almost always in excess of the accommodation available, and there were times when the place was full to overflowing. Neild[22] gives some figures which well illustrate this. On the 14th June, 1800, there were 199 debtors and 289 felons in the prison. On the 27th April, in the following year, these numbers had risen to 275 and 375 respectively, or 650 in all. For two more years these high figures were steadily maintained, and in 1803 the total rose to 710. After that they fell as steadily, till, 1808, the lowest point was touched of 197 debtors and 182 felons, or 379 in all. The numbers soon increased, however, and by 1811 had again risen to 629; and Mr. Neild was told that there had been at one time 300 debtors and 900 criminals in Newgate, or 1200 prisoners in all. Previous to that date there had been 700 or 800 frequently, and once, in Mr. Akerman’s time, 1000. Trustworthy evidence is forthcoming to the effect that these high figures were constantly maintained for many months at a time. The inadequacy of the gaol was noticed and reported upon again and again by the grand juries of the city of London, who seldom let a session go by without visiting Newgate. In 1813 the grand jury made a special presentment to the Court of Common Council, pointing out that on the debtors’ side, which was intended for only 100, no less than 340 were crowded, to the great inconvenience and danger of the inmates. On the female side matters were much worse; “the apartments set apart for them, being built to accommodate 60 persons, now contain about 120.” Returns laid before the House of Commons showed that 6439 persons had been committed to Newgate in the three years between 1813 and 1816, and this number did not include the debtors, a numerous class, who were still committed to Newgate pending the completion of the White Cross Street prison.

In order to realize the evils entailed by incarceration in Newgate in these days, it is necessary to give some account of its interior as it was occupied and appropriated in 1810. Full details of the arrangements are to be found in Mr. Neild’s ‘State of Prisons in England, Scotland, and Wales,’ published in 1812. The gaol at that date was divided into eight separate and more or less distinct departments, each of which had its own wards and yard. These were—

i. The male debtors’ side consisted of a yard forty-nine feet by thirty-one, leading to thirteen wards on various floors, and a day room. Of these wards, three were appropriated to the “cabin side,” so called because they each contained four small rooms or “cabins” seven feet square, intended to accommodate a couple of prisoners apiece, but often much more crowded.[23] Two other wards were appropriated to the master’s side debtors; they were each twenty-three feet by fourteen and a half, and supposed to accommodate twenty persons. The eight remaining wards were for the common side debtors, long narrow rooms—one thirty-six feet, six twenty-three feet, and the eighth eighteen, the whole about fifteen feet wide. The various wards were all about eleven feet in height, and were occupied as a rule by ten to fifteen people when the prison was not crowded, but double the number was occasionally placed in them. The day room was fitted with benches and settles after the manner of the tap in a public-house.

ii. The female debtors’ side consisted of a court-yard forty-nine by sixteen feet, leading to two wards, one of which was thirty-six feet by fifteen, and the other eighteen by fifteen; and they nominally held twenty-two persons. A high wall fifteen feet in height divided the females’ court-yard from the men’s.

iii. The chapel yard was about forty-three feet by twenty-five. It had been for some time devoted principally to felons of the worst types, those who were the oldest offenders, sentenced to transportation, and who had narrowly escaped the penalty of death. This arrangement was, however, modified after 1811, and the chapel yard was allotted to misdemeanants and prisoners awaiting trial. The wards in this part were five in number, all in dimensions twenty feet by fifteen, with a sixth ward fifteen feet square. These wards were all fitted with barrack-beds, but no bedding was supplied. The chapel yard led to the chapel, and on the staircase were two rooms frequently set apart for the king’s witnesses, those who had turned king’s evidence, whose safety might have been imperilled had they been lodged with the men against whom they had informed. But these king’s witnesses were also put at times into the press yard among the capital convicts, seemingly a very dangerous proceeding, or they lodged with the gatesmen, the prisoner officers who had charge of the inner gates.

iv. The middle yard was at first given up to the least heinous offenders. After 1812 it changed functions with the chapel yard. It was fifty feet by twenty-five, and had five wards each thirty-eight by fifteen. At one end of the yard was an arcade, directly under the chapel, in which there were three cells, used either for the confinement of disorderly and refractory prisoners, or female convicts ordered for execution.

v. The master felons’ side consisted of a yard the same size as the preceding, appropriated nominally to the most decent and better-behaved prisoners, but really kept for the few who had funds sufficient to gain them admission to these more comfortable quarters. Here were also lodged the gatesmen, the prisoners who had charge of the inner gates, and who were intrusted with the duty of escorting visitors from the gates to the various wards their friends occupied.

vi. The state side was the part stolen from the female felons’ side. It was large and comparatively commodious, being maintained on a better footing than any other part of the prison. The inmates were privileged, either by antecedents or the fortunate possession of sufficient funds to pay the charges of the place. Neild takes it for granted that the former rather than the latter prevailed in the selection, and tells us that in the state side “such prisoners were safely associated whose manners and conduct evince a more liberal style of education, and who are therefore lodged apart from all other districts of the gaol.” The state side contained twelve good-sized rooms, from twenty-one by eighteen feet to fifteen feet square, which were furnished with bedsteads and bedding.

vii. The press yard was that part set aside for the condemned. Its name and its situation were the same as those of the old place of carrying out the terrible sentence inflicted on accused persons who stood mute.[24] The long narrow yard still remained as we saw it in Jacobite times, and beyond it was now a day room for the capital convicts or those awaiting execution. Beyond the press yard were three stories, condemned cells, fifteen in all, with vaulted ceilings nine feet high to the crown of the arch. The ground floor cells were nine feet by six; those on the first floor were rather larger on account of a set-off in the wall; and the uppermost were the largest, for the same reason. Security was provided for in these condemned cells by lining the substantial stone walls with planks studded with broad-headed nails; they were lighted by a double-grated window two feet nine inches by fourteen inches; and in the doors, which were four inches thick, a circular aperture had been let in to give ventilation and secure a free current of air. In each cell there was a barrack bedstead on the floor without bedding.

viii. The female felons were deprived of part of the space which the architect had intended for them. More than half their quadrangle had been partitioned off for another purpose, and what remained was divided into a master’s and a common side for female felons. The two yards were adjoining, that for the common side much the largest. There were nine wards in all on the female side, one of them in the attic, with four casements and two fireplaces, being allotted for a female infirmary, and the rest being provided with barrack beds, and in dimensions varying from thirty feet by fifteen to fifteen feet by ten.

The eight courts above enumerated were well supplied with water; they had dust-bins, sewers, and so forth, “properly disposed,”[25] and the city scavenger paid periodical visits to the prison. The prisoners had few comforts, beyond the occasional use of a bath at some distance, situated in the press yard, to which access was granted rarely and as a great favour. But they were allowed the luxury of drink—if they could pay for it. A recent reform had closed the tap kept by the gaoler within the precincts, but there was still a “convenient room” which served, and “near it a grating through which the debtors receive their beer from the neighbouring public-houses. The felons’ side has a similar accommodation, and this mode of introducing the beverage is adopted because no publican as such can be permitted to enter the interior of this prison.”[26] The tap-room and bar were just behind the felons’ entrance lodge, and beyond it was a room called the “wine room,” because formerly used for the sale of wine, but in which latterly a copper had been fixed for the cooking of provisions sent in by charitable persons. “On the top of the gaol,” continues Neild, “are a watch-house and a sentry-box, where two or more guards, with dogs and firearms, watch all night. Adjoining the felons’ side lodge is the keeper’s office, where the prison books are kept, and his clerk, called the clerk of the papers, attends daily.”[27]

Having thus briefly described the plan and appropriation of the prison, I propose to deal now with the general condition of the inmates, and the manner of their life. Of these the debtors, male and female, formed a large proportion. The frequency and extent of processes against debtors seventy or eighty years ago will appear almost incredible in an age when insolvent acts and bankruptcy courts do so much to relieve the impecunious, and imprisonment for debt has almost entirely disappeared.[28] But at the time of which I am writing the laws were relentless against all who failed to meet their engagements. The number of processes against debtors annually was extraordinary. Neild gives, on the authority of Mr. Burchell, the under sheriff of Middlesex, a table showing the figures for the year ending Michaelmas 1802. In that period upwards of 200,000 writs had been issued for the arrests of debtors in the kingdom, for sums varying from fourpence to £500 and upwards. Fifteen thousand of these were issued in Middlesex alone, which at that time was reckoned as only a fifteenth of Great Britain. The number of arrests actually made was 114,300 for the kingdom, and 7020 for Middlesex. Barely half of these gave bail bonds on arrests, and the remainder went to prison. Quite half of the foregoing writs and arrests applied to sums under £30. Neild also says that in 1793, 5719 writs and executions for debts between £10 and £20 were issued in Middlesex, and the aggregate amount of debts sued for was £81,791. He also makes the curious calculation that the costs of these actions if undefended would have amounted to £68,728, and if defended, £285,950; in other words, that to recover eighty odd thousand pounds, three times the amount would be expended.

An elaborate machinery planned for the protection of the trader, and altogether on his side, had long existed for the recovery of debts. Alfred the Great established the Court Baron, the Hundred Court, and the County Court, which among other matters entertained pleas for debt. The County Court was the sheriff’s, who sat there surrounded by the bishop and the magnates of the county; but as time passed, difficulties and delays in obtaining judgment led to the removal of causes to the great Court of King’s Bench, and the disuse of the inferior courts. So much inconvenience ensued, that in 1518 the Corporation obtained from Parliament an act empowering two aldermen and four common councilmen to hold Courts of Requests, or Courts of Conscience, to hear and determine all causes of debt under 40s. arising within the city. These courts were extended two centuries later to several large provincial towns, and all were in full activity when Neild wrote, and indeed supplied the bulk of the poor debtors committed to prison. These courts were open to many and grave objections. The commissioners who presided were “little otherwise than self-elected,[29] and when once appointed continued to serve sine die;”[30] they were generally near in rank to the parties whose causes they decided. Often a commissioner had to leave the bench because he was himself a party to the suit that was sub judice. The activity as well as the futility of these courts may be estimated from the statement given by Neild, that 1312 debtors were committed by them to Newgate between 1797 and 1808, and that no more than 197 creditors recovered debts and costs. The latter indeed hung like millstones round the neck of the unhappy insolvent wretches who found themselves in limbo. Costs were the gallons of sack to the pennyworth of debt. Neild found at his visit to Newgate in 1810, fourteen men and women who had lain there ten, eleven, and thirteen years for debts of a few shillings, weighted by treble the amount of costs. Thus, amongst others, Thomas Blackburn had been committed on October 15th for a debt of 1s. 5d., for which the costs were 6s. 10d. Thomas Dobson, on 22nd August, 1799, for 1s., with costs of 8s. 10d.; and Susannah Evans, in October the same year, for 2s., with costs of 6s. 8d. Other cases are recorded elsewhere, as at the Giltspur Street Compter, where in 1805 Mr. Neild found a man named William Grant detained for 1s. 9d., with costs of 5s., and John Lancaster for 1s. 8d., with costs of 7s. 6d. “These surely, I thought,” says Mr. Neild, “were bad enough! But it was not so.” He recites another most outrageous and extraordinary case, in which one John Bird, a market porter, was arrested and committed at the suit of a publican for the paltry sum of 4d., with costs of 7s. 6d. Bird was, however, discharged within three days by a subscription raised among his fellow-prisoners.

Mr. Buxton, in his ‘Inquiry into the System of Prison Discipline,’ quotes a case which came within his own knowledge of a boy sent to prison for non-payment of one penny. The lad in question was found in Coldbath Fields prison, to which he had been sent for a month in default of paying a fine of forty shillings. He had been in the employ of a corn-chandler at Islington, and went into London with his master’s cart and horse. There was in the City Road a temporary bar, with a collector of tolls who was sometimes on the spot and sometimes not. The boy declared he saw no one, and accordingly passed through without paying the toll of a penny. For this he was summoned before a magistrate, and sentenced as already stated. The lad was proved to be of good character and the son of respectable parents. Mr. Buxton’s friends at once paid the forty shillings, and the boy was released.

The costs in heavier debts always doubled the sum; if the arrest was made in the country it trebled it. Neild gives a list of the various items charged upon a debt of £10, which included instructions to sue, affidavit of debt, drawing præcipe (£1 5s.), capias, fee to officer on arrest, affidavit of service, and many more, amounting in all to twenty-seven, and costing £11 15s. 8d., within ten days.[31]

Before dealing with the debtors in Newgate, I may refer incidentally to those in other London prisons, for Newgate was not the only place of durance for these unfortunate people. There were also the King’s Bench, the Fleet, and the Marshalsea prisons especially devoted to them, whilst Ludgate, the Giltspur Street, and Borough Compters also received them—the latter two being also a prison for felons and vagrants arrested within certain limits.

The King’s Bench was a national prison, in which were confined all debtors arrested for debt or for contempt of the court of the King’s Bench. The population generally amounted to from five hundred to seven hundred, the accommodation being calculated for two hundred. Every new-comer was entitled to a “chummage” ticket, but did not always get it, being often obliged to pay a high rent for a bed at the coffee-house or in some room which was vacated by its regular occupant. No fixed rates or rules governed the hiring out of rooms or parts of a room, and all sorts of imposition was practised. The best, or at least the most influential prisoners, got lodging in the State House, which contained “eight large handsome rooms.” Besides those actually resident within the walls, another two hundred more or less took advantage of “the rules,” and lived outside within a circumference of two miles and a half. In these cases security was given for the amount of the debt, and a heavy fee at the rate of £8 per £100, with £4 for every additional hundred. Besides these, a number had the privilege of a “run on the key,” which allowed a prisoner to go into the rules for the day. The foregoing rentals and payments for privileges, together with fees exacted on commitment and discharge, went to the marshal or keeper of the prison, whose net annual income thus entirely derived from the impecunious amounted to between three and four thousand pounds. The office of marshal had been hereditary, but in the 27th Geo. II. the right of presentation was bought by the Crown for £10,500. The marshal was supposed to be resident either within the prison or the rules. He seems to have felt no responsibility as to the welfare or comfort of those in charge, and out of whom he made all his money. The prison was always in “the most filthy state imaginable.”[32] The half or wholly starved prisoners fished for alms or food at the gratings. When they were sick no more notice was taken of them than of a dog. A man dying of liver complaint lay on the cold stones without a bed or food to eat. Dissolute habits prevailed on all sides; drunkenness was universal, gambling perpetual. The yards were taken up with rackets and five courts, and here and there were “bumble puppy grounds,” a game in which the players rolled iron balls into holes marked with numbers. How to make most profit out of the wretched denizens of the gaol was the marshal’s only care. He got a rent for the coffee-house and the bake-house; the keeper of the large tap-room called the Brace, because it was once kept by two brothers named Partridge, also paid him toll. The sale of spirits was forbidden, but gin could always be had at the whistling shops, where it was known as Moonshine, Sky Blue, Mexico, and was consumed at the rate of a hogshead per week.

The Fleet, which stood in Farringdon Street, was a prison for debtors and persons committed for contempt by the courts of Chancery, Exchequer, and Common Pleas. It was so used for the date of the abolition of the Star Chamber in the 16th Charles I. The shameful malpractices of Bambridge, the warden of the Fleet at the commencement of the eighteenth century, are too well known to need more than a passing reference. A committee of the House of Commons investigated the charges against Bambridge, who was proved to have connived at the escape of some debtors, and to have been guilty of extortion to others. One Sir William Rich, Bart., he had loaded with heavy irons. In consequence of these disclosures, both Bambridge and Huggin, his predecessor in the office, were committed to Newgate, and many reforms instituted. But the condition of the prison and its inmates remained unsatisfactory to the last. It contained generally from six to seven hundred inmates,[33] while another hundred more or less resided in the rules outside. The principle of “chummage” prevailed as in the King’s Bench, but a number of rooms, fifteen more or less, were reserved for poor debtors under the name of Bartholomew Fair. The rentals of rooms and fees went to the warden, whose income was £2372. The same evils of overcrowding, uncleanliness, want of medical attendance, absence or neglect of divine service, were present as in the King’s Bench, but in an exaggerated form. The Committee on Gaols[34] reported that “although the house of the warden looked into the court, and the turnkeys slept in the prison, yet scenes of riot, drunkenness, and disorder were most prevalent.” The state of morals was disgraceful. Any woman obtained admission if sober, and if she got drunk she was not turned out. There was no distinct place for the female debtors, who lived in the same galleries as the men. Disturbances were frequent, owing to the riotous conduct of intoxicated women. Twice a week there was a wine and beer club held at night, which lasted till two or three in the morning. In the yard behind the prison were places set apart for skittles, fives, and tennis, which strangers frequented as any other place of public amusement.

Matters were rather better at the Marshalsea. This very ancient prison, which stood in the High Street, Southwark, was used for debtors arrested for the lowest sums within twelve miles of the palace of Whitehall; also for prisoners committed by the Admiralty Court. At one time the Marshalsea was the receptacle of pirates, but none were committed to it after 1789. The court of the Marshalsea was instituted by Charles I. in the sixth year of his reign, to be held before the steward of the royal household, the knight marshal, and the steward of the court, with jurisdiction to hold pleas in all actions within the prescribed limits. The court was chiefly used for the recovery of small debts under £10, but its business was much reduced by the extension of the Courts of Conscience. The prison was a nest of abuses, like its neighbour the King’s Bench, and came under the strong animadversion of the Gaol Committee of 1729. As the business of the Marshalsea Court declined, the numbers in its prison diminished. The population, as reported by the committee in 1814, averaged about sixty, and the prison, although wives and children resided within the walls, was not overcrowded. Their conduct too was orderly on the whole. Drunkenness was not common, chiefly because liquor was not to be had freely, although the tapster paid a rent of two guineas a week for permission to sell it. The inmates, who euphemistically styled themselves “collegians,” were governed by rules which they themselves had framed, and under which subscriptions were levied and fines imposed for conduct disapproved of by the “college.” A court of the collegians was held every Monday to manage its affairs, at which all prisoners were required to attend. A committee of collegians was elected to act as the executive, also a secretary or accountant to receive monies and keep books, and a master of the ale-room, who kept this the scene of their revels clean, and saw that boiling water was provided for grog. Bad language, quarrelling, throwing water over one another was forbidden on pain of fine and being sent to Coventry; but the prevailing moral tone may be guessed from the penalty inflicted upon persons singing obscene songs before nine p.m. Yet the public opinion of the whole body seems to have checked dissipation. The poorer prisoners were not in abject want, as in other prisons, owing to many charitable gifts and bequests, which included annual donations from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Steward of the Household, the steward and officers of the Marshalsea Court, and others. Legacies had also been left to free a certain number of debtors, notably that of £100 per annum left by a Mr. Henry Allnutt, who was long a prisoner in the Marshalsea, and came into a fortune while there. His bequest, which was charged upon his manor at Goring, Oxon, and hence called the Oxford Charity, was applied only to the release of poor debtors whom £4 each could free. The supreme control of the Marshalsea was vested in the marshal of the royal household; but although he drew a salary of £500 a year, he did nothing beyond visiting the prison occasionally, and left the administration to the deputy marshal. The latter’s salary, with fees, the rent of the tap and of the chandler’s shop, amounted to about £600 a year.

The compters of Ludgate, Giltspur Street, and the Borough were discontinued as debtors’ prisons (as was Newgate also) on the opening of Whitecross prison for debtors in 1815. Ludgate to the last was the debtors’ prison for freemen of the city of London, clergymen, proctors, attorneys, and persons specially selected by the Corporation. At one time the Ludgate debtors, accompanied by the keeper, went outside and beyond the prison to call on their creditors, and try to arrange their debts, but this practice was discontinued. There were fifteen rooms of various sizes, and as the numbers imprisoned rarely exceeded five-and-twenty, the place was never overcrowded, while the funds of several bequests and charities were applied in adding to the material comfort of the prisoners. The Giltspur Street Compter received sheriffs’ debtors, also felons, vagrants, and night charges. It was generally crowded, as debtors who would have gone to the Poultry Compter were sent to Giltspur Street when the former was condemned as unfit to receive prisoners.[35] The demands for fees were excessive in Giltspur Street. Those who could not pay were thrown into the wards with the night charges, and denied admission to the “charity wards,” which partook of all the benefits of bequests and donations to poor debtors. The Borough Compter was in a disgraceful state to the last. The men’s ward had an earth, or rather a mud, floor, and was so unfit to sleep on that it had not been used for many years, so that the men and women associated together indiscriminately. The rooms had no fireplaces, so it mattered little that no coals were allowed. There were no beds or bedding, no straw even. In one room Mr. Neild found a woman ill of a flux shut up with three men; the latter raised eighteenpence among them to pay for a truss of straw for the poor woman to lie on. Neild found the prisoners in the Borough Compter ragged, starving, and dirty.

I come now to the debtors in Newgate. The quarters they occupied were divided, as I have said,[36] into three principal divisions—the master’s side, the cabin side, and the common side. Payment of a fee of 3s. gained the debtor admission to the two first named; those who could pay nothing went, as a matter of course, to the common side; a further fee was, however, demanded from the new-comer before he was made free of either the master’s or the cabin side. This was the reprehensible claim for “garnish,” which had already been abolished in all well-conducted prisons, but which still was demanded in Newgate. Garnish on the cabin side was a guinea at entrance for coals, candles, brooms, &c., and a gallon of beer on discharge; on the master’s side it was thirteen and fourpence, and a gallon of beer on entrance, although Mr. Newman, in his evidence in 1814, said it was more, and gave the garnish for the common side at that sum, which is five shillings more than Mr. Neild says was extorted on the common side. Numerous tyrannies were practised on all who would not and could not pay the garnish. They were made to wash and swab the ward, or they were shut out from the ward fireplace, and forbidden to pass a chalked line drawn on the floor, and so were unable either to warm themselves or to cook their food. Besides these fees, legitimate and illegitimate, there were others which must be paid before release. The sheriff demanded 4s. 6d. for his liberate, the gaoler 6s. 10d. more, and the turnkey 2s.; and thus when the debtor’s debt had been actually paid, or when he had abandoned his property to the creditors, and, almost destitute, looked forward to his liberty, he was still delayed until he had paid a new debt arising “only out of a satisfaction of all his former debts.” The fees were not always extorted, it is true; nor was non-payment made a pretext for further imprisonment, thanks to the humanity of the gaoler, or the funds provided by various charities.

There was this much honest forbearance in Newgate in these days, that debtors who could afford the cabin and master’s side were not permitted to share in the prison charities. These were lumped together into a general fund, and a calculation made as to the amount that might be expended per week from the whole sum, so that the latter might last out the year. It generally ran to about six pounds per week. The money, which at one time had been distributed quarterly, and all went in drink, was after 1807, through the exertions of the keeper[37] of the gaol, spent in the purchase of necessaries. But this weekly pittance did not go far when the debtors’ side was crowded, as it often was; notably as when numbers filled Newgate in anticipation of Lord Redesdale’s bill for insolvent debtors, and there were as many as three hundred and fifty prisoners in at one time. The city also allowed the poor debtors fourteen ounces of bread daily, and their share of eight stone of meat, an allowance which never varied, issued once a week, and divided as far as it would go—a very precarious and uncertain ration. The bread was issued every alternate day; and while some prisoners often ate their whole allowance at once, others who arrived just after the time of distribution were often forty-eight hours without food. The latter might also be six days without meat. Share in the weekly allowance of meat might also be denied to debtors who had not paid “garnish,” as well as in the weekly grant from the charitable fund. Hence starvation stared many in the face,[38] unless friends from outside came to their assistance, or the keeper made them a special grant of 6d. per diem out of the common stock; or the sixpenny allowance was claimed for the creditors, which seldom happened, owing to the expense the process entailed. The poor debtors were not supplied with beds. Those who could pay the price might hire them from each other, or from persons who made a trade of it, or they might bring their beds with them into the prison. Failing any of these methods, seeing that straw was forbidden for fear of fire, they had to be satisfied with a couple of the rugs provided by the city, the supply of which was, however, limited, and there were not always enough to give bedding to all. The stock was diminished by theft; female visitors carried them out of the prisons, or the debtors destroyed them when the weather was warm, and they were not in great demand, in order to convert them into mop-heads or cleaning-rags. Sometimes rugs were urgently required and not forthcoming; a severe winter set in, the new stock had not been supplied by the contractors, and the poor debtors perished of cold. Again, there was no regular allowance of fuel. Coals were purchased out of the garnish money and the charitable fund; so were candles, salt, pepper, mops and brooms. But the latter could have been of little service. Dirt prevailed everywhere; indeed the place, with its oak floors caulked with pitch, and smoked ceilings, could not be made even to look clean while there was no obligation of personal cleanliness on individuals, who often came into the prison in filthy rags. Only now and again, in extreme cases, an unusually nasty companion was stripped, haled to the pump, and left under it in a state of nature until he was washed clean.