Deplorable condition of debtors throughout the country as detailed by Howard—Famous Inmates—The Chevalier Desseasau, the Prussian—Captain Johnson R. N., a professional smuggler employed in naval expeditions—Arrest—Daring escape—Employed as pilot for the Walcheren expedition—His project for rescuing Napoleon from St. Helena—The “no-Popery riots”—The Fleet burned and rebuilt—Royal Commission to inquire into imprisonment for debt—Debtors’ privileges and extravagances—Graphic picture of the Fleet given by Charles Dickens—The Common Side—The death of “the Chancery prisoner”—The closing days of the Fleet—Abolished in 1840.
THE condition of debtors as shown by Howard was deplorable all through the country. The prisons were often the property of great personages. Cheyney Court at Winchester was owned by the bishop of the diocese, so was that at Durham, and here the debtors were in such evil case that those on the Common Side had no subsistence for a whole twelve month more than a diet of boiled bread and water. His Majesty the King kept a prison for debtors in Windsor Castle in which Howard found two prisoners. The place was governed by the Duke of Montague as constable, and under him a janitor and deputy-janitor were appointed, the latter receiving free house-rent as his salary. The prison of Chester Castle was also the property of the King, who leased it to his constable or patentee, who in his turn received rent from the gaoler, forty pounds a year. The debtors were lodged in the so-called “Pope’s kitchen,” an imaginary free ward. This “Pope’s kitchen” was underground, dark and ill-ventilated, so that Howard when inside with the door shut felt that his situation brought to mind what he had heard of the Black Hole of Calcutta. In striking contrast to this, Howard speaks in commendation of the noble prison for debtors in the spacious area within York Castle, and of the admirable arrangements for the weighing and issuing of bread for the supply of which many charities existed. Elsewhere they were cruelly neglected; the keeper of Bodmin prison bore witness that in twenty years only four prisoners had received the “groats” or allowance from their creditors. At Exeter, during twelve years, only four or five had received it besides the inmates of the Common Side ward known as the “Shoe” because those inside were in the habit of lowering a shoe through the window, to collect alms in the street. At this time the total number of debtors in custody in England and Wales averaged about two thousand.
We may contrast the culpable neglect and ill-treatment of debtors in Great Britain with the milder and more humane customs generally prevailing at that time on the Continent of Europe. In Prussia a money payment of two groschen (threepence farthing) was made by the creditors, and if omitted for one whole week, the prisoner was set free. In Holland creditors were bound to support their debtors with an allowance varying from sixpence to two and three shillings a day. In Flanders the creditor was obliged to pay for a month’s support in advance. At Cologne no debtors who were quite penniless might be confined. In Paris a new prison, La Force, had been constructed and occupied from January, 1782. It was a spacious building with the means of separation of the sexes and classes; the charge for a bed was from five to thirty sous a night, but there were also free beds, and poor prisoners were supplied with rations, soup and a pound and a half of bread daily. The rule obtained in France that the bailiff who arrested a debtor must pay the gaoler on committal a month’s allowance in advance for food. Moreover, the French law obliged creditors to give bail for small sums even where the debtor was insolvent. There was a general rule in Germany that the wives and children of debtors were not allowed to reside within the prison.
Foreigners sometimes came within the grip of the English law and became liable to imprisonment for debt. They did not all fare so well as that eccentric character, the Chevalier Desseasau, who was well known to Londoners at the latter end of the eighteenth century. He was a native of Prussia, of French extraction, who had borne a commission in the Prussian army, but having been involved in a quarrel with a brother officer and fought a duel, in which his antagonist had been dangerously wounded, he fled to England, where he eked out a precarious living in literary pursuits. His line was poetry and his production very mediocre. One verse inspired by his excessive vanity was often quoted against him,—
He was to be met with in the best literary circles, was well known to Dr. Johnson, Goldsmith, Foote, Murphy and to every publisher in the trade. His appearance was so remarkable that he attracted amused attention in the streets. Short of stature and of slender figure, he always wore a black suit, cut in an ancient fashion, and carried in his hands a gold headed cane, a roll of his poetry and a sword or two, so as to be ready to fight at a moment’s notice. He did not greatly prosper as time went on and found himself committed to the Fleet prison, where he took advantage of the “Rules” and was suffered to go about as much as he pleased. His chief places of resort were Anderton’s Coffee House in Fleet Street, “the Barn” in St. Martin’s Lane and various taverns and places of public resort in and about Covent Garden. Being a man of originality and good-nature, his company was much courted. He was buried in St. Bride’s Churchyard.
A rather remarkable character was an inmate of the Fleet and of other London prisons at the end of the eighteenth century. This was Captain Johnson, a sea-faring man, noted for his daring exploits and more or less criminal pursuits throughout his long and diversified career. He was a man of middle stature, with intelligent features and of striking personal appearance, a native of Ireland and in religion a Catholic, according to contemporary accounts. He was before all else a smuggler in a very large way of business, constantly engaged in running profitable cargoes, well known all along the southern sea-coast, full of guile in evading capture, but desperately bold in defending his ill-gotten spoil. He made London his headquarters and lived in Fitzroy Square “keeping up an establishment fit for a nobleman,” with a stable full of horses and a large staff of servants. On one occasion, when about to run a large cargo into London, he was invited to assist four persons charged with forgery out of the kingdom. After secreting them in the empty carts, he got them on board ship near Folkestone and despatched them safely to Flushing; returning with his smuggled goods, he fell in with a riding revenue officer with a cavalry escort and was made prisoner. He was lodged in the new prison in the Borough, no doubt the Queen’s Bench, but when brought up for trial boldly made his escape in the open court.
A series of hairbreadth adventures followed. Johnson was hunted from place to place but by moving constantly to and fro and assuming many disguises he continued to keep at large, until his services being urgently needed to pilot an expedition to Ostend, he was granted a pardon. No one knew the Dutch coast better, and although the earliest operations were unsuccessful, he was again employed to assist in landing troops at the Helder. He was of immense service and gained a rich reward; his pardon was confirmed, he was granted the rank and pay of post-captain in the British Navy and was much esteemed as “a bold intrepid, high-couraged Englishman” on the testimony of such officers as Sir Home Popham and Sir Ralph Abercromby.
Johnson had become concerned with contracts for the provisions of the troops and his money matters were so much mixed that he was arrested for a large sum said to be owing to the crown, and lodged in the Fleet prison. He brought counter charges and was in due course bailed out, cleared of the debt. He had a further claim on the government, an income promised him by Mr. Pitt of a thousand pounds a year if he would give up smuggling. He could not substantiate the claim and was once more thrown into the Fleet where he lived well and entertained largely, although £13,000 was the amount of his liabilities. Very little restraint was put upon him as he had given a bond to the warden against making an escape. Soon he was identified by certain revenue officers as the ringleader of a gang of smugglers who had attacked them, and from being merely a debtor, he was constituted a prisoner awaiting trial on a capital charge. An order was therefore issued for his removal to Newgate, and to make sure of his person until transferred, he was lodged in the strong room of the Fleet.
Matters now began to look serious and he secretly turned over in his mind the possibility of escape. He withdrew therefore from his bond by making it appear that he had quarrelled with his attorney, who would no longer be responsible for him. After this Johnson commenced active operations. The strong room was at the opposite end of the coffee-house gallery; he could not file the window bars, the noise of which would have betrayed him, but he bored through the panels of his double doors with strong gimlets and after much patient labour broke them out. The panels yielded to a tremendous blow delivered by one of the iron pulleys of his window sash and the noise was deadened by the loud shouting and bellowing of a neighbouring prisoner who was believed to be mad, and who readily consented to give this assistance. When once through the panel, he stole along the gallery and upstairs to an attic with a window opening on the outside. From this he reached the boundary wall headed with its chevaux de frise and creeping along till he found a foothold made fast a rope he had brought with him to one of the spikes just over Fleet market. Here he lowered the rope, and slid down in safety only to find the exterior watchman on his beat below, whom he would have shot dead on the spot had he been observed, which fortunately for him was not the case.
Johnson had taken the preliminary precaution to put on the uniform of a lieutenant of the Hussars, before he climbed through the panel, the clothes having been introduced into the prison for this purpose. The Hussar regiment was stationed at Brighton and the supposed lieutenant, with the help of a friend, secured a post chaise for the journey. Arrived at Brighton, Johnson changed his clothes and went on board one of his own cutters awaiting him at Hove. He must have gone to sea forthwith and remained abroad, or in some secure hiding place, for he was not heard of again until 1809 when he was again employed by the government as pilot and guide upon the ill-starred Walcheren. His active spirit prompted him to proffer advice to the dilatory commanders and he strongly urged them to capture Flushing and proceed up the Scheldt and lay siege to Antwerp. They would not listen to him and turned a deaf ear also to his proposal but they approved of an attempt to blow in the walls of Flushing by a submarine torpedo, his own invention and presumably the first idea of that esteemed weapon of modern warfare. Johnson himself took charge of the enterprise and approaching the walls in a small boat, he swam up to them and fastened a block with rope attached to a part of the piles on which the town was built. The other end of this rope was fastened to the torpedo which was run out and the match ignited, but there was no explosion. The engine was imperfect, as Johnson afterward discovered, because the water had entered and wet the powder through a hole drilled in the gunlock. Johnson always attributed this to the jealousy of the inventor of the Congreve rocket, Sir William Congreve, who was present at the siege, but his charge it is difficult to believe. The torpedo which had failed at Flushing was afterward successfully tried upon a barge in the Thames, moored in midstream.
It is well known in history that Napoleon had still many active sympathisers after his downfall. More than one friend in adversity would have helped him to escape from St. Helena. Captain Johnson, although still calling himself an officer of the Royal Navy, was willing enough to give his aid and accepted a proposal to construct two submarine vessels, to spirit the fallen emperor from his iron prison. These ships, the Eagle, 110 tons, 84 feet long and 18 feet beam, and the Etna, 23 tons, 40 feet long, 10 feet beam, were to be built in a yard in Battersea; they were to be propelled by steam, still in its infancy, and were so constructed and provided with artificial air supply that they could be submerged on the approach of an enemy, and use their torpedoes with murderous effect. Nothing came of this extravagant project, for before the ships were completed news came that Napoleon was dead. Captain Johnson has left a detailed account of the steps by which he hoped to accomplish the rescue. His two vessels were to lie submerged close to the rocky shore and to rise to the surface after nightfall. Captain Johnson would get ashore, taking with him the end of a rope fastened to a mechanical chair which should be eventually raised to such a height as to receive the person of the fugitive, who would then be lowered on to the deck of the Etna. Napoleon was actually to be smuggled out of Longwood disguised as a servant in livery.
Johnson was to have received £40,000 directly his submarine boats got into blue water and a further sum if the escape was successfully carried out. In his latter days Captain Johnson resided at Flushing, engaged in mercantile pursuits, but he was looked upon with little favour, for his services during the war were not forgotten or forgiven. He busied himself with the proposal to defend the Dutch coast and rivers, with his favourite device of submarines, but did not think it advisable to remain in the country.
Not long after Howard’s visitation, the Fleet prison was involved with all other London prisons in the destructive mischief wreaked by the non-popery rioters, who, headed by the weak-minded Lord George Gordon, terrorized the metropolis in 1780. On Wednesday, June 7th, the rioters, now temporarily in the ascendant, sent word to all the public prisons that they were coming to burn them down. They intended to do this on the day previous, when the mob appeared before the Fleet prison and insisted that the gates should be opened and the keepers yielded to their demand. “They were then proceeding to demolish the prison, but the prisoners expostulated with them, begging that they would give them time to remove their goods. They readily condescended, and gave them a day for that purpose, in consequence of which the prisoners were removing all this day out of that place. Some of the prisoners were in for life.” In the evening of the next day, they fulfilled their threat and burned it. This was the second time, for the great fire of 1666 had previously demolished it.
The evening of this Wednesday, June 7th, is described in the Annual Register as one of the most dreadful spectacles this country ever beheld. “Let those who did not see it judge what the inhabitants felt when they beheld at the same instant the flames ascending and rolling in clouds from the King’s Bench and Fleet prisons, from New Bridewell, from the toll gates on Blackfriars Bridge, from houses in every quarter of the town, and particularly from the bottom and middle of Holborn, where the conflagration was horrible beyond description.”
The Fleet Prison was rebuilt immediately after the riots in 1780 on almost exactly the same lines. Howard’s description of it as it stood before the fire coincides pretty closely with later descriptions, after the fire. Of these the most graphic is that familiar to the whole world as given by Charles Dickens in the “Pickwick Papers.” The great literary master no doubt drew upon his own personal knowledge, for he was intimately acquainted with the London of his time, as he once resided with his father within the limits of another great debtor’s prison, the Marshalsea. In 1818, a Royal Commission was appointed as the outcome of increasing agitation against imprisonment for debt, and the report issued supplied much valuable information as to the state of the Fleet and the Marshalsea at this period. There was little improvement in either prison; they were still hot-beds of vice. While the poorer starved, all who had command of money spent it freely in a reckless and riotous fashion, little in keeping with the quiet decorum of a prison. Outsiders came in at pleasure, women of loose morals, and men to play the games provided for the prisoners. There was a racquet court, a skittle ground and “forecorner” ground, all open to the strangers who came in constantly and were a source of great profit to the racquet masters, many of whom have been from time immemorial considered very eminent players. The post of racquet master was in great request. It was in the gift of the collegians (prisoners) who elected to it once a year at Christmas tide. The canvassers for votes issued handbills. One reads as follows: “I feel that the situation is one that requires attention and increasing exertion, not so much for the individual position as from the circumstance that the amusement and—what is more vitally important—the health of my fellow inmates is in some measure placed in the hands of the person appointed.”
The prison was not closed and lights put out till a late hour, when gambling was in progress and riots frequent; when drunken persons resisted the turnkeys and fought with the coffee-house and tap-room keepers, who sought to put them out of the rooms at eleven o’clock at night. If finally expelled, they resorted to secret gin shops kept in the prisoners’ rooms, where they gambled and played at cards half through the night. Clubs still existed as when reported by Howard, and met regularly to sing and carouse at social evenings. It was impossible to check the introduction of spirits, although prohibited by act of Parliament, and a large quantity was consumed within the prison so that drunkenness was very prevalent. A number of coffee-houses and public houses were held to be within the “Rules” and were much frequented, among the last the London Coffee-House, and the Belle Sauvage Inn at Ludgate Circus. Grand dinners were frequently given at the latter by prisoners “of great consideration, men of title and consequence.” Much money was also spent within the walls. The warden told the committee that he had seen a prisoner’s servant bringing in a pail of ice to cool his master’s bottle of wine. He told another story of an Italian lady, a prisoner, who was living under the protection of a gentleman outside and who would not pay for a bushel of coals she had ordered. She struck the messenger who brought the bill, but when she was threatened with removal to the strong room she produced a guinea from her pocket and begged the man’s pardon for the blows.
At this time there were many lodged in the Common Side without means of subsistence beyond the county allowance of three and six pence a week, or what they could earn by menial service,—cleaning boots, making beds and dusting rooms, for their fellow prisoners. Sometimes after long residence a poor debtor might succeed to be “the owner of a room” and was permitted to levy “chummage” or rent from the “chums” who lodged with him; their number was not limited. Debtors were entirely free from supervision in their rooms. The warden and his officers held no master keys and could only enter a room when its occupants unlocked it to them. No numbering took place, and it was never certainly known that the proper number were present.
The warden was responsible for safe custody and might suffer serious loss for the escape of prisoners committed for heavy debts. In one case he was mulcted in £2,500 for the escape of a French count who had got over an old wall, afterward made more secure, but as the warden philosophically remarked: “there can be no wall built which a prisoner cannot get over if he is a clever fellow; a sailor who has the use of his limbs can get over any wall.” On the other hand he pointed out that “it seldom answers the purpose of any man to escape out of the Fleet prison unless it is a foreigner who has no residence in this kingdom or a smuggler who can live anywhere. Many people come to the prison for their own benefit, that is for the purpose of taking the benefit of some act passed to allow them to plead insolvency, and so purge their debts.” With all his risks the warden had a considerable margin in the handsome total of his fees and other receipts. These averaged yearly for the three years ending 1818 as much as £3,008, from which his outgoings had to be deducted, amounting to £1,125, leaving him a net annual income of £1,883. The deductions were made up of an average of £300 per annum for losses by escapes, a sum of £368.11.0 for rates and taxes on all premises, and the rest for chaplain’s salary and servants’ wages, lighting, coals and so forth.
At this date the prison population, taking the total inside the walls and those located within the “Rules,” seldom exceeded three hundred. The prisoners taken as a body were an idle, disorderly set of men with vicious habits. Thefts from one another were very common, although articles stolen were sometimes surrendered at the summons of the “crier” who publicly announced things lost or found. Divine service was performed on Sundays, Christmas Day and Good Friday, but prisoners seldom attended. The chaplain, an earnest, painstaking man, thought the hour of service inconveniently early and changed it to one o’clock in the afternoon, but found his flock as indolent at that hour as when the service was at eleven o’clock. The rule of attendance at chapel was laid down, but it could not be enforced. Neither the warden nor his deputy nor yet any of his turnkeys attended, but the latter sometimes drove away idle boys and people who make a disturbance at the chapel doors. The coffee-house and the “cellar head” tap were not closed during hours of divine worship. The warden was an aged man, blind, deaf, and infirm, who had delegated his duties to a deputy for fifteen years past, but who took the emoluments and risks, only paying the warden a fixed annuity of £500 a year. The rest of the staff consisted of a “clerk of the papers,” three turnkeys, a watchman who acted also as scavenger and the “crier.” There was no regular medical attendance, but a general practitioner from the neighbourhood was called in when required.
The foregoing conditions still obtained at the date of Charles Dickens’ description. “Pickwick” first appeared in 1836, but the observations on which the account of the Fleet was based were no doubt made much earlier and the picture drawn is strikingly realistic, as a few quotations will abundantly show.
When Mr. Pickwick accompanied by his astute solicitor Mr. Perker and his faithful bodyservant Sam Weller was committed to the Fleet at the suit of Messrs. Dodson and Fogg, he went through the usual preliminaries, sat for his portrait and was duly passed through the inner gate and found himself within the “lock” as imprisonment was euphemistically described. His further progress in search of quarters for the night is thus described: “It was getting dark; that is to say, a few jets were kindled in this place, which was never light, by way of compliment to the evening which had set in outside. As it was rather warm some of the tenants of the numerous little rooms which opened into the gallery on either hand had set their doors ajar. Mr. Pickwick peeped into them as he passed along, with great curiosity and interest. Here four or five great hulking fellows, just visible through a cloud of tobacco-smoke, were engaged in noisy and riotous conversation over half-emptied pots of beer or playing at ‘all-fours’ with a very greasy pack of cards. In the adjoining room some solitary tenant might be seen, poring, by the light of a feeble tallow candle, over a bundle of soiled and tattered papers, yellow with dust and dropping to pieces from age, writing, for the hundredth time, some lengthened statement of his grievances, for the perusal of some great man whose eyes it would never reach, or whose heart it would never touch. In a third, a man, with his wife and a whole crowd of children, might be seen, making up a scanty bed on the ground and upon a few chairs, for the younger ones to pass the night in. And in a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth and a seventh, the noise and the beer and the tobacco smoke, and the cards all came over again in greater force than before.
“In the galleries themselves and more especially on the staircases, there lingered a great number of people who came there, some because their rooms were empty and lonesome, others because their rooms were full and hot, and the greater part because they were restless and uncomfortable, and not possessed of the secret of exactly knowing what to do with themselves. There were many classes of people here—from the labouring man in his fustian jacket to the broken-down spendthrift in his shawl dressing-gown, most appropriately out at elbows; but there was the same air about them all—a listless, jail-bird, careless swagger, a vagabondish who’s afraid sort of bearing, which is wholly indescribable in words.”
The visit to the Common Side is brought forcibly before us in the following admirable description:
“The poor side of a debtor’s prison is, as its name imports, that in which the most miserable and abject class of debtors are confined. A prisoner having declared upon the poor side, pays neither rent nor ‘chummage.’ His fees upon entering and leaving the jail are reduced in amount, and he becomes entitled to a share of some small quantities of food, to provide which a few charitable persons have from time to time left trifling legacies in their wills. Most of our readers will remember that, until within a few years past, there was a kind of iron cage in the wall of the Fleet Prison, within which was posted some man of hungry looks, who from time to time rattled a money box and exclaimed in a mournful voice, ‘Pray remember the poor debtors; pray remember the poor debtors.’ The receipts of this box, when there were any, were divided among the poor prisoners; and the men on the poor side relieved each other in this degrading office.
“Although this custom has been abolished and the cage is now boarded up, the miserable and destitute condition of these unhappy persons remains the same. We no longer suffer them to appeal at the prison gates to the charity and compassion of the passers-by; but we still leave unblotted in our statute book, for the reverence and admiration of succeeding ages, the just and wholesome law which declares that the sturdy felon shall be fed and clothed, and that the penniless debtor shall be left to die of starvation and nakedness. This is no fiction. Not a week passes over our heads but, in every one of our prisons for debt, some of these men must inevitably expire in the slow agonies of want, if they were not relieved by their fellow-prisoners.”
No finer effort of genius has been shown than the pathetic episode of the death of the Chancery prisoner:
“The turnkey led the way in silence; and gently raising the latch of the room door, motioned Mr. Pickwick to enter. It was a large, bare, desolate room, with a number of stump bedsteads made of iron, on one of which lay stretched the shadow of a man, wan, pale and ghastly. His breathing was hard and thick and he moaned painfully as it came and went. At the bedside sat a short old man in a cobbler’s apron, who, by the aid of horn spectacles, was reading from the Bible aloud.
“The sick man laid his hand upon his attendant’s arm and motioned him to stop. He closed the book and laid it on the bed.
“ ‘Open the window,’ said the sick man.
“He did so. The noise of carriages and carts, the rattle of wheels, the cries of men and boys—all the busy sounds of a mighty multitude instinct with life and occupation, blended into one deep murmur, floated into the room. Above the hoarse, loud hum arose from time to time, a boisterous laugh; or a scrap of some jingling song, shouted forth by one of the giddy crowd, would strike upon the ear for an instant and then be lost amidst the roar of voices and the tramp of footsteps—the breaking of the billows of the restless sea of life that rolled heavily on without. Melancholy sounds to a quiet listener at any time; how melancholy to the watcher by the bed of death!
“ ‘There is no air here,’ said the sick man, faintly. ‘The place pollutes it. It was fresh round about when I walked there, years ago; but it grows hot and heavy in passing these walls. I cannot breathe it.’
“ ‘We have breathed it together for a long time,’ said the old man. ‘Come, come.’
“There was a short silence, during which the two spectators approached the bed. The sick man drew a hand of his old fellow-prisoner towards him, and pressing it affectionately between both his own, retained it in his grasp.
“ ‘I hope,’ he gasped, after a while, so faintly that they bent their ears close over the bed to catch the half-formed sounds his pale lips gave vent to—‘I hope my merciful Judge will bear in mind my heavy punishment on earth. Twenty years, my friend, twenty years in this hideous grave! My heart broke when my child died, and I could not even kiss him in his little coffin. My loneliness since then, in all this noise and riot, has been very dreadful. May God forgive me! He has seen my solitary, lingering death.’
“He folded his hands and murmuring something more they could not hear, fell into a sleep—only a sleep at first, for they saw him smile.
“They whispered together for a little time and the turnkey, stooping over the pillow, drew hastily back. ‘He has got his discharge by G—!’ said the man.
“He had. But he had grown so like death in life that they knew not when he died.”
As the years drew on the Fleet prison was more and more denounced and discredited. While a certain section of those detained spent their days in dissipation and excess, a much larger number, three-fourths of the whole, were still destitute and unable to provide themselves with bread. A case given in the Morning Herald of August 12, 1833, may be cited in this connection. “A gentleman complained that the overseers of St. Bride’s Parish had refused to relieve a distressed prisoner in the Fleet. The prisoner was Mr. Timothy Sheldrake, who had been well known for his skill in treating deformities of the body. He once kept his carriage and obtained £4,000 by his practice but he was now quite destitute—when applicant saw him he had actually fasted forty-eight hours.” There was some dispute as to the liability of the parish of St. Bride’s, but it was decided to appropriate relief out of the County Rate.
The hardships inflicted upon the poorer inmates of the Fleet were not the only evils that prevailed in that mismanaged establishment. It was a school of crime and more than one offender owed his lapse from honesty to his residence in the Fleet. It came out that the ringleader of a gang of utterers of forged bank-notes lived constantly in the prison. He made it his business to ingratiate himself with young men of good appearance who were fellow prisoners and to lead them into giving their services in passing spurious notes when again at large. One of these was convicted and only escaped the gallows by taking poison the night before his execution. He had been a captain in the army and was of good family and showy appearance. The gang at last committed a robbery on a bank in Cornwall and was entirely broken up. From that time the instigator, who had resided within the Fleet, disappeared entirely, although he was not one of those convicted or even suspected of the crime in Cornwall.
At last the days of the Fleet prison were numbered. The act of 1 and 2 Queen Victoria C-110 abolished arrest on mesne process and no more debtors were to be sent by the courts of Chancery, Exchequer and Common Pleas to the Fleet: all debtors and bankrupts to go in future to the Queen’s Bench prison in Southwark, or to the new prison in Whitecross Street, which shall be dealt with in due course. These prisons were to be fully utilised and the Fleet pulled down, with a considerable saving to the Exchequer in its maintenance and the sale of its valuable site. The change was not made without protest and the bill was opposed in Parliament, but it passed in due course into law. There were several strict clauses regulating the future governance of the Queen’s Bench, all aimed at “preventing extravagance and luxury and enforcing due order and discipline within the prison.”
Earliest mention—Lord Chief Justice and Prince Hal—The first prison destroyed by the Lord George rioters—Rebuilt—Notable inmates—Richard Baxter—Sir William Reresbury—Chatterton—Smollett’s description in “Roderick Random”—George Morland frequently a prisoner—John Wilkes imprisoned and the disturbances that resulted—His career and death—William Hone, the well known litterateur, lodged in the King’s Bench for debt, where he compiled his “Every Day Book,” “Table Book,” and “Year Book”—Colonel Hanger, soldier, courtier, beau—A chosen companion of the Prince of Wales—His services in the American War—His difficulties and arrest—Lord Cochrane, a distinguished naval officer—Committal to the King’s Bench—Plot of which he was the victim—His adventures in the King’s Bench—Method of escape and appearance in Parliament—Later career in South America. Brilliant services and tardy rehabilitation by the British government.
THE first King’s Bench Prison stood on the east side of the High Street Borough, Southwark, near the Marshalsea and dated from 1377, the time of Richard II. It is memorable as the prison to which Chief Justice Gascoigne committed Prince Hal, the heir apparent of the English throne, and later King Henry V, the hero of Agincourt. The royal offender, Prince Hal, had been guilty of contempt of court in taking one of his suite from the custody of the court and offering violence to the judge on his bench. The story is held by some to be apocryphal, but the Prince’s prison chamber was still shown in the time of Oldys,[5] the historian. The prison was moved to the southwest corner of Blackman’s Street and the entrance of the Borough Road, and was standing there when burned down by the Lord George Gordon rioters in 1780, but was rebuilt on the lines described by Mr. Allen in his history of Surrey, and survived until a quite recent date. According to the account there given, it occupied an extensive area of ground and consisted of one large pile of buildings about 120 yards long. The south or principal front had a pediment under which was the chapel. There were four pumps of spring and river water in the interior. It contained 224 rooms or apartments, eight of which being much larger than the others were called staterooms. A coffee-house and two public houses were to be found within the walls, with shops and stalls for the sale of meat, vegetables and necessaries like any public market. “The number of people walking about,” says Allen, “or engaged in various amusements are little calculated to impress the stranger with an idea of distress or even of confinement.” The walls surrounding the prison were thirty feet high and were crowned with a chevaux de frise to prevent escape. The “Rules” were extensive and included all St. George’s Fields, one side of Blackman Street, and part of the Borough High Street, enclosing altogether an area of three miles in circumference. These “Rules” were purchasable by prisoners at various rates; when the debt was considerable the price was eight guineas for the first hundred, and half that sum for every hundred in addition. Day rates cost 4s 2d for the first day and 3s 10d for the days following. The exact limits of the Rules were never strictly defined and Lord Ellenborough, when Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, being asked to extend them, said he saw no necessity, as to his certain knowledge they already included the East Indies, implying that fugitives had fled there. Of course in such a case the marshal was held responsible for the debt of the one who had run away. The practice of permitting prisoners to live beyond the prison originated, it was said, in the days of the Plague.
Among the earliest records of the King’s Bench prison of Southwark was a petition from the prisoners to the Privy Council for its enlargement and the erection of a chapel. It was pleaded that at this time, through over-crowding, there was “much sickness in the house.” In later days under the Commonwealth it was called the “Upper Bench Prison.” Among the early inmates of any note was Dr. Robert Recorde, said to have been physician to King Edward VI and Queen Mary; he was a Fellow of All Souls, Oxford, and died in the King’s Bench in 1558, when confined there for debt. John Rushworth, author of the “Historical Collections” of facts, 1618-1648, was a prisoner in the Bench for six years, and the notorious Judge Jeffreys committed Richard Baxter, the non-conformist advocate, to it for eighteen months. An inmate of title who had fallen sadly away from his high estate was Sir William Reresby, the son and heir of Sir John, whose “Memoirs and Travels,” with anecdotes and secret history of the courts of Charles II and James II are full of interest. Sir William was the third baronet, a reckless spendthrift and gamester who wasted large sums at the tables and in cock-fighting. He lost his fine estate of Dennaby at a single throw of the dice and was afterward tried and imprisoned for cheating in 1711. He eventually became a tapster in the King’s Bench.
Chatterton, the youthful poet, who forged the apocryphal poems of Thomas Rowley, the supposititious monk of the fifteenth century, was at one time a prisoner in the King’s Bench, whence he dated a letter, May 14th, 1770, saying that a gentleman had recommended him as the travelling companion for the young Duke of Northumberland, but that alas! he spoke no language but his own. Chatterton’s fraud was one of the most curious crimes in literary history. He was a native of Bristol and an attorney’s clerk, when he pretended to have discovered an ancient manuscript, which he put forward as authentic, but which was soon pronounced a forgery by Mason and Gray and other contemporary poets. Nothing daunted, Chatterton came to London to seek his fortune in literature; he produced great numbers of satirical poems, political essays and critical letters which found their way into print, but without remuneration. When threatened with penury, he committed suicide at his lodgings in Brook St., Holborn. He was undoubtedly a genius and he has been called the greatest prodigy in literature, for he was no more than eighteen when he died and he had already produced some fine, vigorous work.
A good picture of the King’s Bench is given by Smollett about this date (1750) in his “Roderick Random:” “The prison is situated in St. George’s Fields, about a mile from the end of Westminster Bridge, and it appears like a neat little regular town, consisting of one street, surrounded by a very high wall, including an open piece of ground which may be termed a garden, where the prisoners take the air, and amuse themselves with a variety of diversions. Except the entrance, where the turnkeys keep watch and ward, there is nothing in the place that looks like a gaol, or bears the least colour of restraint. The street is crowded with passengers; tradesmen of all kinds here exercise their different professions; hawkers of all sorts are admitted to call and vend their wares as in any open street in London. There are butchers’ stands, chandlers’ shops, a surgery, a tap-house well frequented, and a public kitchen, in which provisions are dressed for all the prisoners gratis, at the expense of the publican. Here the voice of misery never complains; and indeed little else is to be heard but the sounds of mirth and jollity. At the further end of the street, on the right hand, is a little paved court leading to a separate building, consisting of twelve large apartments called ‘State rooms,’ well furnished, and fitted up for the reception of the better sort of Crown prisoners; and on the other side of the street, facing a separate piece of ground, is the Common Side, a range of rooms occupied by prisoners of the lowest order, who share the profits of the begging-box, and are maintained by this practice and some established funds of charity. We ought also to observe that the gaol is provided with a neat chapel, in which a clergyman in consideration of a certain salary, performs divine service every Sunday.”
Artists shared with men of letters the honours of the King’s Bench. One whose work is perhaps more highly appreciated to-day than in his own time was George Morland, the painter, who was born in London on the 26th June, 1763, and was the son of Henry Robert Morland and grandson of George Henry Morland. He is said by Cunningham to have been lineally descended from Sir Samuel Morland, while other biographers go so far as to assert that he had only to claim the baronetcy in order to get it. He began to draw at three years old and at the age of ten (1773) his name appears as an honorary exhibitor at the Royal Academy. Although the publishers reaped the principal profit from the sale of his works, Morland’s credit and resources enabled him for some years to lead the rollicking life he loved without much pressure of monetary care. At one period he kept eight saddle horses at the White Lion Inn. But as time passed he became crippled with debts and a prey to creditors who gave him no peace. He lived a hunted life and was only able to escape from the bailiffs by his knowledge of London and the assistance of friends and interested picture dealers. He fled from one house to another, residing now in Lambeth, now in East Sheen, now Queen Anne Street, the Minories, Kensington or Hackney. At this last place his strict seclusion aroused a suspicion that he was a forger of bank notes and his premises were searched at the instance of the bank directors, who afterward made him a present of £40 for the inconvenience caused by their mistake.
In November, 1799, Morland was at last arrested for debt, and he was allowed to take lodgings “within the Rules” of the King’s Bench to which his most discreditable friends constantly flocked. During this mitigated imprisonment he sank lower and lower. According to the “Dictionary of National Biography” he was often drunk for days together and generally slept on the floor in a helpless condition. It is probable that these stories are exaggerated, for he still produced an enormous quantity of good work. “For his brother alone,” says Redgrave, “he painted 192 pictures between 1800 and 1804, and he probably painted as many more for other dealers during the same period, his terms being four guineas a day and his drink.” Another account says that during his last eight years he painted 490 pictures for his brother and probably 300 more for others, besides making hundreds of drawings. His total production is estimated at no less than four thousand pictures. In 1802 he was released under the Insolvent Debtors’ Act but his health was ruined and his habits irremediable. About this time he was seized with palsy and lost the use of his left hand so that he could not hold his palette. Notwithstanding this, he seems to have gone on painting to the last, when he was arrested again for a publican’s score and died in a sponging house in Eyre Street, Cold Bath Fields, on 27th October, 1804. His much wronged wife was so afflicted at the news of his death that she died three days afterward and both were buried together in the burial ground attached to St. James’ Chapel in the Hampstead Road.
Morland’s epitaph on himself was, “Here lies a drunken dog.” His propensities to drink and low pleasure appear to have been unusually strong. He had opportunities of indulging them at an unusually early age and throughout life, except for a short interval of courtship and domesticity, he was surrounded by associates who encouraged his debauchery. “But though he was vain and dissolute he was generous, good natured and industrious and appears to have been free from the meaner and more malicious forms of vice. It should also be placed to his credit that however degraded his mode of life, he did not degrade his art to the same level.”
It would be difficult to define the exact place of John Wilkes in the history of this time, but he figures largely in that of the King’s Bench prison, both as an inmate and the cause of much loss of life in the disturbances to which his committal gave rise. To-day he is rightly judged as an insolent demagogue who misled the ignorant public by his intemperate attacks upon the government and his offensive writings in the North Briton, which cost him several duels and an embittered prosecution. He gained immense popularity with the mob as his long trial proceeded, which culminated in serious riots when the case at last went against him, and he was sent to the King’s Bench. The carriage in which he was conveyed was seized by the crowd, the horses removed, and the vehicle was dragged to a public house in Spital Fields north of the present Liverpool Street Railway Station. Here he was allowed to alight and at eleven o’clock at night to escape from his over zealous friends, taking immediate advantage of his liberty to surrender himself at the King’s Bench prison. The next day a vast mob collected outside the prison, and some hostile demonstration was feared. Nothing worse occurred than the tearing down of the fences surrounding the prison and burning them in a bonfire, while the residents in the neighbourhood were compelled to illuminate their windows. Legal proceedings were resumed in the days following and Wilkes’ counsel pleaded for arrest in judgment on the ground of illegal action, but the Crown would not yield, and a day was fixed for the final discussion whether or not the sentence of outlawry passed on him should be maintained.
The malcontents held their ground about the prison in threatening numbers, and resisted all efforts of the civil authority to disperse them, and the troops were called out. The riot act was read and after the warning the order given to fire, which was promptly obeyed with fatal results. A number of persons were killed and wounded, the shots aimed high after taking effect upon those at a distance. Further violent outrages were not committed. Later a mob attacked the house of Lord Bute, hated Prime Minister of that day, and the Mansion House and private apartments of the Lady Mayoress were invaded and wrecked. People were everywhere forced to illuminate their windows and the street echoed with cries of “Wilkes and Liberty.” The rioters were guilty of many outrages. Several quiet folk were killed, numbers wounded, windows were broken, furniture destroyed, royal residences even were threatened. The tumults extended to the provinces, the working classes were disaffected and demanded higher wages, and when denied went out on strikes, the earliest instances of them known. The disturbances were taken up by the seamen in the Pool, and a body of thousands of sailors marched in procession to the St. James Palace with drums beating and colours flying to present a petition to the King, praying for a relief of grievances. The following day they assembled in a great multitude in Palace Yard, boisterously clamouring for an increase of wages, but dispersed on an assurance from two M. P.’s that their requests should receive attention. A fresh tumult arose at Limehouse where several outward bound vessels were boarded and prevented from going to sea. All workers in London—sawyers, hatters, watermen and the Spital Fields weavers—combined in demanding an increase of wages, and confusion and unrest were general throughout London. The commotion gradually subsided and the principal rioters were brought to justice, while Wilkes still remained in the King’s Bench prison. The sympathy shown him took a very practical form. Some £20,000 were subscribed for the payment of his fines and debts, many valuable gifts were presented to him: plate, jewels, wine, furniture and purses embroidered in gold and containing specie.
A word or two about John Wilkes will illuminate the foregoing recital. He was born in 1727, the son of a brewer or distiller at Clerkenwell, and had been well educated at the University of Leyden. On his return to England at the early age of twenty-two he married an heiress, Miss Mead, ten years his senior. Although he was without personal attraction, his ready wit and charming manner gave him such an advantage with the fair sex that he was fond of saying that he was only ten minutes behind the handsomest man in a room. He kept a good table and soon won a large circle of friends, but his extravagant ways and love of dissipation involved him in difficulties. He quarrelled with his wife, they separated, and in the lawsuit his character and reputation were much damaged. When in 1757 he entered the House of Commons as a member for Aylesbury, he joined the agitation against that already most unpopular minister, Lord Bute, and founding the notorious North Briton, succeeded by persistent attacks in the paper in driving him from office. The next minister was no less fiercely assailed and Wilkes so far forgot himself as to charge the King (George III) with telling a lie. For this his house was entered and his papers seized and he himself committed to the Tower, but released on his claiming privilege as a member of Parliament. The North Briton was publicly burned by order of the House of Commons; Wilkes retaliated by an action against the Government for the improper seizure of his papers, and he was awarded £1,000 damages with a dictum from the Lord Chief Justice that general warrants were illegal.
Wilkes then was expelled from the House of Commons and went over to France. In his absence the Government proceeded to blacken his character by publishing an obscene poem of which he was the joint author, but it was shown that a printed copy had been obtained by underhand methods, the ministers incurring so much odium that they were driven from office. When the new Government was formed Wilkes returned to England and was now elected member for Middlesex. It was at this time that the riots described above occurred. Wilkes impugned the conduct of ministers and accused them of responsibility for the “massacre in St. George in the Field.” This was held in the House of Commons to be a seditious libel and Wilkes was again expelled from the House. The electors of Middlesex protested by returning him again and again, defying the House of Commons and glorifying Wilkes—who was still imprisoned in the King’s Bench—as the champion of national liberty. Wilkes was now the most popular man in England. Soon afterward he won a suit against Lord Halifax with £4,000 damages and in the following year was released on giving a bond for seven years’ good behaviour. Three years after he was made Lord Mayor of London and once again elected as member for Middlesex, which he now represented for several years. Wilkes in his last days sank into comparative obscurity and died an “extinct volcano” in 1792. Wilkes was not the immediate cause of the confinement in the King’s Bench prison of William Hone, but this well-known writer owed his protracted trials directly to the famous demagogue. He was arraigned at the Guildhall in 1817, charged with having printed and published the profane but curious “Wilkes’ Catechism,” which purported “to have been from the original manuscript in Mr. Wilkes’ handwriting and never before printed.” It was described as a catechism or “Instructions to be learned of every person before he be brought to be confirmed a placeman or pensioner by the minister.” The first questions and answers indicate its character. “Q. What is your name? A. Lickspittle. Q. Who gave you this name? A. My sureties to the ministry in my political change wherein I was made a member of the majority, the child of corruption and a locust to devour the good things of the kingdom.” Then follows the “belief,” which is too blasphemous for quotation, and the commandments, one of which ran, “Honour the Regent and the helmets of the Lifeguards, that thy stay may be long in the place which the Lord thy ministry giveth thee.” The general tenor of this catechism will be seen in the question “What is thy duty towards thyself?” and the answer, “My duty towards myself is to love nobody but myself and to do unto most men what I would not that they should do unto me; to sacrifice unto my own interest even my father and mother; to pay little reverence to the King, but to compensate that omission by my servility to all that are out in authority under him,” and so on.
The prosecution was no doubt inspired by the fierce party spirit prevailing at the time and caused great excitement; the Court, that of the King’s Bench in Guildhall, was densely crowded by an audience by no means in sympathy with the Attorney General when he unsparingly denounced the publication, and the violent coughing and other marks of disapprobation during his address roused the judge, Mr. Justice Abbott, to declare that he would clear the court. Mr. Hone defended himself ably, pleading that the whole publication was intended as a parody, but that he had stopped its sale directly he found it was looked upon as profane. A verdict of “not guilty” was speedily brought in by the jury, which was received with loud demonstrations of approval. Mr. Hone was again put on his trial, first for publishing a parody entitled “The Political Litany,” and again for publishing a parody on the “Athanasian Creed” styled the “Sinecurist Creed.” His defence, which he again conducted personally with such great boldness that the sitting judge, Lord Ellenborough, designated it as outraging decency and propriety, resulted in another verdict of “not guilty,” a decision greeted with loud cheers extending far beyond the limits of the court. These matters would have no permanent interest nor would William Hone call for reference here, but that he was afterward arrested by a creditor and lodged in the King’s Bench when he was engaged upon the production of his “Everyday Book,” a work full of curious and useful information, completed within the walls of the prison. He also began and finished there his “Table Book” and his “Year Book,” productions that have long survived the personality of their author.
An interesting character, the hero of many striking adventures and who passed through some strange vicissitudes and misfortunes, found himself more than once in the King’s Bench at the latter end of the eighteenth century. This was Colonel Hanger, commonly known as George Hanger, for although he eventually succeeded to his father’s title of Lord Coleraine, he steadfastly objected to assume it. He was a man of substance in his time, having property in his own right, and he early entered the army as an officer in the 1st regiment of Guards, from which he passed during the war with the American Colonies into the service of the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel. He was a prominent dandy in his time, lived fashionably, spent large sums on his clothes, and although he played little at cards, he gambled continually and for large sums on the turf. It was the rule for well-born youths in his time to dress extravagantly; young Hanger tells us in his memoirs that one set of winter dress clothes cost him £900 and he adds, “This should not so much astonish the reader as the fact that I actually paid the tailor.” The expense of appearing properly on the King’s birthday was enormous, an officer of the Guards being obliged to have two suits, and he says: “My morning vestments cost me nearly £80 and those for the state ball above £180. It was a satin coat and the first that had made its appearance in this country; shortly after, satin dress clothes became common among well-dressed men.... I had no office of emolument, advantage or trust about his Majesty’s person, except an ensigncy, the pay of which did not amount to four shillings per day, a sum insufficient to meet the tailor’s charges for one single button and button-hole to my gala suit; the very stitching of a button-hole in those days cost me more, and the embroidered gold clocks on my stockings in which I never failed to appear at a ball were very expensive.” Hanger became one of the chosen companions of the Prince of Wales (George IV) and lived at the same pace. He kept race-horses, backed them for considerable sums and once stood to win or lose 3,000 guineas on one race. “I can with truth say the turf had done me justice,” he writes, “but the extravagance of the times, the delightful pleasure of that age and the frailty of my own nature were my ruin.” He lived in fact far above his income which never exceeded eleven hundred pounds a year, and presently he became seriously involved. He had recourse to a mortgage on his estate for £13,000, and as he became more and more indebted was obliged in due course to sell it when it fetched rather less than half the sum at which it had been originally valued. He accompanied his regiment to America, took part in the war of Independence, but made the mistake of leaving the British Guards for the Hessian service. He found friends in Sir Harry Clinton and Colonel Tarleton, by whom he was appointed to the British Legion, and distinguished himself in the field.
When the war ended and Major Hanger was due to return to England, his affairs were so straitened that he took refuge in Calais, leaving friends to act for him at home and arrange with his creditors. But for the generous assistance of Mr. Richard Tattersal he could not have landed in England, for he was now completely beggared, and when directly he reappeared in the world, was arrested by his creditors. It was at this time that his estate was forcibly sold at such a loss. He now surrendered himself at the King’s Bench, where he was detained for some months but by the help of friends was admitted to take the “Rules.” His detention was brief, but his experiences as told in his “Life and Adventures” throw a strong light upon the iniquitous system still in force with regard to debtors as described later.
A distinguished naval officer, Lord Cochrane, afterward Earl of Dundonald, was committed a prisoner to the King’s Bench in 1815, on conviction of seeking to influence the stock markets by the dissemination of false news. His eminent services in the late war with France were forgotten and he was denied a fair, unprejudiced trial. It was clear that he was the victim of a dastardly plot and was sacrificed to the treachery of the villainous author of it. Lord Cochrane had recently been given the command of a King’s ship, and was on the point of sailing for the North American station. One day a visitor named de Berenger called at his house, pretending to be an officer and prisoner for debt, within the Rules of the King’s Bench. He said he had come to Lord Cochrane to implore him to release him from his difficulties and give him a passage across the Atlantic. His application was refused,—it was forbidden indeed according to naval rules,—and de Berenger was sent away. But before he left the house he pleaded piteously that to return to the King’s Bench prison in full uniform would attract suspicion. It was not stated how he had evaded its jurisdiction, but he no doubt implied that he had escaped and changed into uniform somewhere. Why he did not go back to the same place to resume his plain clothes did not appear. Lord Cochrane only knew that in answer to his urgent entreaty he lent him some clothes (the room was at that moment littered with clothes, which were to be sent on board the Tonnant). He unguardedly gave de Berenger a “civilian’s hat and coat.” This was a capital part of the charge against Lord Cochrane.
De Berenger had altogether lied about himself. He had not come from within the Rules of the King’s Bench but from Dover, where he had been seen the previous night at the Ship Hotel. He was then in uniform and pretended to be an aide-de-camp to Lord Cathcart, who was the bearer of important despatches. He made no secret of the transcendent news he brought. Bonaparte had been killed by the Cossacks, Louis XVIII proclaimed and the allied armies were on the point of occupying Paris. To give greater publicity to the intelligence he sent it by letter to the port-admiral at Deal, to be forwarded to the Government in London by means of the semaphore telegraph. The effect of this startling news was to send up stocks ten per cent., and many speculators who sold on the rise realised enormous sums.
De Berenger, still in uniform, followed in a post-chaise, but on reaching London he dismissed it, took a hackney coach and drove straight to Lord Cochrane’s. He had some slight acquaintance with his lordship and had already petitioned him for a passage to America but the application had been refused. There was nothing extraordinary, then, in de Berenger’s visit. His lordship, again, claimed that de Berenger in calling on him, instead of going straight to the Stock Exchange to commence operations, indicated that he had weakened in his plot and did not see how to carry it through. “Had I been his confederate,” says Lord Cochrane in his affidavit, “it is not within the bounds of credibility that he would have come in the first instance to my house and waited two hours for my return home in place of carrying out the plot he had undertaken, or that I should have been occupied in perfecting my lamp invention for the use of the convoy of which I was in a few days to take charge, instead of being on the only spot where any advantage to be derived from the Stock Exchange hoax could be realised had I been a participator in it. Such advantage must have been immediate, before the truth came out; and to have reaped it, had I been guilty, it was necessary that I should not lose a moment. It is still more improbable that being aware of the hoax, I should not have speculated largely for the special risk of that day.”
We may take Lord Cochrane’s word, as an officer and a gentleman, that he had no guilty knowledge of de Berenger’s scheme; but here again the luck was against him, for it came out in evidence that his brokers had sold stock for him on the day of the fraud. Yet the operation was not an isolated one, made on that occasion only. Lord Cochrane declared that he had for some time past anticipated a favourable conclusion to the war. “I had held shares for the rise,” he said, “and had made money by sales. The stock I held on the day of the fraud was less than I usually had, and it was sold under an old order given to my brokers to sell at a certain price. It had necessarily to be sold.” It was clear to Lord Cochrane’s friends—who, indeed, and rightly, held him to be incapable of stooping to fraud—that had he contemplated it he would have been a larger holder of stock on the day in question when, actually, he held less than usual. On these grounds alone they were of opinion that he should have been absolved from the charge.
The part taken by the late Lord Playfair in the rehabilitation of Lord Cochrane has been told by Sir Wemyss Reid in his admirable “Memoirs” of Playfair. The Earl of Dundonald died in October, 1860. To his grandson, the present gallant earl, whose brilliant achievements as a cavalry leader in the great Boer War have shown him to be a worthy scion of a warrior stock, his last will bequeathed as follows: “All sums due to me by the British Government for my important services, as well as the sums of pay stopped under perjured evidence for the commission of a fraud upon the Stock Exchange. Given under my trembling hand this 21st day of February, the anniversary of my ruin.”
Lord Playfair was an intimate friend of the much-worried admiral, and while he was a member of the House of Commons he made a strenuous effort to carry out the terms of the above will by recovering the sums mentioned in it. What followed shall be told in Playfair’s own words. “In 1814 Lord Dundonald and Lady X were in love and though they did not marry, always held each other in great esteem for the rest of their lives. Old Lady X was still alive in 1877, and she sent me a letter through young Cochrane, the grandson, authorising me to use it as I thought best. The letter was yellow with age, but had been carefully preserved. It was written by Lord Dundonald and was dated from the prison on the night of the committal. It tried to console the lady by the fact that the guilt of a near relative of hers was not suspected, while the innocence of the writer was his support and consolation.
“The old lady must have had a terrible trial. It was hard to sacrifice the reputation of her relative; it was harder still to see injustice still resting upon her former lover. Lord Dundonald had loved her and received much kindness from her relative, so he suffered calumny and the injustice of nearly two generations rather than tell the true story of his wrong.
“I had long suspected the truth, but I never heard it from Lord Dundonald. The brave old lady tendered this letter as evidence to the Committee, but I declined to give it in, knowing that had my friend been alive he would not have allowed me to do so. At the same time I showed the letter to the members of the Committee individually and it had a great effect upon their minds and no doubt helped to secure the report recommending that the Treasury should pay the grandson the back salary of the admiral.
“The interesting letter itself I recommended should be put in the archives of the Dundonald family and this I believe has been done.”
Lord Cochrane’s incarceration in the King’s Bench was the cause of considerable trouble. He had been committed there in default of a payment of the fine of a thousand pounds and with a sentence of one year’s imprisonment during which, in company with his alleged confederates, he was to stand once on the pillory in the open space before the Royal Exchange. Lord Cochrane was at that time a member of the House of Commons and it was moved in the House that he should be expelled, which was carried by a large majority. He found many warm friends, however, and chief among them Sir Francis Burdett, who, when the seat of Westminster was declared vacant, proposed Lord Cochrane for re-election, and his lordship was unanimously returned. He continued, however, to reside in the King’s Bench until the time of the next session approached, and he was resolved to break prison in order to appear in his place when the House met. He did, in effect, but in none of the ways reported at the time. One report was that he went out concealed in a sofa bedstead; another that he was sewn up inside a mattress with the feathers; a third that he passed the gates in disguise, but not unknown to the authorities, whom he had bribed to wink at his departure. The real truth was that having arranged for the visit of three or four Life guardsmen, he exchanged clothes with one of the troopers and walked out unmolested wearing the soldier’s uniform.
Lord Cochrane remained at large for a fortnight and evaded pursuit until he presumed to enter the House of Commons where he found a seat upon the Treasury bench. While he was addressing the House and reading the documents connected with his own case, the marshal of the King’s Bench, who had been notified, accompanied by several officers, walked into the House and proceeded to arrest his lordship, who immediately demanded the authority. He was told that it was the public proclamation offering a reward for his apprehension. Lord Cochrane demurred, violently resisted his capture, and something like a free fight occurred upon the floor of the House; eventually his lordship was overpowered and reconducted to the King’s Bench. Mr. Jones, the marshal, no doubt a little unhappy at his temerity, humbly submitted himself to the Speaker, hoping he had not been guilty of disrespect, for if he was wrong it was from an error of judgment and due to no wish to offend the House. The matter was made the subject of some debate, but when referred to the Committee of Privilege, they considered that the case was quite novel and it did not appear to them that the privileges of the House had been violated or that there was any call for interference. The time remaining for the completion of the term of imprisonment Lord Cochrane spent in a conflict with the marshal as to his accommodation and general treatment in the prison, in which Mr. Jones was ultimately exonerated and Lord Cochrane admitted that he had no complaint to make of the marshal, or of any of the officers of the prison.
Lord Dundonald’s later career is in a sense outside of my subject, but it was distinguished by many brave exploits and his capacity as a naval leader was usefully exercised in the service of another country than his own; his merits were recognised by the Emperor of Brazil, who gave him the command of the Brazilian fleet and created him a marquis. Through his able leadership the South American colonies of Spain gained their freedom and he assisted largely in the Greek war of independence. At length in 1830, tardy justice was done him and Earl Grey, now in office, believing him to have been the victim of a cruel and unjust persecution, restored him to his rank in the British navy. He was granted the Grand Cross of the Bath and appointed to a command, as an admiral. He was a man of strong character, remarkable for his inventive genius, a skilled and adventurous seaman, who won renown afloat although constantly opposed to forces superior to his own in numbers and metal. At the end of his life he enjoyed the sympathetic esteem of his fellow countrymen. His heirs were eventually granted compensation for the pay and allowances as a naval officer so long withheld from him, while under a cloud.