It was through this gateway that the tipstaff preceded Mr. Pickwick, as you may read in chapter xii. of the second volume which chronicles that immortal gentleman’s adventures, “looking over his shoulder to see that his charge was following close at his heels;” and in the gate-lodge, which they entered through a door at the left, Mr. Pickwick sat for his portrait to the assembled turnkeys, so that he might be remembered should he take the fancy to stroll out of the doors without a license. There was in this lodge “a heavy gate guarded by a stout turnkey with the key in his hand,” and when Mr. Pickwick’s likeness was completed, he passed through this inner gate, and 78 down a short flight of steps, and “found himself, for the first time in his life, within the walls of a debtor’s prison.”
The Fleet in those days consisted principally of one long brick pile, which ran parallel with the Fleet Market, now Farringdon street, with an open court around it, bounded by a lofty wall, over which, here and there, one could see the sooty chimney-tops and the smoky sky. The buildings were four stories in height above the ground, with a story half under ground among the foundations. No architectural art had been wasted on the exterior of the structure, and no sanitary ingenuity or sentimental seeking after the comfort of the inmates had been expended upon the interior. The one aim of the constructors had been to so divide the space as to cram within it the greatest possible number of persons. To this end, each floor was traversed by a single hallway or passage, “a long narrow gallery, dirty and low, and very dimly lighted by a window at each remote end,” on either hand of which opened doors of innumerable single rooms, which rarely, however, failed to do duty as lodgings for less than several tenants. The floors, as Mr. Tom Roker explained to Mr. 79 Pickwick when he inducted him into the prison, were distinguished as the hall flight, the coffee-room flight, the third flight and the top flight. All the rooms on these floors were let by the week, at prices adjusted to their presumed desirability and the capacity of the lessee’s purse, and governed by the number of tenants who entered upon them.
The basement rooms, even, formed a source of revenue to the warden. This sunken story, which received its light from the low-browed windows whose sills were level with the slabs of the prison yard, was known as Bartholomew Fair. Here misery might welter in its offal at the fee of one-and-threepence a week if it still held itself above the abject degradation of the Common Side, whose inmates took their turn at begging at the grate. The Common Side was a building apart from the main range, which latter was known as the Warden Side. Here there was no rent to pay. The prisoners bunked in gangs, like emigrants on an ocean passage. As to Bartholomew Fair, let Dickens describe it himself (vide “Pickwick,” chapter xiii, volume II):
“‘Oh!’ replied Mr. Pickwick, looking down 80 a dark and filthy staircase which appeared to lead to a range of damp and gloomy stone vaults beneath the ground, ‘And these, I suppose, are the little cellars where the prisoners keep their small quantities of coals? Unpleasant places to have to go down to, but very convenient, I daresay.’ ‘Yes, I shouldn’t wonder if they was convenient,’ replied Mr. Roker, ‘seeing that a few people live there pretty snug. That’s the Fair, that is!’ ‘My friend,’ said Mr. Pickwick, ‘you don’t really mean to say that human beings live down these wretched dungeons?’ ‘Don’t?’ replied Mr. Roker, with indignant astonishment; ‘why shouldn’t I?’ ‘Live down there?’ exclaimed Mr. Pickwick. ‘Live down there? Yes, and die down there, too, wery often.’”
Nominally, each prisoner in the Fleet on the Warden Side was entitled to a room at the charge of 1s. 3d. a week. Actually, however, he never got one on any floor above the level of Bartholomew Fair. Each room was made to quarter from two to four tenants in the space designed for one, so that it, at full seasons, actually produced at least a crown a week rental. This system, which was excused on the plea of overcrowding of the jail by commitments of the courts, was called “chummage,” and the system produced another curious practice of prison 81 life. If one or more prisoners occupied a room and another was “chummed” on them, they could buy him off by paying him a few shillings a week, and so keep the room to themselves. He, out of the money they paid him, paid in his turn for inferior quarters elsewhere. Thus, a prisoner who was willing to pay full rent for a room to the warden, and buy off anyone who might be chummed upon him, could have a dirty box of a chamber to himself, at the average cost of a first-class parlor and bedroom outside the walls. Prisoners who had been a certain number of years in the jail had a prescriptive right to a room to themselves, and most of these rented their apartments at good rates to new comers, and took beds for themselves in the common lodgings.
When Mr. Pickwick entered the Fleet as a resident (vide volume II, chapter xiv) he was chummed on “27 in the third,” whose door was to be distinguished by the likeness of a man being hung and smoking a pipe the while, done in chalk upon the panel. Not liking his company of three here he, as may be recalled, rented the room of a chancery prisoner, in which he settled down. For the use of this room he 82 paid £1 a week, and for the furniture, which he hired from a keeper, £1 3s. more. These figures may serve as an indication of the rates prevailing in the Fleet fifteen years before it was demolished. The episode of Mr. Pickwick’s investigatory experiences in this connection is worth quoting, as a part of the panorama of prison life. There was only one man in the room upon which he was chummed, and he “was leaning out of the window as far as he could without overbalancing himself, endeavoring, with great perseverance, to spit upon the crown of the hat of a personal friend upon the parade below.” He expressed his disgust at having had the newcomer chummed upon him, and summoned his two room-mates, who were a bankrupt butcher and a drunken chaplain out of orders, the expectoratory gentleman himself being a professional blackleg.
“‘It’s an aggravating thing, just as we got the beds so snug,’ said the chaplain, looking at the dirty mattresses, each rolled up in a blanket, which occupied one corner of the room during the day, and formed a kind of slab on which were placed an old cracked basin, ewer and soap-dish of common yellow earthenware with a blue flower; ‘very aggravating.’
83“Mr. Martin (the butcher) expressed the same opinion, in rather stronger terms.
“Mr. Simpson (the ’leg) after having let a variety of expletive adjectives loose upon society, without any substantive to accompany them, tucked up his sleeves and began to wash greens for dinner.
“While this was going on Mr. Pickwick had been eyeing the room, which was filthily dirty and smelt intolerably close. There was no vestige of either carpet, curtain or blind. There was not even a closet in it. Unquestionably, there were but few things to put away if there had been one, but, however few in number, or small in individual amount, still, remnants of loaves, and pieces of cheese, and damp towels, and scraps of meat, and articles of wearing apparel, mutilated crockery, and bellows without nozzles, and toasting-forks without prongs, do present somewhat of an uncomfortable appearance when they are scattered about the floor of a small apartment, which is the common sitting and sleeping room of three idle men.
“‘I suppose that this can be managed somehow,’ said the butcher, after a pretty long silence. ‘What will you take to go out?’
“‘I beg your pardon,’ replied Mr. Pickwick, ‘what did you say? I hardly understood you.’
“‘What will you take to be paid out?’ said the butcher. ‘The regular chummage is two-and-six; will you take three bob?’
84“‘And a bender,’ suggested the clerical gentleman.
“‘Well, I don’t mind that; it’s only a twopence apiece more,’ said Mr. Martin; ‘What do you say now? We’ll pay you out for three-and-sixpence a week; come!’
“‘And stand a gallon of beer down,’ chimed in Mr. Simpson. ‘There!’
“‘And drink it on the spot,’ said the chaplain; ‘NOW!’
“After this introductory preface the three chums informed Mr. Pickwick, in a breath, that money was in the Fleet just what money was out of it; that it would instantly procure him almost anything he desired; and that supposing he had it, and had no objection to spend it; if he only signified his wish to have a room to himself, he might take possession of one, furnished and fitted to boot, in half an hour’s time.
“With this the parties separated, very much to their mutual satisfaction, Mr. Pickwick once more retracing his steps to the lodge, and the three companions adjourned to the coffee-room, there to expend the five shillings which the clerical gentleman, with admirable prudence and foresight, had borrowed of him for the purpose.
“‘I knowed it,’ said Mr. Roker with a chuckle, when Mr. Pickwick stated the object with which he had returned. ‘Lord, why didn’t you 85 say at first that you was willing to come down handsome?’”
Those who could afford to sleep well in the Fleet, as sleeping went in such places, might feed well enough, too. They could be served in the coffee-room, and if they preferred to eat in privacy, there was a cookshop in the prison; and there were, besides, messengers who could be sent on errands of purchase outside the walls. In every case the charges were extortionate, for the one object of the prison was to squeeze the debtor dry by fair means or foul. But when the law sanctions such outrages as the Fleet itself, the minor offenses by which the greater burden is mitigated to its victims may be condoned. There was a taproom in the prison where beer and wine were to be had, but the traffic in spirits was forbidden, and even the conveyance of them to the prisoners from without prohibited under heavy penalties; “and such commodities being highly prized by the ladies and gentlemen confined therein” (“Pickwick” volume II, chapter xvii), “it had occurred to some speculative turnkey to connive, for certain remunerative considerations, at two or three prisoners retailing the favorite 86 articles of gin for their own profit and advantage.” The spirit dispensaries were known in the jargon of the jail as “whistling-shops,” and what with the strong waters they provided, and the malt liquors of the taproom, it was safe to assume that the bulk of such prisoners in the Fleet as were not dying for the want of sufficient food were perishing of a superfluity of drink.
The poor debtors who still had the price of “a chamber-pot of coals” and a scrag of mutton, could have it in from the market and cook it for themselves in their rooms or, for a penny or two, at the common kitchen in the prison-yard. In default of sufficient capital to this end they must live off bread and cheese, or cold meat, or hope, or, as many doubtless did, on the porter from the taproom. To secure the means of subsistence and indulgence they begged from the visitors. The sharper old residents borrowed from the shallower newcomers, and, as a matter of course, theft went hand in hand with mendicancy. Of this shadowy side of a picture, dark enough, in all conscience, in its lightest spots, Dickens gives us a glimpse in chapter xiv of volume II, where Mr. Pickwick 87 encounters Mr. Alfred Jingle on the Common Side, and Mr. Jeb Trotter, returning from pawning his master’s last coat, with a scrap of meat for his dinner. And Mr. Jingle’s own summary of the prevailing state of things at that period and place may serve as a description of the condition and prospects of his neighbors.
“‘Lived on a pair of boots—whole fortnight. Silk umbrella—ivory handle—week. Nothing soon—lie in bed—starve—die—inquest—little bone-house—poor prisoner—common necessaries—hush it up—gentlemen of jury—warden’s tradesmen—keep it snug—natural death—coroner’s order—workhouse funeral—serve him right—all over—drop the curtain.’”