The same report continued: “Captain John Mackpheadris, who was bred a merchant, is another melancholy instance of the cruel use the said Bambridge hath made of his assumed authority. Mackpheadris was a considerable trader, and in a very flourishing condition, until the year 1720, when, being bound for large sums to the Crown, for a person afterward ruined by the misfortunes of that year, he was undone. In June, 1727, he was prisoner in the Fleet, and although he had before paid his commitment fee, the like fee was extorted from him a second time; and he having furnished a room, Bambridge demanded an extravagant price for it, which he refused to pay, and urged that it was unlawful for a warden to demand extravagant rents, and offered to pay what was legally due. Notwithstanding which, the said Bambridge assisted by the said James Barnes and other accomplices, broke open his room and took away several things of great value, amongst others, the King’s Extent in aid of the prisoner (which was to have been returned in a few days, in order to procure the debt to the Crown, and the prisoner’s enlargement), which Bambridge still detains. Not content with this, Bambridge locked the prisoner out of his room and forced him to lie in the open yard called the ‘Bare.’ He sat quietly under his wrongs, and getting some poor materials, built a little hut, to protect himself as well as he could from the injuries of the weather. The said Bambridge, seeing his unconcernedness, said, ‘—— him! he is easy! I will put him into the strong room before to-morrow!’ and ordered Barnes to pull down his little hut, which was done accordingly. The poor prisoner, being in an ill state of health and the night rainy, was put to great distress. Some time after this he was (about eleven o’clock at night) assaulted by Bambridge, with several other persons, his accomplices, in a violent manner; and Bambridge, though the prisoner was unarmed, attacked him with his sword, but by good fortune was prevented from killing him; and several other persons coming out upon the noise, they carried Mackpheadris for safety into another gentleman’s room; soon after which Bambridge, coming with one Savage and several others, broke open the door, and Bambridge strove with his sword to kill the prisoner, but he again got away and hid himself in another room. The next morning the said Bambridge entered the prison with a detachment of soldiers and ordered the prisoner to be dragged to the lodge and ironed with great irons. On which he, desiring to know for what cause and by what authority he was to be so cruelly used, Bambridge replied, it was by his own authority, and —— him, he would do it and have his life. The prisoner desired that he might be carried before a magistrate, that he might know his crime before he was punished; but Bambridge refused, and put irons upon his legs which were too little, so that in forcing them on, his legs were like to have been broken and the torture was impossible to be endured. Upon which the prisoner complaining of the grievous pain and straitness of the irons, Bambridge answered that he did it on purpose to torture him. On which the prisoner replying that by the law of England no man ought to be tortured, Bambridge declared that he would do it first and answer for it afterwards; and caused him to be dragged away to the dungeon, where he lay without a bed, loaded with irons so close riveted that they kept him in continual torture and mortified his legs. After long application his irons were changed and a surgeon directed to dress his legs; but his lameness is not, nor can be, cured. He was kept in this miserable condition for three weeks, by which his sight is greatly prejudiced and in danger of being lost.
“The prisoner upon this usage, petitioned the judges; and after several meetings and a full hearing, the judges reprimanded Mr. Huggins and Bambridge and declared that a gaoler could not answer the ironing of a man before he be found guilty of a crime, but it being out of term, they could not give the prisoner any relief or satisfaction.”
There were other cases, that, for instance, of Captain David Sinclair, an old and distinguished officer whom hard fate and impecuniosity had consigned to a debtors’ prison. Bambridge was his enemy and openly declared that he would have Sinclair’s blood. On the king’s birthday, a jovial occasion, on which he thought to find the captain elated with wine, Bambridge entered his room and struck him with a cane. Then turning to the soldiers of the escort, who came armed with musket and bayonet, Bambridge ordered them to carry Sinclair to the strong room and to stab him if he made any resistance. Confinement in this dark, damp dungeon all but cost Sinclair his life; he lost the use of his limbs and his memory went; he was left for four days without food and had he not been removed he would certainly have died. An unfortunate Spanish merchant, Mr. John Holder, who was confined in the Common Side under Bambridge, was seized with a fatal illness from the miseries and privations he endured.
It was said in the report already quoted that Bambridge, when he manacled Solas, was the first to put a debtor in irons. This is manifestly erroneous as is seen in the account of the charges brought against warden Harris in 1620, for misusage of prisoners in the Fleet. But this brutal gaoler, Bambridge, was guilty of many and great enormities. He was proved to have defied writs of habeas corpus; to have stolen or misappropriated charitable bequests; to have bribed or terrified lawyers who came to champion ill-used prisoners. When Sir William Rich was behind-hand in his chamber-rent, Bambridge threatened to fire at him, slashed at him with a hanger, and struck him with a stick. Rich was then thrown into the strong room, heavily ironed, and kept there in close confinement accused of having attacked the warden with a shoemaker’s knife, which he did, but in self-defence.
Huggins and Bambridge, in their greedy desire to increase their emoluments, invented an astute device, that of allowing, even helping debtors to escape from custody, whom they presently rearrested, and having made them pay forfeit, pocketed the amounts. To facilitate this a false gate was broken through the prison wall, through which the fugitives were released with the co-operation of the warden, and thus the forfeit was exacted many times over.
The same means of exit was utilised by a smuggler, in custody for revenue fraud, who passed in and out on his own concerns, and to do business for Mr. Huggins. This man, by name Dumay, made frequent voyages to France, where he bought quantities of wine for Huggins and paid for them by bills drawn upon one of the tipstaffs, which when due were punctually met. Confidence was thus established and the traffic was greatly developed, but when an unusually large deal had been effected the tipstaff declined to accept the bill and the French wine merchant was swindled out of his goods and his money.
This inquiry of 1727 resulted in the committal of both Huggins and Bambridge to the gaol of Newgate, and their prosecution. A bill was introduced into Parliament to remove both men from their posts and to revise the management of the Fleet; but when these wretches were arraigned for their misdeeds the evidence was deemed insufficient and they escaped with a verdict of not guilty. The episode is especially interesting as having inspired Hogarth to paint the remarkable picture of the Fleet Prison Committee, which is said to have first brought the painter into fame. Speaking of this picture, Horace Walpole in his “Anecdotes of Painting” says: “The scene is the Committee; on the left are the instruments of torture. A prisoner in rags half starved appears before them. The poor man has a good countenance that adds to the interest. On the other hand is the inhuman gaoler. It is the very figure that Salvator Rosa would have drawn for Iago at the moment of detection,—villainy, fear and conscience are mixed on his yellow and livid countenance. His lips contracted by tremor, his legs step back as though thinking to make his escape—one hand is thrust precipitately into his bosom, the fingers of the other are catching uncertainly at his button-holes. If this was a portrait it is the most striking that ever was drawn; if not it is still finer.” There is no question that this is Bambridge, who lingered on for twenty years disgraced and despised and in the end committed suicide by cutting his throat.
We have two views of the interior of the Fleet and its general aspect from two eye witnesses at a later date than the exposure of Huggins and Bambridge. One is John Howard’s account of his visitation in 1774; the other a volume of verse “The Humours of the Fleet, an humorous and descriptive poem written by a gentleman of the College,” published in London in 1749. The author was the younger Dance, son of Mr. Dance, the architect, who rebuilt the gaol of Newgate after its destruction by the Lord George Gordon rioters in 1780. It is described as “The Prince of Prisons” standing “close by the borders of a slimy flood,” a structure in whose extended oblong boundaries are shops and sheds and stalls of all degrees, for the sale of everything from trinkets to pork and beans. The inmates are next described:
“Without distinction intermixed is seen
A squire quite dirty, a mechanic clean;
The spendthrift new who in his chariot rolled
All his possessions gone, reversions sold.
Now mean, as once profuse, the stupid sot
Sits by a Runner’s[3] side and shules a pot.”
The first ceremony for the newcomer is to sit or stand for his portrait: