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.