“ ‘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.”