THE relations between debtor and creditor in England continued to be a disgrace to any so-called free and enlightened country far into the nineteenth century. The procedure was full of abuses and the system in force subjected the debtor to great and manifest hardships without benefiting the creditor or securing him the repayment of his debt. It was customary to serve the debtor with a writ, which was returnable only in term time, and if issued between terms it could be evaded by giving bail to the sheriff. But if the debtor was a poor man, or without friends and therefore unable to procure bail, he paid in person and was taken off to prison. Here he might lie almost indefinitely waiting, hopelessly, for money from the skies to enable him to liquidate the claim or defend the action. Often enough the writ had been issued on no clear grounds; the debt may never have existed in fact and innocent persons were arrested upon the affidavits of scoundrels impelled by unworthy motives, which might be revenge or extortion. Not only was it often the case that the prisoner lay in prison until he discharged a debt he had never incurred, but even when the claim was undoubted and for a small amount, the liability was soon swollen by the lawyers’ costs amounting to three or four times the original debt. People were still detained who owed no more than three or four pounds which they could pay, until they could satisfy the attorneys for the costs of twenty and thirty pounds they did not really owe. “I, myself,” says Colonel Hanger, “for a debt of four pounds, thirteen shillings, and for one of six pounds, sixteen shillings, have paid ten, twelve or fourteen pounds costs.” Once caught in the meshes of the law it was not enough to pay the original debt, and the creditor, when he received it, could not release the debtor until the attorney’s costs were liquidated. The records of the King’s Bench show that hundreds of debtors who in the first instance owed no more than ten pounds were still detained for twice or three times the amount claimed by the attorneys.
As a natural result, the debtors’ prisons, especially the King’s Bench, were constantly crowded with persons of all classes and callings,—“Nobles and ignobles, parsons, lawyers, farmers, tradesmen, shopmen, colonels, captains, gamblers, horse-dealers, publicans and so forth.” The wives of many of these shared the fortunes and misfortunes of their husbands. It has been calculated that at times the population of the prison averaged eight hundred or a thousand individuals. This total was presently much reduced by the institution of a court for the relief of insolvent debtors, and the number was further kept down by a charitable society which used considerable sums collected for the extinction of small debts. Nevertheless numbers still languished within the walls in a state bordering upon utter destitution. Colonel Hanger testifies that out of 355 prisoners, he could with truth assert there were seldom fifty who had any regular means of subsistence. “I do not mean to say,” he continues, “that prisoners have been absolutely starved to death; but this I positively assert,—that numbers of the lower order, and many officers confined, some even for small debts under fifty pounds, who have served their country with gallantry and fidelity and have bled in her defence, have often gone a whole week with not above three or four meals; nay more, have frequently been destitute of a penny to buy them a roll of bread for breakfast.” The same difficulty as that already mentioned of obtaining the “groats” or creditor’s allowance for food still obtained. It was greatly increased by legal technicalities, for it could only be sued for in term time and a debtor arrested in June when the term was over must wait to take action till November, five months that is to say, during which he might starve and was wholly dependent upon the charity of generous fellow prisoners and others. Judgment on the case might still be prolonged until the following May, so that many gentlemen as well as others of superior stations in life had for successive days never known what it was to enjoy one good meal.[6]
The perfectly regular payment of the “groats” (the allowance was really sixpence per diem) would not have gone far. “Will any man venture to assert,” asks Colonel Hanger, “that a man can live on such a stipend, for a sufficient quantity of bread and small beer to satisfy appetite and thirst cannot be purchased for that money.” The price of provisions in 1798 barely allowed the purchase of one pound of bread and one pint of porter per day for sixpence. “The felon in Newgate and the prisoner in the Penitentiary house, Cold Bath fields, for high crimes and misdemeanours against the State, whatever his sufferings, has one comfort—he knows not the pangs of hunger; but the gentleman, the citizen, the sailor or the soldier, who may have bled in their country’s defence, if oppressed by sinful poverty, that worst of crimes, is allowed only sixpence per day for all his wants, and has not even a bed or fire found him to rest his wearied limbs or warm his half-starved frame.”
The evils above described do not exhaust the sufferings that were inflicted upon debtors. It often happened that a writ was served and an arrest made at a distance from London. The man taken was carried to the county gaol and when the time came for surrender, after being bailed, he must perforce do so in London at the King’s Bench prison. And he must make the journey as best he could according to his means. Hanger quotes a case of an aged man, between seventy and eighty years, who trudged all the way from Cumberland and arrived at the prison barefooted and almost exhausted. He was, however, unprovided with the proper forms for surrender and was refused admittance until he had paid his fees in Chancery Lane, when at last he was received. Colonel Hanger, when in the King’s Bench, was removed to the Fleet on habeas corpus to meet a writ returnable there and was mulcted in further costs before he was allowed to go back to the King’s Bench.
Much more might be said in condemnation of the old system of imprisonment for debt, which was rightly characterised by a competent writer as “the curse and disgrace of England.” We have seen how in the earliest times it directly contravened the principles of constitutional freedom, which forbade it for simple pecuniary obligations unaccompanied by fraud. It was extended alike to early youth and decrepit old age; a minor might be laid by the heels and an old man of ninety arrested on his dying bed. Until more humane laws were passed the boy prisoner might be confined sine die. Incarceration too often paralysed the bread winner; the prisoner was unable to earn wages for himself and his family, to his own great loss and a diminution of the wealth of the country.
The moral side of the question remains. Debtors’ prisons and their purlieus were seething centres of vicious life. Idlers and dissolute persons congregated therein; drunkenness, gaming, dissipation of all kinds constantly prevailed. Dealers in contraband commodities traded without let or hindrance. Game was exposed for sale within the walls by unlicensed dealers without interference. These traders were prisoners, of course, who were lodged under fictitious arrests of their own contriving to facilitate their operations. “Tap-shops” and “whistling shops” for the illegal consumption of spirits were plentiful within the prison and were supplied under the very noses of the authorities by clandestine means. On one occasion, an inmate who had been a smuggler got in seventeen two-gallon tubs of brandy, which lay hidden in a friend’s room till they could be distributed through the prison. The supplies on sale were so good that much custom was attracted from outside. It was calculated that at the “tap” or public bar room, three butts of porter were drawn daily to meet the demands of outsiders with a nice taste for beer. Amusements and games were continually in progress. Crowds came in to see the racquet players reputed the best in the metropolis; on festivals and holidays—Easter Monday, Whit Monday, Boxing Day—sports were held, such as racing and hopping in sacks and blind man’s buff, the whole under the supervision of a clerk of the courts, Captain Christie, who was long a prisoner but married a rich wife and so at last gained his liberty.
The King’s Bench, with its dependent “Rules,” was like a modern Alsatia, swarming with idle, self-indulgent men living a dissipated life, spending recklessly the means that should have gone to the liquidation of their debts and which belonged really to their creditors. At one time they freely entered all taverns and theatres, but were presently restricted to one “Lowthorpes,” in front of the Asylum for the Blind near the Obelisk in St. George’s in the Fields. This limitation was due to Lord Chancellor Thurlow, who was annoyed by the trespass on his grounds of a number of “Rulers” on their way to the Derby. No restriction was placed upon the movements of the “Rulers” provided they showed themselves once in every twenty-four hours. On the strength of this concession a prisoner, Mellor Hetherington, a famous whip, drove the night coach from London to Birmingham for a whole month, very much to the satisfaction of proprietor and passengers. The regular coachman had been taken ill and his temporary substitute comported himself so well that he would have been permanently appointed but that it was feared his creditors would interpose and impound his wages. This Mr. Hetherington, who began life with a substantial income inherited from his father, soon wasted his substance and found himself a prisoner in the Fleet from which he was transferred to the King’s Bench, where he was long resident in the “State House,” the large building close to the entrance or lobby of the prison at one time occupied by prisoners of State. He lived in great luxury and was allotted two rooms, but to enjoy their peaceable occupation he was always obliged to buy out the “chums” quartered on him. Some of these he employed as servants and assistants in his domestic arrangements and especially in the kitchen, for he was a lover of good cheer and had installed a kitchen range in one of the rooms he occupied. He entertained largely, and guests in great number gladly accepted his invitations. This Mr. Hetherington spent twenty years as a prisoner for debt either within the walls of the Fleet or the King’s Bench, or enjoying the privileges of the “Rules.” Finally he took advantage of the Act as it was called, and went through the court for the relief of insolvent debtors. He began life with a clear income of six hundred pounds a year and finished his career of wasteful self-indulgence without repaying a single sixpence to his creditors, who had so foolishly and so uselessly deprived him of his liberty.
To give a full and complete list of the many and varied characters that passed through the King’s Bench would fill a great space, but some of those mentioned in contemporary records may be briefly referred to here. They belonged to all classes of society and often exhibited eccentric traits. One prisoner residing in the “Rules” belonged to the family of the Hydes, Earls of Clarendon, and he was never parted from the coffin which was ultimately to receive him. It was a fine coffin of solid oak, grown upon his own estate in Kent and hollowed out with a chisel. Its owner was in the habit of getting into the coffin at night and sleeping there “with great composure and serenity.” Its weight was five hundred pounds and on one occasion when it was filled with punch it held upwards of forty-one gallons. John Palmer, the actor, when a prisoner within the Rules in 1789 was committed to the Surrey gaol for accepting an engagement at the Royal Circus theatre, as acting manager at a salary of twenty pounds a week. This led, it is said (but the statement is at variance with that already given), to the prohibiting by Lord Chief Justice Kenyon of debtors to enter theatres.
Literature and the arts were constantly represented in the King’s Bench. It was the home of William Combe, the author of “Dr. Syntax,” a poem “written to cuts” as the saying is, or planned for a series of Rowlandson’s drawings, which were forwarded to Combe when residing in the Rules. As Horace Smith tells us, “he was a ready writer of all work for the booksellers.” Another notable resident was Theodore Hook, who never cleared himself from his liability to the Crown for the moneys that went astray when he was acting as treasurer in the colony of Mauritius. There was a deficit in his accounts of a sum of twelve thousand pounds for which he was held responsible, although there was never any charge of dishonesty and the law officers said no grounds existed for criminal proceedings. He was, however, arrested after his arrival in England and passed from a sponging house into the Rules of the King’s Bench, from which he was soon set at liberty, but with his liability hanging like a millstone round his neck till the day of his death. Theodore Hook, the most famous of humourists, was the inventor of a witticism, now a time honoured “chestnut.” On his passage home from Mauritius, he met at Saint Helena the newly appointed governor of the Cape, Lord Charles Somerset, who knew nothing of the arrest. Lord Charles said, “I hope you are not going home for your health, Mr. Hook.” “Why, why, yes,” replied Theodore, “I am sorry to say there is something wrong with my chest.” Theodore Hook was already associated with the once famous weekly newspaper John Bull, which was a thorn in the side of the Whigs then in power. The proprietors of the paper, Messrs. Weaver, Arrowsmith and Shackell, were prosecuted for libel of some great personages, found guilty, heavily fined and committed to the King’s Bench. Persons of lesser note were Jimmy Bearcroft, a hanger on of the Mr. Hetherington, Captain Garth, Lady Hydeparker, “Pea-green” Hayne, one or two baronets, Lord Glentworth, General Bacon and Miss Gordon, who sold newspapers and kept a circulating library in the King’s Bench.
Miss Gordon’s story deserves a word or two as illustrating the hardships entailed upon the impecunious in those days. She inherited a decent property from her father which was, however, impounded as security for a loan of one hundred pounds advanced by a friend; she proposed to pay off the loan, but the title deeds could not be found and the debt ran on until the lender died, when the one hundred pounds was claimed from Miss Gordon with the back interest, the whole amounting now to nearly a thousand pounds. She was arrested and committed to prison where she remained for nearly twenty years, harassed by the law’s delays, always on the verge of starvation, but eking out a bare existence by her traffic in books and newspapers.