| A. Press Yard. (Exercising Ground.) B. Part of Press Yard. C. Partner’s Room. D. Lodge. E. Part of Keeper’s House. (Under which was the Condemned Hold.) | 1. Hall Ward. (Master Debtors.) 4. Drinking Cellar, below. 5. Gigger. 9. Stone Hall. (Common Side Debtors.) 11. Tangier. (Common Side Debtors.) 14. Stone Hold. (Common Side Felons.) 15. Lower Ward. (Common Side Felons.) |
continued course of swearing, cursing, and debauchery, insomuch that it passes all description and belief.... It is with no small concern,” he adds, “that I am obliged to observe that the women in every ward of this prison are exceedingly worse than the worst of the men, not only in respect to nastiness and indecency of living, but more especially as to their conversation, which, to their great shame, is as profane and wicked as hell itself can be.”
These remarks, unhappily, are fully borne out by more modern experience. Female prisoners are, as a rule, far worse than the male.
V. The one division remaining, and commonly called the Press-Yard and Castle, was quite the best part of the prison. The entrance was at the base of the stairs between the common debtors’ and the common felons’ sides. It was composed of “divers large spacious rooms,” on all three floors: those on the ground and first floor faced towards east and south; those on the second—the Castle so called—to the west. These rooms were all well supplied with light and air, free from all ill smells, and possessed all necessary appurtenances. A yard or place for walking in the open air was attached to this side, and was situate between the door or postern which entered from Newgate Street and the fabric itself. This yard, which was fifty-four feet long by seven feet wide, and was handsomely paved with Purbeck stone, could have been little better than a narrow passage running the whole north side of the prison between the building and its boundary wall. The Press-Yard was for State prisoners, or great and opulent criminals who could afford to pay such high premium at entrance as they and the gaoler might agree upon, and also the weekly rent of their wards. This premium was fixed according to the quality of the individual, and ranged from £20 to £500. The weekly rent of tenancy of the rooms was 11s. 6d. per head, 1s. of which was paid to a woman called the laundress, who made the fires and cleaned the rooms; the remainder went into the gaoler’s pocket. The prisoners themselves provided their fires and candles, as also all other necessaries, “save the beds, which were very good of their kind, and which the gaoler found, sheets being always excepted.” A less aristocratic section of this very select part of the prison was the Castle, which comprised two wards above the Stone ward and King’s Bench ward of the master debtors’ sides, and of the same dimensions, with the same air and light, as the wards immediately beneath. In the Castle wards were divers partitions for beds, for each of which a prisoner paid 2s. 6d. per week.
The remainder of this top floor, with the exception of the high hall, and the second ward for common female felons, was taken up by the prison chapel, which looked towards the south-east. The chapel was partitioned on the north side into large apartments called pens, which were all strongly built, as they contained every Sunday the common debtors and the felons of both kinds. The pulpit stood in the
Newgate (1700).
1st Floor.
