Perhaps the most hideous and terrible of all evils, and the immediate parent of gaol fever, was the disgraceful and almost indiscriminate overcrowding of the gaols. The rarity of gaol deliveries was a proximate cause of this. The expense of entertaining the judges was alleged as an excuse for not holding assizes more than once a year; but at some places—Hull, for instance—there had been only one gaol delivery in seven years, although, according to Howard, it had latterly been reduced to three. Often in the lapse of time principal witnesses died, and there was an acquittal with a failure of justice. Nor was it only the accused and unconvicted who lingered out their lives in gaol, but numbers of perfectly innocent folk helped to crowd the narrow limits of the prison-house. Either the mistaken leniency, or more probably the absolutely callous indifference of gaol-rulers, suffered debtors to surround themselves with their families, pure women and tender children brought thus into continuous intercourse with felons and murderers, and doomed to lose their moral sense in the demoralizing atmosphere. The prison population was daily increased by a host of visitors, improper characters, friends and associates of thieves, who had free access to all parts of the gaol. In every filthy, unventilated cell-chamber the number of occupants was constantly excessive. The air space for each was often less than 150 cubic feet, and this air was never changed. Of one room, with its beds in tiers, its windows looking only into a dark entry, its fireplace used for the cooking of food for forty persons, it was said that the man who planned it could not well have contrived “a place of the same dimensions more effectually calculated to destroy his fellow-creatures.”
The gaol fever or distemper, of which I shall now give some account, was the natural product of these insanitary conditions. This fell epidemic exercised strange terrors by the mystery which once surrounded it; but this has now been dispelled by the strong light of modern medical science. All authorities are agreed that it was nothing but that typhus fever, which inevitably goes hand in hand with the herding and packing together of human beings, whether in prisons, workhouses, hospitals, or densely-populated quarters of a town. The disease is likely to crop up, as Dr. Guy remarks, “wherever men and women live together in places small in proportion to their numbers, with neglect of cleanliness and ventilation, surrounded by offensive effluvia, without proper exercise, and scantily supplied with food.”[180] It is easy to understand that the poison would be generated in gaol establishments such as I have described; still more, that prisoners should be saturated with it so as to infect even healthy persons whom they approached. This is precisely what happened, and it is through the ravages committed by the disorder beyond the prison walls that we mostly hear of it. The decimation it caused within the gaol might have passed unnoticed, but the many authentic cases of the terrible mortality it occasioned elsewhere forced it upon the attention of the chronicler. It made the administration of the law a service of danger, while its fatal effects can be traced far from beyond the limits of the court-house. Prisoners carried home the contagion to the bosoms of their families, whence the disease spread into town or village. They carried it on board ship, and imported it into our fleets. “The first English fleet sent to America lost by it above 2000 men; ... the of infection were carried from the guardships into our squadrons; and the mortality thence occasioned was greater than by all other diseases or means of death put together.”[181] It was the same with the army: regiments and garrisons were infected by comrades who brought the fever from the gaol; sometimes the escorts returning with deserters temporarily lodged in prison also sickened and died.
The earliest mention of a gaol distemper is that quoted by Howard from Stowe, under date 1414, when “the gaolers of Newgate and Ludgate died, and prisoners in Newgate to the number of sixty-four.” In ‘Wood’s History of Oxford’ there is a record of a contagious fever which broke out at the assize of Cambridge in 1521. The justices, gentlemen, bailiffs, and others “resorting thither took such an infection that many of them died, and almost all that were present fell desperately sick, and narrowly escaped with their lives.” After this comes the Black Assize at Oxford in 1577, when, Holinshed says, “there arose amidst the people such a dampe that almost all were smouldered, very few escaping.... the jurors presently dying, and shortly after Sir Robert Bell, Lord Chief Baron.” To this account we may add that in ‘Baker’s Chronicle,’ which states that all present died within forty hours, the Lord Chief Baron, the sheriff, and three hundred more. The contagion spread into the city of Oxford, and thence into the neighbourhood, where there were many more deaths. Stowe has another reference to the fever about this date, and tells us that in the King’s Bench Prison, in the six years preceding the year 1579, a hundred died of a certain contagion called “the sickness of the house.” Another outbreak occurred at Exeter, 1586, on the occasion of holding the city assizes, when “a sudden and strange sickness,” which had appeared first among the prisoners in the gaol, was dispersed at their trial through the audience in court, “whereof more died than escaped,” and of those that succumbed, some were constables, some reeves, some tithing men or jurors. No wonder that Lord Bacon, in writing on the subject, should characterize “the smell of the jail the most pernicious infection, next to the plague. When prisoners have been long and close and nastily kept, whereof we have had in our time experience twice or thrice, both judges that sat upon the trial, and numbers of those that attended the business or were present, sickened upon it and died.”
The gaol distemper is but sparingly mentioned throughout the seventeenth century, but as the conditions were precisely the same, it is pretty certain that the disease existed then, as before and after. But in the first half of the eighteenth century we have detailed accounts of three serious and fatal outbreaks. The first was at the Lent Assizes held in Taunton in 1730, “when,” Howard says, “some prisoners who were brought thither from the Ilchester gaol infected the court; and Lord Chief Baron Pengelly, Sir James Shepherd, sergeant, John Pigott, Esq., sheriff, and some hundreds besides died of the gaol distemper.” The second case occurred also in the west country, at Launceston, where “a fever which took its rise in the prisons was disseminated far and near by the county assizes, occasioned the death of numbers, and foiled frequently the best advice.” It is described as a contagious, putrid, and very pestilential fever, attended with tremblings, twitchings, restlessness, delirium, with, in some instances, early phrenzy and lethargy; while the victims broke out often into livid pustules and purple spots. The third case of gaol fever was in London in 1750, and it undoubtedly had its origin in Newgate. At the May Sessions at the Old Bailey there was a more than usually heavy calendar, and the court was excessively crowded. The prisoners awaiting trial numbered a hundred, and these were mostly lodged in two rooms, fourteen feet by seven, and only seven feet in height; but some, and no doubt all in turn, were put into the bail dock; many had long lain close confined in the pestiferous wards of Newgate. The court itself was of limited dimensions, being barely thirty feet square, and in direct communication with the bail dock and rooms beyond, whence an open window, “at the furthest end of the room,” carried a draught poisoned with infection towards the judges’ bench. Of these four, viz. Sir Samuel Pennant, the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Abney and Baron Clark, the judges, and Sir Daniel Lambert, alderman, were seized with the distemper, and speedily died; others, to the number of forty, were also attacked and succumbed. Among them were some of the under-sheriffs, several members of the bar and of the jury; while in others of lesser note the disease showed itself more tardily, but they also eventually succumbed. Indeed, with the exception of two or three, none of those attacked escaped.[182] The symptoms were the same as these already described, including the delirium and the spots on the skin.
The Corporation of London, moved thereto by a letter from the Lord Chief Justice, and not unnaturally alarmed themselves at the ravages of a pestilence which spared neither Lord Mayor nor aldermen, set about inquiring into its origin. A committee was appointed for this purpose in October, 1750, five months after the last outbreak, and their instructions were to ascertain “the best means for procuring in Newgate such a purity of air as might prevent the rise of those infectious distempers.” ... The committee consulted the Rev. Dr. Hales and Dr. Pringle, F.R.S.,[183] the latter of whom subsequently published a paper in the ‘Transactions of the Philosophical Society,’ containing much curious information concerning the disease. The remedy suggested by Dr. Hales, and eventually approved of by the committee, was to try further the ventilator which some time previously had been placed upon the top of Newgate. Nothing less than the reconstruction on an extended plan of the prison, which was acknowledged to be too small for its average population, would have really sufficed, but this, although mooted, had not yet taken practical shape. The existing ventilator was in the nature of a main trunk or shaft, into which other air-pipes led from various parts of the prison. But these were neither numerous nor effective, while there was no process of extraction or of obtaining an up-draught. To effect this a machine was erected upon the leads of Newgate with large arms like those of a windmill. The plan was fully approved of by the Court of Aldermen, but its execution was delayed. At length, in July, 1752,[184] Dr. Pringle heard that a portion of the machine was completed and in working order, and went to inspect it, accompanied by other medical men. “Having visited several of the wards,” he says, “we were all of us very sensible that such as were provided with ventilating tubes were much less offensive than the rest that wanted them.” The air of the whole gaol they thought was distinctly improved. Some of the wards indeed were so free from the smell peculiar to such places that Dr. Pringle felt persuaded that if the design was completed, and persons appointed to regulate the sliders of the tubes, and keep the machine in order, the usual evil effects of overcrowding in gaols might be in a great measure if not wholly prevented in Newgate.
Nevertheless, throughout the execution of the work and afterwards the air of Newgate continued pestiferous and fatal to all who breathed it. The workmen employed in fixing the tubes ran great risks, and in several cases were seized with unmistakable gaol fever. One man had found himself indisposed for some days and left off work; then returning to Newgate, he had been employed in opening one of the tubes of the old ventilator which had stood for three or four years. Such an offensive smell had issued from the tube that he was seized with sickness and nausea. He went home, and that night fell ill of the fever, being afflicted with violent headache, retching, trembling of the hands, and last of all delirium. He was admitted into St. Thomas’ Hospital, and said to be suffering from continued fever, attended with stupor and a sunk pulse. Another victim was a fellow workman, who from, having been active and full of health, fell ill after working at Newgate, and shewed the same symptoms. Three more of his companions were also attacked, all of whom had the headaches, tremblings, stupor, and “petechial” spots. One of these was a lad of fifteen, who had been forced by his fellows to go down the great trunk of the ventilator in order to bring up a wig which some one had thrown into it; on coming up again he was immediately attacked by a violent headache, a great disorder in his stomach, and nausea, none of which had left him when seen weeks later. A peculiarity in his case was, that he had been twice let down into the ventilator when the machine on the leads had been standing still, and he had suffered no ill effects; but the last time it was in motion, and the heavily-laden up-draught had well nigh poisoned him and two others who had dragged him out of the shaft. These cases did not complete the mischief done. The infection was carried home and spread in the families of those attacked in Newgate. Wives, children, friends, and nurses all fell sick in turn. Besides those who received the contagion at second-hand, there were seven originally infected in the gaol, and this out of a total of eleven workmen employed.
It is probable that the great windmill and ventilator[185] did some good, for there is no further mention of epidemic seizure in court. But the sanitary condition of the inmates of Newgate cannot have been permanently or very appreciably improved. I find in the Home Office papers, under date July, 1769,
