vii. The press yard was that part set aside for the condemned. Its name and its situation were the same as those of the old place of carrying out the terrible sentence inflicted on accused persons who stood mute.[24] The long narrow yard still remained as we saw it in Jacobite times, and beyond it was now a day room for the capital convicts or those awaiting execution. Beyond the press yard were three stories, condemned cells, fifteen in all, with vaulted ceilings nine feet high to the crown of the arch. The ground floor cells were nine feet by six; those on the first floor were rather larger on account of a set-off in the wall; and the uppermost were the largest, for the same reason. Security was provided for in these condemned cells by lining the substantial stone walls with planks studded with broad-headed nails; they were lighted by a double-grated window two feet nine inches by fourteen inches; and in the doors, which were four inches thick, a circular aperture had been let in to give ventilation and secure a free current of air. In each cell there was a barrack bedstead on the floor without bedding.
viii. The female felons were deprived of part of the space which the architect had intended for them. More than half their quadrangle had been partitioned off for another purpose, and what remained was divided into a master’s and a common side for female felons. The two yards were adjoining, that for the common side much the largest. There were nine wards in all on the female side, one of them in the attic, with four casements and two fireplaces, being allotted for a female infirmary, and the rest being provided with barrack beds, and in dimensions varying from thirty feet by fifteen to fifteen feet by ten.
The eight courts above enumerated were well supplied with water; they had dust-bins, sewers, and so forth, “properly disposed,”[25] and the city scavenger paid periodical visits to the prison. The prisoners had few comforts, beyond the occasional use of a bath at some distance, situated in the press yard, to which access was granted rarely and as a great favour. But they were allowed the luxury of drink—if they could pay for it. A recent reform had closed the tap kept by the gaoler within the precincts, but there was still a “convenient room” which served, and “near it a grating through which the debtors receive their beer from the neighbouring public-houses. The felons’ side has a similar accommodation, and this mode of introducing the beverage is adopted because no publican as such can be permitted to enter the interior of this prison.”[26] The tap-room and bar were just behind the felons’ entrance lodge, and beyond it was a room called the “wine room,” because formerly used for the sale of wine, but in which latterly a copper had been fixed for the cooking of provisions sent in by charitable persons. “On the top of the gaol,” continues Neild, “are a watch-house and a sentry-box, where two or more guards, with dogs and firearms, watch all night. Adjoining the felons’ side lodge is the keeper’s office, where the prison books are kept, and his clerk, called the clerk of the papers, attends daily.”[27]
Having thus briefly described the plan and appropriation of the prison, I propose to deal now with the general condition of the inmates, and the manner of their life. Of these the debtors, male and female, formed a large proportion. The frequency and extent of processes against debtors seventy or eighty years ago will appear almost incredible in an age when insolvent acts and bankruptcy courts do so much to relieve the impecunious, and imprisonment for debt has almost entirely disappeared.[28] But at the time of which I am writing the laws were relentless against all who failed to meet their engagements. The number of processes against debtors annually was extraordinary. Neild gives, on the authority of Mr. Burchell, the under sheriff of Middlesex, a table showing the figures for the year ending Michaelmas 1802. In that period upwards of 200,000 writs had been issued for the arrests of debtors in the kingdom, for sums varying from fourpence to £500 and upwards. Fifteen thousand of these were issued in Middlesex alone, which at that time was reckoned as only a fifteenth of Great Britain. The number of arrests actually made was 114,300 for the kingdom, and 7020 for Middlesex. Barely half of these gave bail bonds on arrests, and the remainder went to prison. Quite half of the foregoing writs and arrests applied to sums under £30. Neild also says that in 1793, 5719 writs and executions for debts between £10 and £20 were issued in Middlesex, and the aggregate amount of debts sued for was £81,791. He also makes the curious calculation that the costs of these actions if undefended would have amounted to £68,728, and if defended, £285,950; in other words, that to recover eighty odd thousand pounds, three times the amount would be expended.
An elaborate machinery planned for the protection of the trader, and altogether on his side, had long existed for the recovery of debts. Alfred the Great established the Court Baron, the Hundred Court, and the County Court, which among other matters entertained pleas for debt. The County Court was the sheriff’s, who sat there surrounded by the bishop and the magnates of the county; but as time passed, difficulties and delays in obtaining judgment led to the removal of causes to the great Court of King’s Bench, and the disuse of the inferior courts. So much inconvenience ensued, that in 1518 the Corporation obtained from Parliament an act empowering two aldermen and four common councilmen to hold Courts of Requests, or Courts of Conscience, to hear and determine all causes of debt under 40s. arising within the city. These courts were extended two centuries later to several large provincial towns, and all were in full activity when Neild wrote, and indeed supplied the bulk of the poor debtors committed to prison. These courts were open to many and grave objections. The commissioners who presided were “little otherwise than self-elected,[29] and when once appointed continued to serve sine die;”[30] they were generally near in rank to the parties whose causes they decided. Often a commissioner had to leave the bench because he was himself a party to the suit that was sub judice. The activity as well as the futility of these courts may be estimated from the statement given by Neild, that 1312 debtors were committed by them to Newgate between 1797 and 1808, and that no more than 197 creditors recovered debts and costs. The latter indeed hung like millstones round the neck of the unhappy insolvent wretches who found themselves in limbo. Costs were the gallons of sack to the pennyworth of debt. Neild found at his visit to Newgate in 1810, fourteen men and women who had lain there ten, eleven, and thirteen years for debts of a few shillings, weighted by treble the amount of costs. Thus, amongst others, Thomas Blackburn had been committed on October 15th for a debt of 1s. 5d., for which the costs were 6s. 10d. Thomas Dobson, on 22nd August, 1799, for 1s., with costs of 8s. 10d.; and Susannah Evans, in October the same year, for 2s., with costs of 6s. 8d. Other cases are recorded elsewhere, as at the Giltspur Street Compter, where in 1805 Mr. Neild found a man named William Grant detained for 1s. 9d., with costs of 5s., and John Lancaster for 1s. 8d., with costs of 7s. 6d. “These surely, I thought,” says Mr. Neild, “were bad enough! But it was not so.” He recites another most outrageous and extraordinary case, in which one John Bird, a market porter, was arrested and committed at the suit of a publican for the paltry sum of 4d., with costs of 7s. 6d. Bird was, however, discharged within three days by a subscription raised among his fellow-prisoners.
Mr. Buxton, in his ‘Inquiry into the System of Prison Discipline,’ quotes a case which came within his own knowledge of a boy sent to prison for non-payment of one penny. The lad in question was found in Coldbath Fields prison, to which he had been sent for a month in default of paying a fine of forty shillings. He had been in the employ of a corn-chandler at Islington, and went into London with his master’s cart and horse. There was in the City Road a temporary bar, with a collector of tolls who was sometimes on the spot and sometimes not. The boy declared he saw no one, and accordingly passed through without paying the toll of a penny. For this he was summoned before a magistrate, and sentenced as already stated. The lad was proved to be of good character and the son of respectable parents. Mr. Buxton’s friends at once paid the forty shillings, and the boy was released.
The costs in heavier debts always doubled the sum; if the arrest was made in the country it trebled it. Neild gives a list of the various items charged upon a debt of £10, which included instructions to sue, affidavit of debt, drawing præcipe (£1 5s.), capias, fee to officer on arrest, affidavit of service, and many more, amounting in all to twenty-seven, and costing £11 15s. 8d., within ten days.[31]
Before dealing with the debtors in Newgate, I may refer incidentally to those in other London prisons, for Newgate was not the only place of durance for these unfortunate people. There were also the King’s Bench, the Fleet, and the Marshalsea prisons especially devoted to them, whilst Ludgate, the Giltspur Street, and Borough Compters also received them—the latter two being also a prison for felons and vagrants arrested within certain limits.
The King’s Bench was a national prison, in which were confined all debtors arrested for debt or for contempt of the court of the King’s Bench. The population generally amounted to from five hundred to seven hundred, the accommodation being calculated for two hundred. Every new-comer was entitled to a “chummage” ticket, but did not always get it, being often obliged to pay a high rent for a bed at the coffee-house or in some room which was vacated by its regular occupant. No fixed rates or rules governed the hiring out of rooms or parts of a room, and all sorts of imposition was practised. The best, or at least the most influential prisoners, got lodging in the State House, which contained “eight large handsome rooms.” Besides those actually resident within the walls, another two hundred more or less took advantage of “the rules,” and lived outside within a circumference of two miles and a half. In these cases security was given for the amount of the debt, and a heavy fee at the rate of £8 per £100, with £4 for every additional hundred. Besides these, a number had the privilege of a “run on the key,” which allowed a prisoner to go into the rules for the day. The foregoing rentals and payments for privileges, together with fees exacted on commitment and discharge, went to the marshal or keeper of the prison, whose net annual income thus entirely derived from the impecunious amounted to between three and four thousand pounds. The office of marshal had been hereditary, but in the 27th Geo. II. the right of presentation was bought by the Crown for £10,500. The marshal was supposed to be resident either within the prison or the rules. He seems to have felt no responsibility as to the welfare or comfort of those in charge, and out of whom he made all his money. The prison was always in “the most filthy state imaginable.”[32] The half or wholly starved prisoners fished for alms or food at the gratings. When they were sick no more notice was taken of them than of a dog. A man dying of liver complaint lay on the cold stones without a bed or food to eat. Dissolute habits prevailed on all sides; drunkenness was universal, gambling perpetual. The yards were taken up with rackets and five courts, and here and there were “bumble puppy grounds,” a game in which the players rolled iron balls into holes marked with numbers. How to make most profit out of the wretched denizens of the gaol was the marshal’s only care. He got a rent for the coffee-house and the bake-house; the keeper of the large tap-room called the Brace, because it was once kept by two brothers named Partridge, also paid him toll. The sale of spirits was forbidden, but gin could always be had at the whistling shops, where it was known as Moonshine, Sky Blue, Mexico, and was consumed at the rate of a hogshead per week.
The Fleet, which stood in Farringdon Street, was a prison for debtors and persons committed for contempt by the courts of Chancery, Exchequer, and Common Pleas. It was so used for the date of the abolition of the Star Chamber in the 16th Charles I. The shameful malpractices of Bambridge, the warden of the Fleet at the commencement of the eighteenth century, are too well known to need more than a passing reference. A committee of the House of Commons investigated the charges against Bambridge, who was proved to have connived at the escape of some debtors, and to have been guilty of extortion to others. One Sir William Rich, Bart., he had loaded with heavy irons. In consequence of these disclosures, both Bambridge and Huggin, his predecessor in the office, were committed to Newgate, and many reforms instituted. But the condition of the prison and its inmates remained unsatisfactory to the last. It contained generally from six to seven hundred inmates,[33] while another hundred more or less resided in the rules outside. The principle of “chummage” prevailed as in the King’s Bench, but a number of rooms, fifteen more or less, were reserved for poor debtors under the name of Bartholomew Fair. The rentals of rooms and fees went to the warden, whose income was £2372. The same evils of overcrowding, uncleanliness, want of medical attendance, absence or neglect of divine service, were present as in the King’s Bench, but in an exaggerated form. The Committee on Gaols[34] reported that “although the house of the warden looked into the court, and the turnkeys slept in the prison, yet scenes of riot, drunkenness, and disorder were most prevalent.” The state of morals was disgraceful. Any woman obtained admission if sober, and if she got drunk she was not turned out. There was no distinct place for the female debtors, who lived in the same galleries as the men. Disturbances were frequent, owing to the riotous conduct of intoxicated women. Twice a week there was a wine and beer club held at night, which lasted till two or three in the morning. In the yard behind the prison were places set apart for skittles, fives, and tennis, which strangers frequented as any other place of public amusement.