‘It is always with satisfaction that we avail ourselves of the return of the present Season to acknowledge our sense of the obligation we lay under to the Public, for the very liberal Patronage with which they have honoured the Times, during many years; a constancy of favour, which, we believe, has never before distinguished any Newspaper, and for which the Proprietors cannot sufficiently express their most grateful thanks.
‘This Favour is too valuable and too honourable to excite no envy in contemporary Prints, whose frequent habit it is to express it by the grossest calumnies and abuse. The Public, we believe, has done them ample justice, and applauded the contempt with which it is our practice to receive them.’
As this self-gratulatory notice brings us down to the last year of the eighteenth century, I close this notice of ‘The Times and its Founder.’ John Walter died at Teddington, Middlesex, on the 26th of January, 1812.
IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT.
Imprisonment for debt has long ceased to exist in England; debtors now only suffering incarceration for contempt of Court: that is to say, that the judge has satisfied himself that the debtor has the means to pay, and will not. But, in the eighteenth century, it was a fearful fact, and many languished in prison for life, for most trifling sums. Of course, there were debtors and debtors. If a man had money or friends, much might be done to mitigate his position; he might even live outside the prison, in the Rules, as they were called, a limited district surrounding the prison; but for this advantage he must find substantial bail—enough to cover his debt and fees. But the friendless poor debtor had a very hard lot, subsisting on charity, going, in turn, to beg of passers-by for a coin, however small, rattling a box to call attention, and dolorously repeating, ‘Remember the poor prisoners.’
There were many debtors’ prisons, and one of the principal, the Fleet, was over-crowded; in fact, they all were full. Newgate, the Marshalsea, the Gate House, Westminster, the Queen’s Bench, the Fleet, Ludgate, Whitecross Street, Whitechapel, and a peculiar one belonging to St. Katharine’s (where are now the docks).
Arrest for debt was very prompt; a writ was taken out, and no poor debtor dare stir out without walking ‘beard on shoulder,’ dreading a bailiff in every passer-by. The profession of bailiff was not an honoured one, and, probably, the best men did not enter it; but they had to be men of keen wit and ready resource, for they had equally keen wits, sharpened by the dread of capture, pitted against them. Some rose to eminence in their profession, and as, occasionally, there is a humorous side even to misery, I will tell a few stories of their exploits. As I am not inventing them, and am too honest to pass off another man’s work as my own, I prefer telling the stories in the quaint language in which I find them.
‘Abram Wood had a Writ against an Engraver, who kept a House opposite to Long Acre in Drury Lane, and having been several times to serve it, but could never light on the Man, because he work’d at his business above Stairs, as not daring to shew his Head for fear of being arrested, for he owed a great deal of Money, Mr. Bum was in a Resolution of spending no more Time over him; till, shortly after, hearing that one Tom Sharp, a House-breaker, was to be hang’d at the end of Long Acre, for murdering a Watchman, he and his Follower dress’d themselves like Carpenters, having Leather Aprons on, and Rules tuck’d in at the Apron Strings: then going early the morning or two before the Malefactor was to be executed, to the place appointed for Execution, they there began to pull out their Rules, and were very busie in marking out the Ground where they thought best for erecting the Gibbet. This drew several of the Housekeepers about ’em presently, and among the rest the Engraver, who, out of a selfish humour of thinking he might make somewhat the more by People standing in his House to see the Execution, in Case this Gibbet was near it, gave Abram a Crown, saying,