‘The Master’s-side Prisoners have four sizeable chambers fronting the road—i.e., two on each storey. They pay two shillings and sixpence a week, and lie two in a bed; two beds in a room. The Common-side Debtors are in two long rooms in the Court Yard, near the Tap-room. Men in one room, women in the other: the Court Yard in common. They hang out a begging-box from a little closet in the front of the House, and attend it in turn. It brings them only a few pence a day, and of this pittance none partake but those who, at entrance, have paid the keeper two shillings and sixpence, and treated the Prisoners with half a gallon of beer. The last time I was there, no more than three had purchased this privilege....
‘At my first visit there were, on the Common-side, two Prisoners in Hammocks, sick and very poor. No chaplain. A compassionate Man, who is not a regular Clergyman, sometimes preaches to them on Sunday, and gives them some small relief. Lady Townsend sends a Guinea twice a year, which her Servant distributes equally among the Prisoners.
‘As Debtors here are generally very poor, I was surprised to see, once, ten or twelve noisy men at skittles; but the Turnkey said they were only visitants. I found they were admitted here as at another public-house. No Prisoners were at play with them.’
At St. Catherine’s, without the Tower, was another small debtors’ prison. This parish was a ‘peculiar,’ the Bishop of London having no jurisdiction over it, and the place was under the especial patronage of the Queens of England ever since the time of Matilda, the wife of Stephen, who founded a hospital there, now removed to Regent’s Park. It was a wonderful little parish, for there people could take sanctuary—and there also were tried civil and ecclesiastical cases. Howard says that the prison for debtors had been rebuilt seven years before he wrote. It was a small house of two storeys; two rooms on a floor. In April, 1774, there was a keeper, but no prisoners. ‘I have since called two or three times, and always found the House uninhabited.’
No notice of debtors’ prisons would be complete without mention of the King’s Bench, which was in Southwark. Howard reports:
‘The Prisoners are numerous. At more than one of my visits, some had the Small Pox. It was so crowded this last summer, that a Prisoner paid five shillings a week for half a bed, and many lay in the chapel. In May, 1766, the number of Prisoners within the Walls was three hundred and ninety-five, and, by an accurate list which I procured, their wives (including a few only called so) were two hundred and seventy-nine, children seven hundred and twenty-five—total, one thousand and four; about two-thirds of these were in the Prison.’
The prisoners had, as in the Fleet, their weekly wine and beer clubs, and they also indulged in similar outdoor sports. The Marshalsea and Horsemonger Lane gaol complete the list of London debtors’ prisons.
Howard’s description of the county prisons is something appalling. Gaol-fever, distemper, or small-pox being recorded against most of them. At Chelmsford there had been no divine service for above a year past, except to condemned criminals. At Warwick the debtors’ common day-room was the hall, which was also used as a chapel. At Derby a person went about the country, at Christmas-time, to gentlemen’s houses, and begged for the benefit of the debtors. The donations were entered in a book, and signed by each donor. About fourteen pounds were generally collected in this manner.
Chesterfield gaol was the property of the Duke of Portland, and Howard describes it thus:
‘Only one room, with a cellar under it, to which the Prisoners occasionally descend through a hole in the floor. The cellar had not been cleaned for many months. The Prison door had not been opened for several weeks, when I was there first. There were four Prisoners, who told me they were almost starved; one of them said, with tears in his eyes, “he had not eaten a morsel that day,”—it was afternoon. They had borrowed a book of Dr. Manton’s; one of them was reading it to the rest. Each of them had a wife, and they had, in the whole, thirteen children, cast on their respective parishes. Two had their groats from the Creditors, and out of that pittance they relieved the other two. No allowance: no straw: no firing: water a halfpenny for about three gallons, put in (as other things are) at the window. Gaoler lives distant.’