Bridewell.
This name, from a well dedicated to St. Bridget, or St. Bride, between Fleet-street and the Thames, was given to a palace built there, and which, soon after, became a House of Correction, in the reign of Queen Mary. Hence, places of confinement in other parts, in which employment and penitentiary amendment were leading objects, were called Bridewells.
The greater part of the City of London Bridewell was taken down in 1863; committals are now made to the City prison at Holloway, but refractory City apprentices are still committed to Bridewell by the Chamberlain, this jurisdiction being preserved by the Court of Chancery. The number of committals rarely exceeds 25 annually, nevertheless the power of committal which the present Chamberlain has most praiseworthily asserted and successfully maintains, acts as a terror to evil-doers, and keeps in restraint 3000 of these lads of the City.
By a document lately discovered in the State-Paper Office, it appears that in the Bridewell of London were imprisoned the members of the Congregational Church first formed after the accession of Elizabeth; they were committed to the custody of the gaoler, May 20, 1567.
Cockfighting.
British cocks are mentioned by Cæsar; but the first notice of English cockfighting is by Fitzstephen, in the reign of Henry II.; and it was a fashionable sport from temp. Edward III. almost to our time. Henry VIII. added a cockpit to Whitehall Palace, where James I. went to see the sport twice a week. There were also cockpits in Drury-lane, Shoe-lane, Jewin-street, Cripplegate, and “behind Gray’s Inn;” and several lanes, courts, and alleys are named from having been the sites of cockpits. The original name of the pit in our theatres was the cock-pit, which seems to imply that cockfighting had been their original destination. One of our oldest London theatres was called the Cockpit; this was the Phœnix in Drury-lane, the site of which was Cockpit-alley, now corruptly written Pitt-place. Southwark has several cockpit sites. The cockpit in St. James’s-park, leading from Birdcage-walk into Dartmouth-street, was only taken down in 1816, but had been deserted long before. Howell, in 1657, described “cockfighting, a sport peculiar to the English, and so is bear and bull baitings, there being not such dangerous dogs and cocks anywhere.” Hogarth’s print best illustrates the brutal refinement of the cockfighting of the last century; and Cowper’s “Cockfighter’s Garland,” greatly tended to keep down this modern barbarism, which is punishable by statute. It was, not many years since, greatly indulged in through Staffordshire; and “Wednesbury (Wedgbury) cockings” and their ribald songs were a disgrace to our times.
Cockfighting was, in fact, the great national amusement, particularly in the north of England, and Berwick-upon-Tweed was among the places most celebrated for it. Some ninety years ago, in the north of England, when a cockfighting was about to take place, the parties were in want of an adept in putting on the spurs: a person present was recognised by an acquaintance, who exclaimed, “Here comes a Berwick man; he knows how to do it.” Cockfighting is now legally a misdemeanor; and on the 15th of April, 1857, at the Liverpool Police Court, James Clark, a publican, in Houghton-street, was fined 5l. and costs for permitting cockfighting in his house.
In the autumn of 1862, several persons were convicted by the magistrates at Barnsley, for cockfighting, under the Act, which inflicts a fine on any one assisting at a cockfight, in a place used for the purpose. This is an absurd condition, and is a blunder of the Act-framer. Now, the place used for the purpose of this fight was an old quarry; but the magistrates held that any place where a cockfight took place was a place used for the purpose, the fact of the fight being the evidence of the use. The case came by appeal before the Court of Queen’s Bench, when the Judges decided, in accordance with a ruled case, there must be some evidence of general use, if on a piece of waste ground, and that one act would only prove the use when it was a place over which a man had some control. The judgment was therefore reversed. At Bradford, within a few days of this decision, William Speight and J. Holroyd were fined 3l. each for cruelty in having set gamecocks to fight; twelve other persons, resident in various parts of the Riding, were fined 10s. each.
On June 24th, 1863, before a bench of magistrates at Loughborough, the Marquis of Hastings, and three of his gamekeepers, were charged, on behalf of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, with causing a cock to be cruelly tortured. It was proved in evidence that three weeks before, the Marquis of Hastings had “some good cockfighting” at Donington Hall, on a Sunday! They fought six pairs of cocks, six cocks were killed, all had steel spurs on, and the Marquis was one of the persons who put the cocks together to fight; the other persons accused being spectators. Lord Hastings admitted that the fight had taken place, but denied that there had been any cruelty used in the sense of the words of the information. His Lordship was, however, convicted in the penalty of 5l., and his three keepers in 2l. each.