No debtor is allowed to have any trunk, portmanteau, dressing-case, or even a clothes-bag, with lock and key, within the prison, so that the prisoners are obliged, whensoever they require any change of clothing, to obtain leave to come into the room in the gaoler’s house before mentioned, and there take them from their portmanteau, or otherwise; no respectable prisoner can therefore have any article of convenience or value with him, without being obliged either to carry it about his person, or leave it exposed in his cell, or in an ill-constructed small cupboard, where he is also obliged to keep his provisions, &c.; and so great is the injustice in the prison, that smugglers not only receive fourpence-halfpenny per day, but are also allowed a quart of strong beer or ale each man, while the debtors are not permitted to have strong beer or ale even by paying for it.
When a debtor is removed by a writ of habeas corpus to London, a distance of thirty-six miles, and for which one shilling per mile is allowed by law to the gaoler, the sum of two pounds five shillings has been demanded and taken by the gaoler.
A marked inattention to the complaints or remonstrances repeatedly made by various prisoners, together with the general bad state of the prison, and the excessive and unnecessary harshness of the regulations, rendered it imperative on the petitioners to attempt to lay their grievances before the house, in the fervent hope that the house would be pleased to cause inquiry to be made into the truth of the several allegations contained in the petition, which the petitioners pledge themselves to prove, if permitted, by affidavit or otherwise, as the house should direct.
The petitioners humbly prayed, that a speedy remedy might be applied to their complaints as to the house in its wisdom should seem meet.
[277] Fosbroke’s Ency. of Antiquities.
[278] Acts xxviii. 16, 20, 23, 30, 31.
[279] Fosbroke.