There is another miserable-looking object yonder—greasy, dirty, and slovenly. He, too, is a Chancery prisoner. He has been so for twenty years. Why, he has not the slightest idea. He can only tell you that he was found out to be one of the relations of some one who had left “a good bit of money.” The lawyers “put the will into Chancery; and at last I was ordered to do something or other, I can’t recollect what, which I was also told I couldn’t do nohow if I would. So they said I was in contempt, and they took and put me into the Fleet. It’s a matter of twenty years I have been in prison; of course I’d like to get out, but I’m told there’s no way of doing it anyhow.” He is an artisan, and works at his trade in the prison, by which he gains just enough to keep him without coming upon the county-rate.
In that room over the chapel is the infirmary. There was a death lately. The deceased was an old man of sixty-eight, and nearly blind; he had not been many years in prison, but the confinement, and the anxiety, and the separation from his family, had preyed upon his mind and body. He was half-starved, too; for after being used to all the comforts of life, he had to live in jail on sixpence a-day. Yet there was one thousand pounds in the hands of the Accountant-General of the Court of Chancery, which was justly due to him. He was in contempt for not paying some three hundred pounds. But Death purged his contempt, and a decree was afterwards made for paying over the one thousand pounds to his personal representatives; yet himself had died, for want of a twentieth part of it, of slow starvation!
It must not, however, be supposed that Chancery never releases its victims. We must be just to the laws of “Equity.” There is actually a man now in London whom they have positively let out of prison! They had, however, prolonged his agonies during seventeen years. He was committed for contempt in not paying certain costs, as he had been ordered. He appealed from the order; but until his appeal was heard, he had to remain in durance vile. The Court of Chancery, like all dignified bodies, is never in a hurry; and, therefore, from having no great influence, and a very small stock of money to forward his interest, the poor man could only get his cause finally heard and decided on in December, 1849—seventeen years from the date of his imprisonment. And, after all, the Court decided that the original order was wrong; so that he had been committed for seventeen years by mistake!
How familiar to him must have been the face of that poor, tottering man, creeping along to rest on the bench under the wall yonder. He is very old, but not so old as he looks. He is a poor prisoner, and another victim to Chancery. He has long ago forgotten, if he ever knew, the particulars of his own case, or the order which sent him to a jail. He can tell you more of the history of this gloomy place and its defunct brother, the Fleet, than any other man. He will relate you stories of the “palmy days” of the Fleet, when great and renowned men were frequently its denizens; when soldiers and sailors, authors and actors, whose names even then filled England with their renown, were prisoners within its walls; when whistling shops flourished and turnkeys were smugglers; when lodgings in the prison were dearer than rooms at the west-end of the town; and when a young man was not considered to have finished his education until he had spent a month or two in the Bench or the Fleet. He knows nothing of the world outside—it is dead to him. Relations and friends have long ceased to think of him, or perhaps even to know of his existence. His thoughts range not beyond the high walls which surround him, and probably if he had but a little better supply of food and clothing, he might almost be considered a happy man. But it is the happiness of apathy, not of the intelligence and the affections—the painless condition of a trance, rather than the joyous feeling which has hope for its bright-eyed minister. What has he to do with hope? He has been thirty-eight years a Chancery prisoner. He is another out of twenty-four, still prisoners here, more than half of whom have been prisoners for above ten years, and not one of whom has any hope of release! A few have done something fraudulent in “contempt” of all law and equity; but is not even their punishment greater than their crime?
Let us turn away. Surely we have seen enough, though many other sad tales may be told, rivaling the horrors of Speilberg and French Lettres-de-cachet.
Part XV.
LAW AT A LOW PRICE.
LOW, narrow, dark, and frowning are the thresholds of our Inns of Court. If there is one of these entrances of which I have more dread than another, it is that leading out of Holborn to Gray’s Inn. I never remember to have met a cheerful face at it, until the other morning, when I encountered Mr. Ficker, attorney-at-law. In a few minutes we found ourselves arm in arm, and straining our voices to the utmost amid the noise of passing vehicles. Mr. Ficker stretched himself on tiptoe in a frantic effort to inform me that he was going to a County Court. “But perhaps you have not heard of these places?”
I assured Mr. Ficker that the parliamentary discussions concerning them had made me very anxious to see how justice was administered in these establishments for low-priced Law. “I am going to one now;” but he impressively added, “you must understand, that professionally I do not approve of their working. There can be no doubt that they seriously prejudice the regular course of law. Comparing the three quarters preceding with three quarters subsequent to the establishment of these Courts, there was a decrease of nearly 10,000 writs issued by the Court of Queen’s Bench alone, or of nearly 12,500 on the year.”
We soon arrived at the County Court. It is a plain, substantial looking building, wholly without pretension, but at the same time not devoid of some little architectural elegance of exterior. We entered, by a gateway far less austere than that of Gray’s Inn, a long, well-lighted passage, on either side of which were offices connected with the Court. One of these was the Summons Office, and I observed on the wall a “Table of Fees,” and as I saw Mr. Ficker consulting it with a view to his own business, I asked him his opinion of the charges.
“Why,” said he, “the scale of fees is too large for the client and too small for the lawyer. But suitors object less to the amount than to the intricacies and perplexities of the Table. In some districts the expense of recovering a sum of money is one-third more than it is in others; though in both the same scale of fees is in operation. This arises from the variety of interpretations which different judges and officers put upon the charges.”