The History and
Romance of
Crime
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES
TO THE PRESENT DAY
[Illustration: colophon]
THE GROLIER SOCIETY
LONDON
[Illustration: _Prison Hulks at Portsmouth_
Old hulks of English warships were first used as prisons when the
American War of Independence closed the shores of the colonies to the
convict-exile and rendered some additional prison space in England
immediately necessary. Used as prisons of war: many American prisoners
were confined there after the War of 1812,--loathsome places of durance
from which escape was difficult. They were also used for temporary
detention of prisoners sentenced to penal servitude in the colonies over
seas.]
Non-Criminal Prisons
ENGLISH DEBTOR’S PRISONS AND PRISONS
OF WAR
FRENCH WAR PRISONS
AMERICAN WAR PRISONS
WITH REFERENCES TO THOSE OF
OTHER LANDS
_by_
MAJOR ARTHUR GRIFFITHS
_Late Inspector of Prisons in Great Britain_
_Author of
“The Mysteries of Police and Crime
“Fifty Years of Public Service,” etc._
[Illustration: colphon]
THE GROLIER SOCIETY
EDITION NATIONALE
Limited to one thousand registered and numbered sets.
NUMBER 307.
INTRODUCTION
The word prison connotes crime; a place of punishment and detention
where misdeeds are expiated and penalties enforced. A certain sense of
shame attaches to all who have been committed to durance; for according
to the old law, the “natural inherent right of liberty cannot be
surrendered or forfeited unless by the commission of some great or
atrocious crime.” This doctrine was coeval in one country at least,
England, with the foundation of the constitution. Yet the seclusion and
detention of individuals who had done no wrong, was long the rule in
most civilised countries, and many prisons, which are to all intents and
purposes non-criminal, have existed and been constantly filled with
unfortunate persons guilty of no real offence against the law.
Of these there have been two principal classes: The debtors--those who
had become bound to others for the repayment of moneys lent or goods
purchased--and the prisoners of war,--combatants captured in the field
whom the conqueror was entitled to hold in diminution of his enemy’s
strength while hostilities continued. In both cases the right exercised
is that of the strongest and in neither is it defensible, nor has it
been always carried out fairly or humanely. The full acceptance of the
principle, however, has called many large prisons into being which have
gained great notoriety, and a description of them and the methods
pursued forms the contents of this volume.
The British, essentially a commercial people, sought very early to
control the relations between debtor and creditor, and ancient practice
greatly favoured the latter. Every assistance was given him for the
recovery of what was due him. His right to it was so amply acknowledged
that the law went farther and decreed that the debtor who could not pay
in cash was liable in person, so his services were attached to work out
the debt and he was adjudged a serf or slave to the master he could not
otherwise satisfy. The principle was derived from the Mosaic law by
which the defaulter might be sold into bondage with his family, his wife
and his wage-earning children. It was the same in ancient Greece and
Rome, where the creditor had a claim to the person of his debtor. Solon
abrogated this procedure, but it long held in Rome under very barbarous
conditions. When judgment was pronounced there against a debtor, he was
allowed thirty days to liquidate, but if at the end of that period he
was still unable to pay, he was handed over to his creditor, who might
keep him in chains for sixty days and make public exposure of him
proclaiming his failure, with permission finally to sell him or put him
to death. There were no public prisons for debtors in old Rome and the
creditor acted as his own gaoler until milder methods ruled that the
right of private imprisonment was intolerable. Nor was it permissible in
feudal times, when men were continually called upon to bear arms for
their lord and their valid effective strength would have been reduced by
locking them up in gaol.
Imprisonment for debt had its origin in the wish to foster and protect
trade. The creditor was permitted when he had proved his debt to recoup
himself by laying his debtor by the heels. Yet in England the practice
was held by jurists to be an undoubted invasion of the “Bill of Rights.”
It was distinctly laid down that no court of justice, whether at common
law or statute law, possessed the power to deprive an individual of his
personal liberty for anything less than serious and atrocious crime.
Still the right was usurped and exercised by specious means. Sellon says
in his “Practice,” “They obtained jurisdiction by a mere fiction over
actions of debt, detinue and causes of a like nature.” The judgment
pronounced in English courts against a debtor was merely to the effect
that he should pay the debt and costs, and it was incidental thereto
that “if he does not pay an execution will issue against his property.”
But no mention of imprisonment was included in the judgment, for which
there was, in fact, no authority.
This immunity from personal arrest remained in force in England long
after Magna Charta, but a change was introduced by a statute generally
known as that of “Marlbridge,” which enacted as a remedy against
absconding bailiffs and stewards that if any went off with the rents
they had collected for their employers, their bodies might be attached
when caught and they themselves held to serve to make good the loss. A
second statute called that of “Acton Burnell” (11th Edward I), allowed
merchants to arrest their debtors for acknowledged breaches of contract.
The practice was excused by the plea that traders were very constantly
foreigners and very likely to run out of the kingdom. As time passed the
chicanery of the law was further called in to protect the creditor and
the debtors’ offence was held to be a fraudulent act, a _delictum_ or
offence injurious to the plaintiff or a contempt of the court originally
moved to recover the debt. The rule then was that the creditor should
make a sworn affidavit against his debtor and that the court should
summons him to appear and answer the claim. If he neglected to attend,
the disobedience justified a presumption against him and the sheriff was
ordered to distrain his goods so as to force him to come into court. If
this procedure also failed, the defendant’s conduct was construed into
contumacy and a writ of _capias_ was issued for the seizure of his
person.
Herein there was clearly a great stretch of power and an unlawful
interference with personal liberty, yet the procedure was acquiesced in
on account of its general convenience. Still the public suffered in its
broad interests and the debtor was undoubtedly damnified and afterward
horribly ill-used. When the arrest was made, too often arbitrarily, he
was hurried off to gaol where he might be kept in durance almost
indefinitely with small hope of enlargement. He was in much worse case
than the prisoner charged with a crime, for no proper provision was made
for his support and maintenance. While the supposed lawbreaker got the
county allowance, such as it was, the debtor might starve. The latter
was no doubt entitled to claim his “groats,” fourpence per diem, from
his creditor, who was slow to pay, and did so only under compulsion
enforced by legal process, a costly matter generally beyond the means of
the insolvent and necessitous debtor. To die within the walls was easier
than to obtain release, even if he could show that he had been
wrongfully locked up. It cost money to prove that he did not owe the
debt; a suit at law must be begun and carried through, and legal process
was an expensive undertaking wholly beyond his means. This was so well
understood that a recognised and not uncommon form of charity was the
donation and bequest of moneys for the assistance of poor debtors.
Many are the painful details of the misusage of debtors, and of the
power given to one class of the community to oppress the other. The laws
relating to debtor and creditor in England were for centuries unsound,
illogical and unequal, and productive of untold misery to enormous
numbers of innocent people. The great debtors’ prisons of England will
live in history rivalling in their callous neglect and distinctly
inhuman treatment the more notorious receptacles used by high-handed and
cruel tyrants for the coercion of their helpless subjects. The
irresponsible despotic ruler who cast all who offended him into dark
dungeons and hermetically closed _oubliettes_, condemning them to a
lingering and acutely painful death, was no worse than the callous judge
who, enmeshed by complex, senseless machinery, consigned harmless people
to gaol for unlimited terms and under the most irksome conditions,
because unable to meet the smallest and not always the most righteous
pecuniary demands. It was not until John Howard laid bare the secrets of
the prison houses that the whole story was revealed or the unjust
sufferings of the debtor class fully realised.
The status of military prisons the world over has been an indictment
upon humanity. In England, the Hulks and Dartmoor; in France, Verdun and
Bitche; in Russia, Peter and Paul and the Schlüsselburg; in the United
States, Libby Prison, Andersonville and Fort Delaware are sad examples
of the cruelties of war. Idleness, starvation and homesickness conspired
to make the wretched captives prefer death or daring escape to
indefinite torture.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTION 5
I. THE FLEET PRISON 15
II. ABUSES AT THE FLEET 39
III. FAMOUS DWELLERS IN THE FLEET 76
IV. THE KING’S BENCH PRISON 100
V. LIFE IN THE KING’S BENCH 127
VI. ENGLISH PRISONS OF WAR 154
VII. THE HULKS 179
VIII. AMERICAN PRISONERS IN ENGLAND 199
IX. FRENCH WAR PRISONS 231
X. LATER RECORDS 258
XI. AMERICAN WAR PRISONS 287
List of Illustrations
PRISON HULKS AT PORTSMOUTH _Frontispiece_
THE FLEET BEGGAR _Page_ 28
A FLEET WEDDING “ 68
PRINCETOWN PRISON “ 164
NON-CRIMINAL PRISONS
CHAPTER I
THE FLEET PRISON
The great debtors’ prisons of England notorious for their callous
neglect and inhuman treatment--Denounced by John Howard, the
philanthropist--The Fleet, the King’s Bench and the
Marshalsea--Origin of the Fleet--Early government--Closely
connected with religious and political persecution--Bishop
Hooper--Account of the Fleet at the beginning of the seventeenth
century--Charges of cruelty brought against Warden Alexander
Harris--Charitable bequests--Fees extorted--Prices charged for
chamber-rent--Deplorable state of the prison.
The three principal prisons in London in the fourteenth century were the
Fleet, the King’s Bench and the Marshalsea, but Newgate took precedence
in interest because identified with its earliest history. All have their
peculiar histories full of interesting associations, replete with
memories of famous inmates and striking incidents, and all are worthy of
detailed description. All alike received prisoners for debt and on
occasion, more heinous offenders, especially in the earlier years of
their existence. The old King’s Bench was the peculiar prison for the
Court of that name, but it also took debtors committed by the Court of
Exchequer and the Court of Common Pleas. The Marshalsea Court, so called
from having been originally under the control of the Knight Marshal of
the Royal Household, was at first intended to settle differences between
the lesser servants of the palace, and had its own judge, counsel and
attorneys, but none except members of Clifford’s Inn were permitted to
practise in this court. The jurisdiction of this court extended twelve
miles round Whitehall, excluding the city of London. It also served the
Admiralty Court and received prisoners charged with piracy.
The Fleet prison took its name from the little stream long stigmatised
as the “Fleet[1] Ditch,” the open sewer or water-way which rose in the
eastern ridge of Hampstead Hill, flowed by “Oldbourne” or Holborn under
four bridges to discharge into the Thames on the west side of
Blackfriars bridge. As time passed this ditch, after being deepened once
or twice to allow for water traffic, became more and more pestilential
and was at length filled up and arched over, becoming then the site of
Fleet Market in what is now known as Farringdon Street, on which the
main gates of the prison opened. The building was of great antiquity and
is first mentioned in authentic records about A. D. 1197. A deed of that
date granted it to the safe keeping of one Nathaniel de Leveland and his
son Robert, in conjunction with the King’s Houses at Westminster. It is
stated that the Fleet prison had been the inheritance of the Levelands
since the time of the Norman Conquest. Four years later this same Robert
de Leveland petitioned King John for leave to hand over the wardenship
of the Fleet to Simon Fitz-Robert, archdeacon of Wells, while he,
Leveland, proceeded with the crusaders to the Holy Land. He returned
very shortly afterward, as appears from a grant of moneys made him by
the City of London in 1205, his salary for guardianship of the prison.
His wife Margaret was also granted an allowance as keeper of the
Westminster Royal Houses.
Many entries in the records show that in those early days the Fleet was
a place of detention for offenders of all sorts as well as of ordinary
debtors, and especially of defaulters owing money to the King’s
Exchequer. The Chamberlain of Chester in the reign of Edward I was
imprisoned in the Fleet for a year on account of a debt to the King. A
similar case was that of the sheriffs of Nottingham and Derby, who were
detained in 1347 for sums owing to the Exchequer in the reign of Edward
III; another, that of William de Hedersete, who was answerable for
great “arrears to our lord the King,” through a deceased partner who had
died insolvent. The Fleet received debtors for the Court of Chancery,
and was essentially the King’s prison to which were committed all who
came under his displeasure or failed in their obligations and payments.
When one Guy de Codemore was ordered into exile and did not leave the
country, forthwith he was thrown into the Fleet. French prisoners of war
taken in the capture of Harfleur, in 1423, were brought to the Fleet.
When Sir Geoffrey Poole of Hampshire fell out with a neighbour, the Lord
Privy Seal summoned him to appear before him and committed him to the
Fleet until the King’s (Henry VIII) further pleasure should be known.
Lady Poole won her husband’s pardon this time, but Sir Geoffrey was
again in trouble the very next year for assaulting the parson of Pacton
in the county of Sussex.
In these troublous times various offenders found themselves in the
Fleet. It was a place of penitence for young gentlemen who misbehaved,
such as the son and heir of Sir Mathew Browne of Surrey who, with his
servants, was guilty of arson in a wood; a printer who sold seditious
books was committed to it in 1541; the riotous servants of a gentleman
of the Privy Chamber were laid by the heels in the Fleet. Smugglers and
all who infringed the Customs’ laws were committed to the prison as
debtors to the King. A ship master of Southampton who was “privately
conveying five packets of wool to Flanders without a license” was
arrested and sent to the Fleet, the wool being seized and the captain
fined half the value of his ship. It was made a place for the detention
of state prisoners, for when Cowley, the Master of the Rolls in Ireland,
was under examination in 1541 he was lodged in the Fleet until the King
himself should come to London. This was the fate of the illustrious
knight, Sir John Falstaff, when he bearded the Lord Chief Justice, as
Shakespeare tells us in “Henry IV”:--
“Go carry Sir John Falstaff to the Fleet,
Take all his company with him.”
Poets, dramatists and pamphleteers were from time to time cast into the
Fleet, and it was christened by Pope the “Haunt of the Muses.” Among the
first was Lord Surrey and among the latter Nash, author of the satirical
play “The Isle of Dogs.” Wycherley, the wit and dramatist, who married
the Countess of Drogheda, languished for seven years as a debtor in the
Fleet, and Sir Richard Baker, author of the famous “Chronicles,” wrote
them as a means of subsistence when an impecunious debtor there, where
he died. Francis Sandford, author of the “Genealogical History,” also
died in the prison in 1693. James Howell, who wrote the delightful
“Familiar Letters” during the troublous times of the Civil War, was a
tenant of the Fleet prison in the years 1643 to 1647. In one of his
letters dated from the Fleet in 1643, he describes his arrest one
morning betimes, by five men armed with “swords, pistols and bills,” who
took him to gaol where, as he says, “as far as I can tell I must lie at
dead anchor a long time unless some gentle gale blow thence to launch me
out.” He consoles himself, however, with the thought that all Englishmen
being islanders, are, in effect, prisoners.
The Fleet was arbitrarily used by Sir Richard Empson in the reign of
Henry VII, when that overbearing law officer was indicted for committing
to it, without process, persons accused of murder and high crimes.
Cardinal Wolsey was charged with a like invasion of the liberty of the
subject, “by his power and might contrary to right,” in the case of a
Sir John Stanley who had taken possession of a farm illegally. This man
would not yield but preferred to turn monk in Westminster monastery,
where he died.
Other prisoners were committed to the Fleet for political misdemeanours
and severely dealt with by the ruling powers. It was an offence to marry
the sister of Lady Jane Grey and for this imprisonment was adjudged to
Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford. Dr. Donne, who married Sir George
More’s daughter without his knowledge, was laid by the heels; the
penalty of durance overtook Sir Robert Killigrew for entering into
conversation with Sir Thomas Overbury, when returning from a visit to
Sir Walter Raleigh, then a prisoner in the Tower. James I, when
overmuch importuned by the Countess of Dorset, who broke into the Privy
Council Chamber, sent her to the Fleet, and Lucius Carey, Lord Falkland,
was imprisoned for sending a challenge.
Many painful memories hang about the old Fleet prison in connection with
the religious and political persecutions of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries. It was crowded with the martyrs to intolerance in the reign
of the bigoted Queen Mary and the victims Elizabeth sacrificed in the
way of reprisals when she came to the throne. The Protestant party had
been in the ascendant under Edward VI and the old religion had been
sharply attacked, so that many eminent Catholic bishops burned at the
stake,--Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, and the pious Hooper, whose chief
offence was that being a priest, he had married a wife. He was now
Bishop of Worcester but he had been in the Fleet before, imprisoned by
his own friends for refusing to wear vestments on the occasion of his
consecration. He was soon set free but came again to the Fleet on his
way to the stake.
His own account of this second confinement is to be found in Fox’s Book
of Martyrs. “On the first of September, 1553, I was committed unto the
Fleet from Richmond, to have the liberty of the prison, and within five
days after I had paid for my liberty five pounds sterling to the warden
for fees, who immediately upon the payment thereof complained unto
Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and so I was committed to close
prison one quarter of a year in the lower chamber of the Fleet and used
very extremely. Then by the means of a good gentleman, I had liberty to
come down to dinner and supper; not suffered to speak to any of my
friends, but as soon as dinner and supper were done to repair to my
chamber again. Notwithstanding ... the warden and his wife picked
quarrels with me and complained untruly of me to their great friend the
Bishop of Winchester.
“After one quarter of a year and somewhat more, Babington, the warden,
and his wife fell out with me for the wicked mass; and thereupon the
warden resorted to the bishop and obtained to put me in the ward, where
I have continued a long time, having nothing appointed to me for my bed
but a little pad of straw and a rotten covering with a tick and a few
feathers to lie on, the chamber being vile and stinking, until by God’s
means good people sent me bedding. On one side of the prison is the
stink and filth of the house and on the other side the town ditch (the
Fleet ditch) so that the evil smells have affected me with sundry
diseases. During which time I have been sick and the doors, bars, hasps
and chains being all closed and made fast upon me, I have mourned,
called and cried for help, but the warden when he hath known me many
times ready to die, and when the poor men of the ward have called to
help me, hath commanded the doors to be kept fast and charged that none
of his men should come at me saying, ‘Let him alone, it were a good
riddance of him.’”
Yet the sums extorted from the poor bishop were as high as for a peer of
the realm. A lord, spiritual or temporal, paid the sum of five pounds as
“fyne” for liberty of the house and irons on first coming in. It was a
graduated scale, each item according to rank ranging from ten pounds for
an archbishop, duke or duchess, to twenty-five shillings for an esquire.
The rates were proportionate and laid upon everything: fees for
dismission, for entering the obligation and to everyone concerned in the
administration, porter, “jayler,” chamberlain, charge for commons or
board and for “coyne.” When these fees were not promptly paid the
wretched prisoner was “left to lye in the common prison without ‘bedd’
or ‘dyete,’ subject to the discomfort of low companions and the dangers
of distemper.”
Bishop Hooper sums up his griefs thus: “I have suffered imprisonment
almost eighteen months. My goods, living, friends and comfort taken from
me; the Queen [Mary] owing me by first account eighty pounds or more,
she hath put me in prison and giveth nothing to find me; neither is
there any suffered to come at me whereby I might have relief. I am with
a wicked man and woman [the warden and his wife] so that I see no remedy
(save God’s help) but I shall be cast away in prison before I come to
judgment. But I commit my just cause to God whose will be done whether
it be life or death.” It was death, and as he esteemed it, a glorious
death, that of being burnt at the stake after some more months in
confinement, during which he was frequently examined and called upon to
recant. He was sent down for execution to Gloucester, of which diocese
he had been bishop before his translation to Worcester. He was burned
alive at a slow fire and suffered exceeding torment, but bore it with
the splendid endurance vouchsafed to so many victims to savage laws that
counted difference in religious belief an abominable crime.
We have an authentic account of the interior of the prison early in the
seventeenth century, in the volume published by the Camden Society,
entitled the “Æconomy of the Fleete” by Alexander Harris, at one time
warden there. Charges were brought against him by a number of his
prisoners, of oppression and ill-usage and he is at great pains to make
his defence. The prison, as he describes it, was no doubt identically
the same as that of earlier date. It consisted of “six great rooms and a
courtyard with Tower chambers and Bolton’s ward,” the strongest part of
the prison. There was a further sub-division. One ward of the Tower
chambers was appropriated to females exclusively; another was called the
“Twopenny” ward from the price charged; a third the “Beggars’” ward in
which nothing was demanded and nothing given. At a lower level was the
Dungeon, a receptacle for refractory prisoners where they were kept in
irons and confined in the stocks.
The inmates one and all were entirely at the mercy of the warden, who
inherited his office, or purchased it, and looked to recoup himself by
the fees he extorted from his prisoners. The place was a sort of sorry
hotel kept by a brutal and rapacious landlord, as a life tenant, with a
keen eye to profit, and who gave his lodgers nothing, exacting payment
often exorbitant for even light and air and the barest necessaries. The
English law was so neglectful and inhuman that it made no regular
provision for the imprisoned debtor. A fiction existed that the creditor
was bound to contribute four pence daily to provide him with food, but,
as has been said, as late as 1843 this payment of the “groat” was not
punctually made, if at all, and could only be enforced by slow process
of law at a cost prohibitory to the penniless prisoner, and he was
thrown on his own resources, to starve if without friends or private
means, or in the extreme case to drag out a miserable existence from the
doles of the charitable. Great numbers of hapless folk in the passing
ages were detained for five and twenty, thirty and even forty years, on
account of debts of a few pounds, grown out of a first pitifully small
sum and largely increased by arbitrary charges for fees and maintenance,
which but for unjust arrest and detention would never have existed.
Thousands died of hope deferred or slow starvation and with them
suffered those naturally dependent upon them. It was a calculation well
within the mark that every debtor was saddled with two dependents for
whom he was the stay and breadwinner. Some figures are given by John
Howard when, later, he began his self-sacrificing philanthropic labours,
and may be quoted here to show how numerous were the innocent victims of
the iniquitous and remorseless legal system in force:
“I have found,” he writes in 1777,[2] “by carefully examining sundry
gaols, that upon an average two dependents (by which I mean wives and
children only) may be assigned to each man (debtor) in prison. My
computation is confirmed by the account which we have from the
Benevolent Society at the Thatched House, October 9th, 1777. Since its
institution in 1772 there were yearly about 3,980 discharged debtors who
had 2,193 wives and 6,288 children.” From this he reasoned that as there
was a total of debtors in England and Wales of 4,084, the dependents
would be twice that number.
The sufferings entailed upon poor debtors and their families appealed
forcibly to good people and produced much spontaneous assistance.
Societies were formed having considerable sums at their disposal to be
expended in the relief of poor debtors by the payment of and legal
extinction of small debts. Other sums were subscribed, granted or
bequeathed with the direct intention of purveying to the daily crying
needs of the imprisoned, as moneys held in trust to be expended on bread
and improved dietaries for those who would otherwise starve. These
allowances survived to a comparatively recent date, and when the state
assumed control of all British prisons in 1878, a long list still
existed and was absorbed by the Charity Commissioners. These poor
creatures were active on their own behalf and collected funds by begging
openly in the public streets. This was practised by the so-called
“Running Box;” a prisoner ran about the streets adjacent, carrying a box
which he shook constantly, rattling its contents and imploring alms from
passers by for the poor prisoners in the Fleet. There was also the
prison gate or “grating,” which at the Fleet was a window barred, behind
which always sat an emaciated debtor rattling his money box and ever
chanting dolorously his appeal, “Pray remember the poor prisoners who
have no allowance.” The practice was universal and in Salisbury it went
the length in 1774--as Howard says--of exhibiting two Crown debtors at
the door of the County Gaol, who offered articles manufactured in the
prison for sale. Hard by the outer gate was a row of staples fixed in
the walls and through the rings was run a chain, to each end of which
was padlocked a “Common Side” debtor appealing to the passers by. At
Salisbury there was a custom of sending out felons to roam the city in
quest of alms; two were chained together, one carrying a money box, the
other a sack or basket for food.
No debtor was allowed to benefit by the funds thus obtained until they
had been formally sworn at the “grate,” to the effect that they were not
worth five pounds in the world. After this they were entitled to a share
in the contents of the collection box and to participate in the
donations and bequests of the charitable souls who compassionated their
poverty-stricken, hardly-used brethren.
A detailed list of the benefactors and their gifts will be found in
Howard’s “State of Prisons” (1784), and some are curious enough and may
be quoted, such as the bequest known as “Eleanor Gwynne’s bread,” which
gave the debtors in Ludgate every eighth week five shillings’ worth of
penny loaves, and the gift of Mrs. Elizabeth Mission, the yearly income
of two hundred pounds, three per cent. annuities for free bread and
coals. A mysterious gift was sent for years to the Wood Street Compter,
“nine stone of beef and fourteen quartern loaves,” but its origin was
kept secret until at the death of Princess Caroline its royal origin was
displayed, and the alms was continued by the order of George III during
his life. Mr. Allnutt, who was for many years a prisoner in the
Marshalsea for debt, came in for a good estate while incarcerated and at
his death he left one hundred pounds a year to be applied to the release
of poor debtors. In the Southwark County Gaol, once known as the
[Illustration: _The Fleet Beggar_
_From the painting by Hosmer Shepherd_
At the barred window at the gate of the Fleet prison, it was the
custom for an emaciated debtor to sit, rattling his money-box and
imploring alms. English law made no regular provision for the
imprisoned debtors. The creditor was supposed to contribute
fourpence daily to provide him with food, but this was rarely made
and could only be enforced by process of law.
]
White Lion Prison, there were sixteen legacies and donations, all
applied to the relief of debtors, and “Nell” Gwynne also bequeathed a
sum to be expended in loaves for Common Side debtors.
Returning to the misgovernment of Warden Harris, and the malfeasances
laid to his charge, one of the most serious against him was that he
allowed two prisoners, well-known to be bitter enemies and constantly
quarrelling, to consort together in the same cell or room, that called
the Tower chamber, where one fell suddenly upon the other and stabbed
him so that he presently died. The story told is much confused. It was
not clear who was the aggressor and whether or not the fatal blow was
struck in self-defence. The two prisoners in question were a Sir John
Whitebrook, against whom the warden had a grievance (no less than that
Whitebrook had murderously assaulted him), and the other was one
Boughton, of whose hostile feelings toward Whitebrook the warden
astutely availed himself.
It was stated that Whitebrook was held a close prisoner by the order of
two courts, but that he became violently disturbed, and breaking out
went to the warden’s study, where he found Harris in his gown writing. A
talk ensued as to the quality of the lodging provided and the charge for
the chamber-rent, and as the warden was using the pomice-box to dry his
writing, Sir John Whitebrook struck him on the head with the sharp end
of a hammer, inflicting four wounds upon his skull and other bruises,
before the warden could close with him. Then the assailant was thrown on
his back and the hammer taken from him so that the warden might easily
have beaten out his brains, “but that he was neither wrathful nor
daunted.” When the servants came upon the scene, Whitebrook was seized
by the butler but yet contrived to take out a stiletto and use it
fiercely. The warden’s deputy was stabbed through the hand and the
porter or doorkeeper of the house would have been killed but the
stiletto did not enter. After this the furious creature was carried in
irons to Bolton’s ward.
This affray was part of a settled plan of mutinous disturbance in which
some three score prisoners had combined to break up the strongest wards
and the massive doors of the Tower chamber. At that time Whitebrook and
Boughton agreed amicably and the malcontents set themselves to “bar out”
the warden from the prison and refused all persuasions of the officials
to “unlock” the chambers even at the request of the Lord Chancellor, the
Lord Chief Justice and the Sergeant at Arms, but they yielded to the
Clerk of the Council when sent from the Lords. Whitebrook was still
insubordinate and refused the chamber offered him but seized upon five
others which they “again fortified,” so that the warden “had no command
in that part of the prison.” The authority of the officials was at last
vindicated and the turbulent prisoners were removed into the common
prison, where Boughton and Whitebrook came together and, after a
suspension of hostilities for some months, the fatal quarrel with the
results described took place.
Another serious allegation was that a prisoner, who was in possession of
a large sum in cash, was robbed of it with the connivance of the warden.
A man named Coppin was supposed to have fifty-one pounds concealed in
his bed and orders were issued to remove him to another room and keep
him close while the turnkeys rifled his bed and carried off his
treasure. The answer given was that Coppin was known for six years past
to be quite impecunious and unable “to pay the warden one penny for
meate, drink, lodgings or attendance.” It was proved by the evidence of
other prisoners that when Coppin was transferred from the Tower Chamber
into Bolton’s ward, he took his bedding with him and that he never
complained of having lost “one penny or any other thing.”
There were many more charges against the warden, Alexander Harris, which
he answered speciously and sometimes denied categorically. He was
accused of breaking into prisoners’ rooms, forcing the locks of their
trunks, seizing their goods and cash and applying them to his own use;
but he replied that Peck, the particular complainant, although worth
money, never paid a sou and when set free left the Fleet deeply in the
warden’s debt, having occupied a good room for eight years, for which
he paid not one penny. He was a debtor whom a small sum would discharge,
but “he never paid any man.” Peck’s children were known thieves, who
sought shelter in the Fleet until the gallows got one and the other died
a natural death. Peck himself “purloyned the goods of his
fellow-prisoners and by force, with knife drawn, took away the bedding
of a dead room-mate from the mother who claimed it. Peck with his
accomplices came into the gaoler’s lodge and thrust him out, with his
aged wife, and in resisting grievously bruised the gaoler, offering to
stabb the man that was under the gaoler.”
For these foul abuses Peck was moved to Newgate by order of the Lord
Chief Justice, where he lay for a long time not daring to open his
trunks, for they were full of stolen goods; but the warden called in
neighbours and with the help of some prisoners forced them and
inventoried the contents. The warden of the Fleet found more than enough
to satisfy his debt for eight years’ lodging and fees. Peck’s remaining
property consisted of only three blankets, two pillows, “an ould
covering of darnex” and two bolsters.
Harris was also accused of impounding the moneys paid as fees to the
servant who went as escort with prisoners allowed to go at large for the
day. This curious custom obtained in the Fleet, from the earliest to the
latest times, of permitting a prisoner on payment of a fee to go at
large in the city and even into the country if accompanied by a
“baston” or tipstaff. When the practice began it was understood that no
prisoner was meant to go further than to Westminster or to his counsel,
but by degrees custom enlarged their walks all over London and indeed
far beyond it. In all cases the warden was always responsible for his
prisoner and if he escaped was mulcted to the amount of his debt.
Permission to go abroad was always preceded by the prisoner or his
friends giving security for the amount due. The extent to which this
privilege was conceded is seen by the fact that twenty officers were on
the staff of the prison for the purpose of providing the requisite
escorts. The warden estimated that he paid out to them some eighty
pounds a year, which at twenty pence a day would account for about a
thousand absences, or an average of ten days annually to say a hundred
prisoners, who could afford the luxury of an “exeat.” The warden’s risk
was great, for there were times when the aggregate of the debts owed by
the inmates of the Fleet amounted to two hundred thousand pounds,
besides the State obligations or sums owing to the king. The warden’s
emoluments were necessarily large to cover this liability, and often
exceeded two thousand pounds a year.
Residence beyond the prison within the “Rules,” was another form of
privilege. “The liberty of the rules and the ‘day rules’ of the Fleet
may be traced,” says Mr. Timbs, “to the time of Richard II, when
prisoners were allowed to go at large by bail, or with a ‘baston’
(tipstaff), for nights and days together. This license was paid at
eightpence per day and twelvepence for his keeper that shall be with
him. These were day rules. However they were confirmed by a rule of
court during the reign of James I. The rules wherein prisoners were
allowed to lodge were enlarged in 1824, so as to include the churches of
St. Bride’s and St. Martin’s, Ludgate; New Bridge Street, Blackfriars to
the Thames; Dorset Street and Salisbury Square; and part of Fleet
Street, Ludgate Hill and Ludgate Street, to the entrance of St. Paul’s
Churchyard, the Old Bailey and the lanes, courts, etc., in the vicinity
of the above; the extreme circumference of the liberty being about a
mile and a half. Those requiring the ‘rules’ had to provide sureties for
their punctual reappearance and keeping within the boundaries, and to
pay a percentage on the amount of debts for which they were detained,
which also entitled them to the liberty of the day rules, enabling them
during term or the sitting of the courts of Westminster, to go abroad
during the day, to transact or to arrange their affairs, etc. The Fleet
and the Queen’s Bench were the only prisons in the Kingdom to which
these privileges had for centuries been attached.”
The withholding discharge from those entitled by law to go at large
until all fees and duties were satisfied, an act amounting to false
imprisonment, was a frequent complaint against the warden, as against
all gaolers in the old days. This was answered by the plea that it was a
general rule to detain out-going prisoners until they had satisfied all
just dues, and the imposition of these dues was defended as having been
lawfully originated by Act of Parliament, custom or toleration of the
State and judges of courts. The warden was charged too with making
imprisonment more grievous by keeping prisoners too close, “chaining,
manacling and bolting them with irons,” and this for months and years
without order, warrant or law; but he pleaded that such treatment was
the necessary restraint of dangerous prisoners, “badd” debtors for great
sums, perjurers, “forgerors,” conspirators and such like censured
persons by whom the warden or his servants may be “out-done or slain”
through violence to his person or office, or whose cause was almost
ready for hearing by the Star Chamber.
The use of irons was justified by “ancient continuance” and custom
throughout the Kingdom which many “now in the Fleet do by suffering in
other prisons know to be true.” The fact that a fine was paid to be
freed from them “proveth the use,” said the warden, “and there be some
knights now prisoners that did wear irons for thirty years past for
misdemeanours after they had been fined to be freed from them in the
Fleet.” In support of this use of irons the opinion of the Master of the
Rolls, given twenty-three years previously, is quoted; that if abridged
the discipline of the house would be subverted. “The warden protested
that he did never show spleen or passion in the putting irons on
prisoners for private revenge, not even when several, who were in
execution for great sums, had run away and escaped and the warden was
compelled to pay their debts.”
The warden indignantly denied the charge of starving “close prisoners”
(those kept close), declaring it to be “fabulous and false and to have
no colour;” for food was supplied although no payment was made, and in
one case, when a prisoner “faigned himself sick” from starvation, the
doctor saw in the window the most part of a roasted pullet, left from
the meal before. This complaint of being starved drove a certain
prisoner to break out, behaving himself rather as a “Bedlam frantic than
a gentleman” and with others seeking “for revenge” to the utter dislike
and grief of all in the prison, “with steel chisel, mallets and hammers
cut all the stone work of the door of the Tower Chamber into which the
bolts and locks did shut, so that no door could be shut upon eighteen
prisoners of great weight.”
The exactions of the warden for chamber-rent were the cause of bitter
complaint; the order was that no man should pay more than one shilling
and threepence weekly for a room with bed and bedding, yet the price
demanded was eight shillings, ten, even twenty, per week without
bedding. The warden answered that many of his prisoners desired to have
more ease than ordinary, and sought lodgings in the warden’s own house
and would not lie in the prison. Better accommodation must be paid for
at a higher rate, if they paid at all, but “the misery is that none will
pay at all, but stand upon it they should pay nothing, which is contrary
to right, custom and usage.” Yet these defaulters also brought friends,
wives, children and servants which were no prisoners, to share their
quarters and still would pay nothing for the privilege. On the whole it
was quite a mistake to suppose that the warden’s rents “yielded a mass
of benefit each year, whereof the contrary doth appear, for prisoners
are not the best payers and some lie there many years and die without
paying and others lie many years and then become insolvent.”
It was pleaded that where in old time no rent was charged on the Common
Side, the warden Harris demanded it as if for a private chamber, and
even for the dungeon as well. The answer was that the Common Side was
the king’s ancient prison where for “many hundred years men were
imprisoned there only” and they were not exempt from payment. In the
part called the Tower Chamber there were eight bedsteads by which the
warden had made seventy-one pounds by the year. In one ward, called the
“Twopenny,” the inmates paid twopence a night; only in the “Beggars’”
ward did prisoners pay nothing and receive nothing. In this last the
insolvent debtor was forced to fend for himself; he was dependent upon
chance charity for food, fire, clothing, bedding. Many hundreds
succumbed to starvation and cold and died like dogs upon rotten straw,
their nakedness barely covered by foul scanty rags. Rarely the degraded
and neglected lodgers were suffered to go in search of water to cleanse
the ward, but these as a rule were always filthily dirty.
The state of affairs was horrible within the gaol. No order was kept.
Prisoners quarrelled and fought continually, many ranged the wards and
corridors howling like lunatics all through the night and blowing horns,
so that sleep was impossible to the sick and sorrowful. The lowest women
entered freely, thieves took refuge there and thus avoided arrest;
stolen goods were hidden in secure corners and never discovered. The
prisoners went about armed and used swords and daggers freely in brawls
and fights amongst themselves or in attacking the officers and servants
of the gaol.