FAMOUS DWELLERS IN THE FLEET
Deplorable condition of debtors throughout the country as detailed
by Howard--Famous Inmates--The Chevalier Desseasau, the
Prussian--Captain Johnson R. N., a professional smuggler employed
in naval expeditions--Arrest--Daring escape--Employed as pilot for
the Walcheren expedition--His project for rescuing Napoleon from
St. Helena--The “no-Popery riots”--The Fleet burned and
rebuilt--Royal Commission to inquire into imprisonment for
debt--Debtors’ privileges and extravagances--Graphic picture of the
Fleet given by Charles Dickens--The Common Side--The death of “the
Chancery prisoner”--The closing days of the Fleet--Abolished in
1840.
The condition of debtors as shown by Howard was deplorable all through
the country. The prisons were often the property of great personages.
Cheyney Court at Winchester was owned by the bishop of the diocese, so
was that at Durham, and here the debtors were in such evil case that
those on the Common Side had no subsistence for a whole twelve month
more than a diet of boiled bread and water. His Majesty the King kept a
prison for debtors in Windsor Castle in which Howard found two
prisoners. The place was governed by the Duke of Montague as constable,
and under him a janitor and deputy-janitor were appointed, the latter
receiving free house-rent as his salary. The prison of Chester Castle
was also the property of the King, who leased it to his constable or
patentee, who in his turn received rent from the gaoler, forty pounds a
year. The debtors were lodged in the so-called “Pope’s kitchen,” an
imaginary free ward. This “Pope’s kitchen” was underground, dark and
ill-ventilated, so that Howard when inside with the door shut felt that
his situation brought to mind what he had heard of the Black Hole of
Calcutta. In striking contrast to this, Howard speaks in commendation of
the noble prison for debtors in the spacious area within York Castle,
and of the admirable arrangements for the weighing and issuing of bread
for the supply of which many charities existed. Elsewhere they were
cruelly neglected; the keeper of Bodmin prison bore witness that in
twenty years only four prisoners had received the “groats” or allowance
from their creditors. At Exeter, during twelve years, only four or five
had received it besides the inmates of the Common Side ward known as the
“Shoe” because those inside were in the habit of lowering a shoe through
the window, to collect alms in the street. At this time the total number
of debtors in custody in England and Wales averaged about two thousand.
We may contrast the culpable neglect and ill-treatment of debtors in
Great Britain with the milder and more humane customs generally
prevailing at that time on the Continent of Europe. In Prussia a money
payment of two groschen (threepence farthing) was made by the creditors,
and if omitted for one whole week, the prisoner was set free. In Holland
creditors were bound to support their debtors with an allowance varying
from sixpence to two and three shillings a day. In Flanders the creditor
was obliged to pay for a month’s support in advance. At Cologne no
debtors who were quite penniless might be confined. In Paris a new
prison, La Force, had been constructed and occupied from January, 1782.
It was a spacious building with the means of separation of the sexes and
classes; the charge for a bed was from five to thirty sous a night, but
there were also free beds, and poor prisoners were supplied with
rations, soup and a pound and a half of bread daily. The rule obtained
in France that the bailiff who arrested a debtor must pay the gaoler on
committal a month’s allowance in advance for food. Moreover, the French
law obliged creditors to give bail for small sums even where the debtor
was insolvent. There was a general rule in Germany that the wives and
children of debtors were not allowed to reside within the prison.
Foreigners sometimes came within the grip of the English law and became
liable to imprisonment for debt. They did not all fare so well as that
eccentric character, the Chevalier Desseasau, who was well known to
Londoners at the latter end of the eighteenth century. He was a native
of Prussia, of French extraction, who had borne a commission in the
Prussian army, but having been involved in a quarrel with a brother
officer and fought a duel, in which his antagonist had been dangerously
wounded, he fled to England, where he eked out a precarious living in
literary pursuits. His line was poetry and his production very mediocre.
One verse inspired by his excessive vanity was often quoted against
him,--
“Il n’y a au monde que deux héros,
Le roi de Prusse et Chevalier Desseasau.”
He was to be met with in the best literary circles, was well known to
Dr. Johnson, Goldsmith, Foote, Murphy and to every publisher in the
trade. His appearance was so remarkable that he attracted amused
attention in the streets. Short of stature and of slender figure, he
always wore a black suit, cut in an ancient fashion, and carried in his
hands a gold headed cane, a roll of his poetry and a sword or two, so as
to be ready to fight at a moment’s notice. He did not greatly prosper as
time went on and found himself committed to the Fleet prison, where he
took advantage of the “Rules” and was suffered to go about as much as he
pleased. His chief places of resort were Anderton’s Coffee House in
Fleet Street, “the Barn” in St. Martin’s Lane and various taverns and
places of public resort in and about Covent Garden. Being a man of
originality and good-nature, his company was much courted. He was buried
in St. Bride’s Churchyard.
A rather remarkable character was an inmate of the Fleet and of other
London prisons at the end of the eighteenth century. This was Captain
Johnson, a sea-faring man, noted for his daring exploits and more or
less criminal pursuits throughout his long and diversified career. He
was a man of middle stature, with intelligent features and of striking
personal appearance, a native of Ireland and in religion a Catholic,
according to contemporary accounts. He was before all else a smuggler in
a very large way of business, constantly engaged in running profitable
cargoes, well known all along the southern sea-coast, full of guile in
evading capture, but desperately bold in defending his ill-gotten spoil.
He made London his headquarters and lived in Fitzroy Square “keeping up
an establishment fit for a nobleman,” with a stable full of horses and a
large staff of servants. On one occasion, when about to run a large
cargo into London, he was invited to assist four persons charged with
forgery out of the kingdom. After secreting them in the empty carts, he
got them on board ship near Folkestone and despatched them safely to
Flushing; returning with his smuggled goods, he fell in with a riding
revenue officer with a cavalry escort and was made prisoner. He was
lodged in the new prison in the Borough, no doubt the Queen’s Bench,
but when brought up for trial boldly made his escape in the open court.
A series of hairbreadth adventures followed. Johnson was hunted from
place to place but by moving constantly to and fro and assuming many
disguises he continued to keep at large, until his services being
urgently needed to pilot an expedition to Ostend, he was granted a
pardon. No one knew the Dutch coast better, and although the earliest
operations were unsuccessful, he was again employed to assist in landing
troops at the Helder. He was of immense service and gained a rich
reward; his pardon was confirmed, he was granted the rank and pay of
post-captain in the British Navy and was much esteemed as “a bold
intrepid, high-couraged Englishman” on the testimony of such officers as
Sir Home Popham and Sir Ralph Abercromby.
Johnson had become concerned with contracts for the provisions of the
troops and his money matters were so much mixed that he was arrested for
a large sum said to be owing to the crown, and lodged in the Fleet
prison. He brought counter charges and was in due course bailed out,
cleared of the debt. He had a further claim on the government, an income
promised him by Mr. Pitt of a thousand pounds a year if he would give up
smuggling. He could not substantiate the claim and was once more thrown
into the Fleet where he lived well and entertained largely, although
£13,000 was the amount of his liabilities. Very little restraint was
put upon him as he had given a bond to the warden against making an
escape. Soon he was identified by certain revenue officers as the
ringleader of a gang of smugglers who had attacked them, and from being
merely a debtor, he was constituted a prisoner awaiting trial on a
capital charge. An order was therefore issued for his removal to
Newgate, and to make sure of his person until transferred, he was lodged
in the strong room of the Fleet.
Matters now began to look serious and he secretly turned over in his
mind the possibility of escape. He withdrew therefore from his bond by
making it appear that he had quarrelled with his attorney, who would no
longer be responsible for him. After this Johnson commenced active
operations. The strong room was at the opposite end of the coffee-house
gallery; he could not file the window bars, the noise of which would
have betrayed him, but he bored through the panels of his double doors
with strong gimlets and after much patient labour broke them out. The
panels yielded to a tremendous blow delivered by one of the iron pulleys
of his window sash and the noise was deadened by the loud shouting and
bellowing of a neighbouring prisoner who was believed to be mad, and who
readily consented to give this assistance. When once through the panel,
he stole along the gallery and upstairs to an attic with a window
opening on the outside. From this he reached the boundary wall headed
with its _chevaux de frise_ and creeping along till he found a foothold
made fast a rope he had brought with him to one of the spikes just over
Fleet market. Here he lowered the rope, and slid down in safety only to
find the exterior watchman on his beat below, whom he would have shot
dead on the spot had he been observed, which fortunately for him was not
the case.
Johnson had taken the preliminary precaution to put on the uniform of a
lieutenant of the Hussars, before he climbed through the panel, the
clothes having been introduced into the prison for this purpose. The
Hussar regiment was stationed at Brighton and the supposed lieutenant,
with the help of a friend, secured a post chaise for the journey.
Arrived at Brighton, Johnson changed his clothes and went on board one
of his own cutters awaiting him at Hove. He must have gone to sea
forthwith and remained abroad, or in some secure hiding place, for he
was not heard of again until 1809 when he was again employed by the
government as pilot and guide upon the ill-starred _Walcheren_. His
active spirit prompted him to proffer advice to the dilatory commanders
and he strongly urged them to capture Flushing and proceed up the
Scheldt and lay siege to Antwerp. They would not listen to him and
turned a deaf ear also to his proposal but they approved of an attempt
to blow in the walls of Flushing by a submarine torpedo, his own
invention and presumably the first idea of that esteemed weapon of
modern warfare. Johnson himself took charge of the enterprise and
approaching the walls in a small boat, he swam up to them and fastened a
block with rope attached to a part of the piles on which the town was
built. The other end of this rope was fastened to the torpedo which was
run out and the match ignited, but there was no explosion. The engine
was imperfect, as Johnson afterward discovered, because the water had
entered and wet the powder through a hole drilled in the gunlock.
Johnson always attributed this to the jealousy of the inventor of the
Congreve rocket, Sir William Congreve, who was present at the siege, but
his charge it is difficult to believe. The torpedo which had failed at
Flushing was afterward successfully tried upon a barge in the Thames,
moored in midstream.
It is well known in history that Napoleon had still many active
sympathisers after his downfall. More than one friend in adversity would
have helped him to escape from St. Helena. Captain Johnson, although
still calling himself an officer of the Royal Navy, was willing enough
to give his aid and accepted a proposal to construct two submarine
vessels, to spirit the fallen emperor from his iron prison. These ships,
the _Eagle_, 110 tons, 84 feet long and 18 feet beam, and the _Etna_, 23
tons, 40 feet long, 10 feet beam, were to be built in a yard in
Battersea; they were to be propelled by steam, still in its infancy,
and were so constructed and provided with artificial air supply that
they could be submerged on the approach of an enemy, and use their
torpedoes with murderous effect. Nothing came of this extravagant
project, for before the ships were completed news came that Napoleon was
dead. Captain Johnson has left a detailed account of the steps by which
he hoped to accomplish the rescue. His two vessels were to lie submerged
close to the rocky shore and to rise to the surface after nightfall.
Captain Johnson would get ashore, taking with him the end of a rope
fastened to a mechanical chair which should be eventually raised to such
a height as to receive the person of the fugitive, who would then be
lowered on to the deck of the _Etna_. Napoleon was actually to be
smuggled out of Longwood disguised as a servant in livery.
Johnson was to have received £40,000 directly his submarine boats got
into blue water and a further sum if the escape was successfully carried
out. In his latter days Captain Johnson resided at Flushing, engaged in
mercantile pursuits, but he was looked upon with little favour, for his
services during the war were not forgotten or forgiven. He busied
himself with the proposal to defend the Dutch coast and rivers, with his
favourite device of submarines, but did not think it advisable to remain
in the country.
Not long after Howard’s visitation, the Fleet prison was involved with
all other London prisons in the destructive mischief wreaked by the
non-popery rioters, who, headed by the weak-minded Lord George Gordon,
terrorized the metropolis in 1780. On Wednesday, June 7th, the rioters,
now temporarily in the ascendant, sent word to all the public prisons
that they were coming to burn them down. They intended to do this on the
day previous, when the mob appeared before the Fleet prison and insisted
that the gates should be opened and the keepers yielded to their demand.
“They were then proceeding to demolish the prison, but the prisoners
expostulated with them, begging that they would give them time to remove
their goods. They readily condescended, and gave them a day for that
purpose, in consequence of which the prisoners were removing all this
day out of that place. Some of the prisoners were in for life.” In the
evening of the next day, they fulfilled their threat and burned it. This
was the second time, for the great fire of 1666 had previously
demolished it.
The evening of this Wednesday, June 7th, is described in the Annual
Register as one of the most dreadful spectacles this country ever
beheld. “Let those who did not see it judge what the inhabitants felt
when they beheld at the same instant the flames ascending and rolling in
clouds from the King’s Bench and Fleet prisons, from New Bridewell, from
the toll gates on Blackfriars Bridge, from houses in every quarter of
the town, and particularly from the bottom and middle of Holborn, where
the conflagration was horrible beyond description.”
The Fleet Prison was rebuilt immediately after the riots in 1780 on
almost exactly the same lines. Howard’s description of it as it stood
before the fire coincides pretty closely with later descriptions, after
the fire. Of these the most graphic is that familiar to the whole world
as given by Charles Dickens in the “Pickwick Papers.” The great literary
master no doubt drew upon his own personal knowledge, for he was
intimately acquainted with the London of his time, as he once resided
with his father within the limits of another great debtor’s prison, the
Marshalsea. In 1818, a Royal Commission was appointed as the outcome of
increasing agitation against imprisonment for debt, and the report
issued supplied much valuable information as to the state of the Fleet
and the Marshalsea at this period. There was little improvement in
either prison; they were still hot-beds of vice. While the poorer
starved, all who had command of money spent it freely in a reckless and
riotous fashion, little in keeping with the quiet decorum of a prison.
Outsiders came in at pleasure, women of loose morals, and men to play
the games provided for the prisoners. There was a racquet court, a
skittle ground and “forecorner” ground, all open to the strangers who
came in constantly and were a source of great profit to the racquet
masters, many of whom have been from time immemorial considered very
eminent players. The post of racquet master was in great request. It was
in the gift of the collegians (prisoners) who elected to it once a year
at Christmas tide. The canvassers for votes issued handbills. One reads
as follows: “I feel that the situation is one that requires attention
and increasing exertion, not so much for the individual position as from
the circumstance that the amusement and--what is more vitally
important--the health of my fellow inmates is in some measure placed in
the hands of the person appointed.”
The prison was not closed and lights put out till a late hour, when
gambling was in progress and riots frequent; when drunken persons
resisted the turnkeys and fought with the coffee-house and tap-room
keepers, who sought to put them out of the rooms at eleven o’clock at
night. If finally expelled, they resorted to secret gin shops kept in
the prisoners’ rooms, where they gambled and played at cards half
through the night. Clubs still existed as when reported by Howard, and
met regularly to sing and carouse at social evenings. It was impossible
to check the introduction of spirits, although prohibited by act of
Parliament, and a large quantity was consumed within the prison so that
drunkenness was very prevalent. A number of coffee-houses and public
houses were held to be within the “Rules” and were much frequented,
among the last the London Coffee-House, and the Belle Sauvage Inn at
Ludgate Circus. Grand dinners were frequently given at the latter by
prisoners “of great consideration, men of title and consequence.” Much
money was also spent within the walls. The warden told the committee
that he had seen a prisoner’s servant bringing in a pail of ice to cool
his master’s bottle of wine. He told another story of an Italian lady, a
prisoner, who was living under the protection of a gentleman outside and
who would not pay for a bushel of coals she had ordered. She struck the
messenger who brought the bill, but when she was threatened with removal
to the strong room she produced a guinea from her pocket and begged the
man’s pardon for the blows.
At this time there were many lodged in the Common Side without means of
subsistence beyond the county allowance of three and six pence a week,
or what they could earn by menial service,--cleaning boots, making beds
and dusting rooms, for their fellow prisoners. Sometimes after long
residence a poor debtor might succeed to be “the owner of a room” and
was permitted to levy “chummage” or rent from the “chums” who lodged
with him; their number was not limited. Debtors were entirely free from
supervision in their rooms. The warden and his officers held no master
keys and could only enter a room when its occupants unlocked it to them.
No numbering took place, and it was never certainly known that the
proper number were present.
The warden was responsible for safe custody and might suffer serious
loss for the escape of prisoners committed for heavy debts. In one case
he was mulcted in £2,500 for the escape of a French count who had got
over an old wall, afterward made more secure, but as the warden
philosophically remarked: “there can be no wall built which a prisoner
cannot get over if he is a clever fellow; a sailor who has the use of
his limbs can get over any wall.” On the other hand he pointed out that
“it seldom answers the purpose of any man to escape out of the Fleet
prison unless it is a foreigner who has no residence in this kingdom or
a smuggler who can live anywhere. Many people come to the prison for
their own benefit, that is for the purpose of taking the benefit of some
act passed to allow them to plead insolvency, and so purge their debts.”
With all his risks the warden had a considerable margin in the handsome
total of his fees and other receipts. These averaged yearly for the
three years ending 1818 as much as £3,008, from which his outgoings had
to be deducted, amounting to £1,125, leaving him a net annual income of
£1,883. The deductions were made up of an average of £300 per annum for
losses by escapes, a sum of £368.11.0 for rates and taxes on all
premises, and the rest for chaplain’s salary and servants’ wages,
lighting, coals and so forth.
At this date the prison population, taking the total inside the walls
and those located within the “Rules,” seldom exceeded three hundred.
The prisoners taken as a body were an idle, disorderly set of men with
vicious habits. Thefts from one another were very common, although
articles stolen were sometimes surrendered at the summons of the “crier”
who publicly announced things lost or found. Divine service was
performed on Sundays, Christmas Day and Good Friday, but prisoners
seldom attended. The chaplain, an earnest, painstaking man, thought the
hour of service inconveniently early and changed it to one o’clock in
the afternoon, but found his flock as indolent at that hour as when the
service was at eleven o’clock. The rule of attendance at chapel was laid
down, but it could not be enforced. Neither the warden nor his deputy
nor yet any of his turnkeys attended, but the latter sometimes drove
away idle boys and people who make a disturbance at the chapel doors.
The coffee-house and the “cellar head” tap were not closed during hours
of divine worship. The warden was an aged man, blind, deaf, and infirm,
who had delegated his duties to a deputy for fifteen years past, but who
took the emoluments and risks, only paying the warden a fixed annuity of
£500 a year. The rest of the staff consisted of a “clerk of the papers,”
three turnkeys, a watchman who acted also as scavenger and the “crier.”
There was no regular medical attendance, but a general practitioner from
the neighbourhood was called in when required.
The foregoing conditions still obtained at the date of Charles Dickens’
description. “Pickwick” first appeared in 1836, but the observations on
which the account of the Fleet was based were no doubt made much earlier
and the picture drawn is strikingly realistic, as a few quotations will
abundantly show.
When Mr. Pickwick accompanied by his astute solicitor Mr. Perker and his
faithful bodyservant Sam Weller was committed to the Fleet at the suit
of Messrs. Dodson and Fogg, he went through the usual preliminaries, sat
for his portrait and was duly passed through the inner gate and found
himself within the “lock” as imprisonment was euphemistically described.
His further progress in search of quarters for the night is thus
described: “It was getting dark; that is to say, a few jets were kindled
in this place, which was never light, by way of compliment to the
evening which had set in outside. As it was rather warm some of the
tenants of the numerous little rooms which opened into the gallery on
either hand had set their doors ajar. Mr. Pickwick peeped into them as
he passed along, with great curiosity and interest. Here four or five
great hulking fellows, just visible through a cloud of tobacco-smoke,
were engaged in noisy and riotous conversation over half-emptied pots of
beer or playing at ‘all-fours’ with a very greasy pack of cards. In the
adjoining room some solitary tenant might be seen, poring, by the light
of a feeble tallow candle, over a bundle of soiled and tattered papers,
yellow with dust and dropping to pieces from age, writing, for the
hundredth time, some lengthened statement of his grievances, for the
perusal of some great man whose eyes it would never reach, or whose
heart it would never touch. In a third, a man, with his wife and a whole
crowd of children, might be seen, making up a scanty bed on the ground
and upon a few chairs, for the younger ones to pass the night in. And in
a fourth, and a fifth, and a sixth and a seventh, the noise and the beer
and the tobacco smoke, and the cards all came over again in greater
force than before.
“In the galleries themselves and more especially on the staircases,
there lingered a great number of people who came there, some because
their rooms were empty and lonesome, others because their rooms were
full and hot, and the greater part because they were restless and
uncomfortable, and not possessed of the secret of exactly knowing what
to do with themselves. There were many classes of people here--from the
labouring man in his fustian jacket to the broken-down spendthrift in
his shawl dressing-gown, most appropriately out at elbows; but there was
the same air about them all--a listless, jail-bird, careless swagger, a
vagabondish who’s afraid sort of bearing, which is wholly indescribable
in words.”
The visit to the Common Side is brought forcibly before us in the
following admirable description:
“The poor side of a debtor’s prison is, as its name imports, that in
which the most miserable and abject class of debtors are confined. A
prisoner having declared upon the poor side, pays neither rent nor
‘chummage.’ His fees upon entering and leaving the jail are reduced in
amount, and he becomes entitled to a share of some small quantities of
food, to provide which a few charitable persons have from time to time
left trifling legacies in their wills. Most of our readers will remember
that, until within a few years past, there was a kind of iron cage in
the wall of the Fleet Prison, within which was posted some man of hungry
looks, who from time to time rattled a money box and exclaimed in a
mournful voice, ‘Pray remember the poor debtors; pray remember the poor
debtors.’ The receipts of this box, when there were any, were divided
among the poor prisoners; and the men on the poor side relieved each
other in this degrading office.
“Although this custom has been abolished and the cage is now boarded up,
the miserable and destitute condition of these unhappy persons remains
the same. We no longer suffer them to appeal at the prison gates to the
charity and compassion of the passers-by; but we still leave unblotted
in our statute book, for the reverence and admiration of succeeding
ages, the just and wholesome law which declares that the sturdy felon
shall be fed and clothed, and that the penniless debtor shall be left to
die of starvation and nakedness. This is no fiction. Not a week passes
over our heads but, in every one of our prisons for debt, some of these
men must inevitably expire in the slow agonies of want, if they were not
relieved by their fellow-prisoners.”
No finer effort of genius has been shown than the pathetic episode of
the death of the Chancery prisoner:
“The turnkey led the way in silence; and gently raising the latch of the
room door, motioned Mr. Pickwick to enter. It was a large, bare,
desolate room, with a number of stump bedsteads made of iron, on one of
which lay stretched the shadow of a man, wan, pale and ghastly. His
breathing was hard and thick and he moaned painfully as it came and
went. At the bedside sat a short old man in a cobbler’s apron, who, by
the aid of horn spectacles, was reading from the Bible aloud.
“The sick man laid his hand upon his attendant’s arm and motioned him to
stop. He closed the book and laid it on the bed.
“‘Open the window,’ said the sick man.
“He did so. The noise of carriages and carts, the rattle of wheels, the
cries of men and boys--all the busy sounds of a mighty multitude
instinct with life and occupation, blended into one deep murmur, floated
into the room. Above the hoarse, loud hum arose from time to time, a
boisterous laugh; or a scrap of some jingling song, shouted forth by one
of the giddy crowd, would strike upon the ear for an instant and then be
lost amidst the roar of voices and the tramp of footsteps--the breaking
of the billows of the restless sea of life that rolled heavily on
without. Melancholy sounds to a quiet listener at any time; how
melancholy to the watcher by the bed of death!
“‘There is no air here,’ said the sick man, faintly. ‘The place pollutes
it. It was fresh round about when I walked there, years ago; but it
grows hot and heavy in passing these walls. I cannot breathe it.’
“‘We have breathed it together for a long time,’ said the old man.
‘Come, come.’
“There was a short silence, during which the two spectators approached
the bed. The sick man drew a hand of his old fellow-prisoner towards
him, and pressing it affectionately between both his own, retained it in
his grasp.
“‘I hope,’ he gasped, after a while, so faintly that they bent their
ears close over the bed to catch the half-formed sounds his pale lips
gave vent to--‘I hope my merciful Judge will bear in mind my heavy
punishment on earth. Twenty years, my friend, twenty years in this
hideous grave! My heart broke when my child died, and I could not even
kiss him in his little coffin. My loneliness since then, in all this
noise and riot, has been very dreadful. May God forgive me! He has seen
my solitary, lingering death.’
“He folded his hands and murmuring something more they could not hear,
fell into a sleep--only a sleep at first, for they saw him smile.
“They whispered together for a little time and the turnkey, stooping
over the pillow, drew hastily back. ‘He has got his discharge by G--!’
said the man.
“He had. But he had grown so like death in life that they knew not when
he died.”
As the years drew on the Fleet prison was more and more denounced and
discredited. While a certain section of those detained spent their days
in dissipation and excess, a much larger number, three-fourths of the
whole, were still destitute and unable to provide themselves with bread.
A case given in the _Morning Herald_ of August 12, 1833, may be cited in
this connection. “A gentleman complained that the overseers of St.
Bride’s Parish had refused to relieve a distressed prisoner in the
Fleet. The prisoner was Mr. Timothy Sheldrake, who had been well known
for his skill in treating deformities of the body. He once kept his
carriage and obtained £4,000 by his practice but he was now quite
destitute--when applicant saw him he had actually fasted forty-eight
hours.” There was some dispute as to the liability of the parish of St.
Bride’s, but it was decided to appropriate relief out of the County
Rate.
The hardships inflicted upon the poorer inmates of the Fleet were not
the only evils that prevailed in that mismanaged establishment. It was a
school of crime and more than one offender owed his lapse from honesty
to his residence in the Fleet. It came out that the ringleader of a gang
of utterers of forged bank-notes lived constantly in the prison. He made
it his business to ingratiate himself with young men of good appearance
who were fellow prisoners and to lead them into giving their services in
passing spurious notes when again at large. One of these was convicted
and only escaped the gallows by taking poison the night before his
execution. He had been a captain in the army and was of good family and
showy appearance. The gang at last committed a robbery on a bank in
Cornwall and was entirely broken up. From that time the instigator, who
had resided within the Fleet, disappeared entirely, although he was not
one of those convicted or even suspected of the crime in Cornwall.
At last the days of the Fleet prison were numbered. The act of 1 and 2
Queen Victoria C-110 abolished arrest on mesne process and no more
debtors were to be sent by the courts of Chancery, Exchequer and Common
Pleas to the Fleet: all debtors and bankrupts to go in future to the
Queen’s Bench prison in Southwark, or to the new prison in Whitecross
Street, which shall be dealt with in due course. These prisons were to
be fully utilised and the Fleet pulled down, with a considerable saving
to the Exchequer in its maintenance and the sale of its valuable site.
The change was not made without protest and the bill was opposed in
Parliament, but it passed in due course into law. There were several
strict clauses regulating the future governance of the Queen’s Bench,
all aimed at “preventing extravagance and luxury and enforcing due order
and discipline within the prison.”