Arthur Griffiths

“ 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. ”

“ He begins his penalty in the painful privacy of a separate cell; after six months of irksome monotonous confinement he is promoted to the healthy and laborious life in the open air of a “public work,”—Dartmoor, Portland, Parkhurst or Borstal. The employment is akin to that of the free workman, embracing many varieties of outdoor labour, digging, bricklaying, stone dressing, pile-driving, plate-laying and all the operations of farming and agriculture. ”

“ The prison at Dartmoor is situated on the east side of one of the highest and most barren mountains in England and is surrounded on all sides, as far as the eye can see, by the gloomy features of a bleak moor, uncultivated and uninhabited, except by one or two miserable cottages, just discernible in an eastern view, the tenants of which live by cutting turf on the moor and selling it at the prison. The place is deprived of every thing that is pleasant or agreeable, and is productive of nothing but human woe and misery. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The permanent garrison to overawe this despairing multitude so easily intimidated, constantly discontented and quick to rise into insubordination, was seldom more than a single regiment of militia or line serving practically on a war footing, with an army of guards, patrol and pickets, forever on duty and ready to turn out at a moment’s notice to quell disturbances, give chase to fugitives and hunt them down to the utmost limits of the moor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 yet among them were some of the best educated of the prisoners. What was exhibited at Dartmoor was that same dark tendency of human nature which in all ages has led men encompassed by great and irremediable difficulties to catch at the first enjoyments that present themselves. The throng of prisoners, housed together for long and dreary years, was, it must be remembered, without any of that surveillance which they would have had as criminals or convicts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They were once on the eve of mutiny. A spirit of general insubordination grew among them, born of the cheerless monotony of their lives and their despairing hopelessness. The governor was harsh and unsympathetic. Mutiny was imminent, fostered by the severity of his iron rule. The presence of a masterful and intractable soul, a man who had been a revolutionary, supplied the ringleader and a conspiracy was quickly organised. One morning a red flag was hoisted on the principal barracks and the malcontents, greatly excited, filled the yards with loud shouts and threatening gestures. ”

“ Many had grown so accustomed to prison life and were so broken by its hardships that any exertion seemed distasteful. They marched from prison to prison and, unlike the ardent souls whose adventures have been described, no one made an effort to escape. ”

“ Though an abundance of bread was supplied, little meat was issued, and after the sutlers were excluded, August 18, 1864, an epidemic of scurvy followed. Speaking of some of his fellow prisoners who were finally exchanged, he says: “On they came a ghastly tide with skeleton bodies and lustreless eyes, and brains bereft of but one thought, and hearts purged of all feelings but one—the thought of freedom, the love of home ... some with the seal of death stamped on their wasted cheeks and shrivelled limbs, yet fearing less death than the added agony of death in the hands of enemies.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Did a soldier, sentinel or not, set foot on the gangway leading to our part of the hulk, the first prisoner who observed him raised the signal agreed on by us, and at the cry of ‘ship’ repeated from one end to the other, everything forbidden was stowed away, and any who might happen to be piercing the walls of the hulk in order to make their escape ceased working for a while. ”

“ Fees and fines were levied on the smallest and most trivial grounds; every luxury was taxed by privilege and must be bought at a price. No device was omitted that would put money into Wirion’s pocket. It was said of him that he “persecuted the rich for his profit, the poor for his pleasure.” He had begun life as a police officer and he drew upon his training and experience to establish a system of espionage by which he was kept informed of all that went on; he learned all he wanted to know as to the private means of his prisoners and to what extent he might squeeze money out of them. ”

“ It would be difficult to define the exact place of John Wilkes in the history of this time, but he figures largely in that of the King’s Bench prison, both as an inmate and the cause of much loss of life in the disturbances to which his committal gave rise. To-day he is rightly judged as an insolent demagogue who misled the ignorant public by his intemperate attacks upon the government and his offensive writings in the North Briton, which cost him several duels and an embittered prosecution. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Except the entrance, where the turnkeys keep watch and ward, there is nothing in the place that looks like a gaol, or bears the least colour of restraint. The street is crowded with passengers; tradesmen of all kinds here exercise their different professions; hawkers of all sorts are admitted to call and vend their wares as in any open street in London. There are butchers’ stands, chandlers’ shops, a surgery, a tap-house well frequented, and a public kitchen, in which provisions are dressed for all the prisoners gratis, at the expense of the publican. Here the voice of misery never complains ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the old days there was much mortality among the war prisoners. The severity of the climate although greatly exaggerated was responsible for much, and numbers suffered from their own recklessness in gambling away their clothing and their constant addiction to drink. Scanty attention was paid to the graves of those who succumbed at Dartmoor, and we read that “the burial place of the unfortunate captives has been sadly neglected; horses and cattle have broken up the soil and left the bones of the dead to whiten in the sun.” ”

“ When the cessation of transportation beyond the seas brought about a complete change in the British methods of secondary punishment, and it was essential to provide penal establishments at home, Dartmoor was converted into a convict prison appropriated at first to invalids, but eventually to the able bodied; and felon labour was applied in large quantities to the reclamation of the barren moorland and its conversion into productive farms. It was an ideal penal settlement; at first a wild, barbarous place remote from the busy haunts of men, yet not too far for effective control and supervision. ”

“ As the eighteenth century drew to its close and the war was waged with increasing severity, more and more prisoners fell into the hands of the opposing forces. The star of Napoleon was now in the ascendant and while all Europe submitted to his conquering hand, England still stoutly maintained the combat by sea. The supremacy of the British navy, never really in doubt, was conclusively established by the victory of Trafalgar. French warships were continually captured and their crews constantly passed on to swell the total in war prisons. ”

“ To keep great masses of men disarmed, it is true, but distinctly hostile, and at all times potential foes, in the very heart of the kingdom within easy reach of our naval arsenals was always a source of keen disquietude. The prisoners were constantly turbulent, ripe for mutiny and ready to break into excesses. Thus a number on board the hulks at the Hamoaze managed to set fire to their ships hoping to escape in the confusion ”

“ I thought I was dead to the past, but my blood boils with indignation when I recall the unheard-of sufferings that I endured in those tombs of the living. The lot of a solitary prisoner awakens compassion, but at least he is not tortured by witnessing the woes of a herd of poor wretches, brutalised and exasperated by privations and misery. ”

“ Hetherington spent twenty years as a prisoner for debt either within the walls of the Fleet or the King’s Bench, or enjoying the privileges of the “Rules.” Finally he took advantage of the Act as it was called, and went through the court for the relief of insolvent debtors. He began life with a clear income of six hundred pounds a year and finished his career of wasteful self-indulgence without repaying a single sixpence to his creditors, who had so foolishly and so uselessly deprived him of his liberty. ”

“ Incorrigible gamblers, these wretches had long since parted with their hammocks and blankets; at night they would lie for the sake of warmth in a row on the bare boards, all on the same side; and when the one at the head of a row got tired of the position, he would cry out, ‘Tack,’ and the whole line would immediately change sides. The strange misery of this existence seemed, nevertheless, to have its charms, for outsiders would occasionally wish to enter this fellowship, but to do so, certain rules had to be complied with. ”

“ Prynne, I do declare you to be a schism-maker in the Church, a sedition-sower in the Commonwealth, a wolf in sheep’s clothing; in a word omnium malorium nequissimus. I shall fine him £10,000, which is more than he is worth and less than he deserveth. I will not set him at liberty no more than a plagued man or a mad dog, who though he cannot bite will foam. He is so far from being a sociable soul that he is not a rational soul ”

“ But England was no worse than France in this respect. Severe punishment was decreed for all English prisoners who sought to make their escape from French war prisons; at one time a proclamation was made that all taken in the act should be sentenced to the galleys; at another they were warned that they would be tried by court-martial. But these threats availed little, and constant and determined were the attempts to break away from the ruthless confinement of such strong places as Verdun, Bitche and Valenciennes. ”

“ Through this crowd moved dealers with their cries of ‘Who wants to sell? Who buys?’ Every now and then some poor wretch with hunger in his looks, would stop one of them, and dispose of the miserable rags from his back, and then, turning to another dealer, expend the amount in unattractive food. Some of the occupations of which I have spoken—such as, for example, straw-plaiting—were forbidden by the English, as coming into competition with their own manufactures; with slight interruptions, however, the prisoners worked continuously through the whole day. ”

“ Some of the prisoners were desperate characters, bounty jumpers and the like, and they did not scruple to rob and even murder their comrades. Many lost hope and observed no sanitary precautions. The report of the U. S. Surgeon who received late in the war one hundred and eighty-nine prisoners from this place, says: “Every case wore upon it the visage of hunger, the expression of despair.... Their hair was dishevelled, their beards long and matted with dirt, their skin blackened and caked with the most loathsome filth, their bodies and clothing covered with vermin.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”