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.

CHAPTER II

ABUSES AT THE FLEET