Arthur Griffiths

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,—

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.”