A worse place than the King's Bench was a wretched little Prison called the Borough Compter. It was used both for debtors and for criminals. Now you shall hear what marvellous thing in the way of cruelty can be brought about when the execution of the law is entrusted to such men as prison warders and turnkeys.
The place consisted of a women's ward, a debtors' ward, a felons' ward, and a yard for exercise. The yard was nineteen feet square: this was the only exercising ground for all the prisoners. When Buxton visited the place in the year 1817, there were then thirty-eight debtors, thirty women, and twenty children--all had to exercise themselves in this little yard: he does not say how many felons there were. The debtors' ward consisted of two rooms, each of which was twenty feet long and about nine feet broad. Each room was furnished with eight straw beds, sixteen rugs, and a piece of timber for a pillow. Twenty prisoners slept side by side on these beds! That gives a breadth of twelve inches for each. No one therefore could move in bed. The place was shut up: in the morning the heat and stench were so awful that when the door was opened all rushed together, undressed as they were, into the yard for fresh air. Now and then a man would be brought in with an infectious disease or covered with vermin: they had to endure his company as best they could. There was no infirmary: no surgeon: no conveniences whatever in case of sickness. And the place was so crowded that those who might have carried on their trade could not for want of space. As for the women's ward, I forbear to speak. Think, however, of the noisome, horrible, stinking place, narrow and confined, with its felons' ward of innocent and guilty, tried and untried: the past masters in villainy with the innocent country boy: the honest working man with his wife and children slowly starving and slowly poisoned by the brutal law which permitted a creditor to send him there for life for a paltry debt of a few shillings. Think of the simple-minded country girl thrust into the women's ward, where wickedness was authorised, where nothing was disguised! I sometimes ask whether in the year 1998 the historian of manners will call attention to the lamentable brutality of this the end of the nineteenth century. There are some points as to which I am doubtful. But I cannot believe that there will be anything alleged against us compared with the sleek complacency with which the City Fathers and the Legislators regarded the condition of the Debtors' Prisons.