The King's Bench was the largest of all the Debtors' Prisons. It formerly stood on the east side of the High Street, on the site of what is now the second street north of St. George's Church. This prison was taken down in 1758, and the Debtors were removed to a larger and much more commodious place on the other side of the street south of Lant Street--the site is now marked by a number of new and very ugly houses and mean streets. When it was built it looked out at the back of St. George's Fields and across Lambeth Marsh, then an open space, and by this time drained. But the good air without was fully balanced by the bad air within.
The place was surrounded by a very high wall, the area covered was extensive, and the buildings were more commodious than had ever before been attempted in a prison. But they were not large enough. In the year 1776 the prisoners had to lie two in a bed, and even for those who could pay there were not beds enough, and many slept on the floor of the chapel. There were 395 prisoners: in addition to the prisoners many of them had wives and children with them. There were 279 wives and 725 children: a total of 1,399 sleeping every night in the prison. There was a good water supply, but there was no infirmary, no resident surgeon, and no bath. Imagine a place containing 1,399 persons, and no bath and no infirmary!
Among these prisoners, about a hundred years ago, was a certain Colonel Hanger, who has left his memoirs behind him for the edification of posterity. According to him, the prison 'rivalled the purlieus of Wapping, St. Giles, and St. James's in vice, debauchery, and drunkenness.' The general immorality was so great that it was only possible, he says, to escape contagion by living separate or by consorting only with the few gentlemen of honour who might be found there: 'otherwise a man will quickly sink into dissipation: he will lose every sense of honour and dignity: every moral principle and virtuous disposition.' Among the prisoners in Hanger's time, there were seldom fifty who had any regular means of sustenance. They were always underfed. At that time a detaining creditor had to find sixpence a day for the prisoner's support. But in 1798 a pound of bread cost 4½_d._, a pint of porter 2_d._: therefore a man who had to live on 6_d._ a day could not get more than a pound of bread and a half pint of porter. And then the 6_d._ a day was constantly withheld on some pretence or another, and the poor prisoner had not the wherewithal to engage an attorney to secure his rights. And as for attorneys their name stank in the prison: more than half of the prisoners, Hanger avers, were kept there solely because they could not pay the attorneys' costs.