In the 'Fortunes of Nigel' we are made acquainted with the Alsatia of Fleet Street. There were other places equally secure for rogues, besides Alsatia. Such were Whetstone Park in Lincoln's Inn Fields; Fullwood's Rents, Holborn; Milford Lane, Strand; Montagu Close, Southwark; and others. All these were gradually extinguished; not by any summary procedure; not by turning out the rogues and forcing them to scatter; not by marching off the whole population to prison; but by the slower and more gradual process of transformation. This process began when the parts and places around became respectable. There is something chilling and repellent to the common rogue about the proximity of respectability: he does not like to be in its neighbourhood: in this way these degenerate and unlawful sanctuaries gradually fell into decay. One alone remained, when all the others had disappeared. It was in that part of Southwark--that part which is still a slum--called Mint Street, nearly opposite St. George's Church in the High Street. This street, with its alleys and courts, was inhabited by as villainous a collection as even the eighteenth century, which in point of villains was rich beyond its predecessors, could not equal. They had retreated here from their former haunt in Montagu Close, as to a last fortress, which was not yet besieged. They lived in perfect safety here: no writ could be served on them: no arrest could be made: the only person they had to fear was, as said above, the thief-taker.
The annals of this Sanctuary were never, unfortunately, kept; it is impossible to ascertain what illustrious criminals were here housed and for how long. There are, however, one or two little histories of the Mint which will serve to show us at once the public spirit, the courage, and the immunity with which the people of the later Sanctuary lived and acted.
The first story belongs to the year 1715. The case of Dormer _v._ Dormer and Jones came on for hearing at Westminster Hall. It was a divorce case, in which the co-respondent had been a footman in the plaintiff's house. There seems to have been no defence, practically. The verdict of the Jury was for the plaintiff, with 5,000_l._ damages. Now, consider for a moment what that verdict meant. In these days, when a defendant without any private means at all is mulcted in damages and costs, whether of 5,000_l._ or of 100_l._, he simply smiles. He is not in the least degree affected. Nothing worse than bankruptcy can happen to him, and when a man has nothing bankruptcy presents few terrors. In Portugal Street _subridet vacuus viator_--the insolvent pilgrim smiles cheerfully. But in those days it was very different. To inflict damages of 5,000_l._ meant simply that the Jury considered the case one in which the defendant, who could not be tried in the criminal courts, could only be adequately punished by being locked up for the whole of his remaining days in a debtor's prison, where, since he was only a footman whose relations were probably unable to assist him and certainly unable to maintain him, he would speedily take his place on the common side, and there he would be slowly done to death by insufficient food and insufficient clothing, by privation, cold, fever and misery.