The evils above described do not exhaust the sufferings that were inflicted upon debtors. It often happened that a writ was served and an arrest made at a distance from London. The man taken was carried to the county gaol and when the time came for surrender, after being bailed, he must perforce do so in London at the King’s Bench prison. And he must make the journey as best he could according to his means. Hanger quotes a case of an aged man, between seventy and eighty years, who trudged all the way from Cumberland and arrived at the prison barefooted and almost exhausted. He was, however, unprovided with the proper forms for surrender and was refused admittance until he had paid his fees in Chancery Lane, when at last he was received. Colonel Hanger, when in the King’s Bench, was removed to the Fleet on _habeas corpus_ to meet a writ returnable there and was mulcted in further costs before he was allowed to go back to the King’s Bench.
Much more might be said in condemnation of the old system of imprisonment for debt, which was rightly characterised by a competent writer as “the curse and disgrace of England.” We have seen how in the earliest times it directly contravened the principles of constitutional freedom, which forbade it for simple pecuniary obligations unaccompanied by fraud. It was extended alike to early youth and decrepit old age; a minor might be laid by the heels and an old man of ninety arrested on his dying bed. Until more humane laws were passed the boy prisoner might be confined _sine die_. Incarceration too often paralysed the bread winner; the prisoner was unable to earn wages for himself and his family, to his own great loss and a diminution of the wealth of the country.
The moral side of the question remains. Debtors’ prisons and their purlieus were seething centres of vicious life. Idlers and dissolute persons congregated therein; drunkenness, gaming, dissipation of all kinds constantly prevailed. Dealers in contraband commodities traded without let or hindrance. Game was exposed for sale within the walls by unlicensed dealers without interference. These traders were prisoners, of course, who were lodged under fictitious arrests of their own contriving to facilitate their operations. “Tap-shops” and “whistling shops” for the illegal consumption of spirits were plentiful within the prison and were supplied under the very noses of the authorities by clandestine means. On one occasion, an inmate who had been a smuggler got in seventeen two-gallon tubs of brandy, which lay hidden in a friend’s room till they could be distributed through the prison. The supplies on sale were so good that much custom was attracted from outside. It was calculated that at the “tap” or public bar room, three butts of porter were drawn daily to meet the demands of outsiders with a nice taste for beer. Amusements and games were continually in progress. Crowds came in to see the racquet players reputed the best in the metropolis; on festivals and holidays--Easter Monday, Whit Monday, Boxing Day--sports were held, such as racing and hopping in sacks and blind man’s buff, the whole under the supervision of a clerk of the courts, Captain Christie, who was long a prisoner but married a rich wife and so at last gained his liberty.