"It is also an Hospital for Indigent Persons, and where 20 Art Masters (as they are called) being decayed Traders as Shoemakers, Taylors, Flax-dressers, &c., have Houses, and their Servants, or Apprentices (being about 140 in all) have Cloaths at the House Charge, and their Masters having the Profit of their Work do often advance by this means their own Fortunes, and these Boys, having served their time faithfully, have not only their Freedom, but also £10 each towards carrying on their respective Trades, and many have even arrived from nothing to be Governors."
This arrangement has, of course, had to "march with the times," and in 1860 the Master of the Rolls approved of, and sanctioned, a scheme of the Charity Commissioners, whereby nearly all the funds appertaining to Bridewell are utilized by two industrial schools called "King Edward's Schools," most impartially divided--one at Witley, in Surrey, affording accommodation for two hundred and forty boys, and another in St. George's Fields, Lambeth, for two hundred and forty girls; so that, even in these latter days, Bridewell still exists, and, if the spirits of its numerous benefactors have the power to see the manner in which their money is being spent, I fancy they would not grumble.
Before leaving the topic of Bridewell, as a prison, I must not fail to mention a notorious, but naughty, old woman who lived in the time of Charles II., commonly known as "Old Mother Cresswell." It is no slander on her memory, to say that her sense of morality was exceedingly lax, and she died in Bridewell. She evidently had saved some money, and with that curious spirit which possesses some people, and produces adulatory epitaphs, she would fain be better thought of after her death, than she was estimated when alive, for, in her will, she left a legacy for a sermon at her funeral, the preacher's remuneration to be £10, on one condition, that he should say nothing but what was _well_ of her. A clergyman having been found, he preached a sermon generally adapted to the occasion, and wound up by saying: "By the will of the deceased, it is expected that I should mention her, and say nothing but what was _well_ of her. All that I shall say of her, however, is this: she was born _well_, she lived _well_, and she died _well_; for she was born with the name of Cress_well_, she lived in Clerken_well_, and she died in Bride_well_."