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Life in Early Prisons
HOME FROM HOME
Those held in the Tower of London were largely from the upper echelons of society and, for many, their stay there could be far from uncomfortable, even if their ultimate departure was to the scaffold. During Sir Walter Raleigh’s thirteen-year stint spent in the Bloody Tower, he was accompanied with his wife and two children. He spent some of the time writing The History of the World and even grew some tobacco plants outside his lodgings.
During her internment at the Tower in 1551, Anne Seymour, Duchess of Somerset, enjoyed a midday dinner of mutton stewed with pottage, boiled beef and mutton, roast veal, roast capon and two rabbits. For her supper she again ate mutton with pottage along with sliced beef, roast mutton, two rabbits and a dozen larks, all washed down with either beer or wine at a weekly cost of 77s.47 Mutton stewed with pottage was evidently a favourite dish of the duchess. Here is a typical recipe from the 1623 edition of Gervase Markham’s Countrey Contentments, or the English Huswife:
If you wil make pottage of the best & daintiest kind, you shal take Mutton, Veale, or Kid, & having broke the bones, but not cut the flesh in peeces, and wash it, put it into a pot with faire water, after it is ready to boile, and is throughly skumd, you shal put in a good handful or two of smale oat-meale: & then take whole lettice of the best & most inward leaves, whole spinage, endive, succory [chicory], and whole leaves of colaflorey [cauliflower], or the inward parts of white cabage, with two or three slic’t onions; and put all into the pot and boile them well together till the meat be enough, and the herbes so soft as may be, and stirre them oft well together; and then season it with salt and as much verjuice as will onely turne the tast of the pottage; and so serve them up, covering the meat with the whole hearbes, and adorning the dish with sippets. [Verjuice was a sour-tasting condiment made from the compressed juice of green grapes, gooseberries, or crab apples. Sippets were small pieces of toasted or fried bread – the croutons of their day.]
THE COST OF CONFINEMENT
For lesser mortals, though, a spell in prison could turn out to be an expensive business. From 1605, the expenditure began even before the sentence started when a new Act made prisoners liable for the cost of their own transport to the gaol. Newly arrived inmates were then required to pay a number of fees to the gaol keeper, which varied according to their rank and to the level of comfort they wanted to enjoy during their incarceration.
At the Fleet prison, a schedule of 1561 records that the admission fee for giving ‘the liberty of the house’ (and so avoid being put in leg irons) ranged from £10 for an archbishop, down to 13s 4d for a yeoman. At the Tower of London, the constable of the Tower required a similar payment: £20 for a duke; 20 marks for an earl; £10 for a baron; and 100s for a knight.
The prisoner might also have to stump up for a bond to guarantee his good behaviour and regular outgoings during his stay, a fee to the clerk who drew up the bond, another fee for being entered in the prison register, various tips to the gaoler, chamberlain and porter, and finally a round of drinks for all concerned.
At the end of their stay, the final charge demanded of all prisoners was a discharge fee. At Newgate, the scale of charges began at eightpence, rising to 2s for felons. At the Fleet, generally reckoned to be the most expensive of London’s gaols, the cost of discharge ranged from £3 5s down to a minimum of 2s 4d – which even the totally destitute were required to pay or else remain in prison indefinitely.
On top of these ‘administrative’ fees came various other ongoing charges levied by the keeper. In 1431, for example, Newgate made a charge of fourpence a week towards the running costs of the prison lamps. In 1488, the price for prison-supplied beds at Newgate was set at a penny per week for a bed with sheets, blankets and a coverlet, and a penny per week for a couch. Alternatively, prisoners could bring in their own beds.48 In the early 1600s, Marshalsea had a ‘two-penny ward’ – so named because of the daily charge for a bed and a pair of sheets; the charge in the Knight’s ward was eightpence a day, and even more in the superior rooms on the Master’s side.49 At the Fleet, the upper crust could enjoy separate rooms with use of a parlour for 4d a night, while the lower ranks could obtain a nightly half-share of a bed in the common hall for 2d.
Although the city authorities made periodic efforts to regulate these charges, they were the source of regular abuse. At Ludgate, one prisoner, who had brought in his own bed, bedding and clothes, was obliged to pay for their use by the gaoler John Bottisham. There were also instances of bedding and lights donated from charitable sources being charged for, although this practice was prohibited in London prisons from 1463.50
From 1729, the costs of admission, discharge and so on, could become even more expensive after judges ruled that someone committed to prison for several different offences was liable to pay separate sets of fees for each of them.51
GARNISH AND CHUMMAGE
On top of the various fees and charges taken by the gaoler, additional payments in the form of ‘garnish’ and ‘chummage’ were exacted from new inmates by the prisoners already in residence.
At Marshalsea, the garnish comprised a flat payment on arrival by new prisoners of 8s for men or 5s 6d for women, regardless of their standing. Payment of the money allowed access to the common room, use of boiling water from the fire, the cooking of food and the reading of newspapers. The poet William Fennor, on entering the Wood Street Counter in 1616, was charged 2s by the chamberlain for being allocated comfortable accommodation. At dinner-time the next day, a garnish of half a gallon of claret was demanded by his fellow prisoners. A further garnish of 6d for two pints of claret was then extracted by the under-keepers to endow him with the liberty of the prison. Finally, a few weeks later, when lack of money necessitated his moving to cheaper quarters, the steward there demanded an additional garnish of 1s 6d. Fennor’s refusal to pay resulted in his being given a less than fragrant room situated near a privy.52 Such fees could sometimes be officially sanctioned by authorities: for example in Richmond in 1671, a table of garnish was approved by local JPs.53
In 1814, the arcane principles of the chummage system at Marshalsea prison were revealed to a parliamentary Select Committee. The ‘chum-master’ issued each new arrival with a ‘chum-ticket’ which entitled the holder to admission to some room in the prison:
If the prisoner so requiring a ticket is of decent appearance and has the air of good circumstances, one is given him of a room already occupied by a person of his station in life; but if the applicant be poor, he receives his ticket upon a room held by one who is enabled to pay him out … [at] so much per week, which generally amounts to 5s whereby he yields to the existing occupier the whole right to his room, and pays for his lodgings with persons of his own class and situation.
As a result, poorer inmates slept crammed together, on occasion as many as forty-eight in a room measuring 16ft by 13ft. The Select Committee, after battling for several days to comprehend – with limited success – the complexities of chummage, learned that:
The rule of chummage is, that the person who has been longest in prison keeps his room free from having another prisoner chummed on it, till all the rooms held by those of a junior date to himself each have a prisoner chummed upon them … If the prisoner be poor, and wishes to be bought out, he is chummed upon by one who can afford to pay him: if he wish to remain, he is placed in the room of a person who will keep him, and he has accordingly a chum ticket upon the youngest prisoner in one or other of these classes.
A similar system operated at the Fleet prison where the first occupier of any vacant room was called the owner, and a newcomer the chum. Again, ownership of any newly vacant room was offered to all existing owners. The room vacated by the moving owner then came under the ownership of the senior chum in the prison. All quite simple, really …
HOUSING THE POOREST PRISONERS
The prison keeper was under no obligation to supply food or bedding for those who were not able to
provide it themselves or pay the required fees. For the totally penniless, the Fleet provided the beggar’s ward which might offer a little straw on which to sleep. In 1670, the Keeper of the Poultry Counter recorded that up to fifty prisoners – both men and women – slept, dressed, dined and performed ‘all other necessary occasions and offices’ in a space less than 20ft square known as ‘the Hole’.54
At Newgate, the ‘Common Felons’ side of the prison, ‘a most Terrible, Wicked and Dreadful Place’, had five wards, three for men and two for women.55 Male felons who could not pay the ‘customary dues’ of the prison were placed in the Stone Hold – ‘a most terrible, stinking, dark and dismal place, in which no Day-light can come’. The room was ‘paved with Stone, on which the Prisoners lie without any Beds, and thereby endure great Misery and Hardship’. The adjacent Lower Ward, for men with unpaid fines, was no better, while above it lay the Middle Ward where those who had been able to pay their admission fees had the comfort of a wooden floor, but still no beds.
Similar conditions existed in prisons across the country. At Penzance’s Borough Gaol – locally known as the ‘Black Hole’ – most of the ceiling was too low for a prisoner to stand upright, and the number of rats living there was such that any resident would never know ‘the balm of peaceful sleep’.56 At the Chester City and County Gaol, felons slept in a ‘horrid dungeon’ accessed down a flight of eighteen steps:
It has two barrack bedsteads with straw, and is now 12 inches deep in water. Totally dark, and without any communication with the external air, but from two leaden pipes laid in from the gateway about one inch in diameter. 57
The reception of a debtor at the Fleet prison in around the 1740s. The new arrival is rapidly learning about the prison’s fees – both official (such as a payment to have leg irons removed) and unofficial (garnish), while another prisoner relieves him of his hat.
CATERING ARRANGEMENTS
Much of the gaoler’s income came from providing the prison inmates with food or from cooking their own food in the prison kitchen. In order to maximise profits, the charges set varied according to the prisoner’s rank and where meals were eaten. By 1618, the Fleet’s weekly rate, which included wine, ranged from £3 6s 8d for lords, £1 13s 4d for knights, 10s for gentlemen and 5s for commoners. At other London prisons, the usual rate for board and lodging was 3s per week for gentlemen and 2s for yeomen.58
In 1616, Elizabethan poet and playwright Thomas Dekker, in custody himself at the King’s Bench, described the dinner-time scene at the prison: ‘some ambling downe staires for Bread and Beere, meeting another comming up stayres, carrying a platter ... proudly aloft full of powder Beefe and Brewis ... every chamber shewing like a Cookes shop, where provant [food] was stirring’.59 ‘Brewis’, according to Samuel Johnson in his great dictionary of 1755, was ‘Bread soaked in boiling fat pottage, made of salted meat’.
The menu on offer at the Fleet was recorded in 1592 when the Privy Council sent its details to the keepers of the prisons at Ely, Wisbech Castle and Broughton in Oxfordshire, where recusants were being held. Here are the details despatched to Ely:60
Knights’ commons
Their diet weeklie at xvjs. [16s]
At dynner:
Motton boyled Beef boyled Rabbettes
Chickins or capons or such like
(of these two dishes rosted)
At supper:
Motton boyled
Motton rosted
Rabbettes
Chickins or such like.
Their lodgings weekly at vjs. viijd. [6s 8d]
For the fish daies, butter, ling, and other fish such as maie be had after the rates of the flesh daies at the discrecion of the Keeper.
Gentlemen’s commons
Their diets weeklie xs. [10s]
At dynner:
Motton boyled
Beef boyled
And one dish rosted of the veal
At supper:
Motton boyled
Motton rosted
Rabbettes &c.
Their lodgings weekly at s. iiijd. [2s 4d]
For the fish daies rateable at the discrecion of the Keeper
The ‘Gentlemen’s’ diet as sent to Wisbech also included ‘bread as such as they will eat, small beare [beer] and wine clared, a quart’.
The standard of the cooking at the Fleet and the recusant prisons which adopted its cuisine is unclear. However, cookery books of the period give a picture of how such dishes would be prepared in a domestic kitchen. Thomas Dawson, writing in 1597, offers a simple boiled mutton dish:
Mutton boyled for supper.
First set your mutton on the fire, & trim it cleane, then take out all the broth saving so much as will cover it, then take and put thereto ten or twelve onions pilled [peeled], cut them in quarters, with a handful of parseley chopped fine, putting it to the mutton, and so let them boile, seasoning it with pepper, salt and saffron, with two or three spoonefull of vineger.61
Rabbit could be cooked in a variety of ways. Elizabeth Grey’s 1653 manual offers the following:
To boil a Rabbet.
Fley and wash a Rabbet, and slit the hinder leggs on both sides of the back-bone, from the forward, and truss them to the body, set the head right up with a sciver right down in the neck, then put it to boyling with as much water as will cover it, when it boyls, scum it, season it with Mace, Ginger, Salt, and Butter, then take a handful of Parsley, and a little Thyme, boil it by it self, then take it up, beat it with a back of a knife, then take up your Rabbet, and put it into a dish, then put your Hearbs to your Broth, and scrape in a Carret root, let your broth boil a little while, put in salt, pour it on your Rabbet, and serve it.62
To stew Rabbets.
Half rost it, then take it off the spit, and cut it in little pieces, and put it into a dish with the gravie, and as much liquor as will cover it, then put in a piece of fresh Butter, and some pouder of Ginger; some Pepper and Salt, two or three Pippins minced small, let these stew an houre, then dish them upon sippets.63
The general observance of fish days, when the eating of flesh was prohibited, was taken very seriously – defying the ban was punishable by a £3 fine or three months in prison. In 1562, Elizabeth I added Wednesday to the existing fish days of Friday and Saturday, although this was probably not so much a sign of her religious devotion but an attempt to help an ailing fishing industry.
The Fleet’s fare on fish days included butter (i.e. the butter-fish or gunnel, a small, eel-like sea fish) and ling (a member of the cod family), which was often dried and salted to preserve it. Fish could be cooked in a number of ways including being boiled or baked, stewed or used as a filling – ling pie was a well-known dish in the early seventeenth century. However, the kitchens at prisons such as the Fleet would probably have limited themselves to boiling or baking.
At Newgate, in 1724, those who could afford it dined together in small groups or ‘messes’, each member taking it in turns to provide the day’s requirements such as a joint of mutton, veal, lamb or beef which was roasted or boiled. A mess of seven persons could, it was said, dine well at a cost of fourpence a head. The food was accompanied by ‘Small-Beer very good, for One-penny per Quart Bottle, Strong Drink very good for Three-pence per Winchester Quart [four pints];Wine Two Shillings per Bottle; Brandy, Six-pence per Quartern [quarter pint] &c.’ 64
Although those who could afford it might prefer to send out for food, rather than eat what the prison kitchen produced, the gaoler sometimes went to some lengths to encourage them otherwise. In 1620, there was a mutiny at the King’s Bench prison after the keeper, Sir George Reynell, closed off a window to the street that had previously been used for receiving deliveries of meals from friends or neighbourhood suppliers. The inmates then had to buy their food at inflated prices from the prison kitchen. Sir George’s reply was that the closure of the window had been carried out purely for the safe keeping of the prisoners. At the same establishment, another inmate complained that the prison kitchen charged
him eightpence for cooking fourpence-worth of fish. 65
The absence of any form of outside inspection of prisons left opportunity for abuse, although attempts were made to moderate excessive prices. In an effort to prevent the exploitation of prisoners at Newgate, a proclamation of 1370 prohibited any city official – including Newgate officers – from brewing beer, baking bread or selling food. The ban was lifted in 1393 when prison officials were allowed to resume the selling of food to their inmates so long as they charged reasonable prices. In 1434, however, Newgate’s gaoler was required to swear that he would not charge extortionate prices for beer or coal. A further revision of the regulations in 1488 outlawed profiteering from prisoners, so that a penny loaf was to be sold for 1d, a gallon of best beer for 2d, and a bushel of coal for 1d.
It was not only the price of the food that could lead to complaint, but also its quality. In 1618, insolvent barrister Geffray Mynshul wrote that an unnamed gaoler had sold the prisoners bullock’s liver which he had begged for his dog from a butcher’s, and had also charged a halfpenny for a quart of water.66
The poorest prisoners’ survival at Newgate largely depended on alms. At the front of the prison were iron gratings where the prisoners could call out to passers-by for money for food or to help them pay off their fines or debts. The coins could be collected on long wooden spoons stuck through the holes. Alms were also collected by the prisoners themselves in the streets of the city. In the case of monetary donations, the sealed collecting box was opened under supervision each month and – after the collectors and the gaol keeper had taken their cut – the contents were used to buy food and other goods. Food could also be collected by a ‘basket man’ who walked the streets calling out ‘Bread and meat for the poor prisoners!’ Contributions were piled into the basket carried on his back and later shared out. If playwright John Cooke is to be believed, the quality of the food left much to be desired. A character in his 1614 comedy Greene’s Tu Quoque (roughly translated as ‘the same to you’) described such offerings as:
The Prison Cookbook Page 4