Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/558

 544 IV. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY tions. Yet it was not till after the beginning of the reign that arrest upon mesne process was abolished, and impris- onment in execution of final judgments continued to be the law till a far more recent date. From October 1, 1838, to December 1, 1839 (a period of fourteen months), 3,905 persons were arrested for debt in London and the provinces, and of those 361 remained permanently in gaol in default of payment or satisfaction. Out of the 3,905 debtors so arrested, dividends were obtained in 199 cases only. The debtor who was left in durance vile shared a common prison with the murderer and the thief, and the spectacle of misfortune linked in this manner to the side of crime was as demoralising as it was cruel. The following ^ is the account given in 1844 by a Government inspector of the condition of the debtors lodged in Kidderminster Gaol, which was read to the House of Commons by Sir James Graham : — " At the time when I visited the gaol there were six male debtors confined under executions from the Court of Requests. They occupied a single room paved with bricks, the extent of which is twelve feet in length by twelve in breadth, which is destitute of table, bed, seat, or any other species of furni- ture whatever; and there is no fireplace or any means of lighting a fire. A heap of straw is scattered over the floor of half the room, on which the prisoners sleep, for they have no other bedclothes, and from time to time the worst part of the straw is removed and better substituted for it. The privy occupies a corner of the room, but, from the oppres- siveness of the stench, the prisoners have been allowed to close it with straw. The yard into which the room opens measures thirteen feet in length by twelve feet in breadth, and is so badly drained that in wet weather the water lies in it to such a degree as to confine the prisoners entirely to their room. This yard is closed in by a high wall, sur- mounted by an iron lattice. The prisoners are very dirty, as they never take off their clothes, and are allowed only two jugfuls of water per day for drinking and washing themselves. Their diet consists of an allowance of the quar-
 * Hansard, vol. Ixxvi, p. 1711.