Page:The American encyclopedia of history, biography and travel (IA americanencyclop00blak).pdf/598

 of bailiffs. These detain in their houses (properly enough denominated spunging-houses), at an enormous expense, prisoners who have money. I know there is a legal provision against this oppression; but the mode of obtaining redress is attended with difficulty, and the abuse continues. The rapine of these extortioners needs some more effectual and easy check: no bailiff should be suffered to keep a public-house Felons have in some jails two pennyworth of bread a-day; in some, three halfpennyworth; in some, a pennyworth; in some, none. I often weighed the bread in different prisons, and found the penny loaf seven ounces and a half to eight ounces; the other loaves in proportion. It is probable that, when this allowance was fixed by its value, near double the quantity that the money will now purchase might be bought for it; yet the allowance continues unaltered, and it is not uncommon to see the whole purchase, especially of the smaller sums, eaten at breakfast—which is sometimes the case when they receive their pittance but once in two days; and then on the following day, they must fast. This allowance being so far short of the cravings of nature, and in some prisons lessened by farming to the jailer, many criminals are half-starved; such of them as at their commitment were in health, come out almost famished, scarcely able to move, and for weeks incapable of labor.

'Water.—Many prisons have no water. This defect is frequent in bridewells and town jails. In the felon's courts of some county jails there is no water; in some places where there is water, prisoners are always locked up within doors, and have no more than the keeper or his servants think fit to bring them; in one place they were limited to three pints a-day each—a scanty provision for drink and cleanliness.

'Air.—And as to air, my reader will judge of the malignity of that breathed in prisons, when I assure him that my clothes were, in my first journeys, so offensive, that in a postchaise I could not bear the windows drawn up, and was therefore obliged to travel commonly on horseback. The leaves of my memorandum-book were often so tainted, that I could not use it till after spreading it an hour or two before the fire; and even my antidote—a vial of vinegar—has, after using it in a few prisons, be come intolerably disagreeable. I did not wonder that in those journeys, many jailors made excuses, and did not go with me into the felons' wards. From hence any one may judge of the probability there is against the health and life of prisoners crowded in close rooms, cells, and subterranean dungeons for fourteen or fifteen hours out of the four-and-twenty. In some of these caverns the floor is very damp; in others there is an inch or two of water; and the straw, or bedding, is laid on such floors—seldom on barrack bedsteads. Where prisoners are not kept in underground cells, they are often confined to their rooms, because there is no court belonging to the prison—which is the case in many city and town jails; or because the walls round the yard are ruinous, or too low for safety; or because the jailor has the ground for his own use. Some jails have no sewers or vaults; and in those that have, if they be not properly attended to, they are, even to a visitor, offensive beyond description. How noxious, therefore, to people constantly confined in those prisons! One cause why the rooms in some prisons are so close, is the window tax, which the jailors have to pay; this tempts them to stop the windows, and stifle the prisoners.

'Bedding.—In many jails, and in most bridewells, there is no allowance of bedding or straw for prisoners to sleep on; and if by any means they