Sir John Fielding being again examined, said, that ballad-singers are a greater nuisance than beggars, because they give opportunity to pick-pockets by collecting people together; that the songs they sing are generally immoral and obscene; the people themselves capable of work, and of the lowest and most abandoned order of people; for remedy of which, he proposed that all ballad-singers should be considered as vagrants, and made liable to the same punishments, no person being a vagrant now but who comes within some one of the descriptions of vagrancy in the Vagrant Act. And the High-constable being again examined, informed the Committee that he has often had warrants for taking up ballad-singers; that he has apprehended a great many, notwithstanding which their numbers increase, and they are become a very great nuisance; that they have often been dispersed, but still continue the practice. Sir John Fielding, being again examined, said, that the City of Westminster is a franchise under the Dean and Chapter of Westminster; that the common gaol thereof is called the Gatehouse, to which offenders of every kind, apprehended within the Liberty of Westminster, have been usually committed for several years back, to the number of 600 or 700 annually; that in this gaol there is little or no allowance or provisions for the prisoners but what arises from the charity of passengers, seldom amounting to more than five or six shillings a-week, the greatest part of which is given to the beggar at the window for the day. That the said gaol appears, from experience of the Magistrates, to be too small for the number, and too weak for the safe custody of prisoners; that to this gaol persons for execution in debts recovered in the Court of Conscience, are committed; and he said, he believed this is the only gaol in England where there is not some provision for the poor and distressed prisoners; and he added, that when a Magistrate commits a man to that gaol for an assault, he does not know but he commits him there to starve. For these reasons, as well upon the principles of humanity as of civil policy, this ought to be remedied; and that, on account of the vast increase of inhabitants, property, and number of offenders, there ought to be in Westminster a strong, capacious, and useful gaol, and there is no such thing at present; that the said gaol, called the Gatehouse, is a very old building, subject to be repaired by the said Dean and Chapter, who appoint the Gaoler; that the supposed original use of this gaol was for the purposes of committing Clerks convict. The commission of Magistrates is not later than Charles the First's reign; they began first to commit offenders to this gaol, rather by sufferance than by right; and he observed that, however proper it may have been for its original purposes, it is unequal to the present occasions, and, as he apprehends, cannot be altered without a Law. And he further informed the Committee, that the