The reports of the Select Committees of the House of Commons teem with such cases. One report stated that “The Committee saw in the women’s sick ward many miserable objects lying, without beds, on the floor, perishing with extreme want; and in the men’s sick ward yet much worse.... On the giving of food to these poor wretches (though it was done with the utmost caution, they being only allowed at first the smallest quantities, and that of liquid nourishment) one died; the vessels of his stomach were so disordered and contracted, for want of use, that they were totally incapable of performing their office, and the unhappy creature perished about the time of digestion. Upon his body a coroner’s inquest sat (a thing which, though required by law to be always done, hath for many years been scandalously omitted in this gaol), and the jury found that he died of want. Those who were not so far gone, on proper nourishment being given them, recovered, so that not above nine have died since the 25th March last, the day the Committee first met there, though, before, a day seldom passed without a death; and upon the advancing of the spring not less than eight or ten usually died every twenty-four hours.”[86] The prison referred to was a London prison, but in the provinces matters were no better. There was, for example, a petition to the House of Commons, 1725, from insolvent debtors in Liverpool gaol, stating that they were “reduced to a starving condition, having only straw and water at the courtesy of the sergeant”.[87] The Queen was horrified and indignant at these revelations, and she repeatedly urged on Walpole the reformation of the prison system, and the revision of the criminal code. But Walpole was averse to any legislation unless it was demanded by political exigencies, and the utmost the Queen achieved was a more vigorous inspection of prisons and the punishment of gaolers detected in cruelty. In September the King returned from Hanover and took over the reins of government, an easy task, for Walpole and the Queen had managed so well that this was a period of peace abroad and prosperity at home.