At another prison, water could only be had on payment, the price being a halfpenny for three gallons. The rations of food were equally meagre. In some prisons almost nothing was given; in others, the prisoners subsisted on water-soup—"bread boiled in mere water." The poor debtors were the worst off. For the felon, thief, murderer, or highwayman there was a grant either in money or in kind—a pennyworth of bread per diem, or a shilling's worth per week, or a certain weight of bread: but the debtors, who formed three-fourths of the permanent prison population, and whose liabilities on an average did not exceed ten or fifteen pounds a piece, were almost starved to death. The bequests of charitable people, especially intended for their support, were devoted to other uses; creditors seldom if ever paid the "groat," or fourpence per diem for the subsistence of their imprisoned debtors required by the Act. Any alms collected within the prison by direct mendicancy were commonly intercepted by the ruffians who ruled the roost. When gaolers applied to the magistrates for food for the debtors the answer was, "Let them work or starve;" yet work was forbidden, lest the tools they used might fall into the hands of criminal prisoners, and furnish means of escape. At Exeter the prisoners were marched about the city soliciting charity in the streets. One Christmas-tide, so Howard says, the person who conducted them broke open the alms-box and absconded with the contents. The debtors' ward in this gaol was called the "shew," because the debtors begged by letting down a _shoe_ from the window.