Thomas Allen, in his _History of London_,[154] relates that in 1750 “The Lord Mayor, some of the aldermen, two of the judges, the under sheriff, many lawyers, and a number of lookers-on, died of the gaol distemper.” The prison was afterwards cleansed! Howard asserts that in 1773–4 more people died from the gaol fever than were executed in the kingdom;[155] we lost 2000 sailors (criminals were often given the choice between punishment and the services) with the fleet in the war with America.[156] He quotes Lord Bacon as saying that the most pernicious infection next to the plague is the smell of the jail.[157] Such were the mephitic dens into which were cast men, women, and children of all sorts; and there they would rot away or survive, as the case might be, until the expiration of their (generally short) sentences of imprisonment, if they could pay the fees charged on their coming out; or until they ultimately came up for trial, after which they would either be acquitted and discharged (again when they paid the fees), or they would be convicted and transported or executed.[158] The number of capital offences was truly enormous. Onward from 1688 they steadily increased,[159] owing, as has been well remarked, to the “unhappy facility afforded to legislation by Parliamentary government.”[160] Members who could not become ministers, and who yet wanted to do something, often had interest enough to hang somebody, or at least to get a law passed creating a new capital felony.[161]