‘The American and French Wars had now been raging for some months, and several hundred prisoners of the latter nation had been brought into Liverpool by privateers. I frequently visited them in their confinement, and was much mortified and ashamed of their uniform complaints of hard usage and a scanty allowance of unwholesome provision. What I occasionally observed in my visits gave me but too much reason to believe the representations of this pleasing people, who maintained their national sprightliness and good humour undamped even in captivity. I was happy to learn later from the prisoners themselves the good effects of my interference, and the Commissary, the author of their wrongs, was presently superseded.... When I met him in the street later there was fire in his eye, and fury in his face.’ In 1793, the New Borough Gaol in Great Howard Street, (formerly Milk House Lane), which had been built in 1786, but never used, was made ready for prisoners of war. The following letter to the _Liverpool Courier_ of January 12, 1798, was characterized by _The Times_ as ‘emanating from some sanguinary Jacobin in some back garret of London’: ‘The French prisoners in the dungeons of Liverpool are actually starving. Some time ago their usual allowance was lessened under pretence of their having bribed the sentinels with the superfluity of their provisions. Each prisoner is allowed ½ lb. of beef, 1 lb. bread, &c., and as much water as he can drink. _The meat is the offal of the Victualling Office_—the necks and shanks of the butchered; the bread is so bad and so black as to incite disgust; and the water so brackish as not to be drunken, and they are provided with straw. The officers, contrary to the rule of Nations, are imprisoned with the privates, and are destined with them to experience the dampness and filth of these dismal and unhealthy dungeons. The privileges of Felons are not allowed them. Philanthropos.’ So the Mayor and Magistrates of Liverpool made minute inspection of the prison (which had been arranged in accordance with Howard’s recommendations), and published a report which absolutely contradicted the assertions of ‘Philanthropos’. There were, it said, six large detached buildings, each of three stories, 106 feet long, twenty-three feet high, and forty-seven feet wide; there were two kitchens, each forty-eight feet long, twenty feet broad, and thirteen feet high. In the two upper stories the prisoners slept in cells or separate compartments, nine feet long, seven feet broad, and eleven feet high, each with a glazed window, and in each were generally three or four, never more than five, prisoners. The Hospital occupied two rooms, each thirty-three feet long, thirty feet broad, and eleven feet high. The officer-prisoners, seventy in number, occupied a separate building, and the other prisoners, 1,250 in number, were in the five buildings. The mortality here, from May 15 to December 31, 1798, among 1,332 prisoners was twenty-six.