Why chapter so styled--The gaol fever the visible exponent of foul state of gaols--Their evils briefly described--Neither sufficient light nor air--Often underground--Scantiest supply of water--No bed, no exercise--Meagre rations--Water soup--Allowance to criminals denied to debtors who had to beg alms--Prison buildings wretched--Often private property of local magnates, who farmed them out, and pocketed the gains--How the Bishop of Ely kept his prisoners--All prisoners loaded with irons--Legal opinions on the practice--Description of irons used--Women also fettered--John Wilkes when sheriff protests against ironing the untried--Avarice primary cause of ill-treatment of prisoners--Drunkenness encouraged--Gaol fees--Overcrowding the parent of gaol fever--Rarity of gaol deliveries--The gaol fever explained--Its causes--Its ravages--Extends from prisons to court-houses--To villages--Into the army and the fleet--Earliest mention of gaol distemper--The Black Assize--The sickness of the House at the King’s Bench prison--The gaol fever in the 17th century--Its outbreaks in the 18th--The Taunton Assize--Originated in Newgate in 1750--Extends to Old Bailey with deadly results--The Corporation alarmed--Seek to provide a remedy--Enquiry into the sanitary condition of Newgate--A new ventilator recommended by the Rev. Dr. Hales and Dr. Pringle, F.R.S.--The ventilator described--Hopes expressed that it will check the disease, but the air of Newgate continues pestiferous--Fatal effects of working at the ventilator--Men employed show all symptoms of gaol fever--The fever constantly present in Newgate--Mr. Akerman’s evidence--Statistics of deaths--The fever taken into the country gaols by prisoners removed from Newgate--Also to Southwark--Renewed dread in the Courts, which are protected by the fumes of vinegar--All this time no regular doctor at Newgate--Howard condemns construction of new Newgate as likely to produce gaol fever--Lord George Gordon dies of it in 1793--Dr. Smith reports and condemns the new prison at Newgate--Too crowded and faulty site--Mr. Akerman defends it as superior to the old, but admits that prisoners die in it, broken-hearted--Mr. Akerman a humane man--A friend of Boswell’s, who panegyrizes him--Mr. Akerman’s brave and judicious conduct at a fire in prison--Calms the prisoners, and remains in the midst of danger--Life at Newgate--The sexes intermixed--Debauchery--Gaming--Drunkenness--Moral contamination--Criminals willingly took military service to escape confinement in Newgate.