The condition of the prisoners within Newgate continued very deplorable. This is apparent from the occasional references to their treatment. They were heavily ironed, lodged in loathsome dungeons, and all but starved to death. Poor Stephen Smith, the fishmonger,[57] who had contravened the precautionary rules against the plague, petitions the council that he has been very heavily laden with such intolerable bolts and shackles that he is lamed, and being a weak and aged man, is like to perish in the gaol. “Having always lived in good reputation and been a liberal benefactor where he has long dwelt, he prays enlargement on security.” The prison is so constantly over-crowded that the prisoners have “an infectious malignant fever which sends many to their long home. The magistrates who think them unfit to breathe their native air when living bury them as brethren when dead.” All kinds of robbery and oppression were practised within the precincts of the gaol. Inside, apart from personal discomfort, the inmates do much as they please. “There are seditious preachings by fifth monarchy men at Newgate,” say the records, “and prayers for all righteous blood.” Some time previous, when the Puritans were nominally the weakest, they also held their services in the prison. Samuel Eaton, a prisoner committed to Newgate as a dangerous schismatic, is charged with having conventicles in the gaol, some to the number of seventy persons. He was, moreover, permitted by the keeper to preach openly. The keeper was petitioned by one of the inmates to remove Eaton and send him to some other part of the prison, but he replied disdainfully, threatening to remove the petitioner to a worse place. He, the keeper himself, attended the conventicles, “calling it a very fair and goodly company, and staying there some season.” Besides this, he gave license to Eaton to go abroad, to preach, contrary to the charge of the High Commission (1638). Another complaint made by the petitioner is that the keeper caused petitioner’s sister to be removed out of the prison contrary to the opinion of a doctor, and that she died the very next day. Her chamber after her removal was assigned to Eaton, it being the most convenient place in the prison for holding his conventicles. This keeper may be condemned as a fanatical partizan at worst. But he had predecessors who were active oppressors, eager to squeeze the uttermost farthing out of their involuntary lodgers. The bar kept within the prison must have been a cause of continued extortion, although those who pandered to the cupidity of the bar-keepers occasionally got into trouble. Sir Francis Mitchell, we read, was sent on foot and bareheaded to the Tower on account of his patent for ale-houses. “He is a justice of Middlesex, and had a salary of £40 a year from Newgate prison on condition of sending all his prisoners there,” ... no doubt to drink the liquor supplied to the prison bar.