was vested in the marshal of the royal household; but although he drew a salary of £500 a year, he did nothing beyond visiting the prison occasionally, and left the administration to the deputy marshal. The latter's salary, with fees, the rent of the tap and of the chandler's shop, amounted to about £600 a year. The compters of Ludgate, Giltspur Street, and the Borough were discontinued as debtors' prisons (as was Newgate also) on the opening of Whitecross prison for debtors in 1815. Ludgate to the last was the debtors' prison for freemen of the city of London, clergymen, proctors, attorneys, and persons specially selected by the Corporation. At one time the Ludgate debtors, accompanied by the keeper, went outside and beyond the prison to call on their creditors, and try to arrange their debts, but this practice was discontinued. There were fifteen rooms of various sizes, and as the numbers imprisoned rarely exceeded five-and-twenty, the place was never overcrowded, while the funds of several bequests and charities were applied in adding to the material comfort of the prisoners. The Giltspur Street Compter received sheriffs' debtors, also felons, vagrants, and night charges. It was generally crowded, as debtors who would have gone to the Poultry Compter were sent to Giltspur Street when the former was condemned as unfit to receive prisoners.[35] The demands for fees were excessive in Giltspur Street. Those who could not pay were thrown into the wards with the night charges, and denied admission to the "charity wards," which partook of all the benefits of bequests and donations to poor debtors. The Borough Compter was in a disgraceful state to the last. The men's ward had an earth, or rather a mud, floor, and was so unfit to sleep on that it had not been used for many years, so that the men and women associated together indiscriminately. The rooms had no fireplaces, so it mattered little that no coals were allowed. There were no beds or bedding, no straw even. In one room Mr. Neild found a woman ill of a flux shut up with three men; the latter raised eighteenpence among them to pay for a truss of straw for the poor woman to lie on. Neild found the prisoners in the Borough Compter ragged, starving, and dirty.