"He feedes very strangely, for some say he eates cloakes, hats, shirts, beds, and bedsteds, brasse, or pewter, or gold rings, plate, and the like; but I say he is in his dyet more greedy than Cannibals, for they eate but some parts of a man, but this devoures the whole body. The tenne-peny and nine-peny ordinaries should never bee in the Fleet, Gatehouse, or the two infernal Compters, for Hunger would lay the cloth, and Famine would play the leane-fac'd serving-man to take away the trenchers." A PRISON BASKET-MAN. PLATE VIII. This Plate exhibits one of those men who were sent out to beg broken meat for the poor prisoners. It was copied from one of the sets published by Overton in the reign of King Charles the Second. This custom, which perhaps was as ancient as our Religious Houses, has been long done away by an allowance of meat and bread having been made to those prisoners who are destitute of support. It was the business of such men to claim the attention of the public by their cry of "Some broken breade and meate for ye poore prisonors! for the Lord's sake pitty the poore!" This mendicant for the prisoners is also noticed with the following London Cries, in a play entitled, "Tarquin and Lucrece," viz. "A Marking Stone." "Breade and Meate for the poor Prisoners." "Rock Samphire." "A Hassoc for your pew, or a Pesocke to thrust your feet in." In former days the passenger was solicited in the most melancholy and piteous manner by the poor prisoners. A tin box was lowered by a wire from the windows of their prisons into the street, so as to be even with the eye of the passenger. The confined persons, in hoarse, but sometimes solemn tones, solicited the public to "Remember the poor prisoners!" Not many persons can now recollect the tin boxes of this description, suspended from the Gatehouse at Westminster, and under the gloomy postern of old Newgate; but the custom was till lately continued at the Fleet Prison: where a box of the above description was put out from a grated window, even with the street, where one of the prisoners, who took it by turns, implored the public to "Remember the poor Insolvent Debtors;" but as the person was seen, and so near the street, the impression made on the passenger had not that gloomy and melancholy air of supplication as when uttered from a hollow voice at a distance, and in darkness; so that hundreds passed by without attending to the supplicant. [Illustration: _"Prison Basket Man"_]