“It contains 125 rooms, besides a common kitchen, coffee and tap rooms, but the number of prisoners is generally so great, that two, or even three, persons are obliged to submit to the shocking inconvenience of living in one small room!! Those who can afford it, pay their companion to _chum_ off, and thus have a room to themselves. Each person so paid off, receives four shillings a week. The prisoner pays one shilling and threepence a week for his room without furniture, and an additional sevenpence for furniture. Matters are sometimes so managed, that a room costs the needy and distressed prisoner from ten to thirteen shillings a week. [Illustration: INTERIOR OF FLEET PRISON.] “Those who have trades that can be carried on in a room, generally work, and some gain more than they would out of doors, after they become acquainted with the ways of the place. During the quarterly terms,[81] when the court sits, prisoners, on paying five shillings a day, and on giving security, are allowed to go out when they please, and there is a certain space round the prison, called the _rules_, in which prisoners may live, on furnishing two good securities to the warden for their debt, and on paying about 3 per cent. on the amount of their debts to the warden. The rules extend only from Fleet Market to the London Coffee House, and from Ludgate Hill to Fleet Lane, so that lodgings are bad, and very dear. Within the walls there is a yard for walking in, and a good racquet ground.” 3. Ludgate Prison, or Giltspur Street Compter, for debtors who were freemen of the City of London. 4. Poultry Compter—a dark, small, ill-aired dungeon—used as a House of Detention. 5. Newgate—which was the gaol both for Criminals, and Debtors, for the County of Middlesex. On the debtors’ side, the overcrowding was something terrible. The felons’, or State side, as it was called, was far more comfortable, and the criminals better accommodated. The prison might, then, be visited on payment of two or three shillings to the turnkeys, and giving away a few more to the most distressed debtors. 6. The New Prison, Clerkenwell, was also a gaol for the County of Middlesex, and was built in 1775. The fare here was very meagre—only a pound of bread a day. 7. Prison for the liberty of the Tower of London, Wellclose Square. 8. Whitechapel Prison, for debtors in actions in the Five Pounds Courts, or the Court of the Manor of Stepney. 9. The Savoy Prison, used as a Military prison, principally for deserters. 10. Horsemonger Lane Gaol, the County prison for Surrey. 11. The Clink, a small debtors prison in Southwark. 12. The Marshalsea Gaol, in Southwark, for pirates. 13. The House of Correction, Cold Bath Fields, which was built according to a plan of Howard, the philanthropist, on the basis of solitary confinement. At this time it was dreaded as a place of punishment, and went by the name of the Bastille. (Its slang name now is _the Steel_.)