Conditions in Bristol’s prisons were once bad beyond belief, which is why felons preferred to be banged up in Lawford’s Gate Gaol where they were treated humanely. In 1812, James Neild, High Sheriff, Justice of the Peace and Treasurer of the Society for the Relief of Persons Imprisoned for Small Debts, published a book called State of Prisons in England, Scotland and Wales. These were the days when you could end up in prison for years for the smallest debt, as recorded by Charles Dickens in Little Dorrit, and unless you had someone to provide decent food from outside, life could be bleak.
Some of the conditions Neild discovered on his tours in prisons were almost beyond belief; in others, life was better than that enjoyed by the average family outside. Neild visited three Bristol prisons Newgate, Bridewell and Lawford’s Gate (which was then in Gloucestershire). In Newgate and Lawford’s Gate, he found a complete contrast between the brutality of one and the enlightened conditions of the other.
image above: All that remains of the old Cumberland Road gaol, destroyed by the mob at the time of the Bristol riots, but in use until 1883. Many public hangings took place here - public hangings were held over the main gate.
Newgate City and County Gaol Gaoler William Humphries was paid £200, another £2 a year gown-money plus fees for debtors. The chaplain, the Revd Mr Day, got £35 for a sermon each Sunday and prayers on Wednesdays and Fridays. The number of prisoners on October 4, 1803, was 24 debtors, 26 felons and two deserters. Debtors were given no free food; felons were allowed a three-penny loaf of standard wheat bread.
‘This Gaol, called Newgate, is build on a declivity, and stands in the middle of the City’ reported Neild. ‘It is very antique, and by much too small for the general number of its inhabitants. The lower rooms are dark. For Debtors there are about 15 large and airy rooms; two of which are termed free wards for poor Debtors, who find their own beds.
‘These rooms pay two shillings and six pence per week each; and two Prisoners sleep in a bed. Here is not a proper separation of Men and Women’.
The only exercise area known as the Tennis Court was just 13 yards by six and also used for drying linen. There was a pump with drinking water and a convenient bath which, James Neild noted, was ‘seldom used’.
Male felons had two small day rooms and sleeping rooms with little air or light. But the worst horror of all was the Pit.
‘The Pit to which you descend by eight steps, is 17 feet in diameter, and 8 feet 6 inches high. It has barrack bedsteads, with beds of straw in canvass; and some benevolent Gentlemen of the City occasionally send a few rugs.
‘This dreary place is close and offensive; with only a very small window, whose light is merely sufficient to make darkness visible. In the year 1801, it was chiefly appropriated to convicts under sentence of transportation. Seventeen prisoners are said to have slept here every night!
Lawfords Gate - This old prison once stood at the end of Old Market where Trinity Police Station now stands. After 100 years of use, it was finally pulled down in 1907.
‘The Turnkey himself told me that in a morning, when he unlocked the door, he was so affected by the putrid steam issuing from the dungeon, that it was enough to strike him down. When Turnkeys are thus affected by only opening the doors, what must the pitiable wretches suffer, confined, through the whole night, in such fetid hotbeds of disease’.
The prison was full of narrow passages, which were kept as clean as possible and scraped and whitewashed once a year. Prisoners depended on charity, such as the £4-9 shillings left by Mr Freeman, for bread and beef on Christmas Eve. Local churchwardens also paid £4-2s towards prisoners’ upkeep.
James Neild was upset by the small numbers attending church services and the behaviour in chapel. ‘So little regard, indeed, was paid to the Chapel, as a place of worship, that I have repeatedly seen the prisoners drinking, smoking and chewing tobacco in the gallery. He added: ‘Several years since, an Act was passed for the building of a new Gaol.
That it has not been carried into execution by this rich commercial City, is much to be regretted; for, really the present Gaol is disgraceful.’
Neild also showed unusual concern for hapless debtors, thrown into the same prison as murderers and thieves legal suffering, as he called it. ‘How often do we overlook that most lamentable groupe, which it so dreadfully oppresses! - I mean the victims of mere misfortune, the feeble and unresistless sacrifices to false and groundless accusation!’
image above: An insiders view of Lawfords Gate prison, with the heavy swivel gate in the prison cells.
Lawford’s Gate: The County Bridewell - The keeper here was Joseph Hallam, who was paid £50 a year with no fees. The chaplain, the Revd Mr Eden, got £20 as year for sermons and prayers and the prison had a salaried surgeon who received £15 15s. On December 17, 1801, there were nine prisoners, each given a loaf of one good household bread every day.
‘This Prison was finished in 1791. The boundary wall encloses about an acre of ground, and affords the Keeper a convenient garden for the growth of vegetables.
‘On the right of the Gate is a room, where the Magistrates hold their Petty Session. The approach to the Prison is through a small garden, separated from the courtyards by close wooden palisades.
‘Here are four airy courts, of 28 yards by 15, with a pump and a sewer in each; and three day-rooms. 13 feet by 11 feet 6, with fireplaces, stone seats and shelves. The Women’s court has a grass-plat, to bleach and dry the linen’.
Sleeping quarters were equally impressive - nine cells for women and 10 for men on each floor, each measuring 7 feet 4 inches by 6 feet, and 10 feet high, ‘with an arched roof, to prevent danger and confusion in case of fire’. Each was fitted up with a cast-iron bedstead, straw-mat, hair-mattress, a blanket, sheet, and double rug and had light and ventilation. Two cells for vagrants were provided with straw, which was regularly replaced.
‘On this upper-story are also two infirmary rooms, with fire-places and water-closets; and three small rooms used as foul-wards, from which iron-gratings communicate with the Chapel, to accommodate the sick Prisoners for hearing Divine service. ‘Here is likewise a Dispensary for the Surgeon; and all these latter apartments have glazed windows’.
All prisoners were made to attend church services but debtors and felons were kept separate. They were also provided with warm and cold baths, an oven to ‘purify the prisoners’ clothes’, free prison uniforms, and four stoves which heated the whole building in winter.
If there was work available, prisoners got a cut of their earnings to buy extra food. Any money left over was saved for them and paid when they were discharged, but prisoners who refused to work were put into solitary confinement.
Medical care was probably better than most ordinary Bristol folk received, with the surgeon seeing each prisoner once a week and always available when requested. He also had the power to suspend punishment or vary diets and careful record was kept of his observations for the Visiting Justices. There were even books, admittedly of ‘moral and religious instruction’, and ‘proper cisterns, with soap and towels, are supplied to each courtyard, near the pump, for the daily use of the Prisoners. Weights and measures also are kept for their use; and they have clean linen once a week’.
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