THE DEBTOR’S BEST FRIEND.

_______

THE philanthropist whom I have ventured to distinguish by this title, flourished at the beginning of the last century, and enrolled himself among the ranks of English authors by writing a book, which I purpose to examine briefly, with a view to the reader’s edification on the subject of imprisonment for debt, as it was practised more than a century ago. The work is called "An Accurate Description of Newgate, with the rights, privileges, allowances, fees, dues, and customs thereof; together with a parallel between the Master Debtors’ side of the said prison, and the several Sponging-houses in the County of Middlesex. Wherein are set forth the cheapness of living, civility, sobriety, tranquillity, liberty of conversation, and diversions of the former, and the expensive living, incivility, extortions, close confinement, and abuses of the latter. Together with a faithful account of the impositions of Bailiffs and their vile usage of all such unfortunate persons as fall into their hands. Written for the public good, by B. L., of Twickenham."

Under these mysterious initials does the Debtor’s Best Friend, with the modesty of true merit, bide himself from discovery by a grateful public. In the first pages of his work he apologises for the lively sympathy with insolvent humanity which induced him to turn author, in these terms:" I am not insensible that many persons who perfectly know me will be not a little surprised to see my first public appearance in a treatise of this kind, which is so infinitely foreign from those eminent parts of Mathematics and Philosophy in which, for many years past., I have been familiarly conversant." Here, then, is a profound mathematician and philosopher, perfectly acquainted (as we shall soon see) with the insides of sponging-houses and the habits of bailiffs; resident (when at large) in the delightful seclusion of Twickenham, at the commencement of the last century; and publicly willing to acknowledge that his initials are B. L. A more interesting subject of literary investigation than an inquiry after the name of this illustrious and anonymous man, it is hardly possible to conceive. When learned and eminent antiquarians have settled the question whether Shakspeare’s Plays were written by Shakspeare, and when they have also found out, for positively the last time, who Junius actually was, will they be so obliging as to grapple with the mystery of B. L.? The writer of these lines abandons the new voyage of literary discovery to their superior spirit of enterprise; and, abstaining from any further digression about the anonymous author of Twickenham, returns to the work which B. L. has left behind him, and to that special part of it which is devoted to the parallel between the Sponging-houses of Middlesex, and the Debtors’ side of Newgate Prison, in the year seventeen hundred and twenty-four.

Will the reader—the gentle and solvent reader—be so good as to imagine that he was alive a century and a quarter ago, and that he was arrested for debt? Perhaps the favour is too great to ask; perhaps the suggestion may give offence. It will be fitter and better if the writer places himself, purely for the sake of illustrating the parallel of B. L., in a position of supposititious insolvency, and breaks down under pressure of his tradesman’s bills, in the year seventeen hundred and twenty-four. Very good. I wear, let us say, a long wig and a short sword; broad coat-skirts spread out with buckram; little breeches, hidden at the top by the ends of my waistcoat, and at the bottom by my long stockings, pulled up over my knees. I have had, ’fore Gad, sir! a wild night of it,—have got drunk, bullied citizens, frightened their wives, beaten the watch, and reeled home to bed with my sword broken and half my embroidery scratched off my coat-cuffs. After a heavy sleep, I am just cooling my fevered tongue with a morning draught of small beer, when, plague take it! who should come in on the heels of my little black page bearing my Indian dressing-gown, but the bailiff with my arrest-warrant. Resistance is hopeless. I use the necessary imprecations. The bailiff gives me the necessary tap on the shoulder, and asks where I will go—to Newgate or to the sponging-house? The treatise of B. L. has unhappily not attracted my attention. I am unacquainted with the important truth, divulged for my benefit by the Debtor’s Best Friend, that Newgate offers me, with the one trifling exception of liberty, all the charms of home on the most moderate terms. The very name of the famous prison terrifies me. I weakly imagine that the sponging-house is more genteel, more luxurious, more fit, in every way, for a man of my condition; and to the sponging-house I declare that I will go.

On the way to our destination, the bailiff (B. L. calls him a Crocodile, among other hard names) insists on stopping at a tavern, under pretence of waiting to see if I can procure bail. Here, the Crocodile and his followers (called Swine by B. L.) "plentifully swig and carouse" (vide Treatise) at my expense. When I have paid the whole reckoning, no matter whether I have taken any drink myself or not, I am politely carried on to the sponging-house, and am told, all the way, what a horrible place Newgate is, and how grateful I ought to be to my kind Crocodiles and Swine for saving me from incarceration in the county gaol. Arrived at the sponging-house, I am received with the greatest civility; and my dear friend, the bailiff (without troubling me with any previous consultation on the subject) orders, at my expense, a bottle of wine and half-a-dozen roast fowls. This banquet prepared, he and all his crocodile family, together with the whole herd of unconscionable swine in attendance on them, sit down to table, leaving me the lowest and worst place, cutting, carving, raking, tearing the fowls in the most unmannerly way, helping everybody before me, absorbing wings, breasts, merrythoughts and thighs, and leaving nothing to my share but the drumsticks and the bones. When the wine is all drunk, and the fowls are all eaten, the head of the crocodiles winks at the head of the swine, and each declares that he has got the colic. The families on either side catch the infection of that distressing malady immediately, and brandy is called for (medicinally), and again at my expense. After the sharp pangs of colic have been sufficiently assuaged, the table is cleared. Pipes, tobacco, and a bowl of punch (price half-a-guinea in the sponging-house; price three and sixpence out of doors) are ordered by the company for themselves, in my name. While my free guests are drinking, I, their prisoner-host, am called on to amuse them by telling the story of my misfortunes. When the bowl is empty, I am carried off to my own room, and am visited there, shortly after, on private business, by the head crocodile, with his pipe in his mouth. His present object is to inform me that my paying the bill for the wine, fowls, brandy, pipes, tobacco, and punch, has not by any means freed me from my obligations to his kindness, and that I must positively go to Newgate at once, unless I settle forthwith what I am going to pay him in the way of Civility-money. My doctor has a fee for giving me physic; why should my bailiff not have a fee for treating me kindly? He declines to mention any precise amount, but he laughs in my face if I offer less than a guinea, and I may consider myself very lucky if he does not take from me three times that sum. If I submit to this extortion, and if I am sufficiently liberal afterwards in the matter of brandy, I am treated with a certain consideration. If I object to be swindled, I am locked up in one small filthy room; am left without attendance, whenever I happen to knock or call, by the hour together; am denied every necessary of life; am "scoffed and snapped at, and used, in short, with a great deal of ill manners."

My Civility-money being paid, I am charged two shillings for my first night’s lodging. (The reader will be good enough to remember, whenever money is spoken of, that the value of a shilling, a century and a quarter ago, was a very different thing from the value of a shilling at the present day.) For every night’s lodging afterwards I am charged one shilling, and for my firing one shilling also per diem. This is about six times the real value of the latter article of convenience; and yet, forgetful of the large profit he gets out of me, my excellent friend, the bailiff (B. L., after calling him a Crocodile for five pages, varies the epithet at the sixth, and speaks of him as a Cannibal), comes in at eight o’clock every night and puts out my fire and extinguishes my candle, whether I am ready to go to bed at that early hour or not. Finally, when I retire for the night, it is more than probable that I shall find I have to share my bed with one—sometimes, even, with two—of my fellow-debtors; the cannibal’s only object being to prey, to the utmost possible extent, upon his prisoners’ purses, and to give them as little comfort and convenience in return as he possibly can.

At breakfast, the next morning, I pay four times as much as I ought for my tea, coffee, or chocolate. I am charged a shilling for bread, cheese, or butter. The regular contract price for my dinner is two shillings, or three shillings, or as much more as will include the expense of the cannibal-bailiff’s meal along with mine. If he has a wife and daughters I pay more, because the tea and sugar for the ladies becomes, in that case, a necessary part of my bill. If I complain, dreadful threats of calling a coach and taking me to Newgate forthwith, silence me in a moment, I must object to nothing—not even to the quality of the liquors of which I consume such large quantities by deputy. Though the brandy is "a composition of diverse spirituous liquids," though "the Geneva is fourpence per quartern, and short in measure," though "the wine is horrid base," I must still pay hugely for all, and be particularly careful, on every occasion, to hold my tongue. If I want to vent my repressed feelings in a letter to a friend, I must first beg and pray for liberty to compose that document, and must then pay double price to the messenger who takes it to its address. If I only give him a penny to put it into the, post-office, he indignantly puts it into the fire instead. Even when I fee him liberally he, or some other among the swine, crocodiles, and cannibals of the establishment, opens my letter and reads it, and declines to deliver it if there is anything that he happens to dislike, or to consider as personally offensive in the contents. He takes a precisely similar liberty with any letters which my friends send to me, unless they are wise enough to have them delivered straight into my own hands. Last and sorest aggravation of all, I am charged half-a-crown a day for the luxury of having a bailiff’s follower to lock me up in my room, with a shilling a day extra for the victuals which the monster eats.

Against this exposure of the cruelty and extortion of a sponging-house, the Debtor’s Best Friend sets the companion-picture of the hospitality, the economy, and the happiness of Newgate; earnestly and affectionately entreating all his embarrassed fellow-creatures to flock to that delightful prison for the future, whenever they are arrested by their unfeeling creditors. How different are the events, how varied is the scene on the new stage! I am arrested, we will say, again—or, no, let the reader take his turn now, for the writer has surely suffered enough in the sponging-house to justify him in resuming, at this point of the narrative, his natural character of a solvent man. With your kind permission, therefore, you, reader, are arrested, this time. You have read the inestimable Treatise of B. L. Thanks to the warning of that philanthropic man, you are too sharp to be deceived as I have been; and when the bailiff taps you on the shoulder, and asks you where you will go, you answer with a promptness that confounds the fellow: " Crocodile! to Newgate. Cannibal! to my happy home in my county gaol." You are taken to the Lodge at Newgate, informing the inferior swine all the way that not one of them will get half-a-crown a day for keeping you. The Turnkey advances to meet you, with friendly sympathy beaming in every line of his respectable and attractive face. You pay him six shillings and sixpence, which is all the Civility-money he expects from you. You pass on to your Ward, and pay ten and sixpence more to the Steward—generally selected from among the ranks of the most charming and accomplished men of the age in which he lives. Out of this sum he distributes two shillings among the Prisoners of your Ward—who love you as their brother in return. The remaining eight and sixpence goes into the pocket of the steward, and for that small sum he supplies you with good fires, candles, salt, and brooms during the whole time of your imprisonment no matter how long it may be. Compare this with the sponging house, where I paid a shilling a day for my fire and candle, and was left in the dark every evening at eight o’clock!

As for your meals in Newgate, it is a luxury only to think of them. You mess sociably with the prisoners of your Ward who have had your two shillings divided among them, and who love you like a brother in return. You have an excellent dinner of roast or boiled; you pay fourpence or, at most, sixpence for it; and you order what you like to drink and I are not required to pay for a drop more than you have actually consumed. When your free and solvent friends from outside come to pay you a visit, they are allowed access to you from eight in the morning till nine at night, you are at perfect liberty to talk to them as long as you please, and need have no fear that any prison authority will be mean enough to listen outside your door. When I was in the sponging-house, and when my friends came to see me, a crocodile with his ear at the key-hole was part of the necessary furniture of the establishment. Oh, the happiness of being in Newgate! you remember how my letters were treated by the swine of the sponging-house? Your letters are carried for you with the swiftest despatch by the safest of special messengers for any small gratuity you please to offer. Oh, the privilege of inhabiting one’s county gaol! Can words describe your life of comfort and economy as contrasted with my wretched existence of squalor and expense? No, words cannot describe it; but the superior eloquence of figures may compass the achievment. Let us, to complete the parallel, examine and compare (under the authority of B. L.) the respective daily bills that you and I have to pay—I for staying four and twenty hours in a sponging-house: you, for staying four and twenty hours in the Debtors’ side of Newgate prison.

This is the Bill paid by the insolvent author to the Cannibal of a Sponging-House in the year seventeen hundred and twenty-four, for one night’s lodging and one day’s expense:

This is the Bill paid by the insolvent reader to the paternal authorities of Newgate, in the year seventeen hundred and twenty-four, for one night’s lodging and one day’s expense:

From this comparison of bills it appears that you save (in the year seventeen hundred and twenty-four) fifteen shillings and three-pence a day by going straight to Newgate instead of going into a sponging-house. Having carried his parallel safely forward to this striking and unanswerable result, B. L. wisely leaves his facts and figures to speak for themselves, and closes that part of his Treatise which has established his claim to the honorable title of The Debtor’s Best Friend. It would be a curious subject for investigation to ascertain how far the parallel instituted by B. L. might hold good in the present day. The author can only excuse himself for not making the inquiry, by confessing, to his shame, that he has not public spirit enough to qualify himself for properly collecting the necessary facts, by becoming a debtor and entering a sponging-house. He is as anxious, in his way, as the anonymous "B. L., of Twickenham" to promote "the public good," but his patriotism has its limits, and he finds that bailiffs and turnkeys stand at some distance on the outer side of his mental boundary-line. Having confessed his weakness in these plain terms, he will ask permission to abandon the topic of imprisonment for debt, content with having given the reader some idea of the abuses of sponging-houses and the merits of county gaols in the last century, and perfectly willing to resign the honour of discussing the subject in its modern bearings, to any other gentleman who can speak from that superior position of practical experience to which he most devoutly hopes that he himself may never attain.

First published Household Words 19 September 1857 XVI pp279-282

Taken from that source

go back to e-text list