THE CONDITION OF THE FLEET PRISON, AS REVEALED BY A PARLIAMENTARY ENQUIRY (1729).

A. Description of the Warden, Thomas Bambridge.

Source.—Horace Walpole: Anecdotes of Painting in England, 1771. Vol. iv., p. 71.

I have a sketch in oil that Hogarth gave me, which he intended to engrave.[8] It was done at the time when the house of commons appointed a committee to enquire into the cruelties exercised on prisoners in the Fleet to extort money from them. The scene is the committee; on the table are the instruments of torture. A prisoner in rags, half starved, appears before them; the poor man has a good countenance that adds to the interest. On the other hand is the inhuman gaoler. It is the very figure that Salvator Rosa would have drawn of Iago in the moment of detection. Villainy, fear, and conscience are mixed in yellow and livid on his countenance, his lips are contracted by tremor, his face advances as eager to lie, his legs step back as thinking to make his escape; one hand is thrust precipitately into his bosom, the fingers of the other are catching uncertainly at his button-holes.

B. His Cruelty.

Source.—Lieutenant Bird's Letter from the Shades to T——s B-m-dge, 1729. Pp. 37, 38.

As soon as he had introduced his Marmadons,[9] he began to treat the Prisoners in a Manner little different from that Dragooning, which, upon another Account the Protestants some time ago, suffer'd in France; some he clapp'd into Irons, and others he flung into dungeons; so that it may be said without much Impropriety, that the poor Prisoners underwent a perfect Persecution from their New Warden. The Effect of Persecution is always the same, tho' the Pretence may be Religion, or something else, yet Interest is the true Cause. It soon appear'd that all this Cruelty of B-mb-ge, was only to make the Prisoners more ready to comply with his Demands, by striking a previous Terror into their Minds, and they found out that the only Way to lay that spirit of Cruelty, which possess'd the New Warden, was to give up to his Avarice all the Little which was left them, or cou'd be procured from their Friends to support Life, which every one knows is as much as the generality of Men in those unfortunate Circumstances can hope or desire to do, so helpless they are of themselves, and so cold and scanty is the Charity and Allowance of Friends and Relations; many of those distress'd People, in order to satisfy his avaricious Demands, and to avoid his rigorous Treatment, which grew as terrible to them as an Inquisition, have been obliged to sell their Cloathes off their Backs and give up every Penny of their little Subsistence, by which Means they have been ready to perish with cold and hunger, passing many miserable Days together without eating a Morsel of Victuals.

C. Findings of the Parliamentary Committee of Enquiry.

Source.—T. B. Howell: State Trials. Vol. xvii., pp. 300-302.

The Committee of enquiry found amongst other things. That the said Thomas Bambridge ... caused one Jacob Mendez Solas[10] ... to be seized, fettered, and carried to Corbett's, the spunging-house, and there kept for upwards of a week, and when brought back into the prison, Bambridge caused him to be turned into the dungeon, called the Strong Room of the Master's side.

This place is a vault like those in which the dead are interred, and wherein the bodies of persons dying in the said prison are usually deposited, till the coroner's inquest hath passed upon them; it has no chimney nor fire-place, nor any light but what comes over the door, or through a hole of about eight inches square. It is neither paved nor boarded; and the rough bricks appear both on the sides and top, being neither wainscotted nor plastered: what adds to the dampness and stench of the place is, its being built over the common sewer.... In this miserable place the poor wretch was kept by the said Bambridge, manacled and shackled, for near two months. At length, on receiving five guineas from Mr. Kemp, a friend of Solas's, Bambridge released the prisoner from his cruel confinement. But though his chains were taken off, his terror still remained, and the unhappy man was prevailed upon by that terror, not only to labour gratis, for the said Bambridge, but to swear also at random all that he hath required of him; and the Committee themselves saw an instance of the deep impression his sufferings had made upon him; for on his surmising, from something said, that Bambridge was to return again, as Warden of the Fleet, he fainted, and the blood started out of his mouth and nose.

[The sufferings of Captain John Mackpheadnis, who was ruined by being surety for a man in the South Sea Bubble, are then narrated. He was forced to pay double fees, his room, which he duly rented and had himself furnished, was wrecked, and he was forced "to lie in the open yard called the Bare," where the little hut he built was pulled down, and he was exposed to the rain all night. Finally Bambridge used actual torture.]

Next morning the said Bambridge entered the prison with a detachment of soldiers, and ordered the prisoner to be dragged to the lodge, and ironed with great irons, on which he desired to know for what cause, and by what authority he was to be so cruelly used? Bambridge replied, "It was by his own authority, and damm him he would do it, and have his life." The prisoner desired that he might be carried before a magistrate, that he might know his crime before he was punished; but Bambridge refused, and put irons upon his legs which were too little, so that in forcing them on, his legs were like to have been broken; and the torture was impossible to be endured. Upon which the prisoner complaining of the grievous pain and the straitness of the irons, Bambridge answered, "That he did it on purpose to torture him;" on which the prisoner replying "That by the law of England no man ought to be tortured"; Bambridge declared, "That he would do it first and answer for it afterwards;" and caused him to be dragged away to the dungeon, where he lay without a bed, loaded with irons so close-rivetted that they kept him in continued torture, and mortified his legs. After long application[11] his irons were changed, and a surgeon directed to dress his legs, but his lameness is not, nor ever can be cured. He was kept in this miserable condition for three weeks, by which his sight is greatly prejudiced, and in danger of being lost.