Among the visitors, persons of notoriously bad character, prostitutes, and thieves,
find admission. Many of the prostitutes are very young girls, sometimes not more than
twelve or thirteen years of age: others have visited different men, yet are admitted
under the name of wives and sisters. Several prisoners have informed us that such
characters are common among the visitors; and the officers whom we have
examined have acknowledged that though they use precautions to exclude bad
characters, yet many such they know have daily ingress; and that they have the
governor's permission to admit to a man who has no respectable friends, the woman
or girl he has lived with, that she may supply him with provisions and clean linen; this
permission extends both to the untried and to the convicted.
In ward No. 12 were six prisoners, four convicted and two untried;Here we
found a man aged 38, under a sentence of 12 months' imprisonment for an assault
on a lad, with an intent to commit an unnatural offence; two lads of 17 and 18 years
of age, one under a 14 days sentence; the other untried, being charged with a slight
offence for which he was afterwards sentenced to a month's imprisonment; a man,
aged 35, under sentence of transportation for life, for forgery; another aged 34 under
sentence of seven years' transportation; and the sixth, aged 34, for the nonpayment
of several small sums of money."
2. De gevangenissen voor schuldenaren.
In 1811, dertien jaren vóór de eerste arrestatie van John Dïckens, kwam in de
Marshalsea Prison Thomas Culver om. Hij stierf door vervuiling en verhongering. Het
rapport van de lijkschouwing laat hierover geen twijfel bestaan. Het voorval trok zo'n
aandacht, dat een 'Lords Committee' werd ingesteld vpor onderzoek. Het verslag van
dit onderzoek is dusdanig illustratief voor de toestanden in de gevangenis voor
schuldenaren, dat hieronder het verslag van de lijkschouwing door de Coroner is
opgenomen:
SURVEY.
'AN INQUISITION indented, taken for our Sovereign Lord the King, in the Prison of our
said Lord the King, called the Marshalsea Prison, in the County of Surrey, on the 7th
Day of January, in the Fifty-first Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord George the
Third, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland King,
Defender of the Faith, before Charles Jemmett, Coroner of our said Lord the King for
the said Country, on view of the Body of Thomas Culver a Prisoner, in said Prison, now
here lying dead, upon the Oath of Henry Hales, Joseph Dakin, William Pearcey, Daniel
Birt, James Sheriff, Robert Richmond, Thomas Fulwood, George Barnett, Robert Wellan
Malpas, Thomas Plummer Raby, Kathaniel Denham, William Wainwright and Francis
Chapman, good and lawful Men of the said County, duly chosen, and who being
now here duly sworn and charged to enquire for our said Lord the King, when, how,
and by what Means the said Thomas Culver came to his Death, do upon their Oath
say that the said ThomasCulver was a Prisoner in the said Prison, situated in the County
of Surrey aforesaid, in the Prison aforesaid, for a long Space of Time from the 15th Day
