Keepers of prisons bought their places with the distinct purpose of making money by extortions from the prisoners.  The following is an account of the means pursued by Bainbridge, Warden of the Fleet, to extort money from one Solas, a poor man, imprisoned for debt[150]:  “Bainbridge 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 fireplace, 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, and adjoining to the sink and dunghill where all the nastiness of the prison is cast.  In this miserable place the poor wretch was kept by the said Bainbridge manacled and shackled for near two months.  At length on receiving five guineas from Mr. Kemp, a friend of Solas’s, Bainbridge 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 labor gratis for the said Bainbridge, 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 Bainbridge was to return again as Warden of the Fleet, he fainted, and the blood started out of his mouth and nose.”  This example is by no means an exceptional one.  It is impossible, within the limits of this volume, to give an adequate idea of the disease, the squalor, the cruelties and abuses which existed in the prisons.  Their interiors are often described by the novelists, who were unable to exaggerate the actual circumstances.  Poor prisoners, when acquitted, were dragged back to prison and kept there till their dues were paid or they were released by death.  Richer men were subjected to all sorts of indignity and danger, even to that of small-pox, to force them to enrich their jailers.

The social condition of England in the first half of the eighteenth century presents a material and unattractive aspect.  Its most prominent characteristics are the corruption and coarseness of the upper classes, and the ignorant brutality of the lower.  Still there existed beneath this exterior, qualities and habits in the highest degree favorable to civilization and social order.  At a later time these qualities brought about reforms which did away with many of the worst abuses.  Among the middle classes, fast rising to political and social prominence, lived an earnest morality, which at a later time took form in the great Methodist revival, and the rise of philanthropy.