THE TABLE BOOK. amount to fifty pounds, the members ballot The last I shall enumerate is the" Clock Club." When the weekly deposits of the members amount to about four pounds, they cast lots who shall be first served with a clock of that value, and continue the same method till the whole club is supplied; after which, the clock-maker and landlord cast about for another set, who are chiefly young housekeepers. Hence the beginner ornaments his premises with furniture, the artist finds employment with profit, and the publican empties his barrel.* A HYPOCHONDRIA. for several weeks, under an idea of danger person at Taunton often kept at home in going abroad. Sometimes he imagined that he was a cat, and seated himself on his hind quarters; at other times he would fancy himself a tea-pot, and stand with one arm a-kimbo like the handle, and the other stretched out like the spout. At last he conceived himself to have died, and would not move or be moved till the coffin came. His wife, in serious alarm, sent for a surgeon, who addressed him with the usual salutation, "How do you do this morning?" "Do!" replied he in a low voice, pretty question to a dead man!" 66 a "Dead, sir! what do you mean?" "Yes, I died last Wednesday; the coffin will be here presently, and I shall be buried to-morrow." ,, The surgeon, a man of sense and skill, immediately felt the patient's pulse, and shaking his head, said, "I find it is indeed too true; you are certainly defunct; the blood is in a state of stagnation, putrefaction is about to take place, and the sooner you are buried the better." The coffin arrived, he was carefully placed in it, and carried towards the church. The surgeon had previously given instructions to several neighbours how to proceed. The procession had scarcely moved a dozen yards, when a person stopped to inquire who they were carrying to the grave? "Mr. --> our late worthy overseer.' "What! is the old rogue gone at last? a good release, for a greater villain never lived." The imaginary deceased no sooner heard this attack on his character, than he jumped Hutton's History of Birmingham. 92 up, and in a threatening posture said, "You lying scoundrel, if I was not dead I'd make you suffer for what you say; but as it is, I am forced to submit." He then quietly laid half way to church, another party stopped down again; but ere they had proceeded the procession with the same inquiry, and added invective and abuse. This was more jumping from the coffin, was in the act of than the supposed corpse could bear; and party burst into an immoderate fit of laugh. following his defamers, when the whole ter, the public exposure awakened him to a weakness, and, in the end, conquered it. sense of his folly, and he fought against the Prisons, ANCIENT AND MODERN.. consisted of "souterains," or, sometimes, of only simple vestibules, where the priThe prisons of the classical ancients soners saw their friends, &c.: it was in this latter kind of confinement that Socrates dicine" were caves or vast quarries, guardwas placed. Their "latomia" and "lapied at the entrance: in the "latomia " prisoners could move about; but in the tered. The famous "latomie" at Syracuse lapidicinæ "" they were chained and fetmade a capital prison. The prisoners bribed the lictor or executioner to introduce food, and allow them to visit friends, &c. Some prisoners had merely chains upon the legs, others were set fast in stocks. There were also free prisons; as committal to the house of a magistrate, or custody of the accused in his own house. Felix, at Paul, and to let him have liberty, and that he should forbid none of his acquaintance Cesarea, commanded a centurion to keep Paul was suffered to dwell by himself with At Rome, a soldier that kept him; and while in that custody the chief of the Jews came and heard him expound. He spoke to them of being" bound with this chain." two whole years in his own hired house He dwelt preaching and teaching with all confidence, no man forbidding him.† to minister or come to him. In the middle age there were prisons fetters, without doors or windows, and deprovided with collars, handcuffs, and other scended into only by ladders. Other prisons were made like a cage, with portcullised doors, as now; and there was a kind of prison, called " pediculus," because in it Fosbroke's Ency. of Antiquities. † Acts xxviii. 16, 20, 23, 30, 31. the feet were bound with chains, and prisons were made dark on purpose. Anglo-Saxon prisons were annexed to palaces, with a work-place in them; the prisoners were chained and had guards. In castles there were dungeons, consisting of four dark apartments, three below, and one above, up a long staircase, all well secured; in the uppermost, a ring to which criminals were chained. Prisons were sometimes guarded by dogs, and prisoners bound in chains, brought in carts, and discharged upon a new reign.* AN ENGLISH PRISON A. D. 1827. In the Table Book, which notes the manners and customs, and sketches the features of ancient and modern times, whenever they are conveniently presented, it seems appropriate to notice a petition printed by order of the House of Commons, on the 12th of February, 1827, respecting. HORSHAM GAOL, SUSSEX. The petition alluded to is from debtors in the above prison, and the Votes of the House state the following particulars, as set forth in the petition : The said gaol is ill constructed, confined, and inconvenient, having only twenty cells on the debtors' side, half of which are appropriated to the debtors, and the other half chiefly to smugglers and others for notorious offences against the revenue laws, and to deserters from the army. The said cells for debtors are constructed of the same dimensions, and in the same manner, as the cells for the felons, having no glazed sash-windows, but merely irongratings, with the addition at night of an ill-constructed wooden shutter, having a small square hole in the same of about six inches diameter, in some instances glazed and in others not, and by no means calculated to keep out the rain or cold during the inclement season. The cells are small, being only twelve feet by eight feet, and having no fire-place or other means of being warmed. The said cells are merely brick arches lime-whitened, with rough stone pavement, and so exceedingly damp at times that the water condenses on the walls, and runs down the sides thereof, and on to the floor, and from thence into the common passage, which is so narrow, that when any of the doors of the cells are open there is not • Fosbroke. room for one person safely to walk, particularly as the passage is dark. When the weather is wet, or otherwise inconvenient, the shutters of the cells must necessarily be put up to exclude the same, thereby rendering the cells so dark that the prisoners cannot conveniently see either to read or write; and, therefore, when the prisoners wish to retire to read or write they cannot do so, and are compelled to sit in the common kitchen, which is small, and consequently crowded, and is the only place for the cooking for all the prisoners, and at the same time to accommodate them for a sleeping ward and other purposes. The fire-place is small and inconvenient, and very scantily supplied with fuel, and when the prison is crowded, as it has lately been, it is totally impossible for all the prisoners to have access to the fire, for the required purposes of cooking or otherwise particularly when most required, as in wet and inclement weather. It sometimes happens that thirteen or more prisoners are obliged to sleep in the said kitchen, and three in each bed in many of the cells. door, and also a door made of timber; and To each cell is affixed an iron-grating the debtors are locked up within their respective cells at nine o'clock in the evening, having no access to them till seven o'clock taken ill in the night might lay and perish the next morning, so that any one being before his situation could be discovered or made known, or any assistance rendered. The prisoners are unlocked at seven o'clock in the morning, and are allowed to go into the yard of the prison till eight, whistle until nine o'clock, and allowed to when they are called in by means of a remain in the yard again until twelve o'clock at noon, again locked into the wards til one o'clock, and again in the same manner at five o'clock in the afternoon for the night. Respectable females are confined in the same ward with the smugglers and others, and no female is appointed or employed to attend on them in any case. The state of the prison is in general filthy. water laid on to either of the wards, nor There is no sink or water-course, nor any any means of obtaining water after five o'clock in the evening. at any time cleaned, it is done by some of If any part or the whole of the prison is the debtors. There is no proper place for the reception of the dirty water or filth from the wards, but the same is indiscriminately thrown out at the iron-grating doors at the end of the passage to each ward, thereby occasioning a great stench highly disagreeable and unwholesome to the prisoners. The prisoners are not allowed to see their respective friends or solicitors within the walls of the prison, but are compelled to come into a room in the gaoler's house, and there meet their friends or solicitors, subject to the continual interruption or presence of the gaoler, his wife, or others, to the great annoyance of the prisoners and their friends, and on the sabbath-day even this privilege is not allowed. or even a No debtor is allowed to have any trunk, portmanteau, dressing-case, clothes-bag, with lock and key, within the prison, so that the prisoners are obliged, whensoever they require any change of clothing, to obtain leave to come into the room in the gaoler's house before mentioned, and there take them from their portmanteau, or otherwise; no respectable prisoner can therefore have any article of convenience or value with him, without being obliged either to carry it about his person, or leave it exposed in his cell, or in an ill-constructed small cupboard, where he is also obliged to keep his provisions, &c.; and so great is the injustice in the prison, that smugglers not only receive fourpence-halfpenny per day, but are also allowed a quart of strong beer or ale each man, while the debtors are not permitted to have strong beer or ale even by paying for it. When a debtor is removed by a writ of habeas corpus to London, a distance of thirty-six miles, and for which one shilling per mile is allowed by law to the gaoler, the sum of two pounds five shillings has been demanded and taken by the gaoler. A marked inattention to the complaints or remonstrances repeatedly made by various prisoners, together with the general bad state of the prison, and the excessive and unnecessary harshness of the regulations, rendered it imperative on the petitioners to attempt to lay their grievances before the house, in the fervent hope that the house would be pleased to cause inquiry to be made into the truth of the several allegations contained in the petition, which the petitioners pledge themselves to prove, if permitted, by affidavit or otherwise, as the house should direct. The petitioners humbly prayed, that a speedy remedy might be applied to their complaints as to the house in its wisdom should seem meet. ODE To A SPARROW ALIGHTING BEFORE THE JUDGES' CHAMBERS IN SERJEANT'S INN, FLEET-STREET. Written in half an hour, while attending a Summons. Art thou solicitor for all thy tribe, That thus I now behold thee ?-one that comes To sue for crumbs ?— Say-hast thou pull'd some sparrow o'er the coals, I only hope no curs'd judicial kite I scarce should deem thee of the law-and yet How quickly might'st thou be of that bereft ? Tell me for I am sick at heart to know! Say, in the sky is there" distress for rent," That thou hast fitted to the courts below? If thou wouldst haul some sparrow o'er the coals, And wouldst his spirit hamper and perplexGo to John Body-he's availableSign-swear-and get a bill of Middlesex Returnable (mind,-bailable!) On Wednesday after th' morrow of All Souls. Or dost thou come a sufferer? I see I see thee "cast thy bail-ful eyes around;" Oh, call James White, and he will set thee free, He and John Baines will speedily be bound,In double the sum That theu wilt come And meet the plaintiff Bird on legal ground. But stand, oh, stand aside,-for look, Judge Best, on no fantastic toe, Through dingy arch,-by dirty nook,Across the yard into his room doth go:And wisely there doth read Summons for time to plead, And frame Order for same. so that if it were shut its ornamented side would be hidden; instead whereof, it is kept open by a slight fastening against the eastern form, or settle, within the porch. It may be remembered by readers of the Every Day Book, that, on St. Mark's eve, our ancestors" watched the church-porch," as they do to the present day in some parts of Yorkshire and the north of England, from eleven o'clock at night till one in the morning. This done thrice, on the third year they were supposed to have seen the ghosts of those who were to die the next year pass by into the church. When any one sickens that is thought to have been seen in this manner, it is presently whispered about that he will not recover, for that such or such an one, who watched on St. Mark's eve, says so. This idle superstition is in such force, that if the patients themselves hear of it, they almost despair of recovery: many are said to have actually died by their imaginary fears. The like irrational belief and fond practice prevail on St. John's eve. "I am sure," says a writer in the "Connoisseur," "that my own sister Hetty, who died just before Christmas, stood in the church-porch last Midsummer eve, to see all that were to die that year in our parish; and she saw her own apparition." It is told of a company of these 66 watchers," ," that one of them fell into a sound sleep, so that he could not be waked, and while in this state his ghost or spirit was seen by the rest of his companions knocking at the church-door. it might have been more orderly to have noticed the "church-yard-porch." There is one at Bromley, though more modern than the fine "lich-gate" at Beckenham already engraved and described.* Sir John Sinclair records of some parishioners in the county of Argyll, that "though by no means superstitious, (an observation which in the sequel seems very odd,) they still retain some opinions handed down by their ancestors, perhaps from the time of the Druids. It is believed by them, that the spirit of the last person that was buried watches round the church-yard till another is buried, to whom he delivers his charge.” Further on, in the same work,t is related, that "in one division of this county, where it was believed that the ghost of the person last buried kept the gate of the church-yard till relieved by the next victim of death, a singular scene occurred, when two burials were to take place in one church-yard on the same day. Both parties staggered forward as fast as possible to consign their respective friend in the first place to the dust: if they met at the gate, the dead were thrown down till the living decided, by blows, whose ghost should be condemned to porter it." Bromley church-door is a vestige; for on examination it will be found not perfect. It is seven feet four inches in height, and in width four feet eight inches: the width of the door-way, between the stone jambs, is two inches more; the width of the door itself, therefore, has been reduced these two inches; and hence the centre of the ornaments in relief is not in the centre of the door in its present state. It is a good specimen of the fast-decaying, and often prematurely removed, fine doors of our old churches. The lock, probably of like age with the door, and also of wood, is a massive effectual contrivance, two feet six inches long, seven inches and a half deep, and five inches thick; with a bolt an inch in height, and an inch and a half in thickness, that shoots out two inches on the application of the rude heavy key, which as to form and size is exactly depictured in the following page. It seemed good to introduce the engraving, both in respect to the antiquity of the original, and to the information it conveys of the devices of our ancestors "for locking-up. In relation to this church-watching on St. Mark's and St. John's eve, there is a narrative in the "Athenian Oracle," published by John Dunton:-"Nine others besides myself went into a church-porch, with an expectation of seeing those who should die that year; but about eleven o'clock I was so afraid that I left them, and all the nine did positively affirm to me, that about an hour after, the church-doors flying open, the minister, (who it seems was very much troubled that night in his sleep,) with such as should die that year, did appear in order which persons they named to me, and they appeared then all very healthful; but six of them died in six weeks after, in the very same order that they appeared."+ Before mention of the " church-porch," See the Every Day-Book, on St. John's eve, &c. + Brand. 166164 ⚫ In vol. i. P. 715. + Statistical Account of Scotland. |