The men are put at night into dungeons: one 7 feet square for three prisoners: another, the great hole, 16½ feet by 12, has only a little window.* In this I saw six prisoners (in 1776), most of them transports,* chained to the floor. In that situation they had been many weeks; and were very sickly. Their straw on the stone floor almost worn to dust. Long confinement, and not having the king’s allowance of 2s. 6d. a week, had urged them to attempt an escape: after which the gaoler chained them as above. There is another dungeon for women-felons 12 feet by 8; and up stairs a separate room or two.

The common-side debtors in the low gaol, whom I saw eating boiled bread and water, told me, that this was the only nourishment some had lived upon for near a twelvemonth. They have from a legacy one shilling and six-pence a week in winter, and one shilling a week in summer for coals. No memorandum of it in the gaol; perhaps this may in time be lost, as the gaoler said two others were, viz. one of bishop Crewe, and another of bishop Wood;* from which, prisoners had received no benefit for some years past. But now the bishop* has humanely filed bills in chancery and recovered these legacies, by which several debtors have been discharged.