There’s Nae Good Luck in Durham Gaol
Half a crown a week is paid to a woman for supplying the debtors with water, in the two rooms on the side of the gateway. — The act for preserving the health of prisoners not hung up. The clauses against spirituous liquors are hung up. Gaol delivery once a year.* At several of my visits there were boys between thirteen and fifteen years of age, confined with the most profligate and abandoned.
There was a vacant piece of ground adjacent, of little use but for the gaoler’s occasional lumber. It extends to the river, and measures about 22 yards by 16. I once and again advised the enclosing this for a court: as it might be done with little expence, and it appears that formerly there was a door-way into the prison but when I was there in January 1776, I had the mortification to hear that the surgeon, who was uncle to the gaoler, had obtained from the bishop, in October preceding, a lease of it for twenty-one years, at the rent of one shilling per annum. He had built a little stable on it.
From ‘The State of the Prisons in England and Wales’ (1777, 4th edn 1792), by John Howard (1726-1790).
* That is, prisoners were discharged on the same day once each year. Until the practice was prohibited in 1774, some gaolers used to charge an exit fee. It was particularly hard on those committed to gaol despite being innovent, either because of a miscarriage of justice or simply because a jury subsequently acquitted them. Indeed, it was this particular racket that first led John Howard to look into the state of English prisons.