The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1835-04-10 00:00:00

IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT.

Whitecross-street prison is by far the largest and most
•.extensive of the gaols in.Fvhicii men in this country are
confined for debt, Its prisoners are more numerous its
• enacttnenia'and regulations more severe, its accommo-
ililions more restricted; and,its society more mixed, than
those of the- King's Bench, the 'Fleet, the .Iklarshalsea—
andAve had nearly said Horiemonger-lane ; but wa.re-
Collected.that the latter is a gaol simply. fit for felons,' and
it. is an inhuman uutrage.on the first princi-
Ples.of justice to confine a nelson whti has not been
guilty of some marked and heinous crime. "The White-
-cross-street priSen,•whieh has not,been erected more than,
4 quarter of a centurY; if so long, was built for the pur-
pose Of consolidating in one temple of sorrow, poverty,
and guilt, the debtors' side of Newgate, the Poultry and
Giltspur-street Compters, and:the- Ludgate prison,,.the
Arree:last of which were originally, separate buildings; in
- ditrerent,parta of; the city. The ,new prison was divided
into Vi arch, or compartments, named after the old gaols,
and.sn-called the Ludgate ward, the Giltspur ward,. the
Poultry ward, Ex. Besides these, there is the Middle-
sex side of the prison, intended' for Prisoners arrested
Ntithin the county, andulie forty shilling ward, for the
-debtitis sent in by the orders of the Court of Requesti,-
• and*hose embarrassments do not overtop the sum of
forty:shillings, until indeed they become doubled by the
costs of law.' We must also mention a receiving ward,—
the'room'into which debtors are ushered the first day and
night of their imprisonment—a chapel, a sick ward, a
strong room, a kitchen, and a sort of tap, to which the
inmates. have given the .nomenclature of "the Scratch"
—Land I believe We have fold of 'all the departments and
divisibits'of one of 'the..mo4e monstrous leviathans of ty-
ranny'. tisdininaitY ever raised by human injustice upon
the cursat'centent-ed:superstructure of poverty, misfer-:
tune; persecution, dishonesty and guilt. Within, no
nbt exceptihg even thos,e„of the l3astile and the
prisons of the SpantshinqUiiition,.has there evenexisted
so deep'ancl..heityy a load of positive unhappiness—=of
actual heart-breaking acute miseryi •Greater torture of
the limb, mightier exercise of- terror,,morie, severe, per-
soniti-stiffering, and .darker .dtmgeOn-like .continetnent,
hate, we knoW,•often liirried men to. confession .or to
death' have broken a coward, sometimes even a brave
spirit; have crushed a weak constitution, and 'shattered
the energies of youth and hope. But these effects have
in all lands taken their rise in state tyranny—they have
been visited in the fearer the suspicion of governments,
or bythe'rnad superstition of priests ;. or they have been
the.punishineins of desperate treachery, or atrocious pe-
nal; crimes. Never have -they been the result of a
widely.peactised and:'Openly avov‘ed :systepi, fourukd
upon law's' framed. by' a legilatiire in supportof free
constitutien... Neither, we are prepared to prove, has
the yvorsi.stale or criminal' prison in any other land.—
ana-me are willing to retread the path of civilization as
far as 'one hundred years will take us back into times and
praCtiCes 'of Cruelty—,—disseminated so much real sorrow
and real xurn tbn—as, the English Debtors' Prison of
Whitecrciss-street, in .an equal period of one, two, four,
or .even ten years. For two instances in which'
they have :guillotined a man's head in France, or crushed
his body uPoif the kvlieel in 'Spain for state treason, Tell-
giotia Heresy, or civil murder, you. will. find ten, where
they have broken his heart in England—for debt ! and
for one instance where the -Inquisition or the Bastite,
having imprisoned a father in those lands, have also chi-
'en the family into exile; you may gest .fifty where an
Eng*lntian's. confinement in Whitecross.;street has
plunged his wife and children into what are worse than
a thousand exiles—starvation and'clespair. 4lndividual
suffering is undoubtedly greater in the state dungeon
,but spreading, gathering, goading privation and tnisfor-
tune7-ernigrating as it were from the actual. prison into
the great heart of society, and poisoning the social
springs of life—take their rise and go abroad from the
debtors' gaol.—Scenes, IS-c. by a Clerolima rt.

WARNING TO LITERARY THIEYES.—A: subscriber to the
Commercial Rooms having been detected in purloining papers
from the tables, the Committee have erased his, name trom
the becks, which we hope will'have the effect of checking so
disgraceful a practice.—Bristol Paper.
Buarsau BEES.—The subject of burying bees in winter hav-
ing occupied some attention of late, it was resolved that a trial
-should. be made of it here last winter, and on the 19th and 20th
'December, three ekaps ni them were buried, to preserve them
from frost. On Saturday week they were opened, when'the
inmates of one of them, in a hopeless way when buried, were
'found dead, those, in the other two were not only alive bitt
vigorous. The' moment the little brown coated, industrious
labourers were disinterred, they began terfly about, not "with
angry fvite," but seemingly well pleased to he restored to the
active duties of life., . !low convenient would it be for a city
population to get thus buried fur a few months. to snooze away
a severe winter, or a period of cumercial stagnation I Physio-
logists and political eeeuoinists should investigate this matter.
;fir. Robert Adam, Moss-street,. had two Akepe which were care-
fully covered•up on the 20th of last. October, and were not taken
up until the end of. February.. One of these weighed 30 and
the other 32 lb. but on being re-weighed they were each exactly
10 lb. lighter. In the one Aep there. were 2 lb. of bees and in
the other ladle Iti. The bees in both are as healthy as those
-I,v.hich are preserved in the usual way.—Scotch Toper. •