The Power and Influence of Gaolers: Life and Death in York Debtors’ Prison
By Huddersfield Reader in History Dr Philip Woodfine
“My essay is about the treatment of people imprisoned for debt in the handsome, baroque gaol building in the Castle yard at York, built between 1701 and 1705.
Today, the building is a tourist attraction, and houses a popular museum. Even back in the first half of the eighteenth century, it was already one of the main sights of the city. Tourists visited the prison, and polite York citizens took their walks in the Castle yard, sometimes buying trinkets from the prisoners, or talking to them through the railings.
The attractive debtors prision in York - still a tourist attraction today
Within the prison, though, conditions were much bleaker than the elegant exterior suggested, and overcrowding and disease took their toll on people imprisoned often for small debts. Overcrowding was a serious danger, not only because it put a strain on food resources and made inmates vulnerable to gaol fever (typhus), but also because it threatened life directly. In the supposedly commodious accommodation of York gaol in late October 1737, nine felons died of suffocation during the night. They were sharing a cell meant for no more than three people.
The Debtors Prison as it looked in the early 1700s
Nor did conditions change as a result of this tragedy. Archbishop Herring had to complain to the Lord Chancellor in February 1746:
“The prisoners die and the Recorder told me yesterday, when the turnkey opens the cells in the morning, the steam and stench is intolerable and scarce credible. The very walls are covered with lice in the room over which the Grand Jury sit.”
Eighteenth-century criminals rarely spent longer than six months in gaol, because short and sharp punishments such as whipping or hanging were the main legal checks on crime. In practice, most juries considered hanging to be too drastic a punishment for small thefts, and many guilty people were freed. Of those who were convicted of capital crimes, the great majority were not hanged, but transported to serve as labourers in the colonies. The only people who were held in gaols for long periods were those placed in prison at the suit of people to whom they owed money. Prisoners for debt often spent years in confinement, and had to pay substantial fees and charges to their gaoler. The gaoler was in effect the manager of a franchise which had to return a profit, as well as being a governor of prisoners on behalf of the state. My essay centres on a case that shows how easy it was for a gaoler to abuse his power.
It began in August 1741, when William Petyt, a West Riding weaver, was badly beaten and thrust into a disused dungeon called the ‘women’s condemned hole’. For 11 days he was left there, his only bedding a thin layer of straw laid on damp stones, and within three weeks he died as a result of this abuse. The gaoler, Thomas Griffiths, covered up the death, but complaints from Petyt’s fellow prisoners reached the ears of two active Justices of the Peace, Richard Witton, of Lupset, and Richard Dawson, of York. These men pursued the case at their own expense, badgering the Secretary of State, and ensuring that Griffiths was tried for murder in the Assize Court in his own Castle yard. The gaoler was able to influence several prisoners and assistants to testify on his behalf, and was acquitted, but Petyt got a sort of posthumous revenge. In a kind of rough justice, Griffiths, who had invested heavily in speculative building, became a debtor himself and died in his own gaol in 1751.
The Petyt-Griffiths case highlights the gulf between the handsome classical architecture admired by the citizens of eighteenth-century York and the almost medieval conditions within the prison walls.”
Further information about the essay can be obtained from:
Dr Philip Woodfine in the University’s History department on
Tel: 01484 472466
e-mail: p.l.woodfine@hud.ac.uk
Introduction : Find out more about Lewis’s essay
Huddersfield Reader in History Dr Philip Woodfine