Recollections of a Policeman

  Part XIV.

  THE MARTYRS OF CHANCERY.

  In Lambeth Marsh stands a building better known than honored. Thewealthy merchant knows it as the place where an unfortunate friend, whomade that ruinous speculation during the recent sugar-panic, is now adenizen; the man-about-town knows it as a spot to which several of hisfriends have been driven, at full gallop, by fleet race-horses and deardog-carts; the lawyer knows it as the "last scene of all," thecatastrophe of a large proportion of law-suits; the father knows it as abug-bear wherewith to warn his scapegrace spendthrift son; but the uncleknows it better as the place whence nephews date protestations of reformand piteous appeals, "this once," for bail. Few, indeed, are there whohas not heard of the Queen's Prison, or, as it is more briefly andemphatically termed, "The Bench!"

  Awful sound! What visions of folly and roguery, of sloth and seediness,of ruin and recklessness, are conjured up to the imagination in thesetwo words! It is the "Hades" of commerce--the "Inferno" of fortune.Within its grim walls--surmounted by a chevaux de frise, classicallytermed "Lord Ellenborough's teeth"--dwell at this moment members ofalmost every class of society. Debt--the grim incubus riding on theshoulders of his victim, like the hideous old man in the Easternfable--has here his captives safely under lock and key, and withinfifty-feet walls. The church, the army, the navy, the bar, the press,the turf, the trade of England, have each and all their representativesin this "house." Every grade, from the ruined man of fortune, to thepetty tradesman who has been undone by giving credit to others stillpoorer than himself, sends its members to this Bankrupts' Parliament.

  Nineteen-twentieths in this Royal House of Detention owe theirmisfortunes directly or indirectly to themselves; and, for them, everyfree and prosperous man has his cut-and-dry moral, or scrap of pity, orscreed of advice; but there is a proportion of prisoners--happily asmall one--within those huge brick boundaries, who have committed nocrime, broken no law, infringed no commandment. They are the victims ofa system which has been bequeathed to us from the dark days of the "StarChambers" and "Courts of High Commission"--we mean the Martyrs ofChancery.

  These unhappy persons were formerly confined in the Fleet Prison, but onthe demolition of that edifice, were transferred to the Queen's Bench.Unlike prisoners of any other denomination, they are frequently ignorantof the cause of their imprisonment, and more frequently still, areunable to obtain their liberation by any acts or concessions of theirown. There is no act of which they are permitted to take the benefit--nodoor left open for them in the Court of Bankruptcy. A Chancery prisoneris, in fact, a far more hopeless mortal than a convict sentenced totransportation; for the latter knows that at the expiration of a certainperiod, he will, in any event, be a free man. The Chancery prisoner hasno such certainty; he may, and he frequently does, waste a life-time inthe walls of a jail, whither he was sent in innocence--because,perchance, he had the ill-luck to be one of the next of kin of sometestator who made a will which no one could comprehend, or the heir ofsome intestate who made none. Any other party interested in the estatecommences a Chancery suit, which he must defend or be committed toprison for "contempt." A prison is his portion, whatever he does; for,if he answers the bill filed against him, and cannot pay the costs, heis also clapped in jail for "contempt." Thus, what in ordinary life isbut an irrepressible expression of opinion or a small discourtesy, is,"in Equity," a high crime, punishable with imprisonment--sometimesperpetual. Whoever is pronounced guilty of contempt in a Chancery sense,is taken from his family, his profession, or his trade, (perhaps hissole means of livelihood,) and consigned to a jail where he must starve,or live on a miserable pittance of three shillings and sixpence a week,charitably doled out to him from the county rate.

  Disobedience of an order of the Court of Chancery--though that order maycommand you to pay more money than you ever had, or to hand overproperty which is not yours and was never in your possession--iscontempt of court. No matter how great soever your natural reverence forthe time-honored institutions of your native land--no matter, though youregard the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain as the most wonderfulman upon earth, and his court as the purest fount of Justice, where shesits weighing out justice with a pair of Oertling's balances, you mayyet be pronounced to have been guilty of "contempt." For this there isno pardon. You are in the catalogue of the doomed, and are doomedaccordingly.

  A popular fallacy spreads a notion that no one need "go into Chancery,"unless he pleases. Nothing but an utter and happy innocence of thebitter irony of "Equity" proceedings keeps such an idea current. Menhave been imprisoned for many years, some for a life-time, on account ofChancery proceedings, of the very existence of which they were almost inignorance before they "somehow or other were found in contempt."

  See yonder slatternly old man in threadbare garments, with pinchedfeatures telling of long years of anxiety and privation, and want. Hehas a weak, starved voice, that sounds as though years of privation haveshrunk it as much as his cheeks. He always looks cold, and (God helphim) feels so too; for Liebig tells us that no quantity of clothing willrepel cold without the aid of plenty of food--and little of that passeshis lips. His eye has an unquiet, timid, half-frightened look, as if hecould not look you straight in the face for lack of energy. His step isa hurried shuffle, though he seldom leaves his room; and when he does,he stares at the racket-players as if they were beings of a differentrace from himself. No one ever sees his hands--they are plungeddesperately into his pockets, which never contain anything else. He islike a dried fruit, exhausted, shrunken, and flung aside by the wholeworld. He is a man without hope--a Chancery prisoner! He has lived in ajail for twenty-eight weary years! His history has many parallels. It isthis:--

  It was his misfortune to have an uncle, who died leaving him hisresiduary legatee. The uncle, like most men who make their own wills,forgot an essential part of it--he named no executor. Our poor friendadministered, and all parties interested received their dues--he, lastof all, taking but a small sum. It was his only fortune, and havingreceived it he looked about for an investment. There were no railways inthose days, or he might have speculated in the Diddlesex Junction. Butthere were Brazilian Mining Companies, and South Sea Fishing Companies,and various other companies, comprehensively termed "Bubble." Our friendthought these companies were not safe, and he was quite right in hissupposition. So he determined to intrust his money to no bubblespeculation; but to invest it in Spanish Bonds. After all, our poorfriend had better have tried the Brazilian Mines; for the Bonds provedworth very little more than the paper on which they were written. Hismost Catholic Majesty did not repudiate, (like certain transatlanticStates,) but buttoned up his pockets and told his creditors he had "nomoney."

  Some five years after our friend was startled by being requested to comeup to Doctors' Commons, and tell the worthy Civilians there all abouthis uncle's will--which one of the legatees, after receiving all he wasentitled to under it, and probably spending the money--suddenly took itinto his head to dispute the validity of. Meanwhile the Court ofChancery also stepped in, and ordered him (pending the ecclesiasticalsuit) to pay over into court "that little trifle" he had received. Whatcould the poor man do? His Catholic Majesty had got the money--he, thelegatee, had not a farthing of it, nor of any other money whatsoever. Hewas in contempt! An officer tapped him on the shoulder, displayed alittle piece of parchment, and he found that he was the victim of anunfortunate "attachment." He was walked to the Fleet Prison, where, andin the Queen's Prison, he has remained ever since--a period oftwenty-eight years! Yet no less a personage than a Lord Chancellor haspronounced his opinion that the will, after all, was a good and validwill--though the little family party of Doctors' Commons thoughtotherwise.

  There is another miserable-looking object yonder--greasy, dirty, andslovenly. He, too, is a Chancery prisoner. He has been so for twentyyears. Why, he has not the slightest idea. He can only tell you that hewas found out to be one of the relations of some one who had left "agood bit of money." The lawyers "put the will into C
hancery; and at lastI was ordered to do something or other, I can't recollect what, which Iwas also told I couldn't do nohow if I would. So they said I was incontempt, and they took and put me into the Fleet. It's a matter oftwenty years I have been in prison; of course I'd like to get out, butI'm told there's no way of doing it anyhow." He is an artisan, and worksat his trade in the prison, by which he gains just enough to keep himwithout coming upon the county-rate.

  In that room over the chapel is the infirmary. There was a death lately.The deceased was an old man of sixty-eight, and nearly blind; he had notbeen many years in prison, but the confinement, and the anxiety, and theseparation from his family, had preyed upon his mind and body. He washalf-starved, too; for after being used to all the comforts of life, hehad to live in jail on sixpence a-day. Yet there was one thousand poundsin the hands of the Accountant-General of the Court of Chancery, whichwas justly due to him. He was in contempt for not paying some threehundred pounds. But Death purged his contempt, and a decree wasafterwards made for paying over the one thousand pounds to his personalrepresentatives; yet himself had died, for want of a twentieth part ofit, of slow starvation!

  It must not, however, be supposed that Chancery never releases itsvictims. We must be just to the laws of "Equity." There is actually aman now in London whom they have positively let out of prison! They had,however, prolonged his agonies during seventeen years. He was committedfor contempt in not paying certain costs, as he had been ordered. Heappealed from the order; but until his appeal was heard, he had toremain in durance vile. The Court of Chancery, like all dignifiedbodies, is never in a hurry; and, therefore, from having no greatinfluence, and a very small stock of money to forward his interest, thepoor man could only get his cause finally heard and decided on inDecember, 1849--seventeen years from the date of his imprisonment. And,after all, the Court decided that the original order was wrong; so thathe had been committed for seventeen years _by mistake_!

  How familiar to him must have been the face of that poor, tottering man,creeping along to rest on the bench under the wall yonder. He is veryold, but not so old as he looks. He is a poor prisoner, and anothervictim to Chancery. He has long ago forgotten, if he ever knew, theparticulars of his own case, or the order which sent him to a jail. Hecan tell you more of the history of this gloomy place and its defunctbrother, the Fleet, than any other man. He will relate you stories ofthe "palmy days" of the Fleet, when great and renowned men werefrequently its denizens; when soldiers and sailors, authors and actors,whose names even then filled England with their renown, were prisonerswithin its walls; when whistling shops flourished and turnkeys weresmugglers; when lodgings in the prison were dearer than rooms at thewest-end of the town; and when a young man was not considered to havefinished his education until he had spent a month or two in the Bench orthe Fleet. He knows nothing of the world outside--it is dead to him.Relations and friends have long ceased to think of him, or perhaps evento know of his existence. His thoughts range not beyond the high wallswhich surround him, and probably if he had but a little better supply offood and clothing, he might almost be considered a happy man. But it isthe happiness of apathy, not of the intelligence and the affections--thepainless condition of a trance, rather than the joyous feeling which hashope for its bright-eyed minister. What has _he_ to do with hope? Hehas been thirty-eight years a Chancery prisoner. He is another out oftwenty-four, still prisoners here, more than half of whom have beenprisoners for above ten years, and not one of whom has any hope ofrelease! A few have done something fraudulent in "contempt" of all lawand equity; but is not even _their_ punishment greater than their crime?

  Let us turn away. Surely we have seen enough, though many other sadtales may be told, rivaling the horrors of Speilberg and FrenchLettres-de-cachet.