Elizabethan England

After being charged with a penalty, the bulk of criminals were sentenced to a prison until either released or punished. There were exactly eighteen prisons: the Tower, the Gatehouse, Fleet, Newgate, Ludgate, Poultry Counter, Wood Street Counter, Bridewell, White Lion, the King’s Bench, Marshalsea, Southwark Counter, Clink, St. Katherine’s, East Smithfield, New Prison, Lord Wentworth’s, and Finsbury. Each of the prisons in London had different levels of accommodation for its prisoners. The section of the prison that the prisoner ended up in depended not on the offense with which he was charged, but on how much money the prisoner was willing or able to give to various people in the prison administration. However, prisoners had to pay more money if they wanted their own cell, meat and wine at every meal. Prisoners lived comfortably in this manner as long as they were able to pay for it. When they could no longer afford to live at this level of the prison, they had to move to one of the lesser but relatively comfortable areas, and finally to the worst area of the prison, once they could no longer afford to live in moderate comfort. Although each of the prisons had a lowest level, where the poor prisoners were cramped together into a small space and often died of starvation and cold, or from the lack of exercise and poor sanitation, most did not reach this level. There was no set limit for how long a person stayed in prison. Thus the length of a prison sentence varied from prisoner to prisoner. Debtors were not able to leave prison until they settled with their creditors. Some of those who were to be executed were able to avoid their punishment by becoming hangmen and some even buy their way out of execution with two thousand pounds.