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English Gaols a Century Ago. often necessitated to take dishonest and un lawful methods to enable themselves to pay them." In the same way, as to gaol deliveries, Lord Coke declared that it was a commission instituted by the law of the land, ne homines din detineantur in prisona, but that they might receive plenam ct celerem justitiam. He adds, that gaols ought to be delivered

thrice a year, or oftener, if need be, 4 Co. Inst. 168. He holds up to scorn the Abbot of St. Albans, who, having had the grant of a gaol and gaol delivery, was adjudged to have forfeited his franchise by an unreasonable de lay in making de livery of his gaol, 3 Co. Inst. 43. This loftiness of sentiment was of little use, however, and of but little practical advan tage to prisoners, who, after the law had discharged them, were still detained for fees SIR THOMAS which they could not pay. The inhuman use of chains and fetters as a means of extortion had attracted the at tention of the House of Commons as early as 1728, when inquiring into the condition of the Fleet and Marshalsea prisons, but the practice continued to exist under the pre tence that as gaolers were answerable for their prisoners, they ought to be allowed the use of proper means to secure them. Bracton (1. 3, fol. 105a) had said: Carcer ad

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continendos homines, non ad puniendos haberi debet: prisons are designed only for the custody of prisoners, not for their punish ment, unless as a part of their sentence. Fleta had declared : Custodes gaolorum poenam sibi eommissis non angeant, nee cos torqueant, vel redimant, sed omni saevitia remota pietateqne adhibita judicia debite exequantur. Lord Coke had said : " Shackles about the feet ought not to be, but for fear of es cape," and again, the same oracle of the Common Law declared: "Where the law requireth that the prisoner should be kept in salva ct arcta custodia, yet that must be without pain or torment to the prisoner, which chains and fetters undoubtedly are." And, when com menting on the statute of West minster, 2, Cap. 11, by which the gaoler was per mitted in a par ticular case to put PENGELLY irons on his pris oner, he stoutly declared : " by the Com mon Law it might not be done." Yet notwithstanding this great array of adverse authority, the gaolers openly and notoriously inflicted upon prisoners awaiting trial torments more severe than the law in flicted upon convicted felons. This method of proceeding Lord Coke compared to that of Rhadamanthus, "who first punisheth and then heareth; like as the Chief Captain did by St. Paul, first ordering him to be bound