d traders) were also lodged, and received about 140 apprentices.
The boys, after learning tailoring, weaving, flax-dressing, &c.,
received the freedom of the City, and donations of L10 each. Many of
these boys, says Hatton, "arrived from nothing to be governors." They
wore a blue dress and white hats, and attended fires, with an engine
belonging to the hospital. The lads at last became so turbulent, that in
1785 their special costume was abandoned. "Job's Pound" was the old cant
name for Bridewell, and it is so called in "Hudibras."

The scene of the fourth plate of Hogarth's "Harlot's Progress," finished
in 1733 (George II.), is laid in Bridewell. There, in a long,
dilapidated, tiled shed, a row of female prisoners are beating hemp on
wooden blocks, while a truculent-looking warder, with an apron on, is
raising his rattan to strike a poor girl not without some remains of her
youthful beauty, who seems hardly able to lift the heavy mallet, while
the wretches around leeringly deride her fine apron, laced hood, and
figured gown. There are two degraded men among the female
hemp-beaters--one an old card-sharper in laced coat and foppish wig;
another who stands with his hands in a pillory, on which is inscribed
the admonitory legend, "Better to work than stand thus." A cocked hat
and a dilapidated hoop hang on the wall.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE DUKE'S THEATRE, FROM SETTLE'S "EMPRESS OF
MOROCCO" (_see page 195_).]

That excellent man, Howard, visiting Bridewell in 1783, gives it a bad
name, in his book on "Prisons." He describes the rooms as offensive, and
the prisoners only receiving a penny loaf a day each. The steward
received eightpence a day for each prisoner, and a hemp-dresser, paid a
salary of L20, had the profit of the culprits' labour. For bedding the
prisoners had fresh straw given them once a month. It was the only
London prison where either straw or bedding was allowed. No out-door
exercise was permitted. In the year 1782 there had been confined in
Bridewell 659 prisoners.

In 1790, Pennant describes Bridewell as still having arches and
octagonal towers of the old palace remaining, and a magnificent flight
of ancient stairs leading to the court of justice. In the next room,
where the whipping-stocks were, tradition says sentence of divorce was
pronounced against Katherine of Arragon.

"The first time," says Pennant, "I visited the place, there was not a
single male prisoner, but about twenty females.