They were confined on a
ground floor, and employed on the beating of hemp. When the door was
opened by the keeper, they ran towards it like so many hounds in kennel,
and presented a most moving sight. About twenty young creatures, the
eldest not exceeding sixteen, many of them with angelic faces divested
of every angelic expression, featured with impudence, impenitency, and
profligacy, and clothed in the silken tatters of squalid finery. A
magisterial--a national--opprobrium! What a disadvantageous contrast to
the _Spinhaus_, in Amsterdam, where the confined sit under the eye of a
matron, spinning or sewing, in plain and neat dresses provided by the
public! No traces of their former lives appear in their countenances; a
thorough reformation seems to have been effected, equally to the
emolument and the honour of the republic. This is also the place of
confinement for disobedient and idle apprentices. They are kept
separate, in airy cells, and have an allotted task to be performed in a
certain time. They, the men and women, are employed in beating hemp,
picking oakum, and packing of goods, and are said to earn their
maintenance."

A writer in "Knight's London" (1843) gives a very bad account of
Bridewell. "Bridewell, another place of confinement in the City of
London, is under the jurisdiction of the governors of Bridewell and
Bethlehem Hospitals, but it is supported out of the funds of the
hospital. The entrance is in Bridge Street, Blackfriars. The prisoners
confined here are persons summarily convicted by the Lord Mayor and
aldermen, and are, for the most part, petty pilferers, misdemeanants,
vagrants, and refractory apprentices, sentenced to solitary confinement;
which term need not terrify the said refractory offenders, for the
persons condemned to solitude," says the writer, "can with ease keep up
a conversation with each other from morning to night. The total number
of persons confined here in 1842 was 1,324, of whom 233 were under
seventeen, and 466 were known or reputed thieves. In 1818 no employment
was furnished to the prisoners. The men sauntered about from hour to
hour in those chambers where the worn blocks still stood and exhibited
the marks of the toil of those who are represented in Hogarth's prints.

"The treadmill has been now introduced, and more than five-sixths of the
prisoners are sentenced to hard labour, the 'mill' being employed in
grinding corn for Bridewell, Bethlehem, and the House of Occupat