Debtors

Saturday, 21 October 1727   We are informed that the poor insolvent debtors in Newgate on Wednesday 7-night last in celebrating the day of their Majesties Coronation, lighted an hundred candles in one window of the said Jail, with which Mr. Allen the Prison-Keeper was so well pleas’d that he gave them a piece of money to drink their Majesties Healths, which they all did upon their knees bare headed, no man being suffered to have either wig or cap on at the drinking of the said Healths: No such observation hath been in that jail since the Restoration of King Charles the Second. (Weekly Journal, or the British Gazetteer)

2 November 1728   Two hundred and eighty six poor insolvent debtors, in Newgate, Ludgate, and the Compters, have been discharg’d with the thousand pounds which his Majesty was graciously pleas’d to vest in the disposal of the late Ld. Mayor and Sheriffs for that purpose. (The Flying-Post)