chapter xiii

, volume II):

"'Oh!' replied Mr. Pickwick, looking down a dark and filthy staircase which appeared to lead to a range of damp and gloomy stone vaults beneath the ground, 'And these, I suppose, are the little cellars where the prisoners keep their small quantities of coals? Unpleasant places to have to go down to, but very convenient, I daresay.' 'Yes, I shouldn't wonder if they was convenient,' replied Mr. Roker, 'seeing that a few people live there pretty snug. That's the Fair, that is!' 'My friend,' said Mr. Pickwick, 'you don't really mean to say that human beings live down these wretched dungeons?' 'Don't?' replied Mr. Roker, with indignant astonishment; 'why shouldn't I?' 'Live down there?' exclaimed Mr. Pickwick. 'Live down there? Yes, and die down there, too, wery often.'"

Nominally, each prisoner in the Fleet on the Warden Side was entitled to a room at the charge of 1s. 3d. a week. Actually, however, he never got one on any floor above the level of Bartholomew Fair. Each room was made to quarter from two to four tenants in the space designed for one, so that it, at full seasons, actually produced at least a crown a week rental. This system, which was excused on the plea of overcrowding of the jail by commitments of the courts, was called "chummage," and the system produced another curious practice of prison life. If one or more prisoners occupied a room and another was "chummed" on them, they could buy him off by paying him a few shillings a week, and so keep the room to themselves. He, out of the money they paid him, paid in his turn for inferior quarters elsewhere. Thus, a prisoner who was willing to pay full rent for a room to the warden, and buy off anyone who might be chummed upon him, could have a dirty box of a chamber to himself, at the average cost of a first-class parlor and bedroom outside the walls. Prisoners who had been a certain number of years in the jail had a prescriptive right to a room to themselves, and most of these rented their apartments at good rates to new comers, and took beds for themselves in the common lodgings.

When Mr. Pickwick entered the Fleet as a resident (vide volume II,

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