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Georgian prisons were not expected to reform criminals but were simply holding pens. Newgate was the most notorious. Unbelievably crowded and never cleaned, many prisoners died before they could be tried. The Old Bailey court was originally built with only three walls. The proceedings were carried on under the roof while the prisoners were held outside so they didn't infect everyone else with the typhus that was rife in the gaols.
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But prison life was not completely cut off from the world. The warders made good money letting visitors in and even running alehouses within the gaol. Prostitutes could ply their trade from prison. Men and women shared cells, and often carried on buying and selling from inside. In the early 18th century, prisoners even kept farm animals with them – though pigs were banned from Newgate after 1714.
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As the century wore on, though, the courts became less inclined to impose sentences whose severity bore no relation to that of the crimes, and they increasingly found ways of avoiding it. If convicts could afford it, they could buy their way out of a severe punishment, which might be commuted from a death sentence to transportation to North America or, later, Australia.
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