What were conditions in the prisons like?
The Prison hulks The hulks were old sailing ships at south coast harbours or on the Thames at Woolwich. They were originally used as holding prisons for people waiting to be transported. The rise in crime at the end of the French Wars caused a shortage of prisons, and so the hulks were more and more used to house ordinary prisoners. At one point, over two thirds of all prisoners were on the hulks. Conditions in them were terrible. During outbreaks of disease such as cholera, large numbers of prisoners died because of the insanitary conditions on board and because water taken from the polluted Thames was used for all purposes. Prisoners were chained to their bunks at night to prevent them from slipping ashore. During the day most of them worked ashore, usually on hard labour. The last of the hulks was burnt in 1857, but they had been less and less used in the ten years before then. This, along with the end of transportation, caused problems in some prisons. For example, the Bedford auth
