In his pamphlet "The Praise and Vertue of a Jayle and Jaylers," John Taylor, the Water Poet, lists the eighteen prisons of London: the Tower, the Gatehouse, Fleet, Newgate, Ludgate, Poultry Counter, Wood Street Counter, Bridewell, White Lion, the King's Bench, Marshalsea, Southwark Counter, Clink, St. Katherines, East Smithfield, New Prison, Lord Wentworths, and Finsbury. Of these prisons, the final four listed were lesser prisons, and there are few surviving records about them or the White Lion and Southwark Counter prisons (Dobb 88). Imprisonment was not a punishment for offenders, but a detainment "until they were either brought to trial or released" (Salgado 176). Newgate was the only prison where the most notorious of criminals were sent to be held before execution.
In Elizabethan times, people were arrested for many different reasons, such as vagrancy, petty theft, slander, debt, assault, and many others. It was easy for a person to swear out a warrant against someone and have him or her arrested, as long as one had the money to pay for it (Salgado 164). Constables, like the incompetent Elbow in Measure for Measure and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing, were responsible for making arrests, although they most likely did not arrest nearly the number of people that competent constables could have. Salgado explains that for those caught in the act of committing a crime, such as a theft, "the least they could expect was to be burned through the gristle of the ear, branded or whipped till their backs ran blood" (21). After they were punished, those who were arrested were sent to the appropriate prison (i.e. religious offenders to the Clink, both religious and maritime offenders to the Marshalsea, debtors to the King's Bench or the Counters) (Dobb 89-90).
Each of the prisons in London had different levels of accommodation for its prisoners. Which section of the prison that the prisoner ended up in depended not on the offence that he was charged with, but on how much money the prisoner was willing or able to give to various people in the prison, such as gaolers, keepers, tipstaffs, and others (Salgado 168). Dobb notes that, officially, keepers were to charge fees only for the prisoners' committal, discharge, and exemption from fetters (94). However, prisoners had to pay more money if they wanted their own cell, meat and claret at every meal, and tobacco (Salgado 169). Prisoners lived comfortably in this manner as long as they were able to pay for it. When they could no longer afford to live at this level of the prison, they had to move to one of the lesser but relatively comfortable areas, and finally to the worst area of the prison, once they could no longer afford to live in moderate comfort. Although each of the prisons had a lowest level, at the Counters this section was known as the Hole, where the poor prisoners were cramped together into a small space and often died of starvation and cold (170), or from the lack of exercise and poor sanitation (Dobb 98). The little food that was available at the common Gaol at Newgate and the Hole at the Counters was provided by charities and gifts from the Lord Mayor, the Sheriffs, and the City companies (98).
There was no set limit for how long a person stayed in prison; thus the length of a prison sentence varied from prisoner to prisoner. Debtors were not able to leave prison until they settled with their creditor(s) (Dobb 92). Some of those who were to be executed were able to avoid their punishment by becoming hangmen, like Pompey in Measure for Measure (Salgado 176). Some people were able to buy their way out of execution, like Mary Frith, alias Moll Cutpurse, who apparently bribed her way out of Newgate with two thousand pounds (42-43).