This extraordinary disgrace to the city, which arose most likely from the permission to marry prisoners, and one great secret of which was the advantage taken of it by wretched women to get rid of their debts, was maintained by a collusion between the warden of the Fleet and the disreputable clergymen he became acquainted with. "To such an extent," says Malcolm, "were the proceedings carried, that twenty and thirty couple were joined in one day, at from ten to twenty shillings each;" and "between the 19th Oct., 1704, and the 12th Feb., 1705, 2,954 marriages were celebrated (by evidence), besides others known to have been omitted. To these neither licence nor certificate of banns were required, and they concealed, by private marks, the names of those who chose to pay them for it." The neighbourhood at length complained; and the abuse was put an end to by the Marriage Act, to which it gave rise.
Ludgate and Fleet ditch figure among the scenes of the Dunciad. It is near Bridewell, on the site of the modern Bridge Street, that the venal and scurrilous heroes of that poem emulate one another, at the call of Dulness, in seeing who can plunge deepest into the mud and dirt.
"This labour past, by Bridewell all descend, (As morning prayer and flagellation end[73]), To where Fleet ditch, with disemboguing streams, Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames; The king of dykes! than whom no sluice of mud With deeper sable blots the silver flood. Here strip, my children! here at once leap in; Here prove who best can dash through thick and thin; And who the most in love of dirt excel, And dark dexterity of groping well."[74]
"Through Lud's famed gates, along the well-known Fleet, Rolls the black troop and overshades the street; Till showers of sermons, characters, essays, In circling fences whiten all the ways: So clouds replenished from some bog below, Mount in dark volumes and descend in snow."
The "well-known Fleet" is the prison just mentioned, the side of which appears to have been visible at that time in Ludgate Hill, and where it was a joke (too often founded in truth) to suppose authors incarcerated.
"Few sons of Phoebus in the courts we meet; But fifty sons of Phoebus in the Fleet,"