Full confirmation of this extraordinary story, should any doubt it, may be found in the registers of the church in question. Amongst the burials there we read this entry: "_July, 1797, Richard Parker, Sheerness, Kent, age 33. Cause of death, execution. This was Parker, the President of the Mutinous Delegates on board the fleet at the Nore. He was hanged on board H.M.S._ Sandwich _on the 30th day of June_." [Footnote: Burial Registers of St. Mary Matfellon, Whitechapel, 1797.]
Once the gang had a man in its power, his immediate destination was either the rendezvous press-room or the tender employed as a substitute for that indispensable place of detention.
The press-room, lock-up or "shut-up house," as it was variously termed, must not be confounded with the press-room at Newgate, where persons indicted for felony, and perversely refusing to plead, were pressed beneath weights till they complied with that necessary legal formality. From that historic cell the rendezvous press-room differed widely, both in nature and in use. Here the pressed men were confined pending their dispatch to His Majesty's ships. As a matter of course the place was strongly built, heavily barred and massively bolted, being in these respects merely a commonplace replica of the average bridewell. Where it differed from the bridewell was in its walls. Theoretically these were elastic. No matter how many they held, there was always room within them for more. As late as 1806 the press-room at Bristol consisted of a cell only eight feet square, and into this confined space sixteen men were frequently packed. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 581--Admiral Berkeley, Report on Rendezvous, 14 March 1806.]
Nearly everywhere it was the same gruesome story. The sufferings of the pressed man went for nothing so long as the pressed man was kept. Provided only the bars were dependable and the bolts staunch, anything would do to "clap him up in." The town "cage" came in handy for the purpose; and when no other means of securing him could be found, he was thrust into the local prison like a common felon, often amidst surroundings unspeakably awful.
According to the elder Wesley, no "seat of woe" on this side of the Bottomless Pit outrivalled Newgate except one. [Footnote: London Chronicle, 6 Jan. 1761.] The exception was Bristol jail. A filthy, evil-smelling hole, crowded with distempered prisoners without medical care, it was deservedly held in such dread as to "make all seamen fly the river" for fear of being pressed and committed to it. For when the eight-foot cell at the rendezvous would hold no more, Bristol pressed men were turned in here--to come out, if they survived the pestilential atmosphere of the place, either fever-stricken or pitiful, vermin-covered objects from whom even the hardened gangsman shrank with fear and loathing. [Footnote: _Admiralty Records_ 1. 1490--Capt. Brown, 4 Aug. 1759.] Putting humane considerations entirely aside, it is well-nigh inconceivable that so costly an asset as the pressed man should ever have been exposed to such sanitary risks. The explanation doubtless lies in the enormous amount of pressing that was done. The number of men taken was in the aggregate so great that a life more or less was hardly worth considering.