ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the documents surrounding a series of petitions to the Court of Aldermen in London made in the first two decades of the eighteenth-century by the poor debtors held in the Wood Street and Poultry computers and Newgate and Ludgate prisons. It examines not only the dietary conditions revealed by these records, but also the way in which prisoners claimed their right to the basic necessities for survival, and how they perceived the food supplied. It also questions the extent to which prisoners could exercise agency and the possible conflict that existed between prisoner expectations of relief based on customary practice and their legal position at a time when only convicted felons awaiting execution or transportation had an absolute right to be fed at the public's expense. The records of London's courts for the first two decades of the eighteenth century contain recurrent complaints from poor debtor prisoners.
