THE BACK-GRATE, EXETER, 1831.

Mr. H. Lloyd Parry in his book The History of the Exeter Guildlhall, (published in Exeter by James Townsend, 1936)  describes the Back Grate of the Guildhall at just this time:   "Complaints had been frequent that the cells in the Back Grate were damp and cold, and there appears to have been leakage from the large water cistern above the cells.  To such a complaint made in 1829 the Mayor replied that a place of punishment should not be made too comfortable, cooling was desirable, which elicited the the retort that the cells were used asa place of detention for prisoners till found guilty and not as a place for punishment."

Matters were not put right until in 1838 when there was an inquest on a prisoner who had died from illness aggravated by the Back Grate and the jury denounced the place as being unfit for humans.

Nevertheless, The ExeterFlying Post , 16th July, 1831, reported how the ailing widow of a  fallen soldier,  these day he would no doubt have been a war-hero', had made her way back from the isle of France (Mauritius) with her two children and, after being  kicked out of Bodmin,  had ended up  in the Back Grate, presumably with her children, for the offense of being a 'vagrant',  for which read 'sick and poor'.  

" A family of Scotch paupers consisting of a mother and two children, were brought before his worship, from the back-grate, having commited an act of vagrancy.

"The mother evidently appeared to be suffering acutely from disease; she stated that her husband had been a soldier of the 29th and had died in the isle of  France, whither she had been with him, but had returned at his death, and settled in Bodmin, maintaining herself by making caps and bonnets.  But, falling sick, and likely to bercome chargeable, she had been sent on from Bodmin to the next town in a cart, and so on up the road which had given her a cold in the bones, so that she felt it impossible to proceed any further.

"She had applied to the Mendicity Society of Exeter, but they refused to do anything for her; she then went to the Mayor who sent her to some individual, who had put her in the back-grate all night.

"The Court immediately directed the officers of the poor to relieve the unfortunate woman."

According to Mr. Lloyd Parry, the word grate, in this context, was first recorded here as early as 1493. Interestingly my OED  gives: 'grate - A barred place of confinement, a prison or cage (first recorded usage - 1774)

Somebody should tell them, Exeter was regularly recording the word thus, 281 years earlier!