All the City prisons had been burned down or made useless by the Great Fire. Newgate was hastily repaired, but Aphra was sent to Garonne House in South Lambeth. The filth and overcrowding had been bad enough before the fire. They were ten times worse now because of the lack of prisons and the great numbers of citizens whose houses and property had been destroyed. Unable to pay their debts, they, too, went to gaol.
“I lived through it, though there were times when I wished that I would die. The stench of unwashed bodies and clothes, the stink from the sick suffering from the bloody flux, the noisome odor of the open sewers, the wailing of frightened and sick children, the stealing, the screaming of the mad and the furious, the coughing and retching, the fights, the brutality, the utter lack of privacy … if you would piss or shit you must do it in a cell with a dozen others watching or laughing at you … if my mother had not borrowed money to send me food, half of which was confiscated by the guards for their own benefit… I would have wasted away until I was too weak to resist the diseases floating in the sickening air of that hellhole. Whatever sins I had sinned, before I was in gaol or after, I paid for them. ‘Twas a purgatory without flames, flames that we would have welcomed to keep us warm.”
Two of the guards offered to give her a meal a day with meat, vegetables and wine if she would have intercourse with them both at the same time.
“If my mother had not sent me enough to keep me from completely starving, I suppose I would have consented to their demands sooner or later, probably sooner. My empty belly was sucking wind, and I told myself, though I did not really believe it, that the guards were preferable to starvation. However, one of the guards, in addition to being unusually filthy, one-eyed, humpbacked, and rotten-toothed, had the French disease. I don’t know …”
“Syphilis or gonorrhea?” Frigate had said.
“Both, I think. What did it matter? Anyway, thanks to my mother, not God, I escaped them. And, eventually, Killigrew did pay me enough to discharge my debts and to live on for a while. A very short while.”
She had paused, then said, smiling, and she looked beautiful when smiling, “I lied when I said that I wanted to die when in prison. Oh, perhaps! did briefly consider the benefits of suicide. No, I have always believed passionately that life is worthwhile, and I was not one who hoisted the white flag at the first discouragement. Nor did I ever acknowledge defeat. Not until the last breath came, and then not then. Death had not defeated me any more than life had. It just retired me.
“There I was, just out of prison, thin and wan, my debts paid except for what I owed my mother and not a penny to pay her unless I went without food and lodging and cosmetics and clothes and books.”
She was nearing thirty in a time when a woman of thirty looked—usually—much older than the woman of thirty of the late 1900s. Most had lost many teeth, and their breaths stank of rotten teeth. A woman without a husband, father, brother, uncle or cousin to protect her was considered fair prey. If wronged, she could resort to a law that was far on the side of the wealthy and privileged. The judges, the lawyers, the bailiffs, the jurors, were open to bribery—very few exceptions—and were easily impressed by the rich and the titled. Women writers were not unknown, but these were not professionals. They were the daughters of country vicars who wrote in their spare time or noblewomen who wanted to get a “name” for themselves. No woman in England had tried to get her livelihood from her pen.
Aphra knew that she could write flowingly, wittily and charmingly, and she had imagination. She was well-read, and she thought that she could do as well as any man in creating novels, poems and plays. But she would start with a handicap in the literary race because she was a woman.