[1] The compter was used to house prisoners such as vagrants, debtors and religious dissenters, as well as criminals convicted of misdemeanours including homosexuality, prostitution and drunkenness.

For example, on 1 August 1772, The Craftsman reported that "a well dressed man was detected, near Lombard-street, in an unnatural crime, and immediately committed to the Poultry Compter.

[4] Another contemporary account said: the mixture of scents that arose from mundungus, tobacco, foul feet, dirty shirts, stinking breaths, and uncleanly carcases, poisoned our nostrils far worse than a Southwark ditch, a tanner's yard, or a tallow-chandler's melting-room.

The Poultry Compter was linked to the early struggles to abolish slavery and end British involvement in the slave trade.

Sharp's connection with the Poultry began in 1765 when he obtained the freedom of Jonathan Strong, a young black slave from Barbados.