criticism of the castle prison increased at the end of the 18th century. the facilities were felt to be inadequate and the crowds of spectators who gathered outside the prison to see inmates being taken into york for execution unseemly. attempts were made to improve the way executions were carried out from 1803 onwards: the former castle courtyard, the eye of the ridings, was used for this purpose instead, although crowds still gathered outside the bailey to watch the slow deaths of the prisoners. by 1813 the execution process had been sped up by the introduction of the "short drop" method of hanging, allowing the unusually rapid execution of fourteen luddite agitators at the castle in 1814. overcrowding in the jail was now also a problem, with up to 114 prisoners being held at any one time; occasionally, around forty prisoners awaiting trial had to be kept in the jail yard for lack of space elsewhere.