Lascars commonly suffered from poverty in Britain. In 1782, East India Company records describe lascars coming to their Leadenhall Street offices ‘reduced to great distress and applying to us for relief’. In 1785 a letter writer in "The Public Advertiser" wrote of "miserable objects, lascars, that I see shivering and starving in the streets". During the 1780s it was not uncommon to see lascars starving on the streets of London. The East India Company responded to criticism of the lascars' treatment by making available lodgings for them, but no checks were kept on the boarding houses and barracks they provided. The lascars were made to live in cramped, dreadful conditions which resulted in the deaths of many each year, with reports of lascars being locked in cupboards and whipped for misbehaviour by landlords. Their poor treatment was reported on by the Society for the Protection of Asiatic Sailors (which was founded in 1814).