THE
CHRONICLES OF NEWGATE

BY
ARTHUR GRIFFITHS
MAJOR LATE 63RD REGIMENT; ONE OF H. M. INSPECTORS OF PRISONS
AUTHOR OF “THE MEMORIALS OF MILLBANK,” ETC., ETC.

Bungay:
CLAY AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.

PREFACE.

WHEN I undertook the work of which these two volumes are the result, I scarcely realized the extent of the task before me. Now at the termination of my labours, which have extended over a period of nearly five years, I cannot give my work to the public without regret that it has not been accompanied by deeper study and more widespread research. But I have, in truth, been almost overwhelmed by the mass of materials at hand. These always increased enormously with every digression, and I found at length that I must be satisfied with what I had instead of seeking for more. Even with this restriction I have often been compelled to reject much, to epitomize and perhaps unduly abbreviate what I have used. A really copious and detailed history of Newgate would be a most voluminous affair. This well-known prison, which has stood for centuries upon the same site, is in itself an epitome of the criminal history of England; to have traced its chronicles down from epoch to epoch, closely and minutely, would have been wearisome to the reader. There is a family resemblance in crimes in all ages; when, therefore, the more prominent cases have been selected for description, a general impression will have been conveyed of the whole. I have followed this principle throughout, and have endeavoured to present a general, but not too detailed, picture of the various criminal periods through which Newgate has passed.

But the claims of Newgate on the public interest are not limited to the melancholy histories of those whom it has held in durance. Newgate, as the annexe of the Old Bailey, or great criminal law court of this city, has ever been closely connected with the administration of justice in this country. In its records are to be read the variations of our Statute Book. We may trace at Newgate the gradual amelioration of the penal code, from the days of its pitiless ferocity, to the time when, thanks to the incessant protests of humanitarian and philanthropist, a milder system of punishment became the rule. All this has found more than a passing mention in my pages. Again, Newgate, the city jail, the chief prison of the chief town in the kingdom, might have been expected to lead the van in prison reform; that it remained constantly, from the first and almost to the last, one of the worst-kept prisons in the kingdom, reflects but little credit upon those responsible for its management. The fact, however, that crying evils were constantly present in the great jail, brings Newgate at once into close connection with the whole subject of prison reform. To represent Newgate as it existed even before Howard commenced his crusade, and long afterwards, has naturally, therefore, fallen within the scope of my work. Nor have I confined myself strictly to this prison, but I have endeavoured to trace the slow progress of improvement throughout the whole country from first to last.

I cannot conclude these brief remarks without adding a few words of thanks to those who have assisted me in my undertaking. I have received much valuable information from Sidney Smith, Esq., the last Governor of Newgate; from Mr. Mapperson, its last chief warder; and from many other officials of the prison. But most of all am I indebted to my friend, William Linton, Esq., formerly Governor of Petworth and Nottingham prisons, who has long rendered me the most cordial assistance and co-operation. I am also very grateful to my friend, Colonel Goff, for many of the original illustrations which embellish the book.

November, 1883.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
VOL. I.

CHRONICLES OF NEWGATE.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.[1]

Brief survey of Newgate—The first gaol—Its antiquity—Its inmates and general condition—Whittington’s prison—Rebuilt after the Fire—Misgovernment, neglect, and injustice—Capital convicts and executions—First dawn of reform—A new Newgate built by Dance—State of interior continues deplorable—Mrs. Fry—The first inspectors of prisons—Amelioration long insisted upon introduced at last—Newgate closed in 1880.

IN antiquity and varied interest Newgate prison yields to no place of durance in the world. A gaol has stood on this same site for almost a thousand years. The first prison was nearly as old as the Tower of London, and much older than the Bastille. Hundreds of thousands of “felons and trespassers” have from first to last been incarcerated within. To many it must have been an abode of sorrow, suffering, and unspeakable woe, a kind of terrestrial inferno, to enter which was to abandon every hope. Imprisonment was often lightly and capriciously inflicted in days before our liberties were fully won, and innumerable victims of tyranny and oppression have been lodged in Newgate. Political troubles also sent their quota. The gaol was the halfway-house to the scaffold or the gallows for turbulent or short-sighted persons who espoused the losing side; it was the starting-place for that painful pilgrimage to the pillory or whipping-post which was too frequently the punishment for rashly uttered libels and philippics against constituted power. Newgate, again, was on the high road to Smithfield; in times of intolerance and fierce religious dissensions numbers of devoted martyrs went thence to suffer for conscience’ sake at the stake. For centuries a large section of the permanent population of Newgate, as of all gaols, consisted of offenders against commercial laws. While fraudulent bankrupts were hanged, others more unfortunate than criminal were clapped into gaol to linger out their lives without the chance of earning the funds by which alone freedom could be recovered. Debtors of all degrees were condemned to languish for years in prison, often for the most paltry sums. The perfectly innocent were also detained. Gaol deliveries were rare, and the boon of arraignment and fair trial was strangely and unjustly withheld, while even those acquitted in open court were often haled back to prison because they were unable to discharge the gaoler’s illegal fees. The condition of the prisoners in Newgate was long most deplorable. They were but scantily supplied with the commonest necessaries of life. Light scarcely penetrated their dark and loathsome dungeons; no breath of fresh air sweetened the fetid atmosphere they breathed; that they enjoyed the luxury of water was due to the munificence of a Lord Mayor. Their daily subsistence was most precarious. Food, clothing, fuel were doled out in limited quantities as charitable gifts; occasionally prosperous citizens bequeathed small legacies to be expended in the same articles of supply. These bare prison allowances were further eked out by the chance seizures in the markets; by bread forfeited as inferior or of light weight, and meat declared unfit to be publicly sold. All classes and categories of prisoners were herded indiscriminately together: men and women, tried and untried, upright but misguided zealots with hardened habitual offenders. The only principle of classification was a prisoner’s ability or otherwise to pay certain fees; money could purchase the squalid comfort of the master’s side, but no immunity from the baleful companionship of felons equally well furnished with funds and no less anxious to escape the awful horror of the common side of the gaol. The weight of the chains, again, which, till quite recently, innocent and guilty alike wore, depended upon the price a prisoner could pay for “easement of irons,” and it was a common practice to overload a new-comer with enormous fetters and so terrify him into lavish disbursement. The gaol at all times was so hideously overcrowded that plague and pestilence perpetually ravaged it, and the deadly infection often spread into the neighbouring courts of law.

The foregoing is an imperfect but by no means overcoloured picture of Newgate as it existed for hundreds of years, from the twelfth century, indeed, to the nineteenth. The description is supported by historical records, somewhat meagre at first, perhaps, but becoming more and more ample and better substantiated as the period grows less remote. We have but scant information as to the first gate-house gaol. Being part and parcel of the city fortifications, it was intended mainly for defence, and the prison accommodation which the fate afforded with its dungeons beneath, and garrets above, must have been of the most limited description. More pains were no doubt taken to keep the exterior strong and safe against attack, than to render the interior habitable, and we may conclude that the moneys willed by Whittington for the re-edification of Newgate were principally expended on the restoration and improvements of the prison. “Whit’s palace,” as rebuilt by Whittington’s executors, lasted for a couple of centuries, and was throughout that period the principal gaol for the metropolis. Reference is constantly made to it in the history of the times. It was the natural receptacle for rogues, roysterers, and masterless men. It is described as a hot-bed of vice, a nursery of crime. Drunkenness, gaming, profligacy of the vilest sort, went forward in the prison without let or hindrance. Contemporary petitions, preserved in the State papers, penned by inmates of Newgate pining for liberty, call their prison-house a foul and noisome den. The gaoler for the time being was certain to be a brutal partisan of the party in power, especially bitter to religious or political opponents who fell into his hands. But too frequently also he was a rapacious, extortionate, over-reaching despot, whose first and only thought was to turn the prisoners into profit, and make all the money he could out of those whom the law put completely in his power.

With occasional, but not always sufficient, repairs, but without structural alterations, Whittington’s Newgate continued to serve down to the seventeenth century. About 1629 it was in a state of utter ruin, and such extensive works were undertaken to re-edify it that the security of the gaol was said to be endangered, and it was thought better to pardon most of the prisoners before they set themselves free. Lupton, in his ‘London Carbonadoed,’ speaks of Newgate as “new-fronted and new-faced” in 1638. Its accommodations must have been sorely tried in the troublous years which followed. It seems to have been in the time of the Commonwealth when “our churches were made into prisons,” and demands for space had greatly multiplied, that Newgate was increased by the addition of the buildings belonging to the Phœnix Inn in Newgate Street. The great fire of 1666 gutted, if not completely destroyed, Newgate, and its reconstruction became imperative. Some say Wren was the architect of the new prison, but the fact is not fully substantiated. Authentic and detailed information has, however, been preserved concerning it; it is figured in a familiar woodcut which may be seen in every modern history of London, while a full description of the interior, both plan and appropriation, has been left by an anonymous writer, who was himself an inmate of the gaol[2]. The prison was still subordinated to the gate, which was an ornate structure, with great architectural pretensions. But as a writer in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ well put it about a century ago, “The sumptuousness of the outside but aggravated the misery of the wretches within.” Some effort was made to classify, and the Newgate of that day contained five principal divisions or sides: there was the master’s side, for debtors and felons respectively; the common side, for those same two classes of prisoners; and lastly the press yard, for prisoners of note. The right to occupy the master’s side was a luxury dearly purchased, but the accommodation obtained, albeit indifferent, was palatial to that provided for the impecunious on the common side. The only inmates of the Newgate prison I am now describing who were comparatively well off, were those admitted to the press yard; a division composed of “large and spacious rooms” on all the three floors of the prison, and deemed by a legal fiction to be part of the governor’s house.

How desperate was the case of the bulk of the inmates of Newgate will be amply set forth as my narrative proceeds. A few brief facts will suffice here to give a general idea of this foul prison house. The whole place except the press yard was so dark that candles, “links or burners,” were used all day long; the air was so inconceivably disgusting, that the ventilator on the top of the prison could exercise no remedial effect. That malignant disease, the gaol fever, was chronic, and deaths from it of frequent occurrence. Doctors could be got with difficulty to attend the sick in Newgate, and it was long before any regular medical officer was appointed to the prison. Evil was in the ascendant throughout; wickedness and profligacy prospered; the weakest always went to the wall. Tyranny and oppression were widely practised: not only were the gaolers extortionate, but their subordinates, the inferior turnkeys, even the bed-makers, and the gate-keeper’s wife levied black mail on the pretence of affording relief, and with threats or actual ill-usage when payment was withheld. Certain favoured prisoners wielded recognized authority over their fellows. Unwritten but accepted customs suffered the general body to exact “garnish,” or “chummage,” from new comers, fees for the privilege of approaching the fire, and generally for immunity from persecution, the sums thus raised being forthwith expended in strong drink. The “cellarmen” were selected prisoners who could sell candles at their own prices, and got a percentage upon the liquors consumed, with other advantages. Other prisoners were employed in the distribution of food; in the riveting and removing of shackles; even in the maintenance of discipline, and when so acting were armed with a flexible weapon, “to the great terror and smart of those who dispute their authority.” Into these filthy dens, where misery stalked rampant and corruption festered, unhappy prisoners brought their families, and the population was greatly increased by numbers of innocent persons, women, and even children, to be speedily demoralized and utterly lost. Lunatics raving mad ranged up and down the wards, a terror to all they encountered. Common women were freely admitted; mock marriages were of constant occurrence, and children were frequently born within the precincts of the gaol. There was but little restriction upon the entrance of visitors. When any great personage was confined in Newgate, he held daily levees and received numbers of fashionable folk. Thus Count Konigsmark, when arrested for complicity in the murder of Mr. Thynne, “lived nobly” in the keeper’s house, and was daily visited by persons of quality. When political prisoners, Jacobite rebels, or others were incarcerated, their sympathizers and supporters came to “comfort them” by sharing their potations. Even a notorious highwayman like Maclane, according to Horace Walpole, entertained great guests, and it was the “mode” for half the world to drive to Newgate and gaze on him in the “condemned hold.”

In sharp contrast with the privations and terrible discomforts of the poorer sort was the wild revelry of these aristocratic prisoners of the press yard. They had every luxury to be bought with money, freedom alone excepted, and that was often to be compassed by bribing dishonest officials to suffer them to escape. They kept late hours, collecting in one another’s rooms to roar out seditious songs over innumerable bowls of punch. At times they exhibited much turbulence, and refused to be locked up in the separate chambers allotted to them. No attempt was made to coerce them, or oblige them to observe due decorum and submit to the discipline of the prison. Yet while they thus experienced ill-placed and unjust leniency, others far less culpable were ground down till they were “slowly murdered there by the intolerable horrors of the place.”

As a general rule the movement of offenders through Newgate was pretty rapid. The period of imprisonment for debtors might be often indefinitely prolonged, and there was the well-known case of Major Bernardi and his companions, who were detained for forty years in Newgate without trial or the chance of it. Some, too, languished awaiting transfer to the West Indian or American plantations by the contractors to whom they were legally sold. But for the bulk of the criminal prisoners there was one speedy and effectual system of removal, that of capital punishment. Executions were wholesale in those times. The code was sanguinary in the extreme. The gallows tree was always heavily laden. There was every element of callous brutality in the manner of inflicting the extreme penalty of the law. From the time of sentence to the last dread moment the convict was exhibited as a show, or held up to public contempt and execration. Heartless creatures flocked to the gaol chapel to curiously examine the aspect of condemned malefactors. Men who had but a short time to live mingled freely with their fellow-prisoners, recklessly carousing, and often making a boast that they laughed to scorn and rejected the well-meant ministrations of the ordinary.

The actual ceremony was to the last degree cold-blooded and wanting in all the solemn attributes fitting the awful scene. The doomed was carried in an open cart to Tyburn or other appointed place; the halter already encircled his neck, his coffin was at his feet, by his side the chaplain or some devoted amateur philanthropist and preacher striving earnestly to improve the occasion. For the mob it was a high day and holiday; they lined the route taken by the ghastly procession, encouraging or flouting the convict according as he happened to be a popular hero or unknown to criminal fame. In the first case they cheered him to the echo, offered him bouquets of flowers, or pressed him to drink deep from St. Giles’s Bowl; in the latter they pelted him with filth and overwhelmed him with abuse. The most scandalous scenes occurred on the gallows. The hangman often quarrelled with his victim over the garments, which the former looked upon as a lawful perquisite, and which the latter was disposed to distribute among his friends; now and again the rope broke, or the drop was insufficient, and Jack Ketch had to add his weight to the hanging body to assist strangulation. Occasionally there was a personal conflict, and the hangman was obliged to do his office by sheer force. The convicts were permitted to make dying speeches, and these orations were elaborated and discussed in Newgate weeks before the great day; while down in the yelling crowd beneath the gallows spurious versions were hawked about and rapidly sold. It was a distinct gain to the decency and good order of the metropolis when Tyburn and other distant points ceased to be the places of execution, and hangings were exclusively carried out in front of Newgate, just over the debtors’ door. But some of the worst features of the old system survived. There was still the melodramatic sermon, in the chapel hung with black, before a large congregation collected simply to stare at the convicts squeezed into one pew, who in their turn stared with mixed feelings at the coffin on the table just before their eyes. There was still the same tumultuous gathering to view the last act in tragedy, the same bloodthirsty mob swaying to and fro before the gates, the same blue-blooded spectators, George Selwyn or my Lord Tom Noddy, who breakfasted in state with the gaoler, and so got a box seat or rented window opposite at an exorbitant rate. The populace were like degenerate Romans in the amphitheatre waiting for the butchery to begin. They fought and struggled desperately for front places: people fell and were trampled to death, hoarse roars came from thousands of brazen throats, which swelled into a terrible chorus as the black figures of the performers on the gallows stood out against the sky. “Hats off!” “Down in front!” these cries echoed and re-echoed in increasing volume, and all at once abruptly came to an end—the bolt had been drawn, the drop had fallen, and the miserable wretch had gone to his long home.

The policy which had brought about the substitution of Newgate for Tyburn no doubt halted halfway, but it was enlightened, and a considerable move towards the private executions of our own times. It was dictated by the more humane principles which were gradually making head in regard to criminals and crime. Many more years were to elapse, however, before the eloquence of Romilly was to bear fruit in the softening of our sanguinary penal code. But already John Howard had commenced his labours, and his revelations were letting in a flood of light upon the black recesses of prison life. It is to the credit of the authorities of the City of London that they recognized the necessity for rebuilding Newgate on a larger and more improved plan before the publication of Howard’s reports. The great philanthropist made his first journey of inspection towards the end of 1773; in the following year he laid the information he had obtained before the House of Commons, and in 1777 published the first edition of his celebrated ‘State of Prisons.’ As early as 1755 the Common Council had condemned Newgate in no measured terms; declared it to be habitually overcrowded with “victims of public justice, under the complicated distresses of poverty, nastiness, and disease,” who had neither water, nor air, nor light in sufficient quantities; the buildings were old and ruinous, and incapable of any “improvement or tolerable repairs.” It was plainly admitted that the gaol ought to be at once pulled down. But as usual the difficulty of providing funds cropped up, and the work, though urgent, was postponed for some years. The inadequacy of the prison was so obvious, however, that the matter was presently brought before a committee of the House of Commons, and the necessity for rebuilding clearly proved. A committee of the Corporation next met in 1767 to consider ways and means, and they were fortified in their decision to rebuild by convincing evidence of the horrible condition of the existing prison. A letter addressed to the committee by Sir Stephen Jansen stigmatizes it as “an abominable sink of beastliness and corruption.” He spoke from full knowledge, having been sheriff when the prison was decimated by gaol fever. In the same year Parliamentary powers were obtained to raise money to rebuild the place, and the new Newgate was actually commenced in 1770, when Lord Mayor Beckford, father of “Vathek” Beckford, laid the first stone. Its architect was George Dance, and the prison building, which still stands to speak for itself, has been counted one of his finest works. Howard, who gives this historic prison the first place in his list, must have visited it while the new buildings were in progress. The plan did not find favour with him, but he enters into no particulars, and limits his criticisms to remarking, “that without more than ordinary care the prisoners in it will be in great danger of gaol fever.” According to modern notions the plan was no doubt faulty in the extreme. Safe custody, a leading principle in all prison construction, was compassed at the expense of most others. The prison façade is a marvel of strength and solidity, but until reappropriated in recent years its interior was a limited confined space, still darkened, and deprived of ventilation, by being parcelled out into courts, upon which looked the narrow windows of the various wards.

The erection of the “new and commodious gaol,” as it is described in an Act of the period, proceeded rapidly, but three or four years after Howard’s visit it was still uncompleted. This Act recites what had been done, referring to the valuable, extensive areas, which had been taken in for the construction of this great prison, and provides additional funds. In 1780, however, an unexpected catastrophe happened, and the new buildings were set on fire by the Lord George Gordon rioters, and so much damaged that the most comprehensive repairs were indispensable. These were executed in 1782. Many years were to elapse before any further alterations or improvements were made.

It was soon evident that Dance’s Newgate, imposing and appropriate as were its outlines and façade, by no means satisfied all needs. The progress of enlightenment was continuous, while complaints that would have been stifled or ignored previously were now occasionally heard. Yet the wretched prisoners continued to be closely packed together. Transportation had now been adopted as a secondary punishment, and numbers who escaped the halter were congregated in Newgate waiting removal beyond the seas. The population of the prison had amounted to nearly six hundred at one time in 1785. According to a presentment made by the Grand Jury in 1813, in the debtors’ side, built for one hundred, no less than three hundred and forty were lodged; in the female felons’ ward there were one hundred and twenty in space intended for only sixty. These females were destitute and in rags, without bedding, many without shoes. In later years the figures rose still higher, and it is authoritatively stated that there were as many as eight, nine, even twelve hundred souls immured within an area about three-quarters of an acre in extent. We have the evidence of trustworthy persons that grievous abuses still continued unchecked. All prisoners were still heavily ironed until large bribed had been paid to obtain relief. All manner of unfair dealing was practised towards the prisoners. The daily allowance of food was unequally divided. Bread and beef were issued in the lump, and each individual had to scramble and fight for his share. Prisoners had no bedding beyond a couple of dirty rugs. Exorbitant gaol fees were still demanded on all sides; the Governor eked out his income by what he could extort, and his subordinates took bribes wherever they could get them. It was customary to sell the place of wardsman, with its greater ease and power of oppression, to the highest bidder among the prisoners. Unlimited drinking was allowed within the walls; the prison tap, with the profits on sales of ale and spirits, was a part of the Governor’s perquisites. All this time there was unrestrained intercommunication between the prisoners; the most depraved were free to contaminate and demoralize their more innocent fellows. Newgate was then, and long continued, a school and nursery for crime. It was established beyond doubt that burglaries and robberies were frequently planned in the gaol, while forged notes and false money were often fabricated within the walls and passed out into the town.

The disclosure of these frightful evils led to a Parliamentary inquiry in 1814, and the worst facts were fully substantiated.[3] The prison was not water-tight, rain came in through the roof; broken windows were left unglazed; it was generally very dirty; the gaoler admitted that with its smoked ceilings and floors of oak, caulked with pitch, it never could look clean. The prisoners were not compelled to wash, and cleanliness was only enforced by a general threat to shut out visitors. Sometimes a more than usually filthy person was stripped, put under the pump, and forced to go naked out into the yard. The poor debtors were in terrible straits, herded together, and dependent upon the casual charities for supplies. Birch, the well-known tavern-keeper, and others, sent in broken victuals, generally the stock meat which had helped to make the turtle-soup for civic feasts. The chaplain took life very easy, and, beyond preaching to those who cared to attend chapel, ministered but little to the spiritual wants of his charge. His indifference was strongly condemned in the report of the Commons Committee. The chapel congregation was generally disorderly: prisoners yawned, and coughed, and talked enough to interrupt the service; women were in full view of the men, and many greetings, such as “How do you do, Sall?” often passed from pew to pew. No attempt was made to keep condemned convicts, male or female, separate from other prisoners; they mixed freely with the rest, saw daily any number of visitors, and had unlimited drink.

It was a little before the publication of the Committee’s Report that that noble woman, Mrs. Fry, first visited Newgate. The awful state of the female prison, as she found it, is described in her memoirs. Three years elapsed between her first visit and her second. In the interval, the report last quoted had borne some fruit. An Act had been brought in for the abolition of gaol fees; gaol committees had been appointed to visit and check abuses, and something had been done to ameliorate the condition of the neglected female outcasts. Yet the scene within was still dreadful, and permanent amelioration seemed altogether beyond hope. What Mrs. Fry quickly accomplished against tremendous difficulties, is one of the brightest facts in the whole history of philanthropy. How she persevered in spite of prediction of certain failure; how she won the co-operation of lukewarm officials; how she provided the manual labour for which these poor idle hands were eager, and presently transformed a filthy den of corruption into a clean and whitewashed workroom, in which sat rows of women, recently so desperate and degraded, stitching and sewing orderly and silent: these extraordinary results with the most unpromising materials will be found detailed in a subsequent page.[4]

There was no one, unfortunately, to undertake the same great work upon the male side. “The mismanagement of Newgate had been for years notorious,” says the Hon. H. G. Bennet, in a letter addressed to the Common Council, “yet there is no real reform. The occasional humanity of a sheriff may remedy an abuse, redress a wrong, cleanse a sewer, or whitewash a wall, but the main evils of want of food, air, clothing, bedding, classification, moral discipline remain as before.” But appeals, however eloquent, were of small avail. Time passed, and at last there was a general impetus towards prison reform. The question became cosmopolitan. Close inquiry was made into the relative value of systems of punishment at home and abroad. Millbank Penitentiary was erected at the cost of half a million, to give full scope to the experiment of reformation. Public attention was daily more and more called to prison management. Yet through it all Newgate remained almost unchanged. It was less crowded, perhaps, since having been relieved by the opening of the Giltspur Street Compter, and that was all that could be said. In 1836, when the newly-appointed Government inspectors made their first report, the internal arrangements of Newgate were as bad as ever. These inspectors were earnest men, who had made prisons and prison management a study. One was the Rev. Whitworth Russell, for many years chaplain of Millbank; the other Mr. Crawford, who had written an admirable State paper upon the prisons of the United States, the result of long personal investigation.

The report framed a strong indictment against the Corporation, who were mainly responsible. Well might the inspectors close it with an expression of poignant regret, not unmixed with indignation, at the frightful picture presented of the existing state of Newgate.[5] The charges were unanswerable, the only remedy immediate and searching reform. As a matter of fact various abuses and irregularities were put an end to the following year, but the alterations, so said the inspectors in a later report, only introduced the outward semblance of order. “The master evil, that of gaol association, and consequent contamination, remained in full activity.” Year after year the inspectors repeated their condemnatory criticisms, but were unable to effect any radical change. For quite another decade, Newgate continued a by-word with prison reformers. In 1850, Colonel, afterwards Sir Joshua Jebb, told the select committee on prison discipline, that he considered Newgate, from its defective construction, one of the worst prisons in England. Captain Williams, a prison inspector, was of the same opinion, and called Newgate quite the worst prison in his district. The fact was, limitation of area rendered it quite impossible to reconstitute Newgate and bring it up to the standard of modern prison requirements. Either great additions must be made to the site, an operation likely to be exceedingly costly, or a new building must be erected elsewhere. These points had already been discussed repeatedly and at length by gaol committees and the Court of Aldermen, and a decision finally arrived at, to erect a new prison on the Tufnell Park Estate, in the north of London. And this, now known as Holloway Prison, was opened in 1852.

Newgate, relieved of the unnatural demands upon its accommodation, was easily and rapidly reformed. It became now simply a place of detention for city prisoners, an annexe of the Old Bailey, filled and emptied before and after the sessions. Considerable sums were expended in reconstructing the interior and providing the largest possible number of separate cells for the confinement of the limited number of prisoners who now required to be accommodated. As such it continued to serve until the year 1880, when, under the principles of concentration which formed the basis of the Prison Act of 1877, it was closed. It was found the House of Detention at Clerkenwell had sufficient space to accommodate all prisoners awaiting trial at the Central Criminal Court, and that Newgate prison was not wanted except when the sessions were actually sitting. It ceased, therefore, to be used except as a temporary receptacle at such times, but it is also still the metropolitan place of execution.

CHAPTER I.
MEDIÆVAL NEWGATE.

Earliest accounts of Newgate prison—The New Gate, when built and why—Classes of prisoners incarcerated—Of high degree, as well as all categories of common criminals—Brawlers, vagabonds, and ‘roarers’ committed to Newgate; also those who sold adulterated food—Exposure in pillory and sometimes mutilation preceded imprisonment—The gradual concession of privileges to the Corporation—Lord Mayor constituted perpetual justice of the peace—Corporation obtains complete jurisdiction over Newgate—The sheriffs responsible for the good government of prisons on appointment—Counted prisoners held keys, and the cocket or seal of Newgate—Forbidden to farm the prison or sell the post of keeper—The rule in course of time contravened, and keepership became purchaseable—Conflict of authority between sheriffs and Corporation as to appointment of keeper—Condition of the prisoners in mediæval times—Dependent on charity for commonest necessaries; food, clothing, and water—A breviary bequeathed—Gaol falls into ruin and is rebuilt by Whittington’s executors in 1422—This edifice two centuries later is restored, but destroyed in the great Fire of 1666.

THE earliest authentic mention of Newgate as a gaol or prison for felons and trespassers occurs in the records of the reign of King John. In the following reign, A.D. 1218, Henry III. expressly commands the sheriffs of London to repair it, and promises to reimburse them for their outlay from his own exchequer. This shows that at that time the place was under the direct control of the king, and maintained at his charges. The prison was above the gate, or in the gate-house, as was the general practice in ancient times. Thus Ludgate was long used for the incarceration of city debtors. To the gate-house of Westminster were committed all offenders taken within that city; and the same rule obtained in the great provincial towns, as at Newcastle, Chester, Carlisle, York, and elsewhere. Concerning the gate itself, the New Gate and its antiquity, opinions somewhat differ. Maitland declares it to be “demonstrable” that Newgate was one of the four original gates of the city; “for after the fire of London in 1666,” he goes on to say, “in digging a foundation for the present Holborn bridge, the vestigia of the Roman military way called Watling Street were discovered pointing directly to this gate; and this I take to be an incontestable proof of an original gate built over the said way in this place.” Maitland in this conjecture altogether departs from the account related by Stowe. The latter gives a precise and circumstantial description of the building of Newgate, which he calls the fifth principal gate of the city. There is, however, every reason to suppose that a gate had existed previously hereabouts in the city wall, and the site of the new gate is identical with one which was long called Chamberlain’s Gate, because that official had his court in the Old Bailey hard by. According to Stowe, Newgate was erected about the time of Stephen or the first Henry under the following circumstances. After the destruction of the old cathedral church of St. Paul in 1086, Mauritius, Bishop of London, resolved to build an entirely new edifice upon the site, intending to construct a work so grand that “men judged it would never be performed, it was so wonderful to them for height.”[6] In pursuance of his great scheme the Bishop enclosed a large space of ground for cemetery and churchyard, and in doing so stopped up and obstructed the great thoroughfare from Aldgate in the east to Ludgate in the west. The traffic now was driven to choose between two long detours: one passing to the northward of the new cemetery wall, and so by Paternoster Row, Ave Maria Lane, and Bowyer Row, to Ludgate; the other, still more circuitous, by Cheape and Watling Street, thence southward through Old Change, west through Carter Lane, up Creadlam north, and finally westward again to Ludgate. These routes, as Stowe observes, were “very cumbersome and dangerous both for horse and man. For remedy whereof a new gate was made and so called, by which men and cattle, with all manner of carriages, might pass more directly (as before) from Aldgate through West Cheape to St. Paul’s on the north side, through St. Nicholas Shambles and Newgate market to Newgate, and from thence to any part westward over Holborn Bridge, or turning without the gate into Smithfield and through Iseldon (Islington) to any part north and by west.”

Of that ancient Newgate, city portal and general prison-house combined, but scant records remain. A word or two in the old chroniclers, a passing reference in the history of those troublous times, a few brief and formal entries in the city archives—these are all that have been handed down to us. But we may read between the lines and get some notion of mediæval Newgate. Foul, noisome, terrible are the epithets applied to this densely-crowded place of durance.[7] It was a dark, pestiferous den, then, and for centuries later, perpetually ravaged by deadly diseases.

Its inmates were of all categories. Prisoners of State and the most abandoned criminals were alike committed to it. Howel, quoted by Pennant, states that Newgate was used for the imprisonment of persons of rank long before the Tower was applied to that purpose. Thus Robert de Baldock, Chancellor of the realm in the reign of Edward II., to whom most of the miseries of the kingdom were imputed, was dragged to Newgate by the mob. He had been first committed to the Bishop’s prison, but was taken thence to Newgate as a place of more security; “but the unmerciful treatment he met with on the way occasioned him to die there within a few days in great torment from the blows which had been inflicted on him.” Again, Sir Thomas Percie, Lord Egremond, and other people of distinction, are recorded as inmates in 1457. But the bulk of the prisoners were of meaner condition, relegated for all manner of crimes. Some were parlous offenders. There was but little security for life or property in that old London, yet the law made constant war against the turbulent and reckless roughs. Stowe draws a lively picture of the state of the city at the close of the twelfth century. One night a brother of Earl Ferrers was slain privately in London. The king (Edward I.) on hearing this “swore that he would be avenged on the citizens.” It was then a common practice in the city for “an hundred or more in company of young and old to make nightly invasions upon the houses of the wealthy, to the intent to rob them, and if they found any man stirring in the city they would presently murder him, insomuch that when night was come no man durst adventure to walk in the streets.” Matters at length came to a crisis. A party of citizens young and wealthy, not mere rogues, attacked the “storehouse of a certain rich man,” and broke through the wall. The “good man of the house” was prepared and lay in wait for them “in a corner,” and saw that they were led by one Andrew Bucquinte, who carried a burning brand in one hand and a pot of coals in the other, which he essayed to kindle with the brand. Upon this the master, crying “Thieves!” rushed at Bucquinte and smote off his right hand. All took to flight “saving he that had lost his hand,” whom the good man in the next morning delivered to Richard de Lucy, the king’s justice. The thief turned informer, and “appeached his confederates, of whom many were taken and many were fled.” One, however, was apprehended, a citizen “of great countenance, credit, and wealth, named John Senex, or John the Old, who, when he could not acquit himself by the water dome, offered the king 500 marks for his acquittal; but the king commanded that he should be hanged, which was done, and the city became more quiet.”

Long before this, however, Edward I. had dealt very sharply with evil-doers. By the suspension of corporation government following that king’s conflict with the city authority, “all kinds of licentiousness had got leave to go forward without control.” At length the frequency of robberies and murders produced the great penal statute of the 13 Edward I. (1287). By this Act it was decreed that no stranger should wear any weapon, or be seen in the streets after the ringing of the couvre-feu bell at St. Martin’s-le-Grand; that no vintners and victuallers should keep open house after the ringing of the said bell under heavy fines and penalties; that “whereas it was customary for profligates to learn the art of fencing, who were thereby emboldened to commit the most unheard-of villanies, no such school should be kept in the city for the future upon the penalty of forty marks for every offence.” Most of the aforesaid villanies were said to be committed by foreigners who from all parts incessantly crowded to London; it was therefore ordered that no person not free of the city should be suffered to reside therein; and even many of those that were were obliged to give security for their good behaviour.[8]

The ‘Liber Albus,’ as translated by Riley, gives the penalties for brawling and breaking the peace about this date. It was ordained that any person who should draw a sword, misericorde (a dagger with a thin blade used for mercifully despatching a wounded enemy), or knife, or any arm, even though he did not strike, should pay a fine to the city of half a mark, or be imprisoned in Newgate for fifteen days. If he drew blood the fine was twenty shillings, or forty days in Newgate; in striking with the fist two shillings, or eight days’ imprisonment, and if blood was drawn forty pence, or twelve days. Moreover, the offenders were to find good sureties before release, and those on whom the offence was committed had still “recovery by process of law.”

Nor were these empty threats. The laws and ordinances against prowlers and vagabonds, or “night-walkers,” as they were officially styled, were continually enforced by the attachment of offenders. Many cases are given in the memorials of London. Thus, 4 Edw. II. A.D. 1311: Elmer de Multone was attached on indictment as a common night-walker in the ward of Chepe; “in the day,” it was charged, “he was wont to entice persons and strangers unknown to a tavern and there deceive them by using false dice.” He was furthermore indicted “in Tower ward for being a cruiser and night-walker against the peace, as also for being a common ‘rorere.’[9] Multone was committed to prison. Others met with similar treatment. John de Rokeslee was attached as being held suspected of evil and of beating men coming into the city;” “Peter le Taverner, called Holer,” the same, and for going with sword and buckler and other arms; John Blome was indicted “as a common vagabond[10] for committing batteries and other mischiefs in the ward of Aldresgate and divers other wards.” “A chaplain,” our modern curate, Richard Heryng, was attached on similar charges, but was acquitted. Not only were the “roarers” themselves indicted when taken in this act, but also those who harboured them, like John Baronu mentioned in the same document as attached “for keeping open house at night, and receiving night-walkers and players at dice.” The prohibition against fencing-masters was also rigorously enforced, as appears by the indictment of “Master Roger le Skirmisour, for keeping a fencing school for divers men, and for enticing thither the sons of respectable persons so as to waste and spend the property of their fathers and mothers upon bad practices, the result being that they themselves become bad men. Master Roger, upon proof of a jury that he was guilty of the trespasses aforesaid, was committed to Newgate.”

Incarceration in Newgate, however, was meted out promptly for other offences than those against which the last-mentioned legislation was directed. Priests guilty of loose living, Jews accused rightly or wrongly, now of infanticide, of crucifying children, now of coining and clipping, found themselves in the gaol for indefinite periods. People, again, who adulterated or sold bad food were incontinently clapped into gaol. Thus William Cokke of Hesse (or Hayes) was charged with carrying a sample of wheat in his hand in the market within Newgate, and following one William, the servant of Robert de la Launde Goldmsith, about from sack to sack, as the latter was seeking to buy wheat, telling him that such wheat as the sample could not be got for less than twenty-one pence per bushel, whereas on the same day and at the same hour the same servant could have bought the same wheat for eighteen pence. Cokke, when questioned before the Mayor, Recorder, and certain aldermen, acknowledged that he had done this to enhance the price of wheat to the prejudice of all the people. He was in consequence committed to gaol, and sentenced also to have the punishment of the pillory. The same fate overtook Alan de Lyndeseye and Thomas de Patemere, bakers, who were brought before the bench at Guildhall, and with them “bread they had made of false, putrid, and rotten materials, through which persons who bought such bread were deceived and might be killed.” The fear of imprisonment, again, was before the eyes of all who sought to interfere with the freedom of the markets. Thus it is recorded in the ordinances of the cheesemongers, that “whereas the hokesters (hucksters) and other who sell such wares by retail do come and regrate such cheese and butter before prime rung, and before that the commonalty had been served, may it be ordained that no such hokesters shall buy of any foreigner before the hour of prime on pain of imprisonment at the will of the Mayor.” Similar penalties were decreed against “regrating” fish and other comestibles for the London markets.

In 1316 Gilbert Peny was bound in the third time in default for selling bread deficient in weight. He had been twice drawn on the hurdle, and it was therefore now adjudged that he should be drawn once more, and should then forswear the trade of a baker in the city for ever. One of many similar cases is that of William Spalyng, who, for selling putrid beef at “les Stokkes,” the stocks market near Walbrook, was put upon the pillory, and the carcases were burnt beneath. Another who made shoes of unlawful material had them forfeited. Bakers who stole dough from the moulding-boards of other bakers were exposed on the pillory with the dough hung about their necks[11].

Richard le Forester, for attempting to defraud with a false garland or metal chaplet for the head, was sentenced to stand in the pillory, and afterwards to forswear the city for a year and a day. Traders convicted of having blankets vamped in foreign parts with the hair of oxen and of cows were punished, and the blankets were burnt under the pillory on Cornhill. Similarly, false gloves, braces, and pouches were burnt in the High Street of Chepe near the stone cross there. John Penrose, a taverner, convicted of selling unsound wine, was adjudged to drink a draught of the said wine, and the remainder was then poured out on his head. Alice, wife of Robert de Cranstom, was put in the thew, or pillory for women, for selling ale by short measure; and so was Margery Hore for selling putrid soles, the fish being burnt, and the cause of her punishment proclaimed. Two servants of John Naylere were placed in the stocks upon Cornhill for one hour, and their sacks burnt beside them, for selling a deficient measure of charcoal, while their master’s three horses were seized and detained by the Mayor’s sergeant until he (Naylere) came and answered for the aforesaid falsity and deceit. William Avecroft, having unsound wine, the sheriffs were ordered to pour all the wine in the street and wholly make away with it, according to the custom of the city.

The ‘Liber Albus’ contains other ordinances against brawlers and loose livers. The former, whether male or female, were taken to the thew, a form of pillory, carrying a distaff dressed with flax and preceded by minstrels. The latter, whether male, female, or clerics, were marched behind music to Newgate, and into the Tun in Cornhill.[12] Repeated offences were visited with expulsion, and the culprits were compelled to forswear the city for ever. The men on exposure had their heads and beards shaved, except a fringe on their heads two inches in breadth; women who made the penance in a hood of “rag” or striped cloth had their hair cut round about their heads. Worse cases of both sexes were shaved like “an appealer,” or false informer. The crime of riotous assembling was very sharply dealt with, as appears from the proclamation made in the King’s (Edward III.) departure for France. It was then ordained that “no one of the city, of whatsoever condition he shall be, shall go out of the city to maintain parties, such as taking leisure, or holding days of love (days of reconciliation between persons at variance), or making other congregations within the city or without in disturbance of the peace of our lord the king, or in affray of the people, and to the scandal of the city.” Any found guilty thereof were to be taken and put into the prison of Newgate, and there retained for a year and day; and if he was a freeman of the city, he lost his freedom for ever.

The city authorities appear to have been very jealous of their good name, and to have readily availed themselves of Newgate as a place of punishment for any who impugned it. A certain John de Hakford, about the middle of the fourteenth century, was charged with perjury in falsely accusing the chief men in the city of conspiracy. For this he was, presumably upon proof, remanded by the Mayor and aldermen to Newgate, there to remain until they shall be better advised as to their judgment. A little later on, Saturday the morrow of St. Nicholas (6 Dec., 1364), this judgment was delivered, to the effect that the said John shall remain in prison for one whole year and a day, and the said John within such year shall four times have the punishment of the pillory, that is to say, one day in each quarter of the year, beginning on the Saturday aforesaid, and in this manner: “The said John shall come out of Newgate without hood or girdle, barefoot and unshod, with a whetstone hung by a chain from his neck and lying on his breast, it being marked with the words ‘a false liar,’ and there shall be a pair of trumpets trumpeting before him in his way to the pillory, and there the cause of this punishment shall be solemnly proclaimed, and the said John shall remain in the pillory for three hours of the day, and from thence shall be taken back to Newgate in the same manner, there to remain until his punishment be completed in manner aforesaid.” This investiture of the whetstone was commonly used as a punishment for misstatement;[13] for it is recorded in 1371 that one Nicholas Mollere, servant of John Toppesfield, smith, had the punishment of the pillory and whetstone for “circulating lies,” amongst others that the prisoners at Newgate were to be taken to the Tower of London, and that there was to be no longer a prison at Newgate.

Again in 1383, William Berham for slandering the Mayor was adjudged to be put upon the pillory on the same day, there to stand for one hour of the day with one large whetstone hung from his neck in token of the lie he told against the Mayor, and another smaller whetstone in token of a lie told against a lesser personage. After that he was to be taken back to Newgate, and thence for the five following days

to be taken to the pillory, before noon on one day and after noon on the next, and there exposed with the whetstone as before. A few years later one Robert Stafferstone for slandering an alderman was adjudged to be imprisoned in Newgate for the next forty days, “unless he should find increased favour.” This favour he did subsequently find, and “upon his humiliation he was committed to prison until the morrow, namely, Palm Sunday, and on the same Sunday should be taken from the prison to his house, and from thence proceed between the eighth and ninth hour, before dinner, with his head uncovered, and attended by an officer of the city, carrying a lighted wax candle weighing two pounds through Walbrook Bokelersbury, and so by Conduit and Chepe to St. Lawrence Lane in the Old Jewry, and on to the chapel of the Guildhall, where he was to make offering of the candle. That done, all further imprisonment was to be remitted and forgiven.”

A sharper sentence was meted out about the same date to William Hughlot, who for a murderous assault upon an alderman was sentenced to lose his hand, and precept was given to the sheriffs of London to do execution of the judgment aforesaid. Upon this an axe was brought into court by an officer of sheriffs, and the hand of the said William was laid upon the block there to be cut off. Whereupon John Rove (the alderman aggrieved), in reverence of our lord the king, and at the request of divers lords, who entreated for the said William, begged of the Mayor and aldermen that the judgment might be remitted, which was granted accordingly. The culprit was, however, punished by imprisonment, with exposure on the pillory, wearing a whetstone, and he was also ordered to carry a lighted wax candle weighing three pounds through Chepe and Fleet Streets to St. Dunstan’s church, where he was to make offering of the same.

But, however sensitive of their good name, the Mayor and aldermen of those times seem to have been fairly upright in their administration of the law. The following case shows this. A man named Hugh De Beone, arraigned before the city coroner and sheriff for the death of his wife, stood mute, and refused to plead, so as to save his goods after sentence. For thus “refusing his law of England,” the justiciary of our lord the king for the delivery of the gaol of Newgate, committed him back to prison, “there in penance to remain until he should be dead.”[14]

The punishment inflicted, the goods thus saved were handed over to the defunct criminal’s executor as appears from the following. “Be it remembered that on Saturday next before the Feast of the Apostles Simon and Jude (28 October), in the eleventh year of King Edward, after the conquest, the third, came John Fox, citizen and vintner of London, before Gregory de Nortone, Recorder, and Thomas de Margus, chamberlain of the Guildhall of London, into the chamber of the Guildhall aforesaid, and acknowledged that he had received of Walter de Moedone and Ralph de Uptone, late sheriffs of London, the goods and chattels underwritten in the presence of John de Shirborne, coroner, and the Sheriff of London aforesaid, on the oath of Edward de Mohaut, pellifer,[15] and others.” The inventory of goods is curious, and is perhaps worth quoting at length. There were—

One mattress, value 4s.; six blankets and one serge, 13s. 6d.; one green carpet, 20s.; one torn coverlet, with shields of cendale, 4s.; one coat, and one surcoat, of worstede, 40d.; one robe perset, furred, 20s.; one robe of medly, furred, one mask, one old fur, almost consumed by moths, 6d.; one robe of scarlet, furred, 16s.; one robe of perset, 7s.; one surcoat, with a hood of ray, 2s. 6d.; one coat, with a hood of perset, 1s. 6d.; one surcoat, and one coat of ray, 6s. 1d.; one green hood of cendale, with edging, 6d.; seven linen sheets, 5s.; one table-cloth, 2s.; three table-cloths, 1s. 6d.; and a great many other articles, including “brass pots,” “aundirons,” “tonour,” “iron herce,” “savenapes,” bringing the total value to £12 18s. 4d.

Long years elapsed between the building of Newgate and the date when the city gained complete jurisdiction over the prison. King Henry III.’s orders to repair the gaol at his own charge has been mentioned already. Forty years later the same monarch pretended to be keenly concerned in the good government of Newgate. Returning from Bordeaux when his son Edward had married the King of Spain’s sister, Henry had passed through Dover and reached London on St. John’s day. The city sent to congratulate him on his safe arrival, the messengers taking with them a humble offering of one hundred pounds. The avaricious king was dissatisfied, and instead of thanking them, intimated that if they would win his thanks they must enlarge their present; whereupon they gave him “a valuable piece of plate of exquisite workmanship, which pacified him for the present.” But Henry was resolved to squeeze more out of the wealthy burgesses of London. An opportunity soon offered when a clerk convict, one John Frome, or Offrem,[16] charged with murdering a prior, and committed for safe custody to Newgate, escaped therefrom. The murdered man was a cousin of Henry’s queen, and the king, affecting to be gravely displeased at this gross failure in prison administration, summoned the mayor and sheriffs to appear before him and answer the matter. The mayor laid the fault from him to the sheriffs, forasmuch as to them belonged the keeping of all prisoners within the city. The mayor was therefore allowed to return home, but the sheriffs remained prisoners in the Tower “by the space of a month or more”; and yet they excused themselves in that the fault rested chiefly with the bishop’s officers, the latter having, at their lord’s request, sent the prisoner to Newgate, but being still themselves responsible with the bishop for his safe keeping. These excuses did not satisfy the king, who, “according to his usual justice,” says Noorthouck, “demanded of the city, as an atonement of the pretended crime, no less than the sum of three thousand marks.” The fine was not immediately forthcoming, whereupon he degraded both the sheriffs, and until the citizens paid up the enormous sum demanded, he caused the chief of them to be seized and clapped into prison.

The city was ready enough, however, to purchase substantial privileges in hard cash. Many of its early charters were thus obtained from necessitous kings. In this way the Corporation ransomed, so to speak, its ancient freedom and the right of independent government.

In 1327 a further point was gained. The support of the citizens had been freely given to Queen Isabella and her young son in the struggle against Edward II. On the accession of Edward III. a new charter, dated in the first year of his reign, was granted to the city of London. After confirming the ancient liberties, it granted many new privileges; chief among them was the concession that the Mayor of London should be one of the justices for gaol delivery of Newgate, and named in every commission for that purpose. The king’s marshal might in future hold no court within the boundary of the city, nor were citizens to be called upon to plead beyond them for anything done within the liberties. No market might be kept within seven miles of London, while the citizens were permitted to hold fairs and a court of “pye powder” therein; in other words, a court for the summary disposal of all offences committed by hawkers or pedlers, or perambulating merchants, who have les pieds poudrés, or are “dusty-footed.”[17] Other privileges were obtained from the king during his reign. A second charter granted them the bailiwick of Southwark, a village which openly harboured “felons, thieves, and other malefactors,” who committed crimes in the city and fled to Southwark for sanctuary; and a third guaranteed them against the competition of foreign merchants, who were forbidden to sell by retail in the city, to keep any house, or act as broker therein. Again, the election of the mayor was established on a more settled plan, and vested in the mayor and aldermen for the time being. Another charter conceded to the Corporation the honour of having gold and silver maces borne before the chief functionary, who about this period became first entitled to take rank as Lord Mayor. The vast wealth and importance of this great civic dignitary was to be seen in the state he kept up. The Lord Mayor even then dispensed a princely hospitality, and one eminent citizen in this reign, Henry Picard by name, had the honour of entertaining four sovereigns at his table, viz. the kings of England, France, Scotland, and Cyprus, with the Prince of Wales and many more notables. This Picard was one of the Guild of Merchant Vintners of Gascony, a Bordeaux wine merchant, in fact, and a Gascon by birth, although a naturalized subject of the English king. The Vintners gave the city several lord mayors.

Richard II. was not so well disposed towards the city. Recklessly extravagant, wasteful and profuse in his way of living, he was always in straits for cash. The money needed for his frivolous amusements and ostentatious display he wrung from the Corporation by seizing its charters, which were only redeemed by the payment of heavy fines. The sympathies of the city were therefore with Henry Bolingbroke in the struggle which followed. It was able to do him good service by warning him of a plot against his life, and Henry, now upon the throne, to show his gratitude, and “cultivate the good understanding thus commenced with the city, granted it a new charter.” The most important clause of Henry’s charter was that which entrusted the citizens, their heirs and successors, with the custody “as well of the gates of Newgate and Ludgate, as all other gates and posterns in the same city.” The same clause gave them the office of gathering the tolls and customs in Cheap, Billingsgate, and Smithfield there rightfully to be taken and accustomed;[18] “and also the tronage, that is to say, the weighing of lead, wax, pepper, allom, madder, and other like wares, within the said city for ever.” The great concession was, however, in the reign of Edward IV., whose charter was the fullest and most explicit of any previously granted. By this the mayor, recorder, and aldermen who had been Lord Mayor were constituted perpetual justices of the peace of the city; they were also appointed justices of oyer and terminer; their customs were to be accepted as established beyond controversy by the declaration of the mayor through the recorder; they were exempted from serving as jurors, and so forth, beyond the city. The borough of Southwark was once more clearly placed under the jurisdiction of the city; the citizens were entitled to the goods and chattels of traitors and felons, and the privilege of the annual Southwark Fair, with the pie powder court, was confirmed.

By this time the gate and prison must have passed under the control of the civic authorities. They had, however, already enjoyed the privilege of contributing to its charges. This appears from an entry as far back as September 1339, in the account of expenditure of Thomas de Maryus, chamberlain. The item is for “moneys delivered to William Simond, Sergeant of the Chamber, by precept of the mayor and aldermen, for making the pavement within Newgate, £7 6s. 8d.” How complete became the power and responsibility of the Corporation and its officers is to be seen in the account given in the ‘Liber Albus’ of the procedure when new sheriffs were appointed.[19] They were sworn on appointment, and with them their officers, among whom were the governor of Newgate and his clerk. After dinner on the same day of appointment the old and new sheriffs repaired to Newgate, where the new officials took over all the prisoners “by indenture” made between them and the old.[20] They were also bound to “place one safeguard there at their own peril,” and were forbidden to “let the gaol to fenn or farm.” Other restrictions were placed upon them. It was the sheriffs’ duty also, upon the vigil of St. Michael, on vacating their office, to resign into the hands of the mayor for the time being the keys of Newgate, the Cocket or Seal of Newgate, and all other things pertaining unto the said sheriffwick.[21] All the civic authorities, mayor, sheriffs, aldermen, and their servants, including the gaoler of Newgate, were forbidden to brew for sale, keep an oven, or let carts for hire; “nor shall they be regrators of provisions, or hucksters of ale, or in partnership with such.” Penalties were attached to the breach of these regulations. It was laid down that any who took the oath and afterwards contravened it, or any who would not agree to abide by the ordinance, should be forthwith “ousted from his office for ever.” It was also incumbent upon the sheriffs to put “a man sufficient, and of good repute, to keep the gaol of Newgate in due manner, without taking anything of him for such keeping thereof, by covenant made in private or openly.” Moreover, the gaoler so appointed swore before the Lord Mayor and aldermen that “neither he nor any of them shall take fine or extortionate charge from any prisoner by putting on or taking off his irons, or shall receive moneys extorted from such prisoners.” He was permitted to levy fourpence from each upon release, “as from ancient time has been the usage, but he shall take fees from no person at his entrance there;” indeed, he was warned that if he practised extortion he would be “ousted from his office,” and punished at the discretion of the mayor, aldermen, and common council of the city.

It will be made pretty plain, I think, in subsequent pages, that these wise and righteous regulations were both flagrantly ignored and systematically contravened. The rule against farming out the prison may have been observed, and it may not be clearly proved that the sheriffs ever took toll from the gaoler. But the spirit of the law, if not its letter, was broken by the custom which presently grew general of making the gaolership a purchaseable appointment. The buying and selling of offices, of army commissions, for instance, as we have seen practised within recent years, at one time extended also to the keeperships of gaols. It is recorded in the Calendar of State papers that one Captain Richardson agreed for his place as keeper of Newgate for £3000. A larger sum, viz. £5000, was paid by John Huggins to Lord Clarendon, who “did by his interest” obtain a grant of the office of keeper of the Fleet prison for the life of Huggins and his son. One James Whiston, in a book entitled ‘England’s Calamities Discovered, or Serious Advice to the Common Council of London,’[22] strongly remonstrates against this practice, which he stigmatizes as “bartering justice for gold.” His language is plain and forcible. “Shall the public houses built at the city charges [it appears that at that time Ludgate, Newgate, the Fleet, and the Compters were all put up to the highest bidder] be sold for private lucre?... He that sells a gaoler’s place sells the liberty, the estate, the person, nay, the very lives of the prisoners under his jurisdiction.” “Purchased cruelty,” the right to oppress the prisoners, that is to say, in order to recover the sums spent in buying the place, “is now grown so bold that if a poor man pay not extortionary fees and ruinous chamber-rent, he shall be thrown into holes and common sides to be devoured by famine, lice, and disease. I would fain know,” he asks, “by what surmise of common sense a keeper of a prison can demand a recompense or fee from a prisoner for keeping him in prison?... Can he believe that any person can deserve a recompense for opening the door of misery and destruction?... But now such is the confidence of a purchaser, that to regain his sum expended he sells his tap-house at prodigious rates, ... he farms his sheets to mere harpies, and his great key to such a piece of imperious cruelty (presumably his chief turnkey) as is the worst of mankind.” Following the same line of argument, he says “it will perhaps be thought impertinent to dispute a gaoler’s demands for admitting us into his loathsome den, when even the common hangman, no doubt encouraged by such examples, will scarce give a malefactor a cast of his office without a bribe, demands very formally his fees, forsooth, of the person to be executed, and higgles with him as nicely as if he were going to do him some mighty kindness.” Eventually an act was passed specifically forbidding the sale of such places. This statute affirms that “none shall buy, sell, let, or take to farm, the office of under-sheriff, gaoler, bailiff, under pain of £500, half to the king and half to him that shall sue.”

Before leaving the subject of the sheriffs’ jurisdiction in regard to Newgate, it may be interesting to refer to a conflict between them and the Corporation as to the right to appoint the gaoler. It is recorded in the State papers, under date March 1, 1638, that Isaac Pennington and John Wollaston were elected and sworn sheriffs for the ensuing year. They went, according to ancient custom, to Newgate, where, having received the keys and the charge of the prisoners from the former sheriffs, they substituted for the actual keeper one James Francklin, who about the 15th of the following October died. Accordingly the sheriffs appointed and settled Henry Wollaston as keeper of the gaol, who peaceably executed the duties of that place for six weeks. The rest of the story is best told in the language of the record. After that time “the Lord Mayor and aldermen, never charging Wollaston with any miscarriage, sent for him to their court at Guildhall, and demanded of him the keys of the said prison, who refusing to deliver them to any without the consent of the sheriffs, was then detained until some officers were sent from the said court, who forcibly brought the officer’s servants intrusted with the said keys and prisoners by the said Wollaston, and, without the knowledge or consent of the said sheriffs, delivered them to Richard Johnson, a young man not free of the city, clerk to the recorder, whom they (the sheriffs, from whom this protest comes) consider to be very unfit for such a trust. For redress, the sheriffs by all fair means have applied themselves divers times to the Lord Mayor and court of aldermen, who refuse to restore the said Wollaston. The sheriffs conceive that the trust and keeping of the said gaol, both by law and reason, ought to be in their disposition, and that it is inseparable, incident to, and of common right belonging to their office, they being liable to punishments for any escapes, and amerciaments for non-appearance of prisoners in Her Majesty’s courts of justice, with many other such like damages and fears.”

How the case was finally settled does not appear. But the matter was one in which the king (Charles I.) would probably claim to have a voice. The appointment might be in the gift and actually made by the Corporation, but the city authorities were often invited by the Court to put in some royal nominee, a request which might easily be interpreted into a command. Thus in April 1594, the Lords of the Council addressed the mayor, aldermen, and sheriffs, soliciting them to appoint Richard Hutchman, one of Her Majesty’s sergeants-at-arms, keeper of Newgate, vice Dios, deceased. In June the Corporation reply that they regret they cannot appoint Hutchman. The Lords’ Council now issue a peremptory order to place him in office, which was done, but the Corporation was not to be beaten. Next year a fresh representation is made to the Lords in Council, stating the reasons why the city authorities had dismissed Mr. Hutchman from his place.

Another State paper, dated 1633, gives a draft of a letter recommending one A. B. for the appointment of keeper, vacant by the “nomination of one not deemed to have been legally put in.” Some seventy years later, according to another authority, the question was definitely settled. In this (dated 1708) it is set forth that “the keeper of the prison holds that place of great trust under the queen (Anne), giving about £8000 security, and the prison is turned over to each of the new sheriffs when sworn in by delivering them a key. The place is in the gift of the Lord Mayor and aldermen.”

Let us return to Mediæval Newgate. Whatever the authority, whether royal or civic, the condition of the inmates must have been wretched in the extreme, as the few brief references to them in the various records will sufficiently prove. The place was full of horrors; the gaolers rapacious and cruel. In 1334 an official inquiry was made into the state of the gaol, and some of the atrocities practised were brought to light. Prisoners detained on minor charges were cast into deep dungeons, and there associated with the worst criminals. All were alike threatened, nay tortured, till they yielded to the keepers’ extortions, or consented to turn approvers and swear away the lives of innocent men. These poor prisoners were dependent upon the charity and good-will of the benevolent for food and raiment. As far back as 1237 it is stated that Sir John Pulteney gave four marks by the year to the relief of prisoners in Newgate. In the year 1385 William Walworth, the stalwart mayor whose name is well remembered in connection with Wat Tyler’s rebellion, gave “somewhat” with the same good object. “So have many others since,” says the record. The water supply of the prison, Stowe tells, was also a charitable gift. “Thomas Knowles, grocer, sometime Mayor of London, by license of Reynold, prior of St. Bartholomew’s in Smithfield, and also of John Wakering, master of the hospital of St. Bartholomew, and his brethren, conveyed the waste of water at the cistern near unto the common fountain and Chapel of St. Nicholas (situate by the said hospital) to the gaols of Ludgate and Newgate, for the relief of the prisoners.”

In 1451, by the will of Phillip Malpas, who had been a sheriff some twelve years previous, the sum of £125 was bequeathed to “the relief of poor prisoners.” This Malpas, it may be mentioned here, was a courageous official, ready to act promptly in defence of city rights. In 1439 a prisoner under escort from Newgate to Guildhall was rescued from the officer’s hands by five companions, after which all took sanctuary at the college of St. Martin’s-le-Grand.[23] “But Phillip Malpas and Robert Marshal, the sheriffs of London, were no sooner acquainted with the violence offered to their officer and the rescue of their prisoner, than they, at the head of a great number citizens, repaired to the said college, and forcibly took from thence the criminal and his rescuers, whom they carried in fetters to the Compter, and thence, chained by the necks, to Newgate.”

For food the prisoners were dependent upon alms or upon articles declared forfeit by the law. Thus some bread of light weight, seized on the 10th August 1298, was ordered to be given to the prisoners in Newgate. Again, the halfpenny loaf of light bread of Agnes Foting of Stratford was found wanting 7 shillings (or 4⅕ oz.) in weight; therefore it was adjudged that her bread should be forfeited, and it also was sent unto the gaol. All food sold contrary to the statutes of the various guilds was similarly forfeited to the prisoners. The practice of giving food was continued through succeeding years, and to a very recent date. A long list of charitable donations and bequests might be made out, bestowed either in money or in kind. A customary present was a number of stones of beef. Some gave penny loaves, some oatmeal, some coals. Without this benevolence it would have gone hard with the poor population of the Gatehouse gaol. It was not strange that the prison should be wasted by epidemics, as when in 1414 “the gaoler died and prisoners to the number of sixty-four;” or that the inmates should at times exhibit a desperate turbulence, taking up arms and giving constituted authority much trouble to subdue them, as in 1457 when they broke out of their several wards in Newgate, and got upon the leads, where they defended themselves with great obstinacy against the sheriffs and their officers, insomuch that they, the sheriffs, were obliged to call the citizens to their assistance, whereby the prisoners were soon reduced to their former state.

The evil effects of incarceration in Newgate may be further judged by the fate which overtook the city debtors who were temporarily removed thither from Ludgate. An effort had been made in 1419 to put pressure upon them as a class. An ordinance was issued by Henry V. closing the Ludgate prison for debtors. It had been found that “many false men of bad disposition and purpose have been more willing to take up their abode there, so as to waste and spend their goods upon the ease and license that there is within, than pay their debts.” Wherefore it was ordained that “all prisoners therein shall be removed and safely carried to Newgate, there to remain each in such keeping as his own deserts shall demand.” The order was, however, very speedily rescinded. A later ordinance in the same year sets forth that “whereas, through the abolition and doing away with the prison of Ludgate, which was formerly ordained for the good and comfort of citizens and other reputable persons, and also by reason of the fœtid and corrupt atmosphere that is in the hateful gaol of Newgate, many persons who lately were in the said prison of Ludgate, who in the time of William Sevenoke, late mayor, for divers great offences which they had there compassed were committed to the said gaol (of Newgate), are now dead, who might have been living, it is said, if they had

remained at Ludgate abiding in peace there; and seeing that every person is sovereignly bound to support and be tender to the lives of men, the which God hath bought so dearly with His precious blood; therefore Richard Whittington, now mayor (1419), and the aldermen, on Saturday the 2nd November, have ordained and established that the gaol of Ludgate shall be a prison from henceforth to keep therein all citizens and other reputable persons whom the mayor, aldermen, sheriffs, or chamberlain of the city shall think proper to commit and send to the same, provided always that the warder shall be a good and loyal man, giving sufficient surety,” &c. Ten or twelve years later a similar exodus from Ludgate to Newgate and back again took place. “On the Tuesday next after Palm Sunday 1431, all the prisoners of Ludgate were conveyed into Newgate by Walter Chartsey and Robert Large, sheriffs of London, and on the 13th April the same sheriffs (through the false suggestion of John Kingesell, gaoler of Newgate) did fetch from thence eighteen persons, freemen, and these were led to the Counters pinioned as if they had been felons. But on the 16th June Ludgate was again appointed for freemen, prisoners for debt, and the same day the same freemen entered by ordinance of the mayor, aldermen, and commons; and by them Henry Deane, tailor, was made keeper of Ludgate.”

One other charitable bequest must be referred to here, as proving that the moral no less than the physical well-being of the prisoners was occasionally an object of solicitude. In the reign of Richard II. a prayer-book was specially bequeathed to Newgate in the following terms:—

“Be it remembered that on the 10th day of June, in the 5th year (1382), Henry Bever, parson of the church of St. Peter in Brad Street (St. Peter the Poor, Broad Street), executor of Hugh Tracy, Chaplain, came here before the mayor and aldermen and produced a certain book called a ‘Porte hors,’[24] which the same Hugh had left to the gaol of Newgate, in order that priests and clerks there imprisoned might say their service from the same, there to remain so long as it might last. And so in form aforesaid the book was delivered unto David Bertelike, keeper of the gate aforesaid, to keep it in such manner so long as he should hold that office; who was also then charged to be answerable for it. And it was to be fully allowable for the said Henry to enter the gaol aforesaid twice in the year at such times as he should please, these times being suitable times, for the purpose of seeing how the book was kept.”[25]

We are without any very precise information as to the state of the prison building throughout these dark ages. But it was before everything a gate-house, part and parcel of the city fortifications, and therefore more care and attention would be paid to its external than its internal condition. It was subject, moreover, to the violence of such disturbers of the peace as the

followers of Wat Tyler, of whom it is written that, having spoiled strangers “in most outrageous manner, entered churches, abbeys, and houses of men of law, which in semblable sort they ransacked, they also brake up the prisons of Newgate and of both the Compters, destroyed the books, and set the prisoners at liberty.” This was in 1381. Whether the gaol was immediately repaired after the rebellion was crushed does not appear; but if so, the work was only partially performed, and the process of dilapidation and decay must soon have recommenced, for in Whittington’s time it was almost in ruins. That eminent citizen and mercer, who was three times mayor, and whose charitable bequests were numerous and liberal, left moneys in his will for the purpose of rebuilding the place, and accordingly license was granted in 1422, the first year of Henry VI.’s reign, to his executors, John Coventre, Jenken Carpenter, and William Grove, “to re-edify the gaol of Newgate, which they did with his goods.” This building, such as it was, continued to serve until the commencement of the seventeenth century.

In 1629 a petition from the gaoler to the king sets forth[26] that “by reason of the great ruins of the gaol it is now in hand to be repaired.” The gaoler further states that there is great danger lest in time of repair some of the prisoners should escape, and prays directions to the Lord Mayor and Recorder to certify how many prisoners are capable of His Majesty’s mercy, and to the Attorney General to prepare pardons. This document is under-written, “Reference to Recorder to certify, and to the Attorney General to prepare, a pardon;” following which is a recommendation from Sir Heneage Finch (the first-named official) to release forty-four. Subsequently the east side of Newgate was “begun to be repaired, Sir James Campbell being mayor, and finished the year following, Sir Robert Drury, Baronet, being mayor.” The expense was borne wholly or partly by the locality, as the records show in 1632 an account of the assessment of the parish of St. Stephen Walbrook, in which “two fifteenths were to be gathered for repairing Newgate.” It is this re-edification which is referred to in Lupton’s ‘London Carbonadoed,’ 1638, who speaks of Newgate as new fronted and new faced.

I have been unable to ascertain any exact figure of this old Newgate, either in its ancient or improved aspect. The structure, such as it was, suffered so severely in the great fire of 1666 that it became necessary to rebuild it upon new and more imposing lines.

This may be described as the third edifice: that of the twelfth century being the first, and Richard Whittington’s the second. Of this third prison details are still extant, and I propose to describe it fully on a later page.[27]

CHAPTER II.
NEWGATE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

Prison records meagre—Administration of justice and state of crime—Lenity alternates with great severity—Disturbances in London—The ‘Black Waggon’—A ’prentice riot—Criminal inmates of Newgate—Masterless men—Slandering the Corporation—Robbery with violence—Debtors—Conscience prisoners—Martyrs in reign of Henry VIII.—Religious dissidents: Porter, Anne Askew—Maryan persecutions—Rogers—Bishop Hooper—Philpot—Alexander the cruel gaoler of Newgate—Underhill the hot gospeller in Newgate—Crime in Elizabeth’s reign—The training of young thieves—Elizabethan persecutions: both puritans and papists suffered—The seminary priests—Political prisoners—Condition of gaol—Oppression of the inmates and their disorderly conduct—Gaolers of that period generally tyrants—Crowder, keeper of Newgate, called to account.

THE prison records of the sixteenth century are very meagre. No elaborate system of incarceration as we understand it existed. The only idea of punishment was the infliction of physical pain. There were prisons, but these receptacles, except for debtors, were only the ante chambers of the pillory and the scaffold. The penalties inflicted were purely personal, and so to speak final; such as chastisement, degradation, or death. England had no galleys, no scheme of enforced labour at the oar, such as was known to the nations of the Mediterranean seaboard, no method of compelling perpetual toil in quarry or mine. The germ of transportation no doubt was to be found in the practice which suffered offenders who had taken sanctuary to escape punishment by voluntary exile,[28] but it was long before the plan of deporting criminals beyond seas became the rule. In Henry VIII.’s time, says Froude, “there was but one step to the gallows from the lash and the branding-iron.” Criminals did not always get their deserts, however. Although historians have gravely asserted that seventy-two thousand executions took place in this single reign, the statement will not bear examination, and has been utterly demolished by Froude.[29] As a matter of fact offenders far too often escaped scot free through the multiplication of sanctuaries, which refuges, like that of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, existed under the very walls of Newgate, the negligence of pursuers, and not seldom the stout opposition of the inculpated.[30] Benefit of clergy claimed and conceded on the most shadowy grounds was another easy and frequent means of evading the law. Some judges certainly had held that the tonsure was an indispensable proof; but all were not so strict, and “putting on the book,” in other words, the simple act of reading aloud, was deemed sufficient. So flagrant was the evasion of the law, that gaolers for a certain fee would assist accused persons to obtain a smattering of letters, whereby they might plead their “clergy” in court. It may be added that although the abuse of the privilege was presently greatly checked, it was not until the reign of William and Mary that benefit of clergy was absolutely denied to burglars, pickpockets, and other heinous offenders.

Yet there were occasional spasmodic intervals of extraordinary severity. Twenty thieves, says Sir Thomas More in his ‘Utopia,’ might then be seen hanging on a single gibbet. Special legislation was introduced to deal with special crimes. Although there was an appropriateness in the retribution which overtook him, the sentence inflicted upon the Bishop of Rochester’s cook in 1531, under a new act passed on purpose, was ferociously cruel. This man, one Richard Rose or Rouse, was convicted of having poisoned sixteen persons with porridge specially prepared to put an end to his master. The crime had been previously almost unknown in England, and special statutory powers were taken to cope with it. An act was at once passed defining the offence to be high treason, and prescribing boiling to death as the penalty. Rose was accordingly, after conviction, boiled alive in Smithfield. It may be added that this cruel statute, which may be read in extenso in Froude, was soon afterwards repealed, but not before another culprit, Margaret Davy by name, had suffered under its provisions for a similar offence.

Newgate, like all other gaols, was at times scandalously over-crowded, not only with the felons and trespassers who long languished waiting trial, but with far less guilty offenders. There were also the debtors and the conscience prisoners: the delinquents whose crime was impecuniosity or commercial failure, and the independent thinkers who stoutly maintained their right to profess forms of belief at variance with the government creed of the hour. It is only a passing glimpse that we get of the meaner sort of criminal committed to Newgate in these times. The gaol, as I have said, was but the ante-chamber to something worse. It was the starting-point for the painful promenade to the pillory. The jurors who were forsworn “for rewards or favour of parties were judged to ride from Newgate to the pillory in Cornhill with paper mitres on their heads, there to stand, and from thence again to Newgate.”[31] Again, the ringleaders of false inquests, Darby, Smith, and Simson by name, were, in the first year of Henry’s reign (1509), condemned to ride about the city with their faces to the horses’ tails, and paper on their heads, and were set on the pillory at Cornhill. After that they were brought back to Newgate, where they died for very shame.[32]

A longer story and a heavier doom was that of the ’prentice lads who upon ‘Evil May-day,’ as it was afterwards called, raised a tumult in the city against the competition of foreign workmen, who were about this time established in great numbers in the suburbs. One John Lincoln, a meddlesome city broker, was so much exercised at this foreign interference that he went about seeking a parson who would declaim against it from the pulpit. One Dr. Bell or Bele, who was to preach at the Spital Church, agreed to read from the pulpit a bill which this Lincoln had drawn up, and which set forth the wrongs suffered by native artificers and merchants. Dr. Bell followed the reading by an inflammatory sermon upon the text Pugna pro Patria, by which “many a light-headed person took courage and openly spoke against” the foreigners. As divers ill things had been done of late by these strangers, the people’s rancour was kindled most furiously against them. Conflicts took place in the streets between “the young men of the city” and the strangers, so that several of the former were committed to Newgate. Among others Stephen Studley, skinner, and Stephenson Betts. Then arose “a secret rumour that on May-day following the city would slay all the aliens.” News thereof reached Cardinal Wolsey, who summoned the Lord Mayor, and desired him to take all due precautions. It was settled by agreement between the Corporation and the cardinal that every citizen should be commanded to shut up his doors after nine at night, and keep his servants within. It so chanced that Alderman Sir John Mundy the same night, coming from his ward, found two young men playing at the bucklers, and many others looking on. The order for early closing had not indeed been fully circulated as yet. Sir John Mundy ordered the combatants to desist, and on their hesitation was for sending them to the Compter. But the apprentices rose against the alderman, crying, “’Prentices! clubs! clubs!” A crowd soon collected, the alderman took to flight, and by eleven at night there were in Cheap six or seven hundred “serving-men, watermen, courtiers, and others,” and out of St. Paul’s Churchyard came some three hundred more. The mob, growing riotous, attacked the Compter and released all prisoners confined therein for “hurting the strangers”; thence they went to Newgate and set free Studley and Betts. Gaining courage by these excesses, they ranged the streets, throwing sticks and stones, spoiling all they found. The strangers were the principal victims. The house of one Mewtas, a Picard, and those of other Frenchmen residing at the Greengate, Leadenhall, were broken open and plundered. The riot continued till three in the morning, “at which time they began to withdraw, but by the way were taken by the mayor and others, and sent to the Tower, Newgate and the Compters to the number of three hundred.”

The king took very summary measures for the punishment of the rioters. Bell the preacher was arrested and sent to the Tower. A commission of oyer and terminer was forthwith opened at the Guildhall, and the whole of the prisoners, to the number of two hundred and seventy-eight, were marched through the streets, tied with ropes, and put upon their trial. Lincoln the ringleader and other thirteen were sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered; for execution whereof ten pairs of gallows were put up in divers parts of the city: “before each of the Compters, at Newgate, St. Martin’s, Aldersgate, and Bishopgate, which gallows were set on wheels, to be removed from street to street and door to door as the prisoners were to be executed.” Lincoln suffered death, but the rest were reprieved pending the king’s pleasure. He lay at his manor of Greenwich just then, and thither the mayor, recorder, and divers aldermen repaired to beg mercy for the city. But Henry VIII. was not to be easily appeased. He still blamed the city authorities for not checking these disorders in a more determined fashion, and referred them for answer to his chancellor the cardinal. Wolsey granted them his favour for a consideration, and counselled them to again petition the king. They came to him, therefore, at his palace of Westminster, to the number of four hundred men, in their shirts, bound together with ropes, and with halters about their necks, and were at first sharply rebuked by the cardinal, who told them they deserved death. But at the earnest entreaty of the attendant lords, who were much moved by the humiliating sight, they were pardoned and dismissed. The gallows in the city were taken down, and all in durance were set free. Thus ended the “black waggon,” as the procession of citizens was called, but “not, as it is thought, without paying a considerable sum of money to the cardinal to stand their friend, for at that time he was in such power he did all with the king.”[33]

A few further extracts will serve to describe some other criminal inmates of Newgate in those times. The quotations are from the ‘Remembrancia,’ 1579-1664. Searches appear to have been regularly made for suspected persons, who when caught were committed to ward. Thus, 1519, a search was made in the house of William Solcocke in Holborne, and it was found that one Christopher Tyllesley had lain there two nights. “He has no master, and is committed to Newgate.” Again, “in the house of Christopher Arundell one Robert Bayley: has no master, and is committed to Newgate.” To Newgate were also committed any who were bold enough to malign the great Cardinal Wolsey, in the plenitude of his power, as was Adam Greene in June 1523, a prisoner in Ludgate, who repeated to the keeper what he had heard from a “bocher” (butcher), to the effect that Wolsey had told the king that all London were traitors to his Grace. Greene was warned to keep silent, but he said “he would abide by it, for he had it from a substantial man who would also abide by it.”

It was not less dangerous to let the tongue wag too freely against the city authorities. Articles are exhibited (April, 1524) against “John Sampye, tailor, for saying (1) that he had been wrongfully imprisoned in the Compter by the Mayor of London and Nicholas Partriche, alderman; (2) that they had no power to send any man to ward; (3) that many were cast away by lying in the Compter and Newgate at the command of the Corporation.” The Corporation appear also to have dealt in a very high-handed fashion with the city bakers, possibly to break down their monopoly, but a little on personal private grounds. In 1526 the bakers petition Wolsey for redress, setting forth that they have always been accustomed to “occupy the making and selling of bread for the city, and since the time of Edward II. have been used to take up wheat arriving in London at the price given them by the mayor; but within the last five years certain persons, aldermen and others, out of malice to the mystery and under colour of common weal, have procured that all the wheat coming to the city should be garnered at the Bridge House, and the bakers suffered to buy no other.... Lately the mayor and aldermen tried to compel the bakers to buy two thousand quarters of musty wheat at 12s. when sweet wheat may be bought for 7s. or 8s.” When some bakers refused the mayor sent them to Newgate for eleven days, and shut up their houses and shops, not allowing their wives or families to visit them or buy their bread.

Now and again more serious crimes are recorded. In March 1528, Stephen reports to Thomas Cromwell that between the hours of six and seven, “five thieves knocked at the door of Roderigo the Spaniard, which dwelleth next the goldsmith against your door.[34] Being asked who was there, they answered one from the Court, to speak with Roderigo. When the door was opened three of them rushed in and found the said Roderigo sitting by the fire with a poor woman dwelling next to Mrs. Wynsor. Two tarried and kept the door, and strangled the poor woman that she should not cry. They then took Roderigo’s purse, and killed him by stabbing him in the belly, but had not fled far before two of them were taken and brought to Newgate.”

Debtors were too small fry to be often referred to in the chronicles of the times. Now and again they are mentioned as fitting objects for charity, royal and private. In the king’s book of payments is the following entry, under date May 1515. “Master Almoner redeeming prisoners in Newgate, Ludgate, and the Compter, £20.” The State Papers, 1581, contain a commission to the Lord Mayor, recorder, and sheriffs of London, and many others, all charitable folk, and some sixty in number, to compound with the creditors of poor debtors, at that time prisoners in Newgate, Ludgate, and the two Compters of the city. Although debtors in gaol who volunteered for service on shipboard were discharged by proclamation from the demands of their creditors, as a general rule committal to Newgate on account of monetary mismanagement appears to have been more easily compassed than subsequent release. The same volume of State Papers contains a petition from Richard Case to Lord Burghley, to the effect that he had been committed to Newgate “upon the unjust complaint of Mr. Benedict Spinola, relative to the lease of certain lands and tenements in London.” The petitioner further “desires to be discharged from prison, and to have the queen’s pardon,” but there is no allusion to his enlargement.[35] The impolicy of confining debtors was not to be fully realized till three more centuries had passed away. But as early as 1700 a pamphlet preserved in the ‘Harleian Miscellany,’ and entitled ‘Labour in Vain,’ anticipates modern feeling and modern legislation. The writer protests against the imprisonment of debtors, which he compares to shutting up a cow from herbage when she gives no milk. “In England we confine people to starve, contrary to humanity, mercy, or policy. One may as reasonably expect his dog,” he says, “when chained to a post should catch a hare, as that poor debtors when in gaol should get wherewithal to pay their debts.”

Details of the incarceration and sufferings of prisoners for conscience sake, in an age when polemics were backed up by the strong arm of the law, are naturally to be met with more frequently in the partisan writings of the time. Throughout the reigns of Henry VIII., Mary, and even in that of Elizabeth, intolerance stalked rampant through the land, filling the prisons and keeping Smithfield in a blaze. Henry was by turns severe on all creeds. Now Protestants, now Catholics suffered. He began as an ardent champion of Romish doctrines, and ended by denying the supremacy of the Pope. In the first stage he persecuted so-called heretics, in the second he despoiled Church property, and sent monks and priors to gaol and to the gallows. Foxe gives a long and detailed list of the Protestant martyrs from first to last. One of the most prominent was Richard Bayfield, a monk of Bury, who became an inmate of Newgate. Foxe relates[36] that a letter of inquiry was issued by the Bishop of London to the Lord Mayor and sheriffs to be present at St. Paul’s on the 20th November 1531, to receive the said Richard Bayfield, alias Soundesam, “a relapsed heretic after sentence.” The sheriffs carried him to Newgate, whence they were commanded again to bring him into Paul’s upper choir, there to give attendance upon the bishop. Later on they are ordered to have him into the vestry, and then to bring him forth again in Antichrist’s apparel to be degraded before them. “When the bishop had degraded him,” says old Foxe, “kneeling upon the highest step of the altar, he took his crosier staff and smote him on the breast that he threw him down backwards and brake his head, and that he swooned; and when he came to himself again he thanked God that he was delivered from the malignant Church of Antichrist, and that he was come into the true sincere Church of Jesus Christ militant here on earth; ... and so was he led forth through the choir to Newgate, and there rested about an hour in prayer, and so went to the fire in his apparel manfully and joyfully, and there for lack of a speedy fire was two quarters of an hour alive.”

Henry was, however, impartial in his severity. In 1533 he suffered John Frith, Andrew Hewett, and other Protestants, to the number of twenty-seven, to be burned for heresy. The years immediately following he hunted to death all who refused to acknowledge him as the head of the Church. Besides such imposing victims as Sir Thomas More, and Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, many priests suffered. In 1534 the prior of the London Carthusians, the prior of Hexham, Benase, a monk of Sion College, and John Haite, vicar of Isleworth, together with others,[37] were sentenced to be hanged and quartered at Tyburn. In 1538 a friar, by name Forrest, was hanged in Smithfield upon a gallows, quick, by the middle and armholes, “and burnt to death for denying the king’s supremacy and teaching the same in confession to many of the king’s subjects.” Upon the pile by which Forrest was consumed was also a wooden image, brought out of Wales, called “Darvell Gatheren,” which the Welshmen “much worshipped, and had a prophecy amongst them that this image would set a whole forest on fire, which prophecy took effect.”[38]

The greatest trials were reserved for the religious dissidents who dared to differ with the king. Henry was vain of his learning and of his polemical powers. No true follower of Luther, he was a Protestant by policy rather than conviction, and he still held many tenets of the Church he had disavowed. These were embodied and promulgated in the notorious Six Articles, otherwise “the whip with six tails,” or the Bloody Statute, so called from its sanguinary results. The doctrines enunciated were such that many could not possibly subscribe to them; the penalties were “strait and bloody,” and very soon they were widely inflicted. Foxe, in a dozen or more pages, recounts the various presentments against individuals, lay and clerical, for transgressing one or more of the principles of the Six Articles; and adds to “the aforesaid, Dr. Taylor, parson of St. Peter’s, in Cornhill; South, parish priest of Allhallows, in Lombard Street; Some, a priest; Giles, the king’s beerbrewer, at the Red Lion, in St. Katherine’s; Thomas Lancaster, priest; all which were imprisoned likewise for the Six Articles.” “To be short,” he adds, “such a number out of all parishes in London, and out of Calais, and divers other quarters, were then apprehended through the said inquisition, that all prisons in London, including Newgate, were too little to hold them, insomuch that they were fain to lay them in the halls. At last, by the means of good Lord Audeley, such pardon was obtained of the king that the said Lord Audeley, then Lord Chancellor, being content that one should be bound for another, they were all discharged, being bound only to appear in the Star Chamber the next day after All Souls, there to answer if they were called; but neither was there any person called, neither did any appear.”[39]

Bonner, then Bishop of London, and afterwards one of the queen’s principal advisers, had power to persecute even under Henry. The Bible had been set up by the king’s command in St. Paul’s, that the public might read the sacred word. “Much people used to resort thither,” says Foxe, to hear the reading of the Bible, and especially attended the reading of one John Porter, “a fresh young man, and of a big stature,” who was very expert. It displeased Bonner that this Porter should draw such congregations, and sending for him, rebuked him very sharply for his reading. Porter defended himself, but Bonner charged him with making expositions on the text,

and gathering “great multitudes about him to make tumults.” Nothing was proved against Porter, but “in fine Bonner sent him to Newgate, where he was miserably fettered in irons, both legs and arms, with a collar of iron about his neck, fastened to the wall in the dungeon; being there so cruelly handled that he was compelled to send for a kinsman of his, whose name is also Porter, a man yet alive, and can testify that it is true, and dwelleth yet without Newgate. He, seeing his kinsman in this miserable case, entreated Jewet, the keeper of Newgate, that he might be released out of those cruel irons, and so, through friendship and money, had him up among other prisoners, who lay there for felony and murder.” Porter made the most of the occasion, and after hearing and seeing their wickedness and blasphemy, exhorted them to amendment of life, and “gave unto them such instructions as he had learned of in the Scriptures; for which his so doing he was complained, and so carried down and laid in the lower dungeon of all, oppressed with bolts and irons, where, within six or eight days, he was found dead.”

But the most prominent victim to the Six Articles was Anne Askew, the daughter of Sir William Askew, knight, of Lincolnshire. She was married to one Kyme, but is best known under her maiden name. She was persecuted for denying the Real Presence, but the proceedings against her were pushed to extremity, it was said, because she was befriended in high quarters. Her story is a melancholy one. First one Christopher Dene examined her as to her faith and belief in a very subtle manner, and upon her answers had her before the Lord Mayor, who committed her to the Compter. There, for eleven days, none but a priest was allowed to visit her, his object being to ensnare her further. Presently she was released upon finding sureties to surrender if required, but was again brought before the king’s council at Greenwich. Her opinions in matters of belief proving unsatisfactory, she was remanded to Newgate. Thence she petitioned the king, also the Lord Chancellor Wriottesley, “to aid her in obtaining just consideration.” Nevertheless, she was taken to the Tower, and there tortured. Foxe puts the following words into her mouth: “On Tuesday I was sent from Newgate to the sign of the Crown, where Master Rich and the Bishop of London, with all their power and flattering words, went about to persuade me from God, but I did not esteem their glosing pretences.... Then Master

Rich sent me to the Tower, where I remained till three o’clock.” At the Tower strenuous efforts were made to get her to accuse others. They pressed her to say how she was maintained in prison; whether divers gentlewomen had not sent her money. But she replied that her maid had “gone abroad in the streets and made moan to the ’prentices,” who had sent her alms. When further urged, she admitted that a man in a blue coat had delivered her ten shillings, saying it came from my Lady Hertford, and that another in a violet coat had given her eight shillings from my Lady Denny—“whether it is true or not I cannot tell.” “Then they said three men of the council did maintain me, and I said no. Then they did put me on the rack because I confessed no ladies or gentlemen to be of my opinion, and thereon they kept me a long time; and because I lay still, and did not cry, my Lord Chancellor and Master Rich took pains to rack me with their own hands till I was nigh dead. Then the lieutenant (Sir Anthony Knevet) caused me to be loosed from the rack. Incontinently I swooned, and then they recovered me again. After that I sat two long hours, reasoning with my Lord Chancellor, on the bare floor.” At last she was “brought to a house and laid in a bed with as weary and painful bones as ever had patient Job; I thank my Lord God there-for. Then my Lord Chancellor sent me word, if I would leave my opinion, I should want nothing; if I did not, I should forthwith to Newgate, and so be burned....”

Foxe gives full details of her torture in the Tower. At first she was let down into a dungeon, and the gaoler, by command of Sir Anthony Knevet, pinched her with the rack. After this, deeming he had done enough, he was about to take her down, but Wriottesley, the Lord Chancellor, “commanded the lieutenant to strain her on the rack again; which, because he denied to do, tendering the weakness of the woman, he was threatened therefore grievously of the said Wriottesley, saying he would signify his disobedience to the king. And so consequently upon the same, he (Wriottesley) and Master Rich, throwing off their gowns, would needs play the tormentors themselves.... And so, quietly and patiently praying unto the Lord, she abode their tyranny till her bones and joints were almost plucked asunder, in such sort as she was carried away in a chair.” Then the chancellor galloped off to report the lieutenant to the king; but Sir Anthony Knevet forestalled by going by water, and obtained the king’s pardon before the complaint was made. “King Henry,” says Foxe, “seemed not very well to like of their so extreme handling of the woman.”

Soon after this Mistress Askew was again committed to Newgate, whence she was carried in a chair to Smithfield, “because she could not walk on her feet by means of her great torments. When called upon to recant she refused, as did the martyrs with her.” Whereupon the Lord Mayor, commanding fire to be put under them, cried, “Fiat Justitia,” and they were burned.

The Maryan persecutions naturally filled Newgate. It would weary the reader to give lengthened descriptions of the many martyrs who passed through that prison to Smithfield. But a few of the victims stand prominently forward. Two of the earliest were John Rogers, vicar of St. Sepulchre and prebendary of St. Paul’s, and Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester. Rogers was the proto-martyr—the first sacrificed to the religious intolerance of Mary and her advisers. Foxe says that after being a prisoner in his own house for a long time, Rogers was “removed to the prison called Newgate, where he was lodged among thieves and murderers for a great space.” He was kept in Newgate “a full year,” Rogers tells us himself, “at great costs and charges, having a wife and ten children to find; and I had never a penny of my livings, which was against the law.” He made “many supplications” out of Newgate, and sent his wife to implore fairer treatment; but in Newgate he lay, till at length he was brought to the Compter in Southwark, with Master Hooper, for examination. Finally, after having been “very uncharitably entreated,” he was “unjustly, and most cruelly, by wicked Winchester condemned.” The 4th February, 1555, he was warned suddenly by the keeper’s wife of Newgate to prepare himself for the fire, “who being then found asleep, scarce with much shogging could be awakened.” Being bidden to make haste, he remarked, “If it be so, I need not tie my points.” “So was he had down first to Bonner to be degraded, whom he petitioned to be allowed to talk a few words with his wife before his burning”—a reasonable request, which was refused. “Then the sheriffs, Master Chester and Master Woodroove, took him to Smithfield; and his wife and children, eleven in number, ten able to go, and one at the breast, met him as he passed. This sorrowful sight of his own flesh and blood could nothing move him, but that he constantly and cheerfully took his death with wonderful patience in the defence and quarrel of Christ’s gospel.”[40]

While detained in Newgate, Master Rogers devoted himself to the service of the ordinary prisoners, to whom he was “beneficial and liberal,” having thus devised “that he with his fellows should have but one meal a day, they paying, notwithstanding, the charges of the whole; the other meal should be given to them that lacked on the other (or common) side of the prison. But Alexander their keeper, a strait man and a right Alexander, a coppersmith indeed, ... would in no case suffer that.”

This Alexander Andrew, or Alexander, as he is simply called, figures in contemporary records, more especially in the writings of Foxe, as a perfect type of the brutal gaoler. “Of gaolers,” says Foxe, “Alexander, keeper of Newgate, exceeded all others.” He is described as “a cruel enemy of those that lay there (Newgate) for religion. The cruel wretch, to hasten the poor lambs to the slaughter, would go to Bonner, Story, Cholmley, and others, crying out,

‘Rid my prison! rid my prison! I am too much pestered by these heretics.” Alexander’s reception of an old friend of his, Master Philpot, committed to Newgate,[41] is graphically told by the old chronicler. “‘Ah, thou hast well done to bring thyself hither,’ he says to Philpot. ‘I must be content,’ replied Philpot, ‘for it is God’s appointment, and I shall desire you to let me have some gentle favour, for you and I have been of old acquaintance.’ ‘Well,’ said Alexander, ‘I will show you great gentleness and favour, so thou wilt be ruled by me.’ Then said Master Philpot, ‘I pray you show me what you would have me to do.’ He said, ‘If you will recant I will show you any pleasure I can.’ ‘Nay,’ said Master Philpot, ‘I will never recant whilst I have my life, for it is most certain truth, and in witness thereof I will seal it with my blood.’ Then Alexander said, ‘This is the saying of the whole pack of you heretics.’ Whereupon he commanded him to be set upon the block, and as many irons upon his legs as he could bear, for that he would not follow his wicked mind.... ‘But, good Master Alexander, be so much my friend that these irons may be taken off.’ ‘Well,’ said Alexander, ‘give me my fees, and I will take them off; if not, thou shalt wear them still.’ Then Master Philpot said, ‘Sir, what is your fee?’ He said four pounds was his fee. ‘Ah,’ said Master Philpot, ‘I have not so much; I am but a poor man, and I have been long in prison.’ ‘What wilt thou give me, then?’ said Alexander. ‘Sir,’ said he, ‘I will give you twenty shillings, and that I will send my man for, or else I will lay my gown to gage. For the time is not long, I am sure, that I shall be with you, for the bishop said I should be soon despatched.’ Then said Alexander unto him, ‘What is that to me?’ and with that he departed for a time, and commanded him to be had into limbo. And so his commandment was fulfilled; but before he could be taken from the block the clerk would have a groat. Then one Willerence, steward of the house, took him on his back and carried him down his man knew not whither. Wherefore Master Philpot said to his man, ‘Go to Master Sheriff, and show him how I am used, and desire Master Sheriff to be good unto me;’ and so his servant went straightway, and took an honest man with him.

“And when they came to Master Sheriff, which was Master Ascham, and showed him how Master Philpot was handled in Newgate, the sheriff, hearing this, took his ring off his finger and delivered it unto that honest man that came with Master Philpot’s man, and bade him go unto Alexander the keeper and command him to take off his irons and handle him more gently, and give his man again that which he had taken from him. And when they came to the said Alexander and told their message from the sheriff, Alexander took the ring, and said, ‘Ah, I perceive that Master Sheriff is a bearer with him and all such heretics as he is, therefore to-morrow I will show it to his betters;’ yet at ten by the clock he went to Master Philpot where he lay and took off his irons, and gave him such things as he had taken before from his servant.”

Alexander’s zeal must have been very active. In 1558 it is recorded that twenty-two men and women were committed to Newgate for praying together in the fields about Islington. They were two and twenty weeks in the prison before they were examined, during which Alexander sent them word that if they would hear a mass they should be delivered. According to Foxe a terrible vengeance overtook this hard-hearted man. He died very miserably, being so swollen that he was more like a monster than a man. The same authority relates that other persecutors came to a bad end.

Bishop Hooper soon followed Rogers to the stake. The same Monday night, Feb. 4, 1555, the keeper of Newgate gave him an inkling that he should be sent to Gloucester to suffer death, “and the next day following, about four o’clock in the morning before day, the keeper with others came to him and searched him and the bed wherein he lay, to see if he had written anything, and then he was led to the sheriffs of London and other their officers forth of Newgate, to a place appointed not far from Dunstan’s Church, Fleet Street, where six of the Queen’s Guards were appointed to receive him and to carry him to Gloucester, ...” where execution was to be done.

We obtain a curious insight into the gaol at Newgate during Mary’s reign from the narrative of the ‘Hot Gospeller.’ Edward Underhill, a yeoman of the Guard, was arrested in 1553 for “putting out” a ballad which attacked the Queen’s title. Underhill was carried before the Council, and there got into dispute with Bourne, a fanatic priest whom he called a papist. “Sir John Mason asked what he meant by that, and he replied, ‘If you look among the priests of Paul’s you will find some mumpsimusses there. This caused much heat, and he was committed to Newgate.” At the door of the prison he wrote to his wife, asking her to send his night-gown, Bible, and lute, and then he goes on to describe Newgate as follows:[42]—

“In the centre of Newgate was a great open hall; as soon as it was supper-time the board was covered in the same hall. The keeper, whose name was Alexander, with his wife came and sat down, and half a dozen prisoners that were there for felony. Underhill being the first that for religion was sent into that prison. One of the felons had served with him in France. After supper this good fellow, whose name was Bristow, procured one to have a bed in his (Underhill’s) chamber who could play well upon a rebeck. He was a tall fellow, and after one of Queen Mary’s guard, yet a Protestant, which he kept secret, or else he should not have found such favour as he did at the keeper’s hands and his wife’s, for to such as loved the gospel they were very cruel. ‘Well,’ said Underhill, ‘I have sent for my Bible, and, by God’s grace, therein shall be my daily exercise; I will not hide it from them.’ ‘Sir,’ said he, ‘I am poor; but they will bear with you, for they see your estate is to pay well; and I will show you the nature and manner of them, for I have been here a good while. They both do love music very well; wherefore, you with your lute, and I to play with you on my rebeck, will please them greatly. He loveth to be merry and to drink wine, and she also. If you will bestow upon them, every dinner and supper, a quart of wine and some music, you shall be their white son, and have all the favour they can show you.’

“The honour of being ‘white son’ to the governor and governess of Newgate was worth aspiring after. Underhill duly provided the desired entertainment. The governor gave him the best room in the prison, with all other admissible indulgences.

“At last, however, the evil savours, great unquietness, with over many draughts of air, threw the poor gentleman into a burning ague. He shifted his lodgings, but to no purpose; the evil savours followed him. The keeper offered him his own parlour, where he escaped from the noise of the prison; but it was near the kitchen, and the smell of the meat was disagreeable. Finally the wife put him away in her store closet, amidst her best plate, crockery, and clothes, and there he continued to survive till the middle of September, when he was released on bail through the interference of the Earl of Bedford.”

There was a truce to religious persecution for some years after Mary’s death. Throughout Edward’s reign and the better part of Elizabeth’s it was only the ordinary sort of criminal who was committed to the gaol of Newgate. The offences were mostly coining, horse-stealing, and other kinds of thefts. “One named Ditche was apprehended at the sessions holden at Newgate on 4th December, 1583, nineteen times indicted, whereof he confessed eighteen, who also between the time of his apprehension and the said sessions impeached many for stealing horses, whereof (divers being apprehended) ten were condemned and hanged in Smithfield on the 11th December, being Friday and horse-market there.”[43] The ‘Remembrancia’ gives a letter from Mr. Valentine Dale, one of the masters of the Court of Requests, to the Lord Mayor, stating that the wife of John Hollingshead had petitioned the Queen to grant a reprieve and pardon to her husband, a condemned felon, and directing the execution to be stayed, and a full account of his behaviour and offence forwarded to Her Majesty. The Lord Mayor in reply says that he had called before him the officers of Newgate, who stated that Hollingshead had been for a long time a common and notorious thief. This was the fourth time he had been in Newgate for felonies, and upon the last occasion he had been branded with the letter T (thief). Coiners were very severely dealt with. The offence was treason, and punished as such. There are many cases on record, such as—“On the 27th of January Phillip Meshel, a Frenchman, and two Englishmen were drawn from Newgate to Tyburn, and there hanged. The Frenchman quartered who had coined gold counterfeit; of the Englishmen, the one had clipped silver, and the other cast testers of tin.” “The 30th of May Thomas Green, goldsmith, was drawn from Newgate to Tyburn, and there hanged, headed, and quartered, for clipping of coin, both gold and silver.”

Towards the end of the reign, in spite of the stringent acts against vagrancy, the country swarmed with rogues and beggars—vagabonds who laid the farmers under contribution, and terrified all honest folk out of their lives. In London crime was rampant. Even then it had its organization; there were houses which harboured thieves, in which schools were maintained for the education of young pickpockets. Maitland tells us that in the spring of 1585, Fleetwood the recorder with several other magistrates searched the town and discovered seven houses of entertainment for felons. They found also that one Walton, a gentleman born, once a prosperous merchant, “but fallen into decay,” who had kept an alehouse which had been put down, had begun a “new business.” He opened his house for the reception of all the cut-purses in and about the city. In this house was a room to learn young boys to cut purses. Two devices were hung up; one was a pocket, the other was a purse. The pocket had in it certain counters, and was hung round with hawk’s bells, and over them hung a little sacring[44] bell. The purse had silver in it, and he that could take out a counter without any noise was allowed to be a public foyster; and he that could take a piece of silver out of the purse without noise of any of the bells was adjudged a clever nypper. These places gave great encouragement to evil-doers in these times, but were soon after suppressed.

In 1581 a fresh religious persecution began, happily without the sanguinary accessories of that of Mary’s reign. Elizabeth had no love for the puritans; she also began now to hate and fear the papists. Orthodoxy was insisted upon. People who would not go to church were sent first to prison, then haled before sessions and fined a matter of twenty pounds each. Still worse fared the adherents or emissaries of Rome. Years before (1569) a man, John Felton, had been drawn from Newgate into Paul’s Churchyard, and there hanged and quartered as a traitor for affixing a bull of Pope Pius V. on the gate of the Bishop of London’s palace. In 1578 it is recorded that “the papists are stubborn.” So also must have been the puritans. “One Sherwood brought before the Bishop of London behaved so stubbornly that the bishop will show no more favour to those miscalled puritans.” Next began a fierce crusade against the “seminary” priests, who swarmed into England like missionaries, despatched in partibus infidelium to minister to the faithful few and bring back all whom they could to the fold. Newgate was now for ever full of these priests. They adopted all manner of disguises, and went now as soldiers, now as private gentlemen, now openly as divines. They were harboured and hidden by faithful Roman Catholics, and managed thus to glide unperceived from point to point intent upon their dangerous business. But they did not always escape observation, and when caught they were invariably laid by the heels and hardly dealt with. Gerard Dance, alias Ducket, a seminary priest, was arraigned (1581) at the Old Bailey before the Queen’s justices, and affirmed that although he was in England, he was subject to the Pope in ecclesiastical causes, and that the Pope had now the same authority in England that he had a hundred years past, and which he had at Rome, “with other traitorous speeches, for the which he was condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered.” The same year William Dios (a Spaniard?), keeper of Newgate, sends a certificate of the names of the recusants now in Newgate, “viz. Lawrence Wakeman and others, ... the two last being of the precise sort.” April 20, 1586, Robert Rowley, taken upon seas by Captain Burrows going to Scotland, is committed first to the Marshalsea, and from thence to Newgate. Next year, August 26, Richard Young reports to Secretary Walsyngham that he has talked with sundry priests remaining in the prisons about London. “Some,” he says, “are very evil affected, and unworthy to live in England. Simpson, alias Heygate, and Flower, priests, have justly deserved death, and in no wise merit Her Majesty’s mercy. William Wigges, Leonard Hide, and George Collinson, priests in Newgate, are dangerous fellows, as are also Morris Williams and Thomas Pounde, the latter committed as a layman, but in reality a professed Jesuit. Francis Tirrell is an obstinate papist, and is doubted to be a spy.”

We read as follows in an intercepted letter from Cardinal John Allen, Rector of the English College at Rheims, to Mr. White, seminary priest in the Clink,[45] and the rest of the priests in Newgate, the Fleet, and the Marshalsea. “Pope Sextus sends them his blessing, and will send them over for their comfort Dr. Reynolds, chief Jesuit of the college at Rheims, who must be carefully concealed,” ... with others, ... “whose discourses would be a great joy to all heretics. They will bring some consecrated crucifixes, late consecrated by his Holiness, and some books to be given to the chiefest Catholics, their greatest benefactors.” This letter was taken upon a young man, Robert Weston, travelling to seek service, “who seems to have had considerable dealings with recusants, and to have made very full confessions.”

It was easier for all such to get into Newgate just then—than to obtain release. Henry Ash and Michael Genison, being prisoners in Newgate, petition Lord Keeper Pickering for a warrant for their enlargement upon putting in good security for their appearance; “they were long since committed by Justice Young and the now Bishop of London for recusancy, where they remain, to their great shame and utter undoing, and are likely to continue, unless he extend his mercy.” In 1598 George Barkworth petitions Secretary Cecil “that he was committed to Newgate six months ago on suspicion of being a seminary priest, which he is not; has been examined nine times, and brought up at sessions four times; begs the same liberty of the house at Bridewell which was granted him at Newgate.”

Political prisoners were not wanting in Newgate in the Elizabethan period. In 1585 instructions are given[46] to the recorder to examine one Hall, a prisoner in Newgate, charged with a design for conveying away the Queen of Scots. This was a part of Babington’s conspiracy, for which Throgmorton also suffered. Other victims, besides the unfortunate Queen herself, were Babington, Tichbourne, and many more, who after trial at the Old Bailey, and incarceration in Newgate, were hanged in St. Giles’s Fields. The execution was carried out with great barbarity; seven of the conspirators were cut down before they were dead and disembowelled. Another plot against Elizabeth’s life was discovered in 1587, the actors in which were “one Moody, an idle, profligate fellow, then prisoner in Newgate, and one Stafford, brother to Sir Edward Stafford.” The great Queen Bess in these last days of her reign went in constant terror of her life; and a third conspiracy to poison her, originating with her own physician and Lopez, a Jew, led to their execution as traitors. Again, Squires, a disbanded soldier, was charged with putting poison on the pommel of her saddle, and although he admitted his guilt upon the rack, he declared when dying that he was really innocent.

All this time within Newgate there was turbulence, rioting, disorders, accompanied seemingly by constant oppression. The prisoners were ready to brave anything to get out. General gaol deliveries were made otherwise than in due course of law. Those that were fit to serve in the sea or land forces were frequently pardoned and set free. A petition to the Lord Admiral (1589) is preserved in which certain prisoners, shut out from pardon because they are not “by law bailable,” beg that the words maybe struck out of the order for release, and state that they will gladly enter Her Majesty’s service. Many made determined efforts to escape. “The 16th December, 1556,” says Hollinshed, “Gregory, Carpenter, Smith, and a Frenchman born were arraigned for making counterfeit keys wherewith to have opened the locks of Newgate, to have slain the keeper and let forth the prisoners; at which time of his arraignment, having conveyed a knife into his sleeve, he thrust it into the side of William Whiteguts, his fellow-prisoner, who had given evidence against him, so that he was in great peril of death thereby; for the which fact he was immediately taken from the bar into the street before the justice hall, when, his hand being first stricken off, he was hanged on a gibbet set up for the purpose.

“The keeper of Newgate was arraigned and indicted for that the said prisoner had a weapon about him and his hands loose, which should have been bound.”

Yet the keeper of Newgate and other gaolers were by no means irresponsible agents. Two cases may be quoted in which these officials were promptly brought to book. In 1555 the keeper of the Bread Street Compter, by name Richard Husband, pasteler, “being a wilful and headstrong man,” who, with servants like himself, had dealt hardly with the prisoners in his charge, was sent to the gaol of Newgate by Sir Rowland Hill, mayor, with the assent of a court of aldermen. “It was commanded to the keeper to set those irons on his legs which were called widows’ alms; these he wore from Thursday till Sunday in the afternoon.” On the Tuesday he was released, but not before he was bound over in an hundred marks to act in conformity with the rules for the managing of the Compters. “All which notwithstanding, he continued as before: ... the prisoners were ill-treated, the prison was made a common lodging-house at fourpence the night for thieves and night-walkers, whereby they might be safe from searches that were made abroad.” He was indicted for these, and other enormities, “but did rub it out, and could not be reformed, till the prisoners were removed; for the house in Bread Street was his own by lease or otherwise, and he could not be put from it.”[47] A searching inquiry was also made into the conduct of Crowder, the keeper of Newgate in 1580,[48] or thereabouts. The State Papers contain an information of the disorders practiced by the officers of Newgate prison, levying fines and taking bribes, by old and young Crowders, the gaolers. “Crowder and his wife,” says the report, “be most horrible blasphemers and swearers.” The matter is taken up by the lords of the council, who write to the Lord Mayor, desiring to be fully informed of all disorders committed, and by whom. “They are sending gentlemen to repair to the prison to inquire into the case, and requesting the Lord Mayor to appoint two persons to assist them.” Sir Christopher Hatton also writes to the Lord Mayor, drawing attention to the charges against Crowder. The Lord Mayor replies that certain persons had been appointed to inquire, but had not yet made their report. The Court of Enquiry are willing to receive Crowder, but he persists in refusing (to explain). “He would not come to their meeting, but stood upon his reputation.” The result, so far as can be guessed, was that Crowder was pensioned off. But he found powerful friends in his adversity. His cause was espoused by Sir Thomas Bromley, Lord Chancellor, who informs the Lord Mayor that he thinks Crowder has been dealt with very hardly, and that his accusers were persons unworthy of credit. Apparently Crowder had no chance of being reinstated, for his friend the Lord Chancellor tries next to get his pension raised. The exact amount is not stated, but Sir Thomas Bromley suggests that it should be made up to £40, twenty nobles of which should be paid by his successor. There is no mention of any such increase having been conceded.

CHAPTER III.
NEWGATE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
(DOWN TO THE GREAT FIRE).

More Jesuit emissaries in Newgate—Richardson and others—Their fate—Some escape—Greater favour shown them under Charles I. through intercession of Henrietta Maria—But freedom not easily procured—Case of Thomas Coo—Of John Williams—The Mayor of Sudbury in Newgate—Also an alderman—Pardons and release still given on condition of military service—Troubles with King fill Newgate—Ship-money—Speaking ill of King’s sister entails imprisonment in Newgate for life—Parliament growing more powerful insists of execution of six Jesuits suffered to linger on in Newgate—Irish rebels taken on high seas, in Newgate—Also offenders against plague ordinances, and against religion or morality—Strange news from Newgate—Interior of gaol—Condition of prisoners—Fanatical conduct of keeper—Nefarious practices of turnkeys—They levy black mail—“Coney catching” described—Several cases of such swindling—Civil war reflected in prison records—More Irish arrested at Devonshire—Sent to London and lodged in Newgate for examination—Arbitrary imprisonment imposed by House of Lords on Richard Overton—Case of Colonel Lilburne—“Free born John”—Newgate annals record transfer of power to Commonwealth—Royalists in gaol—Also prisoners of mark—The Portuguese ambassadors’ brother in Newgate charged with murder, and executed—Also Lord Buckhurst and others.

THE disturbing elements of society continued much the same in the early part of the seventeenth century as in the years immediately preceding. There were the same offences against law and order, dealt with in the same summary fashion. Newgate was perpetually crowded with prisoners charged with the same sort of crimes. Bigotry and intolerance continued to breed persecution. All sects which differed from that professed by those in power were in turn under the ban of the law. The Romish priest still ventured into the hostile heretic land where his life was not worth a minute’s purchase; Puritans and Nonconformists were committed to gaol for refusing to surrender their heterodox opinions: these last coming into power were ruthlessly strict towards the openly irreligious backslider. Side by side with these sufferers in the cause of independent thought swarmed the depredators, the wrong-doers, whose criminal instincts and the actions they produced were much the same as they had been before and as they are now.

The devoted courage of the Jesuit emissaries in those days of extreme peril for all priests who dared to cross the channel claims for them a full measure of respect. They were for ever in trouble. When caught they met hard words, scant mercy, often only a short shrift. Repeated references are made to them. In the State Papers July 1602 is a list of priests and recusants in prison, viz. “Newgate—Pound (already mentioned), desperate and obstinate; ... in the Clink, Marshalsea, King’s Bench, are others; among them Douce, a forward intelligence, Tichborne, Webster, perverter of youth,” &c. They were ever the victims of treachery and espionage.[49] “William Richardson, a priest of Seville College (the date is 1603), was discovered to the Chief Justice by one whom he trusted, and arraigned and condemned at Newgate for being a priest and coming to England. When examined he answered stoutly, yet with great modesty and discretion, moving many to compassionate him and speak against the Chief Justice, on whom he laid the guilt of his blood.” He was executed at Tyburn, hanged and quartered, but his head and quarters were buried. “Such spectacles,” says the writer, Ant. Rivers, to Giacomo Creleto, Venice, “do nothing increase the gospel....” A further account says that William Richardson, alias Anderson, was betrayed by a false brother, sent to Newgate, and kept close prisoner over a week, no one being allowed to see him. The Chief Justice, interrupting other trials, called for him, and caused him to be indicted of high treason for being a priest and coming to England. All of which he confessed, and there being no evidence against him, the Chief Justice gave his confession in writing to the jury, who found him guilty. “He thanked God and told the Chief Justice he was a bloody man, and sought the blood of the Catholics. He denied that he was a Jesuit or knew Garnet[50]....”

These priests were not very rigorously guarded. On the 27th November 1612 seven escaped from Newgate. They must also have been very indifferently lodged. When a number of them were transferred for greater security to Wisbeach Castle, they petitioned that they were unable to provide themselves with bedding and other necessaries for their removal, and begged that orders might be taken for their providing. The keeper was closely watched lest he should be too easy with his prisoners. Questions are suggested to be put to him, examining him as to his connivance with recusants, and allowing them to escape or enjoy great liberty. In 1611 Sir Thomas Lake writes to Lord Salisbury to the effect that the king is resolved the keeper of Newgate shall be very severely punished for allowing reverence to priests and masses to be said in the prison.[51] It was evident they were permitted some license, although contraband, for Secretary Conway issues instructions on May 13, 1626, to the provost marshal of Middlesex directing him to search for popish books, massing stuff, and reliques of popery in Newgate. Even in Elizabeth’s time it appears that mass was said in Newgate, and one John Harrison, when charged in 1595 with being in possession of certain popish relics and papers, admitted that he had been married in Newgate by an old priest then in prison with his (H.’s) wife and himself.

Somewhat better times dawned for the Roman Catholic ministers after the accession of Charles I. His queen, Henrietta Maria, was able to help them. Her favouring of papists was indeed one of the many causes of the discontent which culminated in civil war. The king himself addresses the keeper of Newgate to the effect that “at the instance of the queen we have granted Pulteney Morse, lately indicted upon suspicion of being a priest, and still prisoner at Newgate, to be enlarged upon security to appear before the council when he shall be thereunto called. He has given security to that purpose; we therefore command you to set him at liberty.” The queen herself at times personally applied for the release of prisoners confined in Newgate for matters of religion. Often priests committed escaped incarceration, and were found to be at liberty after arrest. But it was not always easy to obtain enlargement when once laid by the heels. Here is the petition to the queen (State Papers, May 1634) of Thomas Reynolds, a secular priest, who has been more than five years in Newgate, “where by the unwholesomeness of the air, the strictness of the imprisonment, and his great age he is fallen into many dangerous infirmities. He now prays the queen to move the king to release him. His application is backed up by a medical certificate signed by three doctors that petitioner is affected with sciatica, colic, defluxion of rheum, and the stone. He is fifty-eight years of age.” The result of the petition is not given.

It was not only in the case of the religious prisoners that freedom was difficult to compass. A very hard case is that of Thomas Coo, committed to Newgate on grounds that are not traceable. He states, October 1618, to Sir Julius Cæsar and Sir Fulk Greville that his loyal service in preserving the life of his sovereign by discovering the London insurrection has been rewarded with famine and a dungeon. He is resolved to live no longer, leaving his son “to conceal his mystical designs.”[52] Fifteen years later, but still in Newgate, he makes his “submission from Newgate dungeon dunghill, almost famished; acknowledging his contrition of heart, and stating his readiness to do any penance the council may command, beseeches to know what his punishment may be.” His long imprisonments in Newgate and elsewhere have “stript petitioner, even of clothes from his back, and from that of the bearer of the letter, his lame child.” He prays that he may be forthwith either banished according to their order of the 28th October of the 5th King Charles (1630), or be allowed close prisoner in some other place where he may have some allowance to preserve him from starving. Six years more pass, and again (1639) he petitions the council, stating that there was neither legal warrant for his commitment to the Fleet eight years, nor for his six years’ detention in Newgate, whither he was thence removed. There were sent with him certain transcribed papers, importing some orders and rules issuing out of the Star Chamber, Chancery, and King’s Bench, in which courts the prisoner was never defendant, convented, nor convicted. The only paper against him was a supposed Inner Star Chamber order of voluntary banishment, to the effect that the petitioner was to depart the kingdom within twenty days, dated 1629. “Gaolers,” says the poor prisoner, “are made his judges, and jurors only give their verdict to whom his carcase belongs to be interred.”

A light matter sufficed to secure committal to Newgate. John Williams in a petition states that he was committed to Newgate for being one at the depopulation of the forest of Dean. There he has remained for five years, and now prays enlargement, not having wherewith to maintain himself in prison with his wife and poor children, who were seemingly incarcerated with him. The coachmen of even great people were committed to Newgate for contravening the Star Chamber order as to the route they should take to and from the playhouse in Blackfriars. Frequenters were invited to go to and fro by water, but if they drove they were to be set down by the west end of St. Paul’s Churchyard or Fleet Conduit. Again Robert Coleman (1631), having found certain writings of the secretary and other noble personages, and thinking they belonged to the Earl of Dorset, went to the Old Bailey, where Lord Dorset was sitting on the bench, to deliver them up. “One Barnes was to be tried,” states Coleman subsequently in a petition, “and there was some one there to beg his estate, whereupon the Earl of Dorset committed the prisoner (Coleman) to Newgate, where he has been ever since detained, and could not bring the writings to the secretary;” “prays that he may be allowed to come to him for that purpose.” Christopher Crowe, a prisoner in Newgate, and another victim to the oppression of a great noble, about the same date (1632) petitions the council: “I am in great misery,” he says, “having no friends nor means.” For six weeks he has had for his allowance but a halfpenny in bread one day and a farthing’s worth the next. “Is heartily sorry for his words spoken against the Marquis of Hamilton, and prays enlargement.” Others in Newgate sought noble protection, and petitioned the great peers to procure release. John Meredith petitions Henry Earl of Holland, Captain of the Guard, reminding him that when he (Meredith) and his wife were committed to Newgate, his lordship on their appeal had sent an order for their discharge, which had been disregarded, and now, “having lain in prison a fortnight, he prays that he and his wife may forthwith be enlarged.” This has no effect, so Meredith and his wife Joan petition the Earl of Manchester, Lord President. “They had now remained in prison three weeks; pray for an enlargement from Newgate gratis,[53] and that the sergeants who arrested them may be committed.”

Prisoners of still greater consequence languished often hopelessly in Newgate Gaol. Now it is the wardens of divers city companies for not making up their proportion towards the previous year’s provision of corn; now a respectable freeman and stationer, William Cooke, who had built a shed of timber in the open street in High Holborn adjoining Furnival’s Inn. He was committed to Newgate till he should demolish the same. But, as Inigo Jones and others represent to the council, “he lies in prison, and the shed continues,” and they suggest an order to the principals of Furnival’s Inn, or to the sheriffs of London, to take the shed away. Next comes a greater personage, John Andrews, the Mayor of Sudbury, who has unhappily fallen foul of a messenger of the Star Chamber named Potter. This messenger came to Andrews with a warrant claiming his assistance for the apprehension of certain unlicensed dealers in tobacco in Sudbury, to which warrant he “gave due obedience.” Potter was presently himself brought before the mayor, “accused of many blasphemies and oaths,” and for compounding for money with the culprit who had unlawfully trafficked in tobacco. Upon this the mayor told Potter that he thought him worthy to be committed to prison. Potter then fell to abusing the mayor in scoffs and threatening speeches, telling him that he would have him set in the stocks, and that he cared not a pin for the mayor’s authority. The exasperated Andrews committed Potter to prison. But Potter’s threats were not without substantial foundation, for Andrews’ action is deemed improper, and he is himself committed to Newgate. From thence he humbly submits himself, and prays discharge from that loathsome prison.

Even an alderman was not safe. Thomas Middleton in 1603, having been duly elected alderman, refused to be sworn, whereupon he was committed to Newgate by the Lord Mayor and court of aldermen, “according to their oaths and the custom of the city.” For this they were sharply reproved by the king, and ordered to release him immediately, “as he was employed in important state service which privileged him from arrest.”

These were days of widespread oppression, when Strafford, Laud, the Star Chamber, and ecclesiastical courts gave effect to the king’s eager longings for arbitrary power. The following is from a half-mad fanatic who has offended the relentless archbishop. “The petition of Richard Farnham, a prophet of the most high God, a true subject to my king, and a prisoner of my saviour Christ, in Newgate, to Archbishop Laud and the rest of the high commissioners, whom he prays to excuse his plainness, being no scholar.... Desires to know the cause of his being detained so long in prison, where he has been kept a year next April without coming to his answer. Thinks they have forgotten him. If he be a false prophet and a blasphemer and a seducer, as most people report that he is, the high commissioners would do well to bring him to trial. What he wrote before he came into prison and what he has written since he will stand to.... If he does not get his answer this summer he intends to complain to the king, believing that it is not his pleasure his subjects should suffer false imprisonment to satisfy the archbishop’s mind.” Of the same year and the same character is this other petition from William King, a prisoner in Newgate “for a little treatise delivered to Lord Leppington.” Has remained in thraldom twenty-seven months; expresses contrition and prays enlargement on bail, or that he may be called to answer. Forty years more were to elapse before the passing of the Habeas Corpus Act; but the forgoing will show how grievously this so-called palladium of an Englishman’s liberties was required.

Pardons free or more or less conditional were, however, vouchsafed at times. Release from prison was still, as before, and for long after, frequently accompanied by the penalty of military service. This had long been the custom. On declaration of war in the earlier reigns, it was usual to issue a proclamation offering a general pardon to those guilty of homicides and felonies on condition of service for a year and a day. Even without this obligation prisoners in durance might sue out a pardon by intercession of some nobleman serving abroad with the king. But later on the release was distinctly conditional on personal service. The Lord Mayor certifies to the king (1619) that certain prisoners in Newgate, whose names and offences are given, are not committed for murder; so they are reprieved, as being able-bodied and fit to do service in foreign parts. Another certificate states that William Dominic, condemned to death for stealing a purse value £4, is reprieved, “this being his first offence, and he an excellent drummer, fit to do the king service.” Again, the king requires the keeper of Newgate to deliver certain reprieved prisoners to Sir Edward Conway, junior, to be employed in His Majesty’s service in the Low Countries. Recorder Finch reports that he has furnished “Conway’s son with seven prisoners fit for service; sends a list of prisoners now in Newgate, but reprieved. Some have been long in gaol, and were saved from execution by the prince’s return [with Buckingham from Spain?] on that day. They pester the gaol, which is already reported crowded, this hot weather, and would do better service as soldiers if pardoned, ‘for they would not dare to run away.’” A warrant is made out June 5, 1629, to the sheriffs of London to deliver to such persons as the Swedish ambassador shall appoint forty-seven persons, of whom one was Elizabeth Leech—was she to be employed as a sutler or vivandière?—being prisoners condemned of felonies, and remaining in the gaols of Newgate and Bridewell, who are released “to the end that they may be employed in the service of the King of Sweden”—Gustavus Adolphus, at that time our ally. There are numerous entries of this kind in the State papers. Sometimes the prisoners volunteer for service. “John Tapps, by the displeasure of the late Lord Chief Justice and the persecution of James the clerk and one of the keepers,[54] has been kept from the benefit of the pardon which has been stayed at the Great Seal. Begs Lord Conway to perfect his work by moving the Lord Keeper in his behalf, and in the mean time sending some powerful warrant for his employment as a soldier.” Certain other convicted prisoners in Newgate, who had been pardoned in respect of the birth of Prince Charles (Charles II.), petition that they are altogether impoverished, and unable to sue out their pardons. They pray that by warrant they may be transported into the State of Venice under the command of Captain Ludovic Hamilton. This document is endorsed with a reference to the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas to certify concerning these delinquents and their crimes. George Gardener, a prisoner in Newgate, also petitions the king in March 1630, stating that he was committed by the council on the information of James Ingram, deputy warden of the Fleet, to prevent petitioner prosecuting the said Ingram for his notorious extortions. He has remained in Newgate since April previous, and by Ingram’s procurement was shut up amongst felons in the common gaol, whereby he might have been murdered. “Prays that he may be allowed to go abroad on security.” Here is another petition, that of Bridget Gray to the council. She states (July 19, 1618) that her grandson, John Throckmorton, is a prisoner in Newgate for felony, and prays that he may be discharged, this being his first offence, and Sir Thomas Smythe being ready to convey him beyond seas. Upon this is endorsed an order that if the mayor or recorder will certify that Throckmorton was not convicted of murder, burglary, highway robbery, rape, or witchcraft, a warrant may be made for his banishment. The certificate is forthcoming, and is to the effect that Throckmorton’s crime was aiding in stealing a hat, value 6s., for which the principal, Robert Whisson, an old thief, was hanged.

The gaol calendar reflects the vicissitudes of these changing, troublous times. There were many London citizens who, sharing the patriotic spirit of Hampden and Pym, found themselves clapped into prison for refusing to submit to the illegal taxations of Charles I. In a long statement, 16th April, 1639, from Edward Rossingham to Lord Conway he says that the Lord Mayor labours hard to get in the ship-money. “Some pay and many refuse; but such as do refuse he requires to enter into a recognizance of so much money to attend the council. Three citizens stand committed to Newgate, not because they refuse to pay ship-money, but because they refuse to enter into bond to attend the Board to answer their not paying the same. Divers others refused, and were sent to Newgate; but upon better consideration they paid their money, and were released again.” The temper of the Government as regards ship-money is further shown by the arrest and trial of the keeper of Newgate for permitting a prisoner committed for non-payment of this unlawful tax to go at large. It appears that the offender, Richard Chambers, had been several times remanded to the same custody, and had been allowed to escape.

It was highly dangerous to speak lightly of dignities in these ticklish times. The State trials give an account of the hard measure meted out to one Edward Floyde for scandalizing the princess palatine, Elizabeth, James I.’s daughter, and titular Queen of Bohemia. Floyde was charged with having said, while a prisoner in the Fleet, “I have heard that Prague is taken, and goodman Palsgrave and goodwife Palsgrave (Elizabeth) have taken to their heels and run away.” This puerile, gossip seriously occupied both houses of Parliament, and eventually the Lords awarded and adjudged that Edward Floyde be deemed an infamous person, incapable of bearing arms as a gentleman, whose testimony was not to be taken in any court or cause. He was also sentenced to ride with his head to his horse’s tail from Westminster to the pillory in Cheapside; after this to be whipped from the Fleet to Westminster, there again to stand on the pillory. He was to pay a fine of £5000 to the king, and imprisoned in Newgate during his life.

In 1642, according to a published document,[55] Newgate “hath not been more replenished with prisoners these many years than now, there being very nigh three hundred prisoners committed to that infamous castle of misery.” It was still the mere gatehouse prison, and its accommodation must have been of the most limited description. Chief among these inmates were six Jesuit priests who had been condemned to die, but had, no doubt through the powerful advocacy of Henrietta Maria, obtained a reprieve. “Whereupon did arise a tumultuous mutiny among the other prisoners, who refused to die without the Jesuits; but afterwards they (the mutineers) were mitigated in a kind of pacified tranquillity.” Parliament had also petitioned that “execution might be imposed upon” these priests; but the king would not condescend thereunto till his further pleasure, “whereupon they (the Jesuits) have continued secure in Newgate ever since, one man being solely excepted, viz. Goodman, who died last Good Friday, and at once deceived both Gregory[56] and Tyburn.” But the Parliament was at this date too near its rupture with the king to submit to be thus put off, and re-petitioned, stating “these Jesuits were an obstacle to their assiduous proceedings;” and His Majesty replied that if they were “the obstruction and hindrance of reformation in the Church they might be forthwith executed without further delay.” Henrietta Maria’s strong attachment to the Roman Catholic faith is satirized in the old German print, which I have taken from the Crowle ‘Pennant’s London’, and which represents the Queen doing penance at Tyburn over the grave of some recently executed priests. It is said that “the pore queen” walked afoot—some say barefoot—from St. James to Tyburn in the dead of night. A state coach followed with attendants, and her father confessor. The whole story is probably apocryphal, but the print is interesting as one of the earliest representations of Tyburn tree. The pilgrimage took place in 1628, but the print is of a later date.

Other prisoners at this time were certain Irishmen suspected to be rebels who had apparently been captured on the high seas, and eventually committed to Newgate. When formally examined before the Parliament, the servants, seamen, and soldiers were remitted; only the master of the ship, the captain, lieutenants, and ancients were detained, “and still continue in prison.” The court was to examine them further; but as this did not come off, the Parliament would, it was thought, censure them. These, found to be ten in number, five of them friars, four soldiers, and one a pilgrim, were at length examined “before a committee in the court of wards, who demanded of them their intents in coming over to Ireland, and to what effect: four of which very peremptorily denied, and said they came over with occasions of merchandize, but one of them betrayed the rest, and affirmed that they were friars, and came over into England to save souls for heaven.” The other five were carried down unto

Westminster before the same committee. The master of the ship, being called first, “did show a commission unto them for his going; they then asked him whether he would take the oath of allegiance, which he was willing to take. When asked as to the oath of supremacy, he replied that he was an ignorant man, and did not understand what it meant.” Three of the others could not speak a word of English, whereupon the master did interpret what they spake. “It seems by the exposition of the master of the ship that they have been in service under the Prince of Orange half a year; they were taken captives at Flanders; they served in France two years, and a half-year in Spain, and now come into their own country.”

Neglect of the stringent ordinances passed to protect life during the constant visitations of that fearful scourge the plague brought down the one universal penalty, committal to Newgate, upon offenders. Here is a long story about Stephen Smith, a fishmonger, whose door was by the sufferance of the warder broken open, and William Fenn, servant to Smith, who had already been indicted for offences committed during the several infections of that house, entered the house and brought a quantity of salted fish to the door for sale. Yet all the time Susan Wheelyer, a maid-servant of Smith’s, was shut up in the house infected with the plague. Smith had unlawfully abandoned his house. Fenn was apprehended and shut up with the late infected servant under a better guard. “I have committed the warder,” says Sir William Slingsby, who makes the report, “and commanded the fish to be carried in again, and the doors locked and guarded.... These proceedings I suspect to be done by the private directions of Smith.” The orders of the council on the above were prompt and severe. Stephen Smith was at once committed to Newgate, “there to be kept under strong bolts until further orders,” while William Fenn was sent to the pest-house, and a weight of iron placed on his heels to keep him safe and quiet there. It was ordered further, that the warders for their great neglect be put in the stocks before Smith’s house.

Newgate, during the last great plague epidemic, received all offenders against the sanitary rules. These were enforced by the Middlesex justices, who were directed to be most careful for the relief of the citizens and for the prevention of the spreading of infection. Diligent circumspection was to be used to prevent the removal of goods or persons from London or Westminster to other towns and villages, or up and down the Thames; also to put pressure upon those belonging to infected families who refused to shut themselves up. Refusal to obey or neglect of these orders was to be visited with committal to Newgate and indictment at the next sessions.

Offences against morality and religion were met with the same penalty of imprisonment. Incontinence and loose living were high misdemeanours. In an extract from the register of the High Court of Commission we find that Nicholas Slater of Royden, Essex, a married man, had run off with Blanche Cowper, another man’s wife. Defendants lived together in various places. “Slater, like a vagabond, without license had wandered up and down the kingdom professing physic and surgery, and carried Blanche about with him from place to place.” Slater was committed close prisoner to Newgate, there to remain during pleasure, and Blanche to Bridewell. There was added penance in Ware and Stepney, while Slater was fined £1000 and Blanche £100 to His Majesty. The last part of the sentence points to Charles’s shifts to raise money. This was in 1638. Another story of the same kind, but with a different issue, is of the same date. George Harrison in Newgate petitions the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lords of the High Commission Court for enlargement. A certain John Cock had, it appears, discovered the incontinent life of John Thierry and Ursula Baythorpe. The latter offered Cock £27 to be silent, which he was willing to accept, and went with the petitioner Harrison to a tavern, the place appointed for the handing over of the money. But they fell into a trap, and were arrested at the tavern; thence they were carried to the Compter and committed to Newgate. Afterwards at a sessions they were indicted, and, on the testimonies of the merchant and the said Ursula’s sister and her husband, were whipped three times to the pillory, where they stood eleven hours. They were not suffered to come down till they had asked Thierry’s and Ursula’s forgiveness before all the spectators, and so were three times whipped back again. “By the extremity of which execution petitioner lost his speech and almost his understanding, and Cock was carried home dead in the cart. By which cruelty and disgrace petitioner, who was formerly well respected, is now utterly undone.” Thierry must have had good friends at court. But the informer seems to have been right in his denunciation, for both the accused were subsequently “detected to the court,” and it was proved that the said poor men had only suffered for “meddling with the truth.” Petitioner now prays that the merchant (Thierry) may be ordered to give him and his poor children relief and restitution for their sufferings.

A quaint pamphlet entitled ‘Strange News from Newgate,’ dated 1647, states that on the 10th January, “being the blessed sabbath, at Botolph’s Church near Bishopgate, in sermon time, there arose a great disturbance by one Evan Price, a tailor, who stood up and declared himself to be Christ, which words much amazed the people, and divers timorous spirits into a great fear.... Whereupon he was immediately apprehended and carried before the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor, where he was examined seriously and at length, although no doubt a religious lunatic.” He was asked whether he had worked miracles, whether he was married, ... “with divers other arguments objected against him, which he was not able to answer, but remained obstinate in his devilish and satanical opinion.” But after some time spent upon his examination, “as he still remained in his hell-bred opinion, not hearkening to any advice or counsel whatsoever,” it was ordered that he should be committed to Newgate, which was accordingly performed. “Five days later he was arraigned at the Old Bailey, and coming to the bar, was examined by the judges, but seemed resolute not to make any confession.” The pamphlet ends abruptly, and does not give the result of his trial.

It must have been consequent on some conflict with the ecclesiastical authority that Edward Powell, alias Anderson, was sent from Ely as a prisoner to Newgate. The story rests on a report from Bishop Wren of Ely to the council, dated 5th June 1638. Powell had been apprehended upon a riot committed by an assemblage which went by the name of Anderson’s Camp, but was not imprisoned for his share therein, but for his misdemeanours and foul speeches at the time of arrest. He was accused of being an abettor of the riot, although not present at it. When he had been at Newmarket the previous Lent, Powell paid the town-crier twopence to proclaim a gathering of the people to go to the king with a petition about their fens; “for the losing of the fens would be the losing of their livelihood.” Upon this Powell was summoned before Mr. Justice Goodrick, but denied the charge. Next day Mr. Goodrick, going into the market-place, found a crowd there with cudgels in their hands, and Powell with them. Powell, interrogated, asked whether the king’s market was not open to all, and rejoined his company. As the result of these disturbances, Powell was arraigned and sentenced to a fine of £200, and to be imprisoned, and “now lies in execution for the same. Since his removal from the prison at Ely to Newgate, the poor people are very quiet and in good order.” Powell from his captivity addresses his “loving friends and neighbours in the city of Ely, and others,” in letters which were seized. In these he expresses a hope of deliverance when the king comes to London, and that he has refused to give up his friends’ names, whereby they might be fined and imprisoned, although daily urged to do so by fair offers and large promises, and also by threatening language, terrible speech, and protestation of perpetual imprisonment. He then asks these friends to make a collection for him and his family, and gives a dark picture of his prison—“this loathsome gaol, in which we are accompanied with noisome stinks, cold, lousy to dying, and almost all other miseries.”

There is nothing especially remarkable in the purely criminal cases of this period; offences have a strong family likeness to those of our own day. Culprits are “cast” for “taking a chest of plate out of a house;” for “taking £100 from a gentleman,” and so forth. Now and again appears a case of abduction, a common crime in those and later days. Sarah Cox prays the king’s pardon for Roger Fulwood, who was convicted of felony for forcibly marrying her against her will. But she begs at the same time her protection for person and estate from any claims in regard to the pretended marriage. Knights of the road have already begun to operate; they have already the brevet rank of captain, and even lads of tender years are beguiled into adopting the profession of highway robber. Counterfeiting the king’s or other great seals was an offence not unknown. A Captain Farrar is lodged in Newgate (1639), accused of counterfeiting His Majesty’s signature and privy signet. His method of procedure was simple. Having received a document bearing His Majesty’s privy seal for the payment of a sum of £190, he removed the seal and affixed it to a paper purporting to be a license from the king to levy and transport two hundred men beyond seas. This he published as a royal license. When arraigned he admitted that the charge was true, but pleaded that he had done the same according to the king’s commands. He was reprieved until further orders.

The condition of the prisoners within Newgate continued very deplorable. This is apparent from the occasional references to their treatment. They were heavily ironed, lodged in loathsome dungeons, and all but starved to death. Poor Stephen Smith, the fishmonger,[57] who had contravened the precautionary rules against the plague, petitions the council that he has been very heavily laden with such intolerable bolts and shackles that he is lamed, and being a weak and aged man, is like to perish in the gaol. “Having always lived in good reputation and been a liberal benefactor where he has long dwelt, he prays enlargement on security.” The prison is so constantly over-crowded that the prisoners have “an infectious malignant fever which sends many to their long home. The magistrates who think them unfit to breathe their native air when living bury them as brethren when dead.” All kinds of robbery and oppression were practised within the precincts of the gaol. Inside, apart from personal discomfort, the inmates do much as they please. “There are seditious preachings by fifth monarchy men at Newgate,” say the records, “and prayers for all righteous blood.” Some time previous, when the Puritans were nominally the weakest, they also held their services in the prison. Samuel Eaton, a prisoner committed to Newgate as a dangerous schismatic, is charged with having conventicles in the gaol, some to the number of seventy persons. He was, moreover, permitted by the keeper to preach openly. The keeper was petitioned by one of the inmates to remove Eaton and send him to some other part of the prison, but he replied disdainfully, threatening to remove the petitioner to a worse place. He, the keeper himself, attended the conventicles, “calling it a very fair and goodly company, and staying there some season.” Besides this, he gave license to Eaton to go abroad, to preach, contrary to the charge of the High Commission (1638). Another complaint made by the petitioner is that the keeper caused petitioner’s sister to be removed out of the prison contrary to the opinion of a doctor, and that she died the very next day. Her chamber after her removal was assigned to Eaton, it being the most convenient place in the prison for holding his conventicles.

This keeper may be condemned as a fanatical partizan at worst. But he had predecessors who were active oppressors, eager to squeeze the uttermost farthing out of their involuntary lodgers. The bar kept within the prison must have been a cause of continued extortion, although those who pandered to the cupidity of the bar-keepers occasionally got into trouble. Sir Francis Mitchell, we read, was sent on foot and bareheaded to the Tower on account of his patent for ale-houses. “He is a justice of Middlesex, and had a salary of £40 a year from Newgate prison on condition of sending all his prisoners there,” ... no doubt to drink the liquor supplied to the prison bar.

But still worse was the conduct of the under-strappers. An instruction to the Lord Mayor and sheriffs in the State Papers (Dec. 1649) directs them to examine the miscarriages of the under officers of Newgate who were favourers of the felons and robbers there committed, and to remove such as appear faulty. The nefarious practices of the Newgate officers were nothing new. They are set forth with much quaintness of diction and many curious details in a pamphlet of the period, entitled the ‘Black Dogge of Newgate.’ There was a tavern entitled the ‘Dogge Tavern in Newgate,’ as appears by the State Papers, where the place is indicted by an informer for improper practices. The author of the pamphlet pretends that the dog has got out of prison and leapt into a sign-board. “‘What the devil’s here?’ quoth a mad fellow going by, seeing the black cur ringed about the nose with a golden hoop, having two saucer-like eyes, and an iron chain about his neck. The public-house must be a well-customed house where such a porter keeps the door and calls in company.” The writer enters it and describes the scene. He finds “English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Dutch, and French in several rooms; some drinking the neat wine of Orleans, some the Gascony, some the Bordeaux. There wanted neither sherry sack nor charnico, paligo nor Peter Seeme, amber-coloured canary or liquorish Ipocras, brown beloved Bastard, fat Alicant, or any quick-spirited liquor that might draw their will into a circle....” Not desiring to mix with such company, the writer sat himself and called for his “whole pint” alone. Presently he was joined by a “poor thin-gut fellow with a face as red as the gilded knobs of an alderman’s horse-bridle, who as it seemed had newly come out of limbo.” The two treated each other, and then exchanged opinions as to the sign of the tavern, wondering how it came first to be called the Black Dog of Newgate; and the writer maintained that he had read in an old chronicle “that it was a walking spirit in the likeness of a black dog, gliding up and down the streets a little before the time of execution, and in the night while the sessions continued.” From this archæological exercise they pass on to discuss the prison and its officers. This part of the pamphlet sheds a strong light upon the evil-doings of the turnkeys, who appear to have been guilty of the grossest extortion, taking advantage of their position as officers of the law to levy black-mail alike on criminals and their victims. Of these swindling turnkeys or bailiffs, whom the writer designates “coney-catchers,” he tells many discreditable tales, one or two of which may be worth transcribing.

The term coney-catching had long been in use to define a species of fraud akin to our modern “confidence trick,” or, as the French call it, the vol à l’Americain. Shakespeare, in the ‘Merry Wives of Windsor,’ makes Falstaff call Bardolph, Nym, and Pistol “coney-catching rascals.” The fraud was then of but recent introduction. It is detailed at length by Robert Greene in his ‘Notable Discovery of Cozenage,’ published in 1591. He characterizes it as a new art. Three parties were needed to practise it, called respectively the setter, the verser, and the barnacle; their game, or victim, was the coney. The first was the decoy, the second was a confederate who plied the coney with drink, the third came in by accident should the efforts of the others to beguile the coney into “a deceit at cards have failed.” In the end the countryman was completely despoiled. Later on there was a new nomenclature: the setter became the beater, the tavern to which the rogues adjourned was the “bush,” and the quarry was the bird. The verser was the retriever, the barnacle was the pot-hunter, and the game was called bat-fowling. Greene’s exposure was supposed to have deprived the coney-catchers of a “collop of their living.” But they still prospered at their nefarious practices, according to the author of the ‘Black Dogge,’ to whom I will now return.

This was their plan of procedure. Two coney-catchers enter a tavern together, and there find a gentleman drinking wine. They note his appearance, his weapons, his good cloak and his neat apparel, and are clear that he has a good store of money; so they make up to him. The three become friendly, and the gentleman stands treat. After two or three pottles of wine are disposed of one of the rogues says to their entertainer, “I pray you heark in your ear. Thus it is; my fellow hath a warrant to take you, therefore in kindness I pray you draw your purse and give him an angel to spend in drink, and I will undertake we will not see you at this time.” The stranger, however, would not be imposed upon, and said they were coney-catching knaves, and that they should not wrong him in any respect. “Whereupon the two sent for a constable, and charged the other with felony. The constable, recognizing the two as officials, took the stranger into custody and deprived him of his weapons. Then the two told the constable they would be answerable for his prisoner, and took charge of him. Now mark what followed. As these two knaves were bringing the party charged with felony to Newgate, one of them offered yet xx shillings to set him free, of which, when the party had considered, knowing though he was clear of that he was charged, yet if he lay in prison till the Sessions it would be greater charges. When he was on Newgate stairs ready to go into the gaol, he was content to leave his cloak, what money he had in his purse, and his weapons, which were in the constable’s hand, in pawn for the xx shillings, which the coney-catchers took, and discharged the prisoner without any more to do.”

A little later the same victim is again encountered, with a companion, in a tavern without Bishopgate, where he “had spoke for supper.” In came the swindling turnkeys, whereat the other set on the best face he could, and bade them welcome. The coney-catchers accepted the invitation, and ate and drank merrily. Supper being ended, the reckoning was called for, the shot paid, and, all things discharged, the coneys would fain have been gone. “But one of the knaves said nay: ... thus it is, such a man was robbed within this week, and hath got out a warrant for you by name. He hath lost £10; now, if you will restore the money, and bestow xx shillings on us two to drink for our pains, we will undertake to satisfy the party and be your discharge. If not, we have a warrant, and you must answer it at Newgate. This back reckoning is something sharp, but there is no remedy; either pay so much money, or else must a constable be sent for, and so to Newgate as round as a hoop.”

“To be short, this was the conclusion: the coney put down £10, every penny whereof was to be paid to the man in the moon, for I dare take it upon my death neither of these coneys did offend any such man in manner these knaves had charged them.”

A favourite hunting-ground for these swindlers was at Westminster Hall during term time. Their method was to send confederates in among the thickest of the crowd, where the cut-purses were likely to be busiest, and there “listen if any purse were cut that day.” The coney-catchers themselves were posted, one by the water stairs, the other at the gate, where they could not fail to intercept the cut-purse who had committed the theft. Presently they recognize him, accost and stop him. The cut-purse, anxious to curry favour, offers to stand both wine and a breakfast, but the coney-catcher will not tarry. He declares with an oath that he is really sorry to have met the cut-purse that day, “for there is a mischief done, and he fears some one will smoke for it.” At this time the cut-purse is afraid, but for that time he scapeth their fingers. After this the swindler makes it his business to seek out the victim of the robbery, and on discovering him, promises that if he will only be guided by him he will help him to most of his money again. The honest fellow, a countryman, delighted, offers “at first word” one half to get other half back, the whole amount being ten pounds. “Then away goeth the coney-catcher to a justice,” from whom he obtains a warrant to take up all suspected persons. The warrant obtained, the coney-catcher is as “pleasant as a pie,” and with his countryman spend some time drinking a pottle of wine, after which the turnkey takes leave of his client, who goes to his lodging, and “the coney-catcher about his faculty.” Now, woe to the cut-purses we may meet, for they must to Newgate on his warrant; but although he apprehends twelve or sixteen, the real culprit is certainly not among them. “The honest company of cut-purses being all in Newgate, H. (the coney-catcher) goes presently and certifies the justice what a set of notable thieves he has taken, and desiring the justice to examine them about the theft, warning him that they will confess nothing, which indeed the justice findeth true.” They are remanded to Newgate, and en route beg H. to stand their friend, “assuring him of their innocency; yet rather than be in prison one offereth ten shillings, some more, some less, as they are of ability, with promise of more if H.’s good words gain them their release.”

“Now the coney-catcher hath the matter as he would wish it, and taking their money, first he goeth presently to the justice and certifieth him that these which he had apprehended did none of them cut the purse, and for that he hath gotten knowledge who did, he desireth that they may be bailed.” The justice, glad to hear the culprit is known, yields ready assent, and the captive cut-purses are set free.

H.’s next business is to hunt up the real thief, and meeting him, “spareth not to tell him how sore the justice is against him, and how earnestly the countryman will pursue the law; and further, he sweareth that some of those that were in Newgate told the justice plainly that he cut the purse. This peal ringeth nothing well in the cut-purse’s ears, who can find no favour but to Newgate.” So he entreats the coney-catcher to stand his friend, who promises at length to do any good he can, at the same time cautioning the cut-purse to confess nothing, “what proof soever come against him,” assuring him further, that the man who lost the money, although sore bent against, “yet he will partly be ruled by him, H.” But the arrest is made; the thief is conveyed to Newgate, and there, by way of welcome, a good pair of bolts and shackles are clapped upon his legs. Then H. sends for the countryman, telling him the good news that the thief is taken and in limbo; and together they go before the justice, to whom H. “signifieth how the case standeth, railing mightily against the cut-purse,” whose guilt can easily be proved, and begging his worship to summon the thief. The cut-purse is sent for, and “having taken out his lesson,” doggedly refuses to confess, upon which the justice returneth him to Newgate, there to abide till the next sessions. The countryman is bound over to give evidence, but he, “dwelling far from London, and it being long to next Law Day, allegeth he cannot be in the city at that time, for he is a poor man, and hath great occasion of business.”

On leaving the justice H. returns to Newgate, and assures the cut-purse that he has laboured hard “with him who had his purse cut to take his money again, and not to give evidence against him; that if he may have his money again he will presently go out of town.” The cut-purse, taking H.’s hand (as witness) that no man shall give evidence against him at the sessions, doth presently send abroad to his friends for the money; which as soon as it cometh he delivereth to H., and withal a large overplus, because he will be thus sure of H.’s favour.

“This done, H. goes to the countryman and tells him he got no more but six or seven pounds, of which, if he will accept, and proceed no further against the party, he hath it to pay him; marry he will not be known to the countryman, but that he had that money of some friend of the cut-purse’s, who upon the former condition is willing it should be paid, if not, to have his money again.

“The countryman, having haste out of the city, is glad to take it, out of which sum, if it be seven pounds, H. must have half; so that the poor man, of ten pounds hath but three pounds ten shillings, whereas the coney-catcher by this account hath got at one hand and another very near forty marks. The money shared, the countryman takes horse and away he rides. Again H.’s mouth is stopt, and the next sessions the cut-purse is quit by proclamation, no man being there to give evidence against him.”

Plain symptoms of the approaching struggle between the king and the commons are to be met with in the prison records. Immediately after the meeting of the Long Parliament, orders were issued for the enlargement of many victims of Star Chamber oppression. Among them was the celebrated Prynne, author of the ‘Histriomatrix,’[58] who had lost his ears in the pillory; Burton a clergyman, and Bastwick a physician, who had suffered the same penalties, all came out of prison triumphant, wearing ivy and rosemary in their hats. Now Strafford was impeached and presently beheaded; Laud also was condemned. The active interference of Parliament in all affairs of State extended to the arrest of persons suspected of treasonable practices. A curious document issues from Newgate in 1642, where several supposed rebels and others have been imprisoned. It is a petition[59] which was presented to Parliament by Colonel Goret, who had commanded some of them in France. The petition sets forth that Daniel Dalley, master of a small barque, of “Kinsaile in Ireland,” had been freighted, about the 10th November, 1641, out by two gentlemen, merchants of Kingsale, with beef, tallow, and hides for “St. Mallowes in France.” There these commodities had been “vended,” and the same merchants laid out their money in wine and fruits to freight the vessel home again. “All being done, and they ready to set sail, the governor (of St. Mallowes) sent a command to Daniel Dalley the master, that he should take nine gentlemen with him, which should pay for their passage.” “By reason of the troubles,”[60] the master refused; but Dalley was obliged to take them on board, under threat of committal to gaol, and by the governor’s warrant and command. He then set sail, and two days after he had gone to sea a storm rose at south and S. S. W., which drove them into Saltcombe in the west country, “where the passengers went ashore and took lodging till it would please God to send fair weather.” However, notice of their landing came to Captain Foskew, “one that had command of a fort of his majesty’s there,” who summoned them before him and examined them. Finding they could not give a good account of their designs, he committed them, with the merchants and the ship’s company, until he communicated with Parliament. In reply the Parliament sent for them to London, and lodged them in Newgate. There they lay from day to day expecting to be called up by Parliament, but this being so long delayed, they petitioned for enlargement.

On the Parliament side it appeared that information had been given the House of Commons that certain mariners and commanders were proceeding from France to Ireland to take part in the rebellion, they having a commission about them for the purpose. Also that one Captain Foskew had taken and stayed the said mariners and sea captains. “The honourable assembly,” therefore, as well out of their pious and grave consideration for the better satisfaction of the kingdom, as for the prevention of such dangers as might follow from their landing in Ireland, made an order to bring the prisoners to London for examination. This was done with all proper precaution. Each sheriff saw to their safe conduct in his own county, “not suffering them to go together, but the commanders to be kept away from the rest.” By virtue of the Speaker’s (Lenthall) warrant, they were delivered by the sheriff of Devon to the next sheriff, and so from county to county, until they came to Middlesex, where they were received by the sheriffs of Middlesex, and committed to Newgate, the county gaol, “where they were with much care imprisoned and strictly kept, some of them being placed in the master’s, others in the common side.”

The petition already mentioned set forth that the said captains, “being all strangers and destitute of acquaintance, except with a few persons of this town. They declared that they were his majesty’s true and loyal subjects, most of them born within the king’s realm of Ireland, all strictly obliged and most ready to defend his rights and privileges to the utmost of their power. Being ‘necessitated in their native country,’ they repaired three years previously to France, where they served in martial affairs under Colonel Goret, till they were disbanded, and resolved to return home. They were, however, detained at Saltcombe, in the county of Devon, where they were imprisoned and their goods seized. Since then they had lain in Newgate, ‘where they are liable to remain in great misery, to their loss of time, and utter destruction and ruin.’ They begged, therefore, that they might be ‘forthwith convented before the honourable assembly to answer their charge,’ and having proved their loyalty, might be restored to their former liberty and fortunes.” The answer to this petition is not recorded, except that the prisoners hoped daily to be sent for, a committee of the House having been appointed to examine them. Meantime they carried themselves civilly in the gaol, and with patience looked for the time when they should be called for their answer. They were conscious of innocence; they denied “all intentions of assisting the rebels in Ireland, or any act which might tend to their disloyalty,” the true cause of their return home being a want of employment in France.

There are other cases of imprisonment more or less arbitrary in these troubled times. Another petition may be quoted, that of Richard Overton, “a prisoner in the most contemptible gaol of Newgate,” under an order of the House of Lords. Overton tells us how he was brought before that House “in a warlike manner, under pretence of a criminal fact, and called upon to answer interrogations concerning himself which he conceived to be illegal and contrary to the national rights, freedoms, and properties of the free commoners of England, confirmed to them by Magna Charta, the Petition of Right, and the Act for the Abolishment of the Star Chamber.” Overton was therefore emboldened to refuse subjection to the said House. He was adjudged guilty of contempt, and committed to Newgate, where he was seemingly doomed to lie until their lordships’ pleasure shall be further signified, which “may be perpetual if they please, and may have their wills, for your petitioner humbly conceiveth that he is made a prisoner to their wills, not to the law, except their wills may be a law.” On this account he appealed to the Commons “as the most sovereign Court of Judicature in the land,” claiming from them “repossession of his just liberty and freedom, or else that he may undergo the penalty prescribed by the law if he be found a transgressor.” Whether Overton was supported by the Commons against the Lords does not appear, but within three years the Lower House abolished the House of Peers.

Here is yet another petition from a better known inmate of Newgate, the obstinately independent Colonel Lilburne, commonly called “Freeborn John.” Lilburne was always at loggerheads with the government of the city. In 1637, when following the trade of bookseller, he was convicted by the Star Chamber for publishing seditious libels, and sentenced to the pillory, imprisonment, and a fine of £5000. In 1645 he falls foul of the Parliament, and writes a new treatise, calling in question their power. For this, although he had already done good service to the Parliamentary cause and had earned the grade of Lieutenant-Colonel in the field, he is first questioned, then sent to Newgate. He dates from thence, in 1646, a letter to Mr. Wollaston, the keeper of Newgate, or his deputy. He states that he has seen a warrant commanding the keeper to produce him before the House of Lords, but that the warrant expresses no reason why he should “dance attendance before them,” nor does he know any reason why he should, or any law that compels him thereto. The Lords had already endeavoured illegally to try him, a commoner, before their bar, for which, under hand and seal, he protested to their faces against them as violent and illegal encroachers upon his rights and liberties, and appealed to the proper tribunal, the Commons, for which appeal he was arbitrarily committed to gaol. Lilburne goes on to say,—

“Sir, I am a freeman of England, and therefore I am not to be used as a slave or vassal by the Lords, which they have already done, and would further do; I also am a man of peace and quietness, and desire not to molest any, if I be not forced thereunto, therefore I desire you, as you tender my good and your own, take this for an answer, that I cannot, without turning traitor to my liberty, dance attendance to their lordships’ bar, being bound in conscience, duty to God, myself, thine, and my country, to oppose their encroachments to the death, which, by the strength of God, I am resolved to do. Sir, you may, or cause to be exercised upon me some force or violence to pull and drag me out of my chamber, which I am resolved to maintain as long as I can, before I will be compelled to go before them; and therefore I desire you, in a friendly way, to be wise and considerate before you do that which, it may be, you can never undo.

“Sir, I am your true and fair-conditioned prisoner, if you will be so to me,

“John Lilburne.

“From my cock-loft in the press-yard of Newgate, 23rd June, 1646.”

Lilburne was eventually banished by the Rump Parliament; but in 1653 he returned to England, and threw himself upon the tender mercies of the Protector. Cromwell would do nothing, and left him to the law. Lilburne was then arrested, and committed to Newgate. At the next sessions he was arraigned, but refused to plead unless furnished with a copy of his indictment. He managed to put off his trial by various expedients till the next sessions, when he was acquitted by the jury. In Thurloe’s State papers it is stated that “John Lilburne was five times at his trial at the Sessions House, where he most courageously defended himself from Mr. Stale, the recorder’s, violent assaults with his old buckler, Magna Charta, so that they have let him alone.” “Freeborn John” was so popular with malcontents of all shades of opinion, that the authorities, from Oliver Cromwell downward, were really afraid of him. Oliver professed to be enraged against him, and anxious for his punishment, yet he privately paid him a pension equal to the pay of a Lieutenant-Colonel, and, as Thurloe says, “thought the fellow so considerable, that during the time of his trial he kept three regiments continually under arms at St. James’.” The jury which acquitted Lilburne were summoned to answer for their conduct before the Council of State. Yet there is little doubt that the court was overawed by the mob. For Thurloe says there were six or seven hundred men at the trial, with swords, pistols, bills, daggers, and other instruments, that, in case they had not cleared him, they would have employed in his defence. The joy and acclamation was so great after he was acquitted, that the shout was heard an English mile.

The mob had been turbulent enough to give cause for alarm on a previous occasion. Four or five years previously the puritanical zeal of the Lords had produced a stringent ordinance against tippling and gaming on the Lord’s Day. This occasioned a great tumult, which originated in Moorfields, and agitated the metropolis for a couple of days. It is said that, but for the vigorous action of Fairfax, the Government would have been overthrown. The people mastered a part of the trainbands, seized their drums and colours, beat up for recruits, then forming into something like military order, they surprised Newgate and Ludgate in the night, and seized the keys. The rioters divided into two parties: one marched upon Whitehall, but were discomfited en route; the other ranged the city, possessing themselves of ordnance, arms, and ammunition. Prompt measures were, however, taken at a council of war, and Fairfax, entering the city at the head of two regiments, put several to the sword, took many prisoners, and dispersed the rest.

The transfer of power to the Commonwealth is significantly recorded in the annals of Newgate. A whole batch of warrants are to be found in the State papers about 1649, ordering the committal of persons charged with being in arms against the Parliament—the offenders are mostly military officers. Thus the keeper of Newgate, Richard Dicke by name, is commanded to receive Lieutenant-Colonel Clarke, Major Wright, and Captain Wescott; also Lieutenant Gage, Robert Wood, pilot, and Robert Parker, taken in a man of war, all charged with levying war. Again, the Commonwealth directs W. Roberts to be sent to Newgate for being an agent of the proclaimed King of Scotland. Later on, Colonel Clarke, already mentioned, was released on his signing the test, and finding securities for good behaviour. Captain Matthew Harrison is committed for bearing arms against the Parliament, and “drinking a health to Charles, the late king’s son, by name King Charles II.” The recorder is directed to examine Colonel Jones concerning Captain Harrison, and to see that he be proceeded against according to law. A declaration is made before the Council of State as to Charles Pullen, “lately a prisoner in Newgate,” committed there for being found in the Hart frigate. Pullen had escaped from prison, and was liable to the penalty of death if recaptured; but the council remit the penalty in order to exchange Pullen for Ensign Wright, a prisoner at Jersey. In Nov. 1650 John Jolfe is committed to Newgate for carrying the Roebuck out of the Commonwealth. Royalist sympathizers find but scant comfort. The keeper of Newgate is ordered to receive and imprison one Pate, and hold him in safe custody, for aiding Lieutenant-General Middleton to escape from the Tower; and a similar warrant is made out against Mitchell for being accessory to the escape of Colonel Edward Massey from the same place.

All this time prisoners of great mark were at times confined in Newgate. That noted royalist, Judge Jenkins, was among the number. His crime was publishing seditious books, and sentencing to death people who had assisted against the Parliament. He was indeed attainted of high treason under an ordinance which started in the House of Commons, and was ultimately passed, and sent to the House of Lords. A committee was sent from “the Commons’ House to Newgate, which was to interview Judge Jenkins, and make the following offer to him—viz. that if he would own the power of the Parliament to be lawful, they would not only take off the sequestrations from his estates, amounting to £500 per annum, but they would also settle a pension on him of £1000 a year.” His reply was to the following effect: “Far be it from me to own rebellion, although it was lawful and successful.” As the judge refused to come to terms with them, he remained in Newgate till the Restoration.

People of still higher rank found themselves in gaol. The brother of the Portugal ambassador, Don Pantaleon Sa, is sent, with others, to Newgate for a murder committed by them near the Exchange. It was a bad case. They had quarrelled with an English officer, Gerard, who, hearing the Portuguese discoursing in French upon English affairs, told them they did not represent certain passages aright. “One of the foreigners gave him the lie, and all three fell upon him, and stabbed him with a dagger; but Colonel Gerard being rescued out of their hands by one Mr. Anthuser, they retired home, and within one hour returned with twenty more, armed with breastplate and head-pieces; but after two or three turns, not finding Mr. Anthuser, they returned home that night.”[61] Don Pantaleon made his escape from prison a few days later, but he was retaken. Strenuous efforts were then made to obtain his release. His trial was postponed on the petition of “the Portugal merchants.” The Portugal ambassador himself had an audience of Cromwell, the Lord Protector. But the law took its course. Don Pantaleon pleaded his relationship, and that he had a commission to act as ambassador in his brother’s absence; this was disallowed, and after much argument the prisoners pleaded guilty, and desired “to be tried by God and the country.” A jury was called, half-denizens, half-aliens, six of each, who, after a full hearing, found the ambassador’s brother and four more guilty of murder and felony. Lord Chief Justice Rolles then sentenced them to be hanged, and fixed the day of execution; “but by the desire of the prisoners it was respited two days.” This was the 6th July, 1654. On the 8th, Don Pantaleon Sa was reprieved, or more exactly, his sentence was commuted to beheading. On the 10th he tried to escape, without success, and on the same day he was conveyed from Newgate to Tower Hill in a coach and six horses in mourning, with divers of his brother’s retinue with him. There he laid his head on the block, and “it was chopt off at two blows.” The rest although condemned were all reprieved, except one, an English boy concerned in the murder, who was hanged at Tyburn.[62]

Other distinguished inmates, a few years later, were Charles Lord Buckhurst, Edward Sackville, and Sir Henry Bellayse, K.B., who, being prisoners in Newgate, petitioned the Lord Chief Justice, March 10th, to be admitted to bail, one of them being ill of the small-pox. They were charged seemingly with murder. Their petition sets forth that “while returning from Waltham to London, on the 8th February, they aided some persons, who complained that they had been robbed and wounded in pursuit of the thieves, and in attacking the robbers wounded one who has since died.” Sir Thomas Towris, Baronet, petitions the king (Charles II.) “not to suffer him to lie in that infamous place, where he has not an hour of health, nor the necessaries of life. He states that he has been four months in the Tower, and five weeks in Newgate, charged with counterfeiting His Majesty’s hand, by the malice of an infamous person who, when Registrar Accountant at Worcester House, sold false debentures.” Sir Thomas “wished to lay his case before His Majesty at his first coming from Oxford, but was deceived, and the way to bounty stopped.”

CHAPTER IV.
NEWGATE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
(AFTER THE GREAT FIRE).

Newgate refronted in 1638—Destroyed in Great Fire of 1666—How rebuilt—Façade described—Account of interior by B. L. of Twickenham—Various parts or sides—The lodge and condemned hold—The master debtors’ side—The master felons’ side—The common debtors’ side—The common felons’ side—The press-yard and castle—The chapel—Miserable condition of inmates—Some few pleaded unhealthiness as an excuse for release—Suicides frequent—Mr. Norton—Newgate called by Recorder a nursery of rogues—Negligence of keepers—The gaoler Fells indicted for permitting escapes—Crimes of the period—Clipping and coining greatly increased—Enormous profits of the fraud—Coining within the gaol itself deemed high treason—Heavy penalties—Highway robbery very prevalent—Instances—Officers and paymasters with the king’s gold robbed—Stage coaches stopped—All manner of men took to the road, including persons of good position—Their effrontery—Whitney—His capture, and attempts to escape—His execution—Efforts to check highway robbery—A few types of notorious highwaymen—“Mulled sack”—Claude Duval—Nevison—Abduction of heiresses—Mrs. Synderfin—Miss Rawlins—Miss Wharton—Count Konigsmark—The German princess—Other criminal names—Titus Oates—Dangerfield—The Fifth Monarchy men—William Penn—The two Bishops, Ellis and Leyburn.

NEWGATE was refronted and refaced in 1638 in the manner already described.[63] No further change or improvement was made in the building until a total re-edification became inevitable, after the great fire in 1666. Of the exact effect of that conflagration upon the prison gate-house I can discover no authentic records. Knight, in his ‘London,’ gives a woodcut of the burning of Newgate, designed by Fussel, which many dismissed as imaginative rather than historically accurate. The gate as represented is altogether larger than it could possibly have been, and the aspect of the structure is very much what a nineteenth century artist would conceive a mediæval prison would be. According to a writer in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ for April, 1764, Newgate was only damaged, not destroyed, in the great fire. He goes on to speak of the “present beautiful structure,” an edifice so inadequate for prison purposes, it may be remarked that it had already been condemned at this date, and schemes for its entire reconstruction propounded. This beautiful structure as represented in the woodcut is thus described by the above-mentioned writer:—

“The west side is adorned with three ranges of Tuscan pilasters with their entablatures, and in the inter columniations are four niches, in one of which is a figure representing Liberty; the word ‘libertas’ is inscribed on her cap, and at her feet lies a cat in allusion to Sir Richard Whittington, a benefactor to the prison, who is said to have made the first step to his advancement and good fortune by a cat. The inside of the gate is also adorned with a range of pilasters, with their entablatures, and in their niches

are the figures of Justice, Mercy, and Truth.... Newgate,” he continues, “considered as a prison is a structure of more cost and beauty than was necessary, because the sumptuousness of the outside but aggravates the misery of the wretches within; but as a gate to such a city as London, it might have received considerable additions both of design and execution, and abundantly answered the cost in the reputation of the building. The gate of a city, erected rather for ornament than use, ought to be in the style of the triumphal arches.... If Newgate be considered as a prison, it is indeed a very dismal one. It is the county gaol for Middlesex both for debtors and malefactors, as well as the city prison for criminals. The debtor, rendered unfortunate by the vicissitudes of trade or unforeseen losses, has the reproach of being confined in the same prison with the greatest villains, and too often his being in Newgate is imputed by the ignorant to crimes which he abhors. On the other hand, those confined as criminals are, even before they are found guilty by the laws of their country, packed so close together that the air being corrupted, ... occasions a dismal, contagious disease called the gaol distemper, which has frequently carried off great numbers, and even spread its contagion to the Court of Justice, where they take their trials. But to prevent these dreadful effects the city has introduced a ventilator on the top of Newgate to expel the foul air, and make room for the admission of such as is fresh; and during the sessions herbs are also spread in the Justice Hall and the passages to it to prevent infection. However, as these precautions, with some others, have often proved ineffectual, and as the prison in its present state is far from being commodious, it was lately resolved by the Common Council of the city of London to petition Parliament for leave to build a new prison in a more commodious place.”

An accurate and detailed account of the interior of the 1667 prison has been preserved in a small work published in 1724, and written by “B. L. of Twickenham.” This book purports to be “an accurate description of Newgate, with the rights, privileges, allowances, fees, dues, and customs thereof, together with a parallel between the master debtors’ side and the several spunging houses in the county of Middlesex, 1724.” The author’s short historical preface contains no new facts. It is when he proceeds to describe the inside of the building, such as he evidently knew it from personal inspection, that his account becomes interesting. He gives no illustrations, but I have constructed plans of each floor from the descriptions in the letter-press, which may assist the reader in understanding the text.

Newgate, as is plain from the woodcut, spanned the roadway, which passed beneath by the arch, and seemingly, as in Temple Bar in our time, without gate or obstruction. This roadway outside the gate, or to the westward, was Holborn; within, or to the eastward, it was Newgate Street. The prison proper seems to have consisted of all the upper stories of the gatehouse; but so far as I can deduce from “B. L.,” only the rooms or apartments to the south of the arch or gateway, upon the ground-floor. Behind the gate front the prison building extended some way back parallel with Newgate Street, an increase of accommodation dating from the time of the Commonwealth, when “our very churches were made prisons, so great was the demand for room.” This extension was accomplished by taking in the buildings belonging to the Phœnix Inn in Newgate Street.

Before proceeding to a detailed description of the various chambers and cellars into which the interior was divided, it will be well to recount briefly the general divisions to be found within Newgate. These were—

PARTS OR SIDES.

I. The Master Debtors’ Side comprised—

II. The Master Felons’ Side comprised—

III. The Common Side for Debtors comprised—

IV. The Common Side for Felons comprised—

V. The Press-Yard and Castle comprised several rooms on ground and three upper floors, as well as an exercising ground.

Besides the foregoing there was a chapel at the topmost story and a number of independent rooms, such as the Bilbows, Press-room, Condemned holds, and Jack Ketch’s kitchen.

At the entrance, on the threshold of the prison, was the lodge, “where prisoners were first received, and where they were generally fettered if the cause of their imprisonment require it.” Other writers less favourably disposed than B. L. affirm that almost all prisoners without exception were in those days ironed upon reception, whatever their condition. This, in effect, was one of the many acts of extortion practised without let or hindrance by the gaolers of the past. Debtors and unconvicted persons were clapped into manacles for a time, and until they were terrified into purchasing release; the most heinous offenders were also heavily weighted until they chose to purchase “easement,” and choice of a lighter set of chains. There was no reception ward in Newgate such as we understand it, but hard by the lodge was a chamber which served as a first resting-place for most male prisoners, as well as the last for not a few. The condemned hold for males, says B. L., is situated “adjacent to the lodge.” Another writer, the author of ‘The History of the Press-Yard,’ states more precisely that the men’s condemned hold, “falsely supposed a noisome vault underground, lies between the top and bottom of the arch under Newgate.” It was only imperfectly lighted, a “dark opace wild room,” entered by a hatch, about twenty feet in length and fifteen in breadth. The floor was of stone, but on it was a wooden barrack bed raised, “whereon you may repose yourself if your nose suffers you to rest.” Along and above this bed-place are “divers ring bolts, wherein such prisoners are locked as are disorderly. There is only one window, which is so very small that very little light comes thereby, so that the room is very dark. It is customary,” adds B. L., “when any felons are brought to the lodge in Newgate, to put them first in this condemned hold, where they remain till they have paid two-and-sixpence, after which they are admitted to the masters’ or common felons’ side.” This is a mild way of describing the custom already referred to.

I. From the lodge admission was gained at once to the Master Debtors’ Side. The principal room, in dimensions twenty-five feet by fifteen, was the Hall Ward (1), which lay to the southern side of the prison, and owned one window, five feet by six, with two casements for air. In the midst of the west side of this ward was a fire-place and good chimney, in which burnt constantly a fire of sea-coal for the general benefit. It had also wooden benches and a good common table; and in the north-west corner was a bench and shelf of wood, on which scullery work was performed. Six and a half feet above the floor, on the north and east sides, was a gallery, supported by fir-posts, wherein were five partitions for beds, one at the end of the other. These beds were made of flock, and were “of their kind very good;” the charge was half-a-crown per week per bed, and for sheets two shillings per month, “paid at the time of receiving them.” Doors on the debtors’ side were locked at 9 P.M. and opened at 8 A.M. The last arrival had to keep all clean, or pay two pence daily to have it done. “Underneath the gallery in this Hall ward is a very good place for the prisoners therein to walk at their pleasure, which advantage the other wards are deficient of.”

The King’s Bench Ward (2) lay over the Hall Ward. Its dimensions were twenty-one feet by fifteen, and it was ten feet high. It had one window six feet by four, with a southern aspect probably like that of the Hall ward. The bed partitions were the same, but on the floor, which was of oak plank. The fees too were similar. The Stone Ward (3), alongside, is described as the very best, and pleasantly situated over the gateway towards Holborn, and therefore facing west. But the beds were all on the floor, which was of stone, with fire-place fees and so forth, as in the other rooms. At the head of the stairs, between the King’s Bench Ward and the Stone Ward, was a small apartment called “my Lady’s Hold,” in which were only two beds, for the accommodation of any female debtors who came to the master’s side. “This small apartment,” says one author (B. L.), “is the very worst part of the master’s side.”

II. The lowermost apartment in the Master Felons’ Side was a large cellar (4), some four feet below the level of the street, comprising a central drinking-room or hall, with three wards alongside, two of which were appropriated to men and one to women. Prices ruled as follows in this underground tavern: wine was sold at 2s. a bottle, strong drink at 4d. per quart, and brandy at 4d. per quartern. A “cellar-man,” so called, was selected by the turnkeys from among the prisoners for the regulation and government of his fellows, who was allowed to make what profit he could on the sale of candles, as well as a penny upon every quart of beer or bottle of wine sold, “with other advantages.” Immediately over the drinking vaults was “a spacious hall,” named the “Gigger” (5), after the small grate or gigger in the door, at which prisoners in the various wards on this side were permitted to have interviews with their friends from outside. The privilege of entrance to this hall, or to the cellar below, was conceded only on payment of a fee of 1s. 6d. per diem. The same sum was charged to any felon’s friend who was admitted to the gigger, and desired to see his friends in the tap-room; besides which they paid the cellar-man for a candle to light them down, and the price of a quart of beer, or 5d. Above the gigger again stairs led to the first ward (6), in which was “a good light, a good fire-place, and convenient lodging-rooms, as also very good flock beds, for the use of which each felon pays 3s. 6d. per week. Over this ward are the other two (7 and 8), which are both of the same magnitude and light, with the like appurtenances belonging thereto.” B. L. further tells us that the prisoners were generally utilized for all prison services. Not only did they perform all menial offices, and distribute the allowance of food, such as it was, but they were also employed to rivet on and remove the irons of their fellows. Discipline even was entrusted to them; and B. L. speaks of certain prisoners who maintained order “with a flexible weapon, to the great terror and smart of those who dispute their authority. Every felon at his coming in pays 14s. 10d. for fees and garnish money only, 1s. 6d. for coals, and 1s. to be spent amongst the prisoners of the ward.”

III. The Common Side for Debtors comprised four apartments, all situate towards Newgate Street, in other words, facing north. The ground-floor apartment was named the “Stone Hall” (9); its dimensions are not given, but it owned a cistern for water, and on the north side a chimney, “in which no fires are made except at Christmas, when there is a quantity of beef boiled there to be given to the felons.” This Stone Hall led to some subordinate chambers; in the north-east angle was the iron hold for fetters, and in the south-east a chamber for the confinement of refractory prisoners, styled “the Partner’s room,” where four men could lie at a time. In the south-west of the room was a large place called the “tap-house,” in which were sold beer, ale, brandy, wine, tobacco, and pipes, at the customary prices, “which of their kind are absolutely good.” Of the tap-house itself B. L. speaks in less complimentary terms. “It is great pity,” he says, “that greater decorum is not maintained among the prisoners of the common side, especially in the tap-house, for therein, by connivance, the felons are permitted to converse and drink with the debtors; by which means such wretchedness abounds therein, that the place has the exact aspect of hell itself, and by this means ’tis much to be questioned whether one debtor in ten who enters therein an honest man comes out the same, the wickedness of the place is so great.”

At the west side of the Stone Hall was a staircase, leading to a large room called “High Hall” (10), wherein felons alone were admitted to walk. I have placed this High Hall in the plan on that part of the gate-house which lay to the north side of Holborn. There is no precise evidence that it was exactly so situated, but as all other rooms on this first floor can be pretty accurately placed, I think the conclusion is just that High Hall was approximately where I have put it. High Hall was large, being thirty-three feet by twenty-eight, and in altitude twelve. In the midst of the place was a stone anvil, whereon the irons were knocked off the unhappy persons sentenced to death, when they came down from the chapel (on the third floor), on their way to the cart which was to carry them to Tyburn.

Opposite the entrance to the tap-house was a passage leading to a second common-side debtors room. This came to be called “Tangier” (11) in due course, no doubt from the stifling atmosphere. “The air in this ward is very bad,” says B. L., “occasioned by the multitude of the prisoners in it, and the filthiness of their lodging.” The room was large, but “dark and stinking,” and it only contained “divers barracks for the prisoners to lie on.” Debtors’ Hall (12), a third room for common-side debtors, was on the floor above. It also faced Newgate Street, and being higher up, enjoyed very good air and light. It had a very large window, which was, however, unglazed, and subjected the prisoners not only to the weather, but also to all kinds of rain, snow, sleet, &c., which the north-eastern winds produce. Unlike those in Tangier, the prisoners in Debtors’ Hall had no barrack-beds to lie on, and were obliged therefore to sleep upon the boarded floor. Close by Debtors’ Hall was a kind of kitchen, containing a large fire-place and grate, and known in B. L.’s time as the Hangman’s, or Jack Ketch’s kitchen, “because it is the place in which that honest fellow boils the quarters of such men as have been executed for treason.”[64] Over this kitchen again, on the third floor, that is to say, was “an indifferent good ward,” called the Women’s Ward (13), and devoted to common debtors of that sex.

These poor debtors were but ill lodged and provided for. They had no firing save what they themselves found. They had to provide their own beds or sleep on the boards supplied by the sheriffs. But every debtor on the common side was allowed “each day one coarse household wheaten loaf, almost the bigness of a common penny white loaf; and there is also given a certain quantity of beef every week, in proportion to the number of debtors. Every debtor at his entrance paid 11s. 6d. garnish money, which was expended among the prisoners of the ward, and on discharge or removal a further fee of 7s. 10d. as on the master’s side. ‘The conversation of these debtors,’ says B. L., ‘was generally very profligate, being, as before mentioned, perpetually drinking and conversing with the felons.’”

IV. The Common Felons’ Side, which was adjacent to that for the common debtors, was evidently a foul disgrace to the prison and to those charged with the administration of the law. B. L. describes it as “a most terrible, wicked, and dreadful place.” In this side were five wards. The first, known as the Stone Hold (14), was an underground dungeon lying beneath the “middle ward,” which I fix somewhere near the Tangier Ward of the debtors’ common side. “The Stone Hold,” says the authority already quoted, “was a terrible, stinking, dark, and dismal place, situate underground, into which no daylight can come. It was paved with stone; the prisoners had no beds, and lay on the pavement, whereby they endured great misery and hardship. The unhappy persons imprisoned therein are such as at their unfortunate entrance cannot pay the customary fees of the gaol.” Alongside the Stone Hold was the “Lower Ward” (15), another large dungeon, in which were confined felons for non-payment of fines. The Middle Ward (16), on the floor above, was for those who had paid their bare fees, no more. Here also they had no beds, but the floor on which they lay was of oak, not stone. There were two wards for common female felons. The first, on this second floor, was called “Waterman’s Hall” (17), a very dark and stinking place; the floor is of oaken planks, which is all the bed allotted to its miserable inhabitants. Water was, however, well supplied to this ward. Close by it were other rooms applied to ghastly uses. One was the “press-room,” still used in the writer’s time for the execution of the frightful sentence of pressing to death culprits arraigned who refused to plead; another the Bilbows,[65] adjacent to the press room, also very dark, “and used as a refractory cell for such as occasioned quarrel or disturbance.” Near this again was the women’s condemned hold, “a small, dark, dismal dungeon, wherein is a barrack for the prisoners to lie on, but no fire-place, and it is therefore cold at all times. A second ward (18) for common side females existed on the third, or floor above all, “the highest part of the whole gaol in the north part thereof, and is of large extent, in which is one window only, and that very small.” Barracks were fixed on the walls on each side, but without any kind of bed whatsoever. “The persons imprisoned therein were generally those that lie for transportation, and they, knowing their time to be short here, rather than bestow one minute towards cleaning the same, suffer themselves to live far worse than swine, and, to speak the truth, the Augean Stable would bear no comparison to it, for they are almost poisoned by their own filth, and their conversation is nothing but one

Newgate (1700).
Ground Floor.

continued course of swearing, cursing, and debauchery, insomuch that it passes all description and belief.... It is with no small concern,” he adds, “that I am obliged to observe that the women in every ward of this prison are exceedingly worse than the worst of the men, not only in respect to nastiness and indecency of living, but more especially as to their conversation, which, to their great shame, is as profane and wicked as hell itself can be.”

These remarks, unhappily, are fully borne out by more modern experience. Female prisoners are, as a rule, far worse than the male.

V. The one division remaining, and commonly called the Press-Yard and Castle, was quite the best part of the prison. The entrance was at the base of the stairs between the common debtors’ and the common felons’ sides. It was composed of “divers large spacious rooms,” on all three floors: those on the ground and first floor faced towards east and south; those on the second—the Castle so called—to the west. These rooms were all well supplied with light and air, free from all ill smells, and possessed all necessary appurtenances. A yard or place for walking in the open air was attached to this side, and was situate between the door or postern which entered from Newgate Street and the fabric itself. This yard, which was fifty-four feet long by seven feet wide, and was handsomely paved with Purbeck stone, could have been little better than a narrow passage running the whole north side of the prison between the building and its boundary wall. The Press-Yard was for State prisoners, or great and opulent criminals who could afford to pay such high premium at entrance as they and the gaoler might agree upon, and also the weekly rent of their wards. This premium was fixed according to the quality of the individual, and ranged from £20 to £500. The weekly rent of tenancy of the rooms was 11s. 6d. per head, 1s. of which was paid to a woman called the laundress, who made the fires and cleaned the rooms; the remainder went into the gaoler’s pocket. The prisoners themselves provided their fires and candles, as also all other necessaries, “save the beds, which were very good of their kind, and which the gaoler found, sheets being always excepted.” A less aristocratic section of this very select part of the prison was the Castle, which comprised two wards above the Stone ward and King’s Bench ward of the master debtors’ sides, and of the same dimensions, with the same air and light, as the wards immediately beneath. In the Castle wards were divers partitions for beds, for each of which a prisoner paid 2s. 6d. per week.

The remainder of this top floor, with the exception of the high hall, and the second ward for common female felons, was taken up by the prison chapel, which looked towards the south-east. The chapel was partitioned on the north side into large apartments called pens, which were all strongly built, as they contained every Sunday the common debtors and the felons of both kinds. The pulpit stood in the

Newgate (1700).
1st Floor.

north-west angle of the chapel, against it were the pens of the male common debtors, next to them those of the male and female felons, but in separate divisions, and in the pens were gratings through which the occupants could be observed from the chapel pews. On the south side, opposite the felons’ pens, were two very handsome enclosures for the master debtors; adjoining the pulpit was another large pew, wherein were placed such prisoners as were under sentence of death, and here in this same apartment “the blessed sacrament was administered to them at proper times, more particularly on the morning before execution.” Besides these were a number of other handsome open pews, free to all persons who choose to come and sit in them. They were generally well filled on the Sundays when the condemned sermon was preached to prisoners about to die.[66]

A few corroborative facts may be quoted from other authorities as to the horrors of Newgate, the mismanagement, tyranny, and lax discipline which prevailed. Its insanitary condition was chronic, which at times, but only for influential inmates, was pleaded as an excuse for release. Lord Montgomery, a prisoner there in 1697, was brought, Luttrell tells, out of Newgate to the King’s Bench Court, there to be bailed, upon two affidavits, which showed that there was an infectious fever in Newgate, of which several were sick and some dead. He was accordingly admitted to bail, himself in £10,000, and four sureties—the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Yarmouth, Lord Carington, and Lord Jeffereys—in £5000 each. An effort to secure release was made some years later in regard to Jacobite prisoners of note, less successfully, although the grounds alleged were the same and equally valid.

If a prisoner was hopelessly despondent, he could generally compass the means of committing suicide. A Mr. Norton, natural son of Sir George Norton, condemned for killing a dancing-master (because the latter would not suffer him to take his wife away from him in the street), poisoned himself the night before his reprieve expired. The drug was conveyed to him by his aunt without difficulty, “who participated in the same dose, but she is likely to recover.” Nor were prisoners driven to this last desperate extremity to escape from durance. Pepys tells us in 1667, August 1, that the gates of the city were shut, “and at Newgate we find them in trouble, some thieves having this night broken open prison.”

Within the gaol all manner of evil communication went forward unchecked among the prisoners. That same year Sir Richard Ford, the recorder, states that it has been made appear to the court of aldermen “that the keeper of Newgate hath at this day made his house the only nursery of rogues, prostitutes, pickpockets, and thieves in the world, where they were held and entertained and the whole society met, and that for the sake of the sheriffs[67] they durst not this

Newgate (1700).
2nd Floor.

day commit him for fear of making him let out the prisoners, but are fain to go by artifice to deal with him.” The keeper at this time was one Walter Cowday, as appears from a State pardon “for seven prisoners ordered to be transported by their own consent,” which he endorses. Sharper measure was dealt out to his successor, Mr. Fells, the keeper in 1696, who was summoned to appear before the Lords Justices for conniving at the escape of Birkenhead, alias Fish, alias South, East, West, &c., one of the conspirators in Sir John Fenwick’s business, and who lay in prison “to be speedily tried.” On examination of Fells, it was stated that Birkenhead’s escape had been effected by a bribe, whereupon the sheriffs were instructed to find out the truth in order to displace Fells. Fells was furthermore charged with showing favour to Sir John Fenwick by suffering him to have pens, ink, and paper alone; a little later he was convicted on two indictments before Lord Chief Justice Holt at Guildhall, viz. for the escape of Birkenhead already mentioned, and of another prisoner imprisoned for non-payment of fine. Fell’s sentence was postponed till the next term at the King’s Bench Bar; but he moved the court in arrest of judgment, a motion which the King’s Bench took time to consider, but which must have been ultimately decided in his favour, as two years later Fells still held the office of gaoler of Newgate.

The crimes of the latter half of the seventeenth century are of the same character as those of previous epochs. Many had, however, developed in degree, and were more widely practised. The offence of clipping and coining had greatly increased. The extent to which it was carried seems almost astounding. The culprits were often of high standing. A clipper, by name White, under sentence of death, was reprieved by the king upon the petition of the House of Commons in order that a committee of the House might examine him in Newgate as to his accomplices and their proceedings. Accordingly, White made “a large discovery” to the committee, both of clippers and coiners, and particularly of Esquire Strode, who had been a witness at the trial of the Earl of Bath (1697). Luttrell says (1696), among twenty persons convicted of coining was Atkinson, the beau “that made such a figure in town about eight years before, and spent an estate of £500 per annum in Yorkshire.” In the lodgings of a parson, by name Salisbury, who was arrested for counterfeiting stamped paper, several instruments for clipping and coining were found. University men were beguiled into the crime of clipping; so were seemingly respectable London tradesmen. Goldsmiths and refiners were repeatedly taken up for these malpractices. “A goldsmith in Leicester Fields and his servants committed to Newgate for receiving large quantities of broad money from Exeter to clip it.”[68] “A refiner’s wife and two servants committed to Newgate for clipping; the husband escaped.” Bird, a laceman, in custody for coining, escaped; but

Newgate (1700).
3rd Floor.

surrendered and impeached others. Certain gilders committed to Newgate petitioned therefrom, that if released they would merit the same by a discovery of a hundred persons concerned in the trade. Such are the entries which appear time after time in contemporary chronicles.

The numbers engaged in these nefarious practices were very great. In 1692 information was given of three hundred coiners and clippers dispersed in various parts of the city, for several of whom warrants were issued, some by the Treasury, others by the Lord Chief Justice. The profits were enormous. Of three clippers executed at Tyburn in 1696, one, John Moore, the tripeman, was said to have got a good estate by clipping, and to have offered £6000 for his pardon. Three other clippers arrested in St. James’ St., and committed to Newgate, were found to be in possession of £400 in clippings, with a pair of shears and other implements. The information of one Gregory, a butcher, who “discovered” near a hundred persons concerned in the trade, went to prove that they made as much as £6000 a month in counterfeit money. “All their utensils and moulds were shown in court, the latter being in very fine clay, which performed with great dexterity.” The extent of the practice is shown by the ingenuity of the machinery used. “All sort of material for coining was found in a house in Kentish town, with stamps for all coins from James I.” The work was performed “with that exactness no banker could detect the counterfeit.” So bold were the coiners, that the manufacture went forward even within the walls of Newgate. Three prisoners were taken in the very act of coining in that prison. One of the medals or tokens struck in Newgate as a monetary medium among the prisoners is still to be seen in the Beaufoy Collection at Guildhall. Upon the obverse of the coin the legend is inscribed: “Belonging to the cellar on the master’s side, 1669;” on the reverse side is a view of Newgate and the debtors’ prison.

The heaviest penalties did not check this crime. The offence was high treason; men sentenced for it were handed, drawn, and quartered, and women were burnt. In 1683 Elizabeth Hare was burnt alive for coining in Bunhill Fields. Special legislation could not cope with this crime, and to hinder it the Lords of the Treasury petitioned the Queen (Mary in the absence of William III.) to grant no pardon to any sentenced for clipping unless before their conviction they discovered their accomplices.

Highway robbery had greatly increased. The roads were infested with banditti. Innkeepers harboured and assisted the highwaymen, sympathizing with them, and frequently sharing in the plunder. None of the great roads were safe: the mails, high officials, foreigners of distinction, noblemen, merchants, all alike were stopped and laid under contribution. The following are a few of the cases which were of constant occurrence. “His Majesty’s mails from Holland robbed near Ilford in Essex, and £5000 taken, belonging to some Jews in London.” The Worcester waggon, wherein was £4000 of the king’s money, was set upon and robbed at Gerard’s Gross, near Uxbridge, by sixteen highwaymen. The convoy, being near their inn, went on ahead, thinking all secure, and leaving only two persons on foot to guard it, who, having laid their blunderbusses in the waggon, were on a sudden surprised by the sixteen highwaymen, who took away £2,500. and left the rest for want of conveniences to carry it.” Two French officers (on their way to the coast) were robbed by nine highwaymen of one hundred and ten guineas, and bidden to go home to their own country. Another batch of French officers was similarly dealt with on the Portsmouth road. Fifteen butchers going to market were robbed by highwaymen, who carried them over a hedge and made them drink King James’ health. The Portsmouth mail was robbed, but only of private letters; and the same men robbed a captain going to Portsmouth with £5000 to pay his regiment with. Three highwaymen robbed the Receiver-General of Bucks of a thousand guineas, which he was sending up by the carrier in a pack; the thieves acted on excellent information, for although there were seventeen packhorses, they went directly to that which was laden with the gold. Seven on the St. Alban’s Road near Pinner robbed the Manchester carrier of £15,000 king’s money, and killed and wounded eighteen horses to prevent pursuit. The purser of a ship landed at Plymouth and rode to London on horseback, with £6000 worth of rough diamonds belonging to some London merchants which had been saved out of a shipwreck. Crossing Hounslow Heath, the purser was robbed by highwaymen. “Oath was thereupon made before a justice of the peace,” says Luttrell, in “order to sue the Hundred for the same.” The Bath coach was stopped in Maidenhead thicket, and a footman who had fired at them was shot through the head. The Dover stage coach, with foreign passengers, was robbed near Shooter’s Hill, but making resistance, one was killed. The western mail was robbed by the two Arthurs, who were captured and committed to Newgate. They soon escaped therefrom, but were again arrested at a tavern by Doctors’ Commons, being betrayed by a companion. They confessed that they had gone publicly about the streets disguised in Grecian habits, and that one Ellis, a tobacconist, assisted them in their escape, for which he was himself committed to Newgate. John Arthur was soon afterwards condemned and executed. Henry Arthur was acquitted, but soon after quarrelling about a tavern bill in Covent Garden, he was killed in the mêlée.

All manner of men took To the road. Some of the Royal guards were apprehended for robbing on the highway. Lifeguardsmen followed the same gentlemanly occupation when on duty. “Thompson, a lifeguardsman, committed on suspicion of robbing Welsh drovers, is refused bail, there being fresh evidence against him.”[69] Captain Beau, or Bew, formerly of the Guards, was seized at Knightsbridge as a highwayman, and afterwards poisoned himself. Seven of his gang were committed to Newgate. Harris, ‘the lifeguardsman’ tried at the Old Bailey for robbing on the black mare and acquitted, was again tried a month later, and condemned. He was then reprieved, and Sir William Penn obtained the Queen’s pardon for him, and a commission as lieutenant in the Pennsylvania Militia, to which colony he was to transport himself. Persons of good social status engaged in the perilous trade. One Smith, a parson and a lecturer at Chelsea, when brought up at Westminster for perjury, was found to be a confederate with two highwaymen, with whom he had shared a gold watch, and planned to rob Chelsea Church of its plate. Smith when arraigned appeared in Court in his gown, but he was “sent to Newgate, and is like to be hanged.” Disguised highwaymen were often found in reputable citizens and quiet tradesmen, who upon the surface seemed honest folk. A mercer of Lombard Street was taken out of his bed and charged by a cheesemonger as being the man that rubbed him two years previously. Another mercer was taken up near Ludgate on suspicion of being a highwayman, and committed. Saunders, a butcher of St. James’ market, was charged with robbing the Hampton coach, and discovered three confederates, who were captured on Sunday at Westminster Abbey. “Two highwaymen taken near Highgate, one of whom was said to be a broken mercer, the other a fishmonger.” Two of Whitney’s gang were said to be tradesmen in the Strand—one a goldsmith and one a milliner.

Nothing could exceed the cool impudence with which reputed robbers showed themselves in public places. They did not always escape capture, however. “A noted highwayman in a scarlet cloak,” says Luttrell, “and coat laced with gold taken in Covent Garden.” Another was taken in the Strand and sent to Newgate. Five more were captured at the Rummer, Charing Cross; three others, notorious highwaymen, taken at the ‘Cheshire Cheeze.’ At times they fought hard for liberty. “One Wake, a highwayman, pursued to Red Lion Fields, set his back against the wall and faced the constables and mob. He shot the former, and wounded others, but was at last taken and sent to Newgate.” Whitney, the famous highwayman, was taken without Bishopsgate, being “discovered by one Hill, as he (Whitney) walked the street. Hill observed where the robber ‘housed’ and calling for assistance, went to the door.” Whitney defended himself for about an hour, but the people increasing, and the officers of Newgate being sent for, he surrendered himself, but not before he had stabbed Hill with a bayonet, “not mortal.” He was cuffed and shackled with irons, and committed to Newgate.

Whitney had done business on a large scale. He had been arrested before by a party of horse despatched by William III., which had come up with him lurking between St. Alban’s and Barnet. He was attacked, but made a stout defence, killing some and wounding others before he was secured. He must have got free again very soon afterwards. His second arrest, which has just been detailed, was followed by that of many others of his gang. “Three were seized near Chelsea College by some soldiers; two more were in company, but escaped.” On Sunday two others were taken; one kept a livery stable at Moorfield’s. Soon after his committal there was a strong rumour that he had escaped from Newgate, but “he continues closely confined there, and has forty pounds weight of irons on his legs. He had his tailor to make him a rich embroidered suit with peruke and hat, worth £100; but the keeper refused to let him wear them, because they would disguise him from being known.”[70] Whitney made many attempts to purchase pardon. He offered to discover his associates, and those that give notice when and where the money is conveyed on the roads in coaches and waggons. He was, however, put upon his trial, and eventually convicted and sentenced to death. He went in the cart to the place of execution, but was reprieved and brought back to Newgate with a rope round his neck, followed by a “vast” crowd. Next night he was carried to Whitehall and examined as to the persons who hired the highwaymen to rob the mails. But he was again ordered for execution, and once more sought to gain a reprieve by writing a letter in which he offered, if he might have his pardon, to betray a conspiracy to kill the king. His last appeal was refused, and he suffered at Porter’s Block, near Cow Cross, Smithfield.

Determined efforts were made from time to time to put down these robberies, which were often so disgracefully prevalent that people hardly dared to travel along the roads. Parties of horse were quartered in most of the towns along the great highways. Handsome rewards were offered for the apprehension of offenders. A proclamation promised £10 for every highwayman taken, and this was ere long increased to £40, to be given to any who might supply information leading to an arrest. Horses standing at livery in and about London, whose ownership was at all doubtful, were seized on suspicion, and often never claimed. It was customary to parade before Newgate persons in custody who were thought to be highwaymen. They were shown in their riding-dresses with their horses, and all gentlemen who had been robbed were invited to inspect this singular exhibition.[71] But the practice flourished in spite of all attempts at repression.

One or two types of the highwaymen of the seventeenth century may here be fitly introduced. One of the earliest and most celebrated was Jack Cottington, alias Mulled Sack, who had been a depredator throughout the Commonwealth epoch, and who enjoyed the credit of having robbed Oliver Cromwell himself on Hounslow Heath. His confederate in this, Horne,