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.

CONTENTS OF VOL II.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
VOL. II.

CHRONICLES OF NEWGATE.

CHAPTER I.
CRIMES AND CRIMINALS.

State of crime on opening new gaol—Newgate full—Executions very numerous—Ruthless penal code—Forgery punished with death—Its frequency—How fostered—Some notable forgers—The first forgery of Bank of England notes—Gibson—Bolland—The two Perreaus—Dr. Dodd—Charles Price, alias Old Patch—Clipping still largely practised—John Clarke hanged for it—Also William Guest, a clerk in Bank of England—His elaborate apparatus for filing guineas—Coining—Forty or fifty private mints for making counterfeits—Always at work—Town and country orders regularly executed—650 prosecutions for coining in seven years—Offences against life and property—Streets unsafe—High roads infested by robbers—No regular police—Inefficiency of watchmen—Assaults on the weaker sex—Renwick Williams “the monster”—Daring Robberies at lévees—The Duke of Beaufort robbed by gentleman Harry—George Barrington, the gentleman thief, frequents Ranelagh, the Palace, the Opera House—His depredations—He aids authorities to suppress a mutiny, turns police officer and becomes chief constable of New South Wales before he dies—Gentlemen of the road ubiquitous and always busy—Highwaymen put down by the horse patrol—Horse patrol described—Executions still numerous, but transportation now adopted as a secondary punishment for lesser offenders—Some of these described—“Long firm” swindlers—Alexander Day, alias Marmaduke Davenport, Esq.—Female Sharpers—Elizabeth Grieve pretends to sell places under the Crown—So does David James Dignam—Traffic in places flourished in this corrupt age—Mrs. Clarke and the Duke of York—Other forms of swindling—Jacques defrauds Warden of the Fleet—Juvenile depravity—Increased by committing the young to Newgate—Various youthful crimes—A girl for sale—Prize-fighting—Writers in gaol—The North Briton—Wilkes—The Press oppressed—Mr. Walter of the ‘Times’ in Newgate—Sir Francis Burdett and Mr. John Gale Jones—William Cobbett in Newgate—Also the Marquis of Sligo.

IN the years immediately following the erection of the new gaol, crime was once more greatly in the ascendant. After the peace which gave independence to the United States, the country was overrun with discharged soldiers and sailors. They were mostly in dire poverty, and took to depredation almost as a matter of course. The calendars were particularly heavy. At the September Sessions of the Old Bailey in 1783, fifty-eight were convicted for capital offences. The Deputy Recorder, in passing sentence, remarked that it gave him inexpressible pain, and that it was truly alarming “to behold a bar so crowded with persons whose wickedness and imprudence had induced them to commit such enormous crimes as the laws of their country justly and necessarily punish with death. Those laws,” he added, being thoroughly imbued with the ferocious spirit of the times, “while they are founded in equity, and executed with lenity, (!) impartiality, and rectitude, are written in blood.” The exemplary punishment of so many failed to have a very deterrent effect. In the December Sessions following the number of trials was greater, although there were not so many capital convictions. Twenty-four received sentence of death, and ninety were convicted of single felonies. “Two such sessions,” says a contemporary writer, “were never known before in London.” The same depravity, dealt with in the same ruthless manner, prevailed throughout England. In the Lent Assizes of 1785 the judges on every circuit dealt out death with a liberal hand. At Kingston there were twenty-one capital sentences, and nine executions. At Lincoln twelve of the former, and at Gloucester sixteen, with, in both cases, nine executions; seven executions at Warwick, six at Exeter, Winchester, and Salisbury, five at Shrewsbury, and so on. The total number of capital sentences in England alone was two hundred and forty-two, of whom one hundred and three suffered, and only at Stafford, Oakham, and Ludlow was there a “maiden assize,” or no capital conviction. At this date there were forty-nine persons lying in Newgate under sentence of death, one hundred and eighty under sentence of transportation, and prisoners of other categories, making the total prison population up to nearly six hundred souls.

Speaking of those times, Mr. Townshend, a veteran Bow Street runner, in his evidence before a Parliamentary Committee in 1816,[1] declared that in the years 1781-7 as many as twelve, sixteen, or twenty were hanged at one execution; twice he saw forty hanged at one time. In 1783 there were twenty at two consecutive executions. He had known, he said, as many as two hundred and twenty tried at one sessions. He had himself obtained convictions of from thirteen to twenty-five for returning from transportation. Upon the same authority we are told that in 1783 the Secretary of State advised the King to punish with all severity. The enormity of the offences was so great, says Mr. Townshend, and “plunder had got to such an alarming pitch,” that a letter was circulated among judges and recorders then sitting, to the effect that His Majesty would dispense with the recorders’ reports, and that the worst criminals should be picked out and at once ordered for execution.

The penal code was at this period still ruthlessly severe. There were some two hundred capital felonies upon the statute book. Almost any member of parliament eager to do his share in legislation could “create a capital felony.” A story is told of Edmund Burke, that he was leaving his house one day in a hurry, when a messenger called him back on a matter which would not detain him a minute: “Only a felony without benefit of clergy.” Burke also told Sir James Mackintosh, that although scarcely entitled to ask a favour of the ministry, he thought he had influence enough to create a capital felony.[2] It is true that of the two hundred, not more than five-and-twenty sorts of felonies actually entailed execution. It is true too that some of the most outrageous and ridiculous reasons for its infliction had disappeared. It was no longer death to take a falcon’s egg from the nest, nor was it a hanging matter to be thrice guilty of exporting live sheep. But a man’s life was still appraised at five shillings. Stealing from the person, or in a dwelling, or in a shop, or on a navigable river, to that amount, was punished with death. “I think it not right nor justice,” wrote Sir Thomas More in 1516, “that the loss of money should cause the loss of man’s life; for mine opinion is that all the goods in the world are not able to countervail man’s life.” Three hundred years was still to pass before the strenuous efforts of Sir Samuel Romilly bore fruit in the amelioration of the penal code. In 1810 he carried a bill through the House of Commons, which was, however, rejected by the Lords, to abolish capital punishment for stealing to the amount of five shillings in a shop. His most bitter opponents were the great lawyers of the times, Lords Ellenborough, Eldon, and others, Lords Chancellors and Lords Chief Justice, who opposed dangerous innovations, and viewed with dismay any attempt “to alter laws which a century had proved to be necessary.” Lord Eldon on this occasion said that he was firmly convinced of the wisdom of the principles and practice of our criminal code. Romilly did not live to see the triumph of his philanthropic endeavours. He failed to procure the repeal of the cruel laws against which he raised his voice, but he stopped the hateful legislation which multiplied capital felonies year by year, and his illustrious example found many imitators. Within a few years milder and more humane ideas very generally prevailed. In 1837 the number of offences to which the extreme penalty could be applied was only seven, and in that year only eight persons were executed, all of them for murders of an atrocious character.[3]

Forgery, at the period of which I am now treating, was an offence especially repugnant to the law. No one guilty of it could hope to escape the gallows. The punishment was so certain, that as milder principles gained ground, many benevolent persons gladly withdrew from prosecution where they could. Instances were known in which bankers and other opulent people compromised with the delinquent rather than be responsible for taking away a fellow-creature’s life.[4] The prosecutor would sometimes pretend his pockets had been picked of the forged instrument, or he destroyed it, or refused to produce it. An important witness sometimes kept out of the way. Persons have gone so far as to meet forged bills of exchange, and to a large amount. In one case it was pretty certain they would not have advanced the money had the punishment been short of death, because the culprit had already behaved disgracefully, and they had no desire he should escape a lesser retribution. Prosecutors have forfeited their recognizances sooner than appear, and have even, when duly sworn, withheld a portion of their testimony.

But at the time of which I am now writing the law generally took its course. In the years between 1805 and 1818 there had been two hundred and seven executions for forgery; more than for either murder, burglary, or robbery from the person. It may be remarked here that the Bank of England was by far the most bitter and implacable as regards prosecutions for forgery. Of the above-mentioned two hundred and seven executions for this crime, no less than seventy-two were the victims of proceedings instituted by the Bank. Forgeries upon this great monetary corporation had been much more frequent since the stoppage of specie payments, which had been decreed by Parliament in 1797 to save the Bank from collapse. Alarms of invasion had produced such a run upon it, that on one particular day little more than a million in cash or bullion remained in the cellars, which had already been drained of specie for foreign subsidies and subventions. Following the cessation of cash payments to redeem its paper in circulation, the Bank had commenced the issue of notes to the value of less than five pounds, and it was soon found that these, especially the one-pound notes, were repeatedly forged. In the eight years preceding 1797 but few prosecutions had been instituted by the Bank; but in the eight immediately following there were one hundred and forty-six convictions for the offence. At last, about 1818, a strong and general feeling of dissatisfaction grew rife against these prosecutions. The crime had continued steadily to increase, in spite of the awful penalties conviction entailed. It was proved, moreover, that note forgery was easily accomplished. Detection, too, was most difficult. The public were unable to distinguish between the good and bad notes. Bank officials were themselves often deceived, and cases were known where the clerks had refused payment of the genuine article. Juries began to decline to convict on the evidence of inspectors and clerks, unless substantiated by the revelation of the private mark, a highly inconvenient practice, which the Bank itself naturally discountenanced. Efforts were made to improve the quality of the note, so as to defy imitation; but this could not well be done at the price, and, as the only effective remedy, specie payments were resumed, and the one-pound note withdrawn from circulation.[5] But execution for forgery continued to be the law for many more years. Fauntleroy suffered for it in 1824;[6] Joseph Hunton, the Quaker linen-draper, in 1828; and Maynard, the last, in the following year.

I am, however, anticipating somewhat, and must retrace my steps, and indicate briefly one or two of the early forgers who passed through Newgate and suffered for the crime. The first case I find recorded is that of Richard Vaughan, a linen-draper of Stafford, who was committed to Newgate in March, 1758, for counterfeiting Bank of England notes. He employed several artists to engrave the notes in various parts, one of whom informed against him. The value of the note he himself added. Twenty which he had thus filled up he had deposited in the hands of a young lady to whom he was paying his addresses, as a guarantee of his wealth. Vaughan no doubt suffered, although I see no record of the fact in the Newgate Calendar.

Mr. Gibson’s was a curious case. He was a prisoner in Newgate for eighteen months between conviction and execution, the jury having found a special verdict, subject to the determination of the twelve judges. As Gibson remained so long in gaol, it was the general opinion that no further notice would be taken of the case. The prisoner himself must have been buoyed up with this hope, as he petitioned repeatedly for judgment. He had been sentenced in Sept. 1766, and in 1768, at Hilary Term, the judges decided that his crime came within the meaning of the law. Gibson had been a solicitor’s clerk, who gave so much satisfaction that he was taken into partnership. The firm was doing a large business, and among other large affairs was intrusted with a Chancery case, respecting an estate for which an ad interim receiver had been appointed. Gibson’s way of life was immoral and extravagant. He had urgent need of funds, and in an evil hour he forged the signature of the Accountant-General to the Court of Chancery, and so obtained possession of some of the rents of the above-mentioned estate. The fraud was presently discovered; Gibson was arrested, and eventually, as already stated, condemned. “After sentence,” says the Calendar, “his behaviour was in every way becoming his awful situation; ... he appeared rational, serious, and devout. His behaviour was so pious, so resigned, and in all respects so admirably adapted to his unhappy situation, that the tears of the commiserating multitude accompanied his last ejaculation. He was carried to execution in a mourning coach,” an especial honour reserved for malefactors of aristocratic antecedents and gentle birth.

James Bolland, who was executed in 1772, deserved and certainly obtained less sympathy. Bolland long filled the post of a sheriff’s officer, and as such became the lessee of a spunging-house, where he practised boundless extortion. He was a man of profligate life, whose means never equalled his extravagant self-indulgence, and he was put to all manner of shifts to get money. More than once he arrested debtors, was paid all claims in full, and appropriated the money to his own use, yet escaped due retribution for his fraud. He employed bullies, spies, and indigent attorneys to second his efforts, some of whom were arrested and convicted of other crimes with the clothes Bolland provided them still on their backs. His character was so infamous, that when he purchased the situation of upper city marshal for £2400, the court of aldermen would not approve of the appointment. He tried also to succeed to a vacancy as Sergeant-at-mace, and met with the same objection. The deposit-money paid over in both these affairs was attached by his sureties, and he was driven to great necessities for funds. When called upon to redeem a note of hand he had given, he pleaded that he was short of cash, and offered another man’s bill, which, however, was refused unless endorsed. Bolland then proceeded to endorse it with his own name, but it was declared unnegotiable, owing to the villanous character it bore. Whereupon Bolland erased all the letters after the capital, and substituted the letters “anks,” the name of Banks being that of a respectable victualler of Rathbone Place, in a large way of trade. When the bill became due, Banks repudiated his signature, and Bolland, who sought too late to meet it and hush up the affair, was arrested for the forgery. He was tried and executed in due course.

The case of the twin brothers Perreau in 1776 was long the talk of the town. It evoked much public sympathy, as they were deemed to be the dupes of a certain Mrs. Rudd, who lived with Daniel Perreau, and passed as his wife. Daniel was a man of reputed good means, with a house in Harley Street, which he kept up well. His brother, Robert Perreau, was a surgeon enjoying a large practice, and residing in Golden Square. The forged deed was a bond for £7500, purporting to be signed by William Adair, a well-known agent. Daniel Perreau handed this to Robert Drummond Perreau, who carried it to the Bank, where its validity was questioned, and the brothers, with Mrs. Rudd, were arrested on suspicion of forgery. Daniel on his trial solemnly declared that he had received the instrument from Mrs. Rudd; Robert’s defence was that he had no notion the document was forged. Both were, however, convicted of knowingly uttering the counterfeit bond. It was, however, found impossible to prove Mrs. Rudd’s complicity in the transaction, and she was acquitted. The general feeling was, however, so strong that she was the guilty person, that the unfortunate Perreaus became a centre of interest. Strenuous efforts were made to obtain a reprieve for them. Robert Perreau’s wife went in deep mourning, accompanied by her three children, to sue for pardon on their knees from the Queen. Seventy-two leading bankers and merchants signed a petition in his favour, which was presented to the King two days before the execution. But all to no purpose. Both brothers suffered the extreme penalty at Tyburn on the 17th January, 1776, before an enormous multitude estimated at 30,000. They asserted their innocence to the last.

In the following year a clergyman, who had at one time achieved some eminence, also fell a victim to the vindictive laws regarding forgery. Dr. Dodd was the son of a clergyman. He had been a wrangler at Cambridge, and was early known as a litterateur of some repute. While still on his promotion, and leading a gay life in London, he made a foolish marriage, and united himself to the daughter of one of Sir John Dolben’s servants, a young lady largely endowed with personal attractions, but certainly deficient in birth and fortune. This sobered him, and he took orders in the year that his ‘Beauties of Shakespeare’ was published. He became a zealous curate at West Ham; thence he went to St. James’, Garlick Hill, and took an active part in London church and charitable work. He was one of the promoters of the Magdalen Hospital, also of the Humane Society, and in 1763, twelve years after ordination, he was appointed chaplain in ordinary to the King. About the same time he was presented to a prebend’s stall in Brecon Cathedral, and was recommended to Lord Chesterfield as tutor to his son. He hoped to succeed to the rectory of West Ham, but being disappointed he now came to London, and launched out into extravagance. He had a town house, and a country house at Ealing, and he exchanged his chariot for a coach. Having won a prize of £1000 in a lottery, he became interested in two proprietary chapels, but could not make them pay. But just then he was presented with a living, that of Hockliffe, in Bedfordshire, which he held with the vicarage of Chalgrove, and his means were still ample. They were not sufficient, however, for his expenditure, and in an evil moment he attempted to obtain the valuable cure of St. George’s, Hanover Square, by back-stair influence. The living was in the gift of the Crown, and Dodd was so ill advised as to write to a great lady at Court, offering her £3000 if he were presented. The letter was forthwith passed on to the Lord Chancellor, and the King, George III., hearing what had happened, ordered Dr. Dodd’s name to be struck off the list of his chaplains. The story was made public, and Dodd was satirized in the press and on the stage.

Dodd was now greatly encumbered by debts, from which the presentation to a third living, that of Winge, in Buckinghamshire, could not relieve him. He was in such straits that, according to his biographer, “he descended so low as to become the editor of a newspaper,” and he tried to obtain relief in bankruptcy, but failed. At length, so sorely pressed was he by creditors that he resolved to do a dishonest deed. He forged the name of his old pupil, now Lord Chesterfield, who had since become his patron, to a bond for £4200. He applied to certain usurers, in the name of a young nobleman who was seeking an advance. The business was refused by many, because Dr. Dodd declared that they could not be present at the execution of the bond. A Mr. Robertson proved more obliging, and to him Dr. Dodd, in due course, handed a bond for £4200 executed by Lord Chesterfield, and witnessed by himself. A second witness being necessary, Mr. Robertson signed his name beneath Dr. Dodd’s. The bond was no sooner presented for payment, and referred to Lord Chesterfield, than it was repudiated. Robertson was forthwith arrested, and soon afterwards Dr. Dodd. The latter at once, in the hope of saving himself, returned £3000; he gave a cheque upon his bankers for £700, a bill of sale on his furniture worth £400 more, and the whole sum was made up by another hundred from the brokers. Nevertheless Dr. Dodd was taken before the Lord Mayor and charged with the forgery. Lord Chesterfield would not stir a finger to help his old tutor, although the poor wretch had made full restitution. Dr. Dodd, when arraigned, declared that he had no intention to defraud, that he had only executed the bond as a temporary resource to meet some pressing claims. The jury after consulting only five minutes found him guilty, and he was regularly sentenced to death. Still greater exertions were made to obtain a reprieve for Dr. Dodd than in the case of the Perreaus. The newspapers were filled with letters pleading for him. All classes of people strove to help him; the parish officers went in mourning from house to house, asking subscriptions to get up a petition to the King, and this petition, when eventually drafted, filled twenty-three skins of parchment. Petitions from Dodd and his wife, both drawn up by Dr. Johnson, were laid before the King and Queen. Even the Lord Mayor and Common Council went in a body to St. James’s Palace to beg mercy from the King. As, however, clemency had been denied to the Perreaus, it was deemed unadvisable to extend it to Dr. Dodd.[7] The concourse at his execution, which took place at Tyburn, was immense. It has been stated erroneously that Dr. Dodd preached his own funeral sermon. He only delivered an address to his fellow-prisoners in the prison chapel by the permission of Mr. Villette, the ordinary. The text he chose was Psalm li. 3, “I acknowledge my faults; and my sin is ever before me.” It was delivered some three weeks before the Doctor’s execution, and subsequently printed. It is a curious fact that among other published works of Dr. Dodd, is a sermon on the injustice of capital punishments. He was, however, himself the chief witness against a highwayman, who was hanged for stopping him. Among other spectators at the execution of Dr. Dodd was the Rev. James Hackman, who afterwards murdered Miss Reay.[8]

It is said that a scheme was devised to procure Dodd’s escape from Newgate. He was treated with much consideration by Mr. Akerman, allowed to have books, papers, and a reading-desk. Food and other necessaries were brought him from outside by a female servant daily. This woman was found to bear a striking resemblance to the Doctor, which was the more marked when she was dressed up in a wig and gown. She was asked if she would co-operate in a scheme for taking the Doctor’s place in gaol, and consented. It was arranged that on a certain day, Dr. Dodd’s irons having been previously filed, he was to change clothes with the woman. She was to seat herself at the reading-desk while Dr. Dodd, carrying a bundle under his arm, coolly walked out of the prison. The plan would probably have succeeded, but Dodd would not be a party to it. He was so buoyed up with the hope of reprieve that he would not risk the misconstruction which would have been placed upon the attempt to escape had it failed. In his own profession Dr. Dodd was not very highly esteemed. Dr. Newton, Bishop of Bristol, is said to have observed that Dodd deserved pity, because he was hanged for the least crime he had committed.

One of the most notorious depredators in this line, whose operations long eluded detection, was Charles Price, commonly called Old Patch. He forged bank-notes wholesale. His plans were laid with the utmost astuteness, and he took extraordinary precautions to avoid discovery. He did everything for himself; made his own paper, with the proper water-mark, engraved his own plates, and manufactured his own ink. His method of negotiating the forged notes was most artful. He had three homes; at one he was Price, properly married, at a second he lived under

another name with a woman who helped him in his schemes, at a third he did the actual business of passing his notes. This business was always effected in disguise; none of his agents or instruments saw him except in disguise, and when his work was over he put it off to return home. One favourite personation of his was that of an infirm old man, wearing a long black camlet cloak, with a broad cape fastened up close to his chin. With this he wore a big, broad-brimmed slouch hat, and often green spectacles or a green shade. Sometimes his mouth was covered up with red flannel, or his corpulent legs and gouty feet were swathed in flannel. His natural appearance as Price was a compact middle-aged man, inclined to stoutness, erect, active, and not bad-looking, with a beaky nose, keen grey eyes, and a nutcracker chin. His schemes were very ingenious. On one occasion he pretended, in one disguise, to expose a swindler (himself in another disguise), whom a respectable city merchant inveigled into his house in order to give him up to the police. The swindler proposed to buy himself off for £500; the offer was accepted, the money paid by a thousand-pound note, for which the swindler got change. The note, of course, was forged. He victimized numbers of tradesmen. Disguised as an old man, he passed six forged fifty-pound notes on a grocer, and then as Price backed up his victim in an action brought against the bank which refused payment of the counterfeits. But his cleverest coup was that organized against the lottery offices. Having in one of his disguises engaged a boy to serve him, he sent the lad, dressed in livery, round the town to buy lottery tickets, paying for them in large (forged) notes, for which change was always required. By these means hundreds and hundreds of pounds were obtained upon the counterfeits. The boy was presently arrested, and a clever plot was laid to nab the old man his master, but Price by his vigilance outwitted the police. Another dodge was to hire boys to take forged notes to the Bank, receive the tickets from the teller, and carry them back to him (Price). He forthwith altered the figures, passed them on by the same messenger to the Bank cashier, and obtained payment for the larger amount.

These wholesale forgeries produced something like consternation at the Bank. It was supposed that they were executed by a large gang, well organized and with numerous ramifications, although Price, as I have said, really worked single-handed. The notes poured in day after day, and still no clue was obtained as to the culprits. The Bow Street officials were hopelessly at fault. “Old Patch” was advertised for, described in his various garbs. It was now discovered that he had a female accomplice. This was a Mrs. Poultney, alias Hickeringill, his wife’s aunt, a tall, rather genteel woman of thirty, with a downcast look, thin face and person, light hair, and pitted with the small-pox. Fate at last unexpectedly overtook Old Patch. One of many endorsements upon a forged note was traced to a pawnbroker, who remembered to have had the note from one Powel. The runners suspected that Powel was Price, and that he was a member of Old Patch’s gang. A watch was set at the pawnbroker’s, and the next time Powel called he was arrested, identified as Price, searched, and found to have upon his person a large number of notes, with a quantity of white tissue-paper, which he declared he had bought to make into air-balloons for his children. Price was committed to prison, and a close inquiry made into his antecedents. He was found to be the man who had decoyed Foote the actor into a partnership in a brewery, and decamped with the profits, leaving Foote to pay liabilities to the extent of £500. Then, he had started an illicit still, and had been arrested and sent to Newgate till he had paid a fine of £1600. He was released through the intercession of Lord Littleton and Foote, and forgiven the fine. He next set up as a fraudulent lottery office keeper, and bolted with a big prize. After this he elaborated his system of forgery, which ended in the way I have said. Price was alert and cunning to the last. One of his first acts was to pass out a clandestine letter to Mrs. Poultney, briefly telling her to “destroy everything.” This she effected by burning the whole of his disguises in the kitchen fire, on the pretence that the clothes were infected by the plague. The engraving press was disposed of; the copper plates heated red hot, then smashed into pieces and thrown with the water-mark wires on to a neighbouring dust-heap, where they were subsequently discovered. Price attempted to deny his identity, but to no purpose, and when he saw the grip of the law tightening upon him, he committed suicide to avoid the extreme penalty. He was found hanging behind the door of his cell, suspended from two hat-screws, strengthened by gimlets. Price’s depredations, it was said, amounted to £200,000; but how he disposed of his ill-gotten gains, seeing that he always lived obscurely, and neither gambled nor drank, remained an inscrutable secret to the last.

Two deliberate cases of forging Bank of England notes about this time may be mentioned, although neither of the criminals passed through Newgate. One was James Elliot, who suffered at Maidstone in 1777, the other Joshua Crompton, who was executed at Gangley Green, near Guildford, in 1778.

The circulation of counterfeit paper was not the only kind of monetary fraud in vogue. The coinage of the realm still suffered. Clipping could not be quite put down by act of Parliament. The punishment was still capital, and generally inflicted without hope of reprieve. It was a crime affected more particularly by workers in the precious metals. Thus John Clarke, in 1767, was a London watch-case maker of good repute, who was in the habit of working alone in a private closet. His apprentice, jealously suspecting him to be engaged in some secret branch of his trade, bored a hole through the wainscot, and caught his master filing guineas. The apprentice immediately informed; Clarke was arrested, convicted, and soon afterwards hanged.

Persons in a higher station, however, succumbed to special temptations. William Guest was the son of a clergyman living at Worcester, who had sufficient interest to get him a clerkship in the Bank of England. The constant handling of piles of gold was too much for Guest’s integrity, and he presently resolved to turn his opportunities to account. Taking a house in Broad Street Buildings, he devoted the upper part of it to his nefarious trade. He abstracted guineas from his drawer in the Bank, carried them home, filed them, then remilled them in a machine he had designed for the purpose, and returned them—now light weight—to the Bank. The filings he converted into ingots and disposed of to the trade. No suspicion of his malpractices transpiring, he was in due course advanced to the post of teller. But a fellow-teller having observed him one day picking out new guineas from a bag, watched him, and found that he did this constantly. On another occasion he was seen to pay away guineas some of which, on examination, proved to have been recently filed. They were weighed, and found short weight. To test Mr. Guest still further, his money-bags were opened one night after hours, and the contents counted and examined. The number was short, and several guineas found which appeared to have been recently filed, and which on weighing proved to be light.

A descent was forthwith made upon Guest’s house, and in the upper rooms the whole apparatus for filing was laid bare. In a nest of drawers were found vice, files, the milling machine, two bags of gold filings, and a hundred guineas. A flap in front of the nest of drawers could be let down, and inside was a skin fastened to the back of the flap, with a hole in it to button on to the waistcoat, and equip the workman after the method of jewellers. More evidence was soon forthcoming against Guest. His fellow-teller had seen him in possession of a substantial bar of gold; jewellers and others swore to having bought ingots from him, and an assayer at Guest’s trial deposed to their being of the same standard as the guinea coinage. His guilt was clearly made out to the jury, and he was sentenced to death. A petition signed by a number of influential persons was forwarded to the Crown, praying for mercy, but it was decided that the law ought to take its course. As his crime amounted to high treason, he went to Tyburn on a sledge, but he suffered no other penalty than hanging.

The flagitious trade of coining was in a most flourishing condition during the last decades of the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth centuries. The condition of the national coinage was at this time far from creditable to the Mint. A great part of both the silver and copper money in circulation was much worn and defaced. Imitation thus became much easier than with coins comparatively fresh and new. Hence the nefarious practice multiplied exceedingly. There were as many as forty or fifty private mints constantly at work, either in London or in the principal country towns. The process was rapid, not too laborious, and extremely profitable. A couple of hands could turn out in a week base silver coins worth nominally two or three hundred pounds. The wages of a good workman were as much as a couple of guineas a day. Much capital was invested by large dealers in the trade, who must have made enormous sums. One admitted that his transactions in seven years amounted to the production of £200,000 in counterfeit half-crowns and other silver coins. So systematic was the traffic, that orders for town and country were regularly executed by the various manufacturers. Boxes and parcels of base coin were despatched every morning by coach and waggon to all parts of the kingdom, like any other goods. The trade extended to foreign countries.[9] The law, until it was rectified by the 37 Geo. III. cap. 126, did not punish the counterfeiting of foreign money, and French louis-d’or, Spanish dollars, German florins, and Turkish sequins were shipped abroad in great quantities. Our Indian possessions even did not escape, and a manufactory of spurious gold or silver pagodas was at one time most active in London, whence they were exported to the East. The number of persons employed in London as capitalists and agents for distribution alone amounted to one hundred and twenty at one time; and besides there was a strong force of skilful handicraftsmen, backed up by a whole army of “utterers” or “smashers,” constantly busy in passing the base money into the currency. The latter comprised hawkers, peddlers, market-women, hackney-coach drivers, all of whom attended the markets held by the dealers in the manufactured article, and bought wholesale to distribute retail by various devices, more particularly in giving change. They obtained the goods at an advantage of about one hundred per cent. When the base money lost its veneer, the dealers were ready to repurchase it in gross, and after a repetition of the treatment, issue it afresh at the old rates.

Gold coins were not so much counterfeited as silver and copper, but there were bad guineas in circulation. The most dexterous method of coining them was by mixing a certain amount of alloy with the pure metal. They were the proper weight, and had some semblance of the true ring, but their intrinsic value was not more than thirteen or fourteen shillings, perhaps only eight or nine. The fabrication was, however, limited by the expense and the nicety required in the process. To counterfeit silver was a simpler operation. Of base silver money there were five kinds; viz. flats, plated goods, plain goods, castings, and fig things. The flats were cut out of prepared flattened plates composed of silver and blanched copper. When cut out the coins were turned in a lathe, stamped in a press with the proper die, and subjected to rubbing with various materials, including aquafortis to bring the silver to the surface, sand-paper, cork, cream of tartar, and last of all blacking to give the appearance of age. Plated goods were prepared from copper; the coins cut the proper size and plated, the stamping being done afterwards. As these coins were most like silver, they generally evaded detection. Plain goods consisted of copper blanks the size of a shilling, turned out from a lathe, then given the colour and lustre of metal buttons, after which they were rubbed with cream of tartar and blacking. Castings, as the word implies, were coins made of blanched copper, cast in moulds of the proper die; they were then silvered and treated like the rest. It was very common to give this class of base money a crooked appearance, by which means they seemed genuine, and got into circulation without suspicion. The figs, or fig things, were the lowest and meanest class, and was confined chiefly to sixpences. Copper counterfeit money was principally of two kinds, stamped and plain, made out of base metal; the profit on them being about a hundred per cent. They were mostly halfpennies; but farthings were also largely manufactured, the material being real copper, but the fraud was in their being of light weight, and very thin.

The prosecutions for coining were very numerous. The register of the solicitor to the Mint recorded as many as 650 in a period of seven years. The offence of making or uttering, till a very recent date, constituted petty treason, and met with the usual penalties. These, in the case of female offenders, included hanging and burning at a stake. The last woman who suffered in this way was burnt before the debtors’ door, in front of Newgate, in 1788, having been previously strangled. In the following year, as I have already said, the 30 Geo. III. cap. 48 was passed, which abolished the practice of burning women convicted of petty treason.[10] Persons guilty of only selling or dealing in base money were more leniently dealt with. The offence was long only a misdemeanour, carrying with it a sentence of imprisonment for a year and a day, which the culprit passed not unpleasantly in Newgate, while his friends or relations kept the business going outside, and supplied him regularly with ample funds.

There was as yet little security for life and property in town or country. The streets of London were still unsafe; high roads and bye roads leading to it were still infested by highway robbers. The protection afforded to the public by the police continued very inefficient. It was still limited to parochial effort; the watchmen were appointed by the vestries, and received a bare pittance,—twelve and sixpence a week in summer, seventeen and sixpence in winter,—which they often eked out by taking bribes from the women of the town, or by a share in a burglar’s “swag,” to whose doings they were conveniently blind. These watchmen were generally middle-aged, often old and feeble men, who were appointed either from charitable motives, to give them employment, or save them from being inmates of the workhouse and a burthen to the parish. Their hours of duty were long, from night-fall to sunrise, during which, when so disposed, they patrolled the streets, calling the hour, the only check on their vigilance being the occasional rounds of the parish beadle, who visited the watchmen on their various beats. In spite of this the watchmen were often invisible; not to be found when most wanted, and even when present, powerless to arrest or make head against disorderly or evilly-disposed persons.

Besides the watchmen there were the parish constables, nominated by the court of burgesses, or court leet. The obligation of serving in the office of constable might fall upon any householder in turn, but he was at liberty to escape it by buying a substitute or purchasing a “Tyburn ticket,” of which more directly. The parish constables were concerned with pursuit rather than prevention, with crime after rather than before the fact. In this duty they were assisted by the police constables, although there was no love lost between the two classes of officer. The police constables are most familiar to us under the name of “Bow Street runners,” but they were attached to all the police offices, and not to Bow Street alone. They were nominated from Whitehall by the Secretary of State, the minister now best known as the Home Secretary. The duties of the “runners” were mainly those of detection and pursuit, in which they were engaged in London and in the country, at home and abroad. Individuals or public bodies applied to Bow Street, or some other office, for the services of a runner. These officers took charge of poaching cases, of murders, burglaries, or highway robberies. Some were constantly on duty at the Court, as depredations were frequently committed in the royal palaces, or the royal family were “teased by lunatics.” The runners were remunerated by a regular salary of a guinea a week; but special services might be recognized by a share in the private reward offered, or, in case of conviction, by a portion of the public parliamentary reward of £40, which might be granted by the bench.[11]

The policy of making these grants was considered questionable. It tended to tempt officers of justice “to forswear themselves for the lucre of the reward,” and the thirst for “blood-money,” as it was called, was aggravated till it led many to sell the lives of their fellow-creatures for gain. There were numerous cases of this. Jonathan Wild was one of the most notorious of the dishonest thief-takers. In 1755 several scoundrels of the same kidney were convicted of having obtained the conviction of innocent people, simply to pocket the reward. Their offence did not give under penal statute, so they were merely exposed in the pillory, where, however, the mob pelted one to death and nearly killed another. Again, in 1816, a police officer named Vaughan was guilty of inciting to crime, in order to betray his victims and receive the blood-money. On the other hand, when conviction was doubtful the offender enjoyed long immunity from arrest. Officers would not arrest him until he “weighed his weight,” as the saying was, or until they were certain of securing the £40 reward. Another form of remuneration was the bestowal on conviction of a “Tyburn ticket”; in other words, of an exemption from service in parish offices. This the officer sold for what it would fetch, the price varying in different parishes from £12 or £14 to £30 or £40.

It was not to be wondered at that a weak and inadequate police force, backed up by such uncertain and injudicious incentives to activity, should generally come off second-best in its struggles with the hydra-headed criminality of the day. Robberies and burglaries were committed almost under the eyes of the police. It was calculated that the value of the property stolen in the city in one month (circa 1808) amounted to £15,000, and none of the parties were even known or apprehended, although sought after night and day.[12] Such cases as the following were of frequent occurrence. “Seven ruffians, about eight o’clock at night, knocked at the door of Mrs. Abercrombie in Charlotte Street, Rathbone Place, calling out ‘Post!’ and on its being opened, rushed in and took from Mrs. A. her jewels and fifty or sixty guineas in money, with all the clothes and linen they could get. The neighbourhood was alarmed, and a great crowd assembled, but the robbers sallied forth, and with swords drawn and pistols presented, threatened destruction to any who opposed them. The mob tamely suffered them to escape with their booty without making any resistance.” The officers of justice were openly defied. There were streets, such as Duck Lane, Gravel Lane, or Cock Lane, in which it was unsafe for any one to venture without an escort of five or six of his fellows. “They (the ruffians) would have cut him to pieces if he was alone.”

Still more dastardly were the wanton outrages perpetrated upon unprotected females, often in broad daylight, and in the public streets. These at one time increased to an alarming extent. Ladies were attacked and wounded without warning, and apparently without cause. The injuries were often most serious. On one occasion a young lady was stabbed in the face by means of an instrument concealed in a bouquet of flowers which a ruffian had begged her to smell. When consternation was greatest, however, it was reported that the cowardly assailant was in custody. He proved to be one Renwick Williams, now generally remembered as “the monster.” The assault for which he was arrested was made in St. James’s Street, about midnight, upon a young lady, Miss Porter, who was returning from a ball to her father’s house. Renwick struck at her with a knife, and wounded her badly through her clothes, accompanying the blow with the grossest language. The villain at the time escaped, but Miss Porter recognized him six months later in St. James’s Park. He was followed by a Mr. Coleman to his quarters at No. 52, Jermyn Street, and brought to Miss Porter’s house. The young lady, crying “That is the wretch!” fainted away at the sight of him. The prisoner indignantly repudiated that he was “the monster” who was advertised for, but he was indicted at the Old Bailey, and the jury found him guilty without hesitation. His sentence was two years’ imprisonment in Newgate, and he was bound over in £400 to be of good behaviour.

Gentlemen, some of the highest station, going or returning from court, were often the victims of the depredations committed in the royal precincts. In 1792 a gang of thieves dressed in court suits smuggled themselves into a drawing-room of St. James’s Palace, and tried to hustle and rob the Prince of Wales. The Duke of Beaufort, returning from a levee, had his “George,” pendant to his ribbon of the Garter, stolen from him in the yard of St. James’s Palace. The order was set with brilliants, worth a very large sum of money. The duke called out to his servants, who came up and seized a gentlemanly man dressed in black standing near. The “George” was found in this gentleman’s pocket. He proved to be one Henry Sterne, commonly called Gentleman Harry,[13] who, being of good address and genteel appearance, easily got admission to the best company, upon whom he levied his contributions.

George Barrington, the notorious pickpocket, also found it to his advantage to attend levees and drawing-rooms. Barrington, or Waldron, which was his real name, began crime early. When one of a strolling company in Ireland, he recruited the empty theatrical treasury and supplemented meagre receipts by stealing watches and purses, the proceeds being divided among the rest of the actors. He found thieving so much more profitable than acting that he abandoned the latter in favour of the former profession, and set up as a gentleman pickpocket. Having worked Dublin well, his native land became too hot to hold him, and came to London. At Ranelagh one night he relieved both the Duke of Leinster and Sir William Draper of considerable sums. He visited also the principal watering places, including Bath, but London was his favourite hunting-ground. Disguised as a clergyman, he went to court on drawing-room days, and picked pockets or removed stars and decorations from the breasts of their wearers. At Covent Garden Theatre one night he stole a gold snuff-box set with brilliants, and worth £30,000, belonging to Prince Orloff, of which there had been much talk, and which, with other celebrated jewels, Barrington had long coveted. The Russian prince felt the thief’s hand in his pocket, and immediately seized Barrington by the throat, on which the latter slipped back the snuff-box. But Barrington was arrested and committed for trial, escaping this time because Prince Orloff would not prosecute. He was, however, again arrested for picking a pocket in Drury Lane Theatre, and sentenced to three years’ hard labour on board the hulks in the Thames.

From this he was released prematurely through the good offices of a gentleman who pitied him, only to be reimprisoned, but in Newgate, not the hulks, for fresh robberies at the Opera House, Pantheon, and other places of public resort. Once more released, he betook himself to his old evil courses, and having narrowly escaped capture in London, wandered through the northern counties in various disguises, till he was at length taken at Newcastle-on-Tyne. Another narrow escape followed, through the absence of a material witness; but he was finally arrested for picking a pocket on Epsom Downs, and sentenced to seven years’ transportation. He made an affecting speech at his trial, urging, in extenuation of his offence, that he had never had a fair chance of earning an honest livelihood. He may have been sincere, and he certainly took the first opportunity of trying to do well. On the voyage out to New South Wales there was a mutiny on board the convict ship, which would have been successful but for Barrington’s aid on the side of authority. He kept the passage to the quarter-deck single-handed, and the mob of convicts at bay with a marline-spike, till the captain and crew were able to get arms and make head against the revolt. As a reward for his conduct, Barrington was appointed to a position of trust, in charge of other prisoners at Paramatta. Within a year or two he was advanced to the more onerous and responsible post of chief constable, and was complimented by the governor of the colony for his faithful performance of the duty. He fell away in health, however, and retiring eventually upon a small pension, died before he was fifty years of age.

The gentlemen of the highway continued to harass and rob all travellers. All the roads were infested. Two or three would be heard of every morning; some on Hounslow Heath, some on Finchley Common, some on Wimbledon Common, some on the Romford Road. Townshend, the Bow Street runner, declared that on arriving at the office of a morning people came in one after the other to give information of such robberies. “Messrs. Mellish, Bosanquet, and Pole, merchants of the city,” says a contemporary chronicle, “were stopped by three highwaymen on Hounslow Heath. After robbing them, without resistance, of their money and their watches, one of the robbers wantonly fired into the chaise and mortally wounded Mr. Mellish.” The first successful effort made to put down this levying of blackmail upon the king’s highway was the establishment of the police horse patrol in 1805. It was organized by the direction of the chief magistrate at Bow Street, then Sir Nathaniel Conant, and under the immediate orders of a conductor, Mr. Day. This force consisted of mounted constables, who every night regularly patrolled all the roads leading into the metropolis. They worked singly between two stations, each starting at a fixed time from each end, halting midway to communicate, then returning. The patrol acted on any information received en route, making themselves known as they rode along to all persons riding horses or in carriages, by calling out in a loud tone “Bow Street Patrol.” They arrested all known offenders whom they met with,

and were fully armed for their own and the public protection. The members of this excellent force were paid eight-and-twenty shillings a week, with turnpike tolls and forage for their horses, which, however, they were obliged to groom and take care of. Marked and immediate results obtained from the establishment of this patrol. Highway robbery ceased almost entirely, and in the rare cases which occurred before it quite died out, the guilty parties were invariably apprehended.

There was as yet no very marked diminution in the number of executions, but other forms of punishment were growing into favour. Already transportation beyond the seas had grown into a system. Since the settlement of New South Wales as a penal colony in 1780, convicts were sent out regularly, and in increasingly large batches. The period between conviction and embarkation was spent in Newgate, thus adding largely to its criminal population, with disastrous consequences to the health and convenience of the place. Besides these, the most heinous criminals, there were other lesser offenders, for whom various terms of imprisonment was deemed a proper and sufficient penalty. Hence gaols were growing much more crowded, Newgate more especially, as I shall presently show. For the present I propose to give the reader some of the types of persons who became lodgers in Newgate, not temporarily, as in the case of all who passed quickly from the condemned cells to the gallows, but who remained there for longer periods, whether awaiting removal as transports, or working out a sentence of imprisonment in the course of law.

As London, increased in size and life, became more complex, chances multiplied for rogues and sharpers, who tried with chicane and stratagem to prey upon society. Swindling was carried out more systematically and upon a wider scale than in the days of Jenny Diver or the sham German Princess.[14] A woman named Robinson was arrested in 1801, who, under the pretence of being a rich heiress, had obtained goods fraudulently from tradesmen to the value of £20,000. Again, some years later, a gang resembling somewhat the “long firms” of modern days carried on a fictitious trade, and obtained goods from city merchants worth £50,000. There were many varieties of the professional swindler in those days. Some did business under the guise of licensed and outwardly respectable pawnbrokers, who sub rosâ were traffickers in stolen goods. Others roamed the country as hawkers, general dealers, and peddlers, distributing exciseable articles which had been smuggled into the country, carrying on fraudulent raffles, purchasing stolen horses in one county and disposing of them in another. The “duffer” went from door to door in the town, offering for sale smuggled tobacco, muslins, or other stuffs, and, if occasion served, passing forged notes or bad money as small change.

Where the swindler possessed such qualifications as a pleasing manner and a gentlemanly address, with a small capital to start with, he flew at higher game. Alexander Day, alias Marmaduke Davenport, Esq., was one of the first of a long line of impostors who made a great show, in a fine house in a fashionable neighbourhood, with sham footmen in smart liveries, and a grand carriage and pair. The latter he got in on approval, taking care while he used them to be driven to the Duke of Montague’s and other aristocratic mansions. In the carriage too he called on numbers of tradesmen and gave large orders for goods: yards of Spanish point-lace, a gold “equipage” or dinner-service, silks in long pieces, table and other linen enough to furnish several houses. By clever excuses he postponed payment, or made off with the property by a second door. Among other things ordered was a gold chain for his squirrel, which already wore a silver one. The goldsmith recognized the silver chain as one he had recently sold to a lady, and his suspicions were aroused. On reference to her she denounced Day as a swindler, who had cheated her out of a large sum of money. Day was forthwith arrested and sent to Newgate. At his trial he declared that he meant to pay for everything he had ordered, that he owned an estate in Durham worth £1200 a year, but that it was heavily mortgaged. The case occupied some time, but in the end Day was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in Newgate, to stand twice in the pillory, find security for his good behaviour, and pay a fine of £200.

The cleverest swindles were often effected by the softer sex. Female sharpers infested all places of public resort. They dressed in the best clothes, and personating ladies of the highest fashion, attended entertainments and masquerades; they even succeeded in gaining admission to St. James’s Palace, where they got into the general circle and pilfered right and left. One woman, the wife of a notorious Chevalier d’Industrie, was known to have been at court at the King’s birthday (George III.). Her costume was in irreproachable good taste; her husband attended her in the garb of a dignitary of the Church. Between them they managed to levy contributions to the extent of £1700, and made off before these thefts were discovered or suspected. A notable female sharper was Elizabeth Harriet Grieve, whose line of business was to pretend that she possessed great influence at court, and promise preferment. She gave out that she was highly connected: Lord North was her first cousin, the Duke of Grafton her second; she was nearly related to Lady Fitz-Roy, and most intimate with Lord Guildford and other peers. In those days places were shamelessly bought and sold, and tradesmen retiring from business, or others who had amassed a little property, invested their savings in a situation under the Crown. When the law at length laid hands on the Hon. Elizabeth Harriet, as she styled herself, a great number of cases were brought against her. A coach-carver, whose trade was declining, had paid her £36 to obtain him a place as clerk in the Victualling Office. Another man gave her £30 down, with a conditional bond for £250, to get the place of a “coast” or “tide”-waiter. Both were defrauded. There were many more proved against her, and she was eventually sentenced to transportation.

She was only one of many who followed the same trade. David James Dignum was convicted in 1777 of pretending to sell places under Government, and sentenced to hard labour on the Thames. Dignum’s was a barefaced kind of imposition. He went the length of handing his victims, in exchange for the fees, which were never less than a hundred guineas, a stamped parchment duly signed by the head of the public department, with seals properly attached. In one case he got £1000 for pretending to secure a person the office of “writer of the ‘London Gazette.’ ” Of course the signatures to these instruments were forged, and the seals had been removed from some legal warrant. When the time came for Dignum’s departure for the hulks, he resolved to go to Woolwich in state, and travelled down in a post-chaise, accompanied by his negro servant. But on reaching the ballast lighter on which Dignum was to work, his valet was refused admittance, and the convict was at once “put to the duty of the wheelbarrow.” He made a desperate effort to get off by forging a cheque on Drummonds, which he got others to cash. They were arrested, but their innocence was clearly shown. Dignum had hoped to be brought up to London for examination. He had thought to change his lot, to exchange the hulks for Newgate, even at the risk of winding up at Tyburn. But in this he was foiled, as the authorities thought it best to institute no prosecution, but leave him to work out his time at the hulks.

That the dishonest and evilly-disposed should thus try to turn the malversation of public patronage to their own advantage was not strange. The traffic in places long flourished unchecked in a corrupt age, and almost under the very eyes of careless, not to say culpable, administrators. The evil practice culminated in the now nearly forgotten case of Mrs. Mary Ann Clarke, who undoubtedly profited liberally by her pernicious influence over the Duke of York when commander-in-chief of the army. The scandal was brought prominently before the public by Colonel Wardle, M.P., who charged her with carrying on a traffic in military commissions, not only with the knowledge, but the participation, of the Duke of York. A long inquiry followed, at which extraordinary disclosures were made. Mrs. Clarke was proved to have disposed of both military and ecclesiastical patronage. She gave her own footman a pair of colours, and procured for an Irish clergyman the honour of preaching before the King. Her brokership extended to any department of state, and her lists of applicants included numbers of persons in the best classes of society. The Duke of York was exonerated from the charge of deriving any pecuniary benefit from this disgraceful traffic; but it was clear that he was cognizant of Mrs. Clarke’s proceedings, and that he knowingly permitted her to barter his patronage for filthy lucre. Mrs. Clarke was examined in person at the bar of the house. In the end a vote acquitted the duke of personal corruption, and the matter was allowed to drop. But a little later Colonel Wardle was sued by an upholsterer for furniture supplied at his order to Mrs. Clarke, and the disinterestedness of the colonel’s exposure began to be questioned. In 1814 Mrs. Clarke was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment for a libel on the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer.

A clever scheme of deception which went very near success was that perpetrated by Robert Jaques. Jaques filled the post of “clerk of the papers” to the warden of the Fleet, a place which he had himself solicited, on the plea that he was a man of experience, able to guard the warden against the tricks incident to his trust. Jaques admitted that his own antecedents were none of the best, that he had been frequently in gaol, but he pleaded that “men like himself, who had been guilty of the worst offences, had afterwards become the best officers.” No sooner was Jaques appointed than he began to mature a plot against his employer. The warden of the Fleet by his office became responsible for the debt of any prisoner in his custody who might escape. Jaques at once cast about for some one whom he might through a third party cause to be arrested, brought to the Fleet on a sham action, and whom he would assist to escape. The third party’s business would then be to sue the warden for the amount of the evaded debt. Jaques applied to a friend, Mr. Tronson, who had been a servant, an apothecary, a perfumer, and a quack doctor. Tronson found him one Shanley, a needy Irishman, short of stature and of fair complexion, altogether a person who might well be disguised as a woman. Jaques next arranged that a friend should get a warrant against Shanley for £450. Upon this, Shanley, who was easily found, being a “dressy young gentleman, fond of blue and gold,” was arrested and carried to a spunging-house. While there a second writ was served upon Shanley for £850, at the suit of another friend of Jaques. Shanley was next transferred to the Fleet on a Habeas, applied for by a fictitious attorney. The very next Sunday, Jaques gave a dinner-party, at which his wife, a brother, Mr. John Jaques, and his wife, with some of the parties to the suits, and of course Shanley, were present. Later in the day Shanley exchanged clothes with Mrs. John Jaques, and, personating her, walked out of the prison. It was at a time when an under turnkey was on duty at the gate, and he let the disguised prisoner pass without question. By-and-by Mrs. Jaques got back her clothes, and also left. Shanley had meanwhile proceeded post haste to Dover, and so reached the continent.

As soon as the escape was discovered, suspicion fell on Jaques’s friends, who were openly taxed with connivance. The matter looked worse for them when they laid claim to the money considered forfeited by the disappearance of the debtor, and the law stepped in to prosecute inquiry. The head turnkey, tracking Shanley to Calais, went in pursuit. At the same time a correspondence which was in progress between the conspirators on either side of the Channel was intercepted by order of the Secretary of State, and the letters handed over to the warden’s solicitors. From these the whole plot was discovered, and the guilt of the parties rendered the more sure by the confession of Shanley. Jaques was arrested, tried, and convicted at the Old Bailey, receiving the sentence of three years’ imprisonment, with one public exposure on the pillory at the Royal Exchange. A curious accident, however, helped to obtain the premature release of Jaques from Newgate. A Sir James Saunderson having been robbed of a large sum in cash and notes, portion of the stolen property was brought into Newgate by some of the thieves, who were arrested on another charge. The notes were intrusted to Jaques, who pretended he could raise money on them. Instead of this, he gave immediate notice to their rightful owner that he had them in his possession. Jaques afterwards petitioned Sir James Saunderson to interest himself in his behalf, and through this gentleman’s good offices he escaped the exposure upon the pillory, and was eventually pardoned.

A peculiar feature in the criminal records of the early part of the present century was the general increase in juvenile depravity. This was remarked and commented upon by all concerned in the administration of justice: magistrates of all categories, police officers, gaolers, and philanthropists. It was borne out, moreover, by the statistics of the times. There were in the various London prisons, in the year 1816, three thousand inmates under twenty years of age. Nearly half of this number were under seventeen, and a thousand of these alone were convicted of felony. Many of those sent to prison were indeed of tender years. Some were barely nine or ten. Children began to steal when they could scarcely crawl. Cases were known of infants of barely six charged in the courts with crimes. This deplorable depravity was attributable to various causes: to the profligacy prevailing in the parish schools; the cruel and culpable neglect of parents who deserted their offspring, leaving them in a state of utter destitution, or were guilty of the no less disgraceful wickedness of using them as instruments for their nefarious designs; the artfulness of astute villains—prototypes of old Fagin—who trained the youthful idea in their own devious ways. The last-named was a fruitful source of juvenile crime. Children were long permitted to commit small thefts with impunity. The offence would have been death to those who used them as catspaws; for them capital punishment was humanely nearly impossible; moreover, the police officers ignored them till they “weighed their weight,” or had been guilty of a forty-pound crime.[15] The education in iniquity continued steadily. They went from bad to worse, and ere long became regular inmates of “flash houses,” where both sexes mixed freely with vicious companions of their own age, and the most daring enjoyed the hero-worship of their fellows. When thus assembled, they formed themselves into distinct parties or gangs, each choosing one of their number as captain, and dividing themselves into reliefs to work certain districts, one by day and by night. When they had “collared their swag,” they returned to divide their plunder, having gained sometimes as much as three or four hundred pounds. A list of these horrible dens prepared about this date showed that there were two hundred of them, frequented by six thousand boys and girls, who lived solely by this way, or were the associates of thieves. These haunts were situated in St. Giles, Drury Lane, Chick Lane, Saffron Hill, the Borough, and Ratcliffe Highway. Others that were out of luck crowded the booths of Covent Garden, where all slept promiscuously amongst the rotting garbage of the stalls. During the daytime all were either actively engaged in thieving, or were revelling in low amusements. Gambling was a passion with them, indulged in without let or hindrance in the open streets; and from tossing buttons there they passed on to playing in the low publics at such games as “put,” or “the rocks of Scylla,” “bumble puppy,” “tumble tumble,” or “nine holes.”

Still more demoralizing than the foregoing was the pernicious habit, commonly, but happily not invariably followed, of committing these young thieves to Newgate. Here these tyros were at once associated with the veterans and great leaders in crime. Old house-breakers expatiated upon their own deeds, and found eager and willing pupils among their youthful listeners. The elder and more evilly experienced boys soon debased and corrupted their juniors. One with twenty previous convictions against him, who had been in Newgate as often, would have alongside him an infant of seven or eight, sent to gaol for the first time for stealing a hearth-broom. It was as bad or worse for the females. Girls of twelve or thirteen were mixed up with the full-grown felons; one of the latter, as in a known case, who was what we should style in these days an habitual criminal, and who had been committed thirty times to Newgate, residing there generally nine months out of every twelve, was the wardswoman or prisoner-officer, with nearly unlimited power.

The crying evils of the system had moved private philanthropy to do something in remedy. Charitable schools, the forerunners of our modern reformatories, or the germ and nucleus of time-honoured institutions still flourishing, and worthy all praise, were started. I shall refer to these more particularly in a later chapter.[16] Other well-meaning people, each with their own pet scheme, began to theorize and propose the construction of juvenile penitentiaries, economical imitations mostly of the great penitentiary which was nearly completed at Millbank. But juvenile crime still grew and flourished, the offences were as numerous as ever, and their character was mostly the same. The most favourite pastime was that of picking pockets. Boys then as now were especially skilful at this in a crowd; short, active little chaps, they slipped through quickly with their booty, and passed it on to the master who was directing the operations. Shop-lifting, again, was much practised, the dodge being to creep along on hands and feet to the shop fronts of haberdashers and linen-drapers, and snatch what they could. Again, there were clever young thieves who could “starr” a pane in a window, and so get their hands through the glass. But there were boys convicted of highway robbery, like Joseph Wood and Thomas Underwood, one fourteen and the other twelve, both of whom were hanged. Another boy, barely sixteen, was executed for setting his master’s house on fire. The young incendiary was pot-boy at a public-house, and having been reprimanded for neglect, vowed revenge. Another boy was condemned for forming one of a gang of boys and girls in a street robbery, who fell upon a man in liquor. The girls attacked him, and the boys stripped him of all he had.

Perhaps the most astounding precocity in crime was that displayed by a boy named Leary, who was tried and sentenced to death at thirteen years of age for stealing a watch and chain from some chambers in the Temple. He began at the early age of eight, and progressed regularly from stealing apples to burglary and household robbery. He learnt the trade first from a companion at school. After exacting toll from the tart-shops, he took to stealing bakers’ loaves, then money from shop counters and tills, or breaking shop windows and drawing their contents through. He often appeared at school with several pounds in his pocket, the proceeds of his depredations. He soon became captain of a gang known as Leary’s gang, who drove about, armed with pistols, in a cart, watching for carriages with the trunks fastened outside, which they could cut away. In these excursions the gang was often out for a week or more, Leary’s share of the profits amounting sometimes to £100. Once, the result of several robberies in and about London, he amassed some £350, but the money was partly stolen from him by older thieves, or he squandered it in gambling, or in the flash houses. After committing innumerable depredations, he was captured in a gentleman’s dining-room in the act of abstracting a quantity of plate. He was found guilty, but out of compassion committed to the Philanthropic School. He was recaptured, however, and eventually sentenced to transportation for life.

The prevailing tastes of the populace were in these times low and depraved. Their amusements were brutal, their manners and customs disreputable, their morality at the lowest ebb. It is actually on record that little more than a hundred years ago a man and his wife were convicted of offering their niece, “a fine young girl, apparently fourteen years of age,” for sale

at the Royal Exchange. Mr. and Mrs. Crouch were residents of Bodmin, Cornwall, to which remote spot came a report that “maidens were very scarce in London, and that they sold there for a good price.” They accordingly travelled up to town by road, two hundred and thirty-two miles, and on arrival hawked the poor girl about the streets. At length they “accosted an honest captain of a ship, who instantly made known the base proposal they had made to him.” The Crouches were arrested and tried; the man was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment in Newgate, but his wife, as having acted under his influence, was acquitted.

Traffic in dead bodies was more actively prosecuted. The wretches who gained the name of Resurrection men despoiled graveyards to purvey subjects for the dissecting knife. There were dealers who traded openly in these terrible goods, and, as has been seen in the chapter on executions, their agents haggled for corpses at the foot of the gallows. Sometimes the culprits were themselves the guardians of the sacred precincts. I find that the grave-digger of St. George’s, Bloomsbury, was convicted, with a female accomplice, of stealing a dead body, and sentenced to imprisonment. They were also “whipped twice on their bare backs from the end of King’s Gate Street, Holborn, to Dyot Street, St. Giles, being half a mile.” To this crime, and its development in the persons of Burke and Hare, I shall recur on a later page.

Disorderly gatherings for the prosecution of the popular sports were of constant occurrence. The vice of gambling was openly practised in the streets. It was also greatly fostered by the metropolitan fairs, of which there were eighty annually, lasting from Easter to September, when Bartholomew Fair was held. These fairs were the resort of the idle and the profligate, and most of the desperate characters in London were included in the crowd. Another favourite amusement was bull-baiting or bullock-hunting. Sunday morning was generally chosen for this pastime. A subscription was made to pay the hire of an animal from some drover or butcher, which was forthwith driven through the most populous parts of the town; often across church-yards when divine service was in progress, pursued by a yelling mob, who goaded the poor brute to madness with sharp pointed sticks, or thrust peas into its ears. When nearly dead the poor beast rejoined its herd, and was driven on to Smithfield market. A system of bull-baits was introduced at Westminster by two notorious characters known as Caleb Baldwin and Hubbersfield, otherwise Slender Billy, which attracted great crowds, and led to drunkenness and scenes of great disorder.

Towards the close of the eighteenth century a still lower and more debasing amusement sprang suddenly into widespread popularity. The patronage of pugilism or prize-fighting was no doubt supposed by many to be the glorification of the national virtues of courage and endurance. It was also greatly due to the gradual disuse of the practice of carrying side-arms, when it was thought that quarrels would be fought out with fists instead of swords. Hence the “noble art of self-defence,” as it was styled magniloquently, found supporters in every class of society. Prize-fights first became fashionable about 1788, following a great encounter between two noted pugilists, named Richard Humphreys and Daniel Mendoza, a Jew. Sporting papers were filled with accounts of the various fights, which peer and pickpocket attended side by side, and which even a Royal Prince did not disdain to honour. These professional bruisers owned many noble patrons. Besides, the Prince of Wales, the Dukes of Clarence and York, the Duke of Hamilton, Lords Barrymore and others, attended prize-fights and sparring matches at theatres and public places. A well-known pugilist, who was summoned for an assault at Covent Garden Theatre, brought forward in his defence the terms of intimacy he was on with noted people; the very day on which he was charged, that he had dined at the Piazza Coffee House with General Gwynne, Colonel McDouel, Captains Barkley and Hanbury, after which they had all gone to the theatre. These aristocratic friends were, moreover, ready to be useful at a pinch, and would bail out a pugilist in trouble, or give him their countenance and support. At the trial of one William Ward, who had killed a man in a fight, the pugilist was attended by his patrons in court. The case was a bad one. Ward, on his way to see a fight in the country, had been challenged by a drunken blacksmith, and proved to him after a few rounds that he was no match for the trained bruiser. The blacksmith did not like his “punishment,” and tried to escape into the bar, when his antagonist followed him, and actually beat him to death. At the trial Ward was found guilty of manslaughter, fined one shilling, and only sentenced to be imprisoned three months in Newgate. Yet the judge who inflicted this light punishment condemned boxing as an inhuman and disgraceful practice, a disgrace to any civilized nation.

To the foregoing categories of undoubted criminals must be added another pretty numerous class of offenders, who were at least so deemed by contemporary codes, and who now frequently found themselves relegated to Newgate. These were days when the press had far from achieved its present independence; when writers, chafing under restraints and reckless of consequence, were tempted into licence from sheer bravado and opposition; when others far more innocent were brought under the same ban of the law, and suffered imprisonment and fine for a hardly unwarrantable freedom of speech. It is to be feared that the frequent prosecutions instituted had often their origin in political antipathy. While ministerial prints might libel and revile the opponents of the governments, journals which did not spare the party in power were humiliated and brow-beaten, difficulties were thrown in the way of their obtaining intelligence, and if they dared to express their opinions freely, “an information ex officio,” as it was styled, was issued by the Attorney-General. Prosecution followed, protracted to the bitter end. Even what seems to us the harmless practice of parliamentary reporting was deemed a breach of privilege; it was tolerated, but never expressly permitted. Offending journalists were often reprimanded at the bar of the House, and any member who felt aggrieved at the language attributed to him was at liberty to claim the protection of the House. When legislators and executive were so sensitive, it was hardly likely that the great ones, the supposed salt of the earth, should be less thin-skinned. Any kind of criticism upon princes of the blood was looked upon as rank blasphemy; the morals of a not blameless or too reputable aristocracy were guaranteed immunity from attack, while the ecclesiastical hierarchy was apparently not strong enough to vindicate its tenets or position without having recourse to the secular arm.

As time passed, the early martyrs to freedom of speech, such men as Prynne Bastwick and Daniel Defoe, were followed by many victims to similar oppression. One of the first to suffer after Defoe was the nonjuring clergyman Lawrence Howell, who died in Newgate. He was prosecuted about 1720 for writing a pamphlet in which he denounced George I. as a usurper. He was tried at the Old Bailey, convicted, and sentenced to pay a fine of £500 to the king, to find sureties for an additional sum, to be imprisoned in Newgate for three years, and during that term to be twice whipped. He was also to be degraded and stripped of his gown by the common executioner. Howell asked indignantly of his judges, “Who will whip a clergyman?” “We pay no deference to your cloth,” replied the court, “because you are a disgrace to it, and have no right to wear it.” The validity of his ordination was also denied by the court, and as Howell continued to protest, the hangman was ordered to tear off his gown as he stood there at the bar. The public whipping was not inflicted, but Howell died soon afterwards in Newgate.

Next came Nathaniel Mist, who was sentenced in 1721 to stand in the pillory, to pay a fine, and suffer imprisonment for reflecting upon the action of George I. as regards the Protestants in the Palatinate. His paper, the ‘Weekly Journal’ or ‘Saturday’s Post,’ was notoriously Jacobite in its views. Soon afterwards he came under the displeasure of the House of Commons for instituting comparisons between the times of the ’15 rebellion and those which followed, and was committed to Newgate for uttering a “false, malicious, and scandalous libel.” This interference by the House with Mist’s publications in a matter which did not concern its privileges is characterized by Hallam as an extraordinary assumption of parliamentary power. Tom Paine, whose rationalist writings gained him much obloquy later on, was one of the next in point of time to feel the arm of the law. In 1724 he was convicted of three libels on the Government, fined £100, and imprisoned for a year. A clergyman, William Rowland, was put in the pillory in 1729 for commenting too freely in print on two magistrates who had failed to convict and punish prisoners charged with unnatural crimes. Mr. Rowland was pilloried in his canonical habit, and preached all the time to the multitude, complaining of the injustice of his sentence, “whereupon the people, and amongst them were several women, made a collection for him.”

About 1730, newspapers were especially established for purposes of political party warfare, and each side libelled or prosecuted the other in turn. The ‘Craftsman’ about this date sprang into the first rank for wit and invective. Its editors were constantly in trouble; the statesmen who supported it had to defend their bantling with their swords. In 1738 the printer, Henry Haines, was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for producing the paper. In 1759 Dr. Shebbeare was fined, put in the pillory, and imprisoned for three years, his offence being the publication of what was deemed a scandalous libel in his ‘Sixth Letter to the English People.’ Four years later, John Wilkes, M.P., started the ‘North Briton,’ a Liberal print, in opposition to Smollet’s ‘Briton,’ a Tory paper, which was subsidized and supported by Lord Bute, then in power. John Wilkes was no doubt assisted by Lord Temple and John Churchill the satirist. The ‘North Briton’ had been intended to assail Lord Bute’s government, but it was not until its forty-fifth number that the dash and boldness of its contributors attracted general attention. In this number a writer rashly accused the king of falsehood.[17] The matter was at once taken up; proceedings were instituted against printer and publisher, who were arrested, as was also Wilkes. These arrests subsequently formed the subject of lengthy lawsuits; they were in the end declared illegal, and all three got heavy damages. Wilkes was, however, expelled from the House, by whose order the offending numbers of the ‘North Briton’ were burnt by the common hangman. But these measures did not extinguish the ‘North Briton,’ which was continued as far as the two hundred and seventeenth number, when Mr. William Bingley, a bookseller, who at that time owned it, was committed to Newgate, and kept there a couple of years for refusing to reply to interrogatories connected with an earlier number of the paper. Wilkes, who had fled to France to escape imprisonment, next fell under the displeasure of the House of Lords. The ‘London Evening Post,’ a paper which had already come into collision with the Commons for presuming to publish reports of debates, committed the seemingly venial offence of inserting a letter from Wilkes, in which he commented rather freely upon a peer of the realm at that time British Ambassador in Paris. The House of Lords could not touch Wilkes, but they took proceedings against the printer for breach of privilege in presuming to mention the name of one of its members,[18] and fined him £100. The precedent soon became popular, and in succeeding sessions printers were constantly fined whenever they mentioned, even by accident, the name of a peer.

Journalism was in these days an ill-used profession. The reign of George III. must always be remembered as a time when newspapers and those who wrote them were at the mercy of the people in power. Grant[19] declares that the despotic and tyrannical treatment of the press during the several administrations under George III. had no parallel in English history. The executive was capriciously sensitive to criticism, and readily roused to extreme measures. No newspaper indeed was safe; the editors of Liberal prints, or their contributors, who touched on political subjects were at the mercy of the Attorney-General. Any morning’s issue might be made the subject of a prosecution, and every independent writer on the wrong side went in daily dread of fine, the pillory, or committal to Newgate.[20] Among the early records of the great organ which custom has long honoured with the title of the “leading journal,” are several instances of the dangers journalists ran. The ‘Daily Universal Register,’ started by the first Mr. John Walter in 1785, became the ‘Times’ in 1788. On the 11th July, 1789, the publisher—at that time Mr. Walter himself—of the paper was tried and convicted of alleged libels on three royal dukes, York, Gloucester, and Cumberland, whose joy at the recovery of the king the ‘Times’ dared to characterize as “insincere.” The sentence decreed and inflicted was a fine of £50, imprisonment in Newgate for one year, and exposure on the pillory at Charing Cross. A second prosecution followed, intended to protect, and if possible rehabilitate, the Prince of Wales, and Mr. Walter, having been brought from Newgate for the trial, was sentenced to a further fine of £100, and a like sum for a libel on the Duke of Clarence. Mr. Walter remained in Newgate for eighteen months, and was released in March 1791, having been pardoned at the instance of the Prince of Wales.

Nor was the law invoked in favour of our own princes alone. A few years later a foreign monarch obtained equal protection, and the editor, printer, and publisher of the ‘Courier’ were fined and imprisoned for stigmatizing the Czar of Russia as a tyrant among his own subjects, and ridiculous to the rest of Europe. The House of Peers, including the Bench of Bishops, continued very sensitive. In 1799 the printer of the ‘Cambridge Intelligence’ was brought to the bar of the House, charged for reflecting on the speech of the Bishop of Llandaff concerning the union with Ireland. Lord Grenville moved that the printer should be fined £100 and committed to Newgate; Lord Holland protested, but it was justified by Lord Kenyon, and the motion was carried. Lord Kenyon did not spare the unfortunates arraigned before him for libel. One Thomas Spence, who published a pamphlet called ‘Spence’s Restorer of Society,’ in which the abolition of private ownership of land was advocated, and its investment in parishes for the good of the public at large, was brought before Lord Kenyon, and sentenced by him to twelve months’ imprisonment and a fine of £50. Another peer, Lord Ellenborough, who prosecuted Messrs. White and Hart for a libel in 1808, obtained a conviction against them, and a sentence of three years’ imprisonment.

In 1810 the House of Commons distinguished itself by a prosecution which led to rather serious consequences. At a debate on the Walcheren expedition, a member, Mr. Yorke, had insisted from day to day upon the exclusion of strangers, and another, Mr. Windham, had inveighed violently against press reporting. Upon this a question was discussed at a debating society known as the “British Forum,” as to whether Mr. Yorke’s or Mr. Windham’s conduct was the greater outrage on the public feeling. The decision was given against Mr. Yorke, and the result announced in a placard outside. This placard was constituted a breach of privilege, “comment upon the proceedings of the House being deemed a contravention of the Bill of Rights.” A Mr. John Gale Jones confessing himself the author of the placard, he was forthwith committed to Newgate. Sir Francis Burdett took Jones’ part, and published his protest, signed, in Cobbett’s ‘Weekly Register.’ The House on this ordered the Sergeant-at-arms to arrest Sir Francis and take him to the Tower. Sir Francis resisted, and was carried off by force.[21] A riot occurred en route, the crowd attacked the escort, and the troops fired, with fatal consequences, upon the crowd. Sir Francis appealed to the law courts, which in the end refused to take cognizance of the questions at issue, and he was released, returning home in triumph. Mr. John Gale Jones claimed to be tried, and refused to leave Newgate without it; but he was got out by a stratagem, loudly complaining that he had been illegally imprisoned, and illegally thrust out. Jones was sentenced in the autumn of the same year to twelve months’ imprisonment in Coldbath Fields Gaol. Another and a better known writer found himself in Newgate about this time. In 1810 William Cobbett was tried for animadverting too openly upon the indignity of subjecting English soldiers to corporal punishment, for which he was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment in Newgate, and a fine of £1000. This was not his first prosecution, but it was by far the most serious. Shorter sentences of imprisonment were imposed on his printers and publishers, Messrs. Hansard, Budd, and Bagshaw.

Some other notable criminals found themselves in Newgate about this date. In 1809 it became the place of punishment for two Government officials who were convicted of embezzlement on a large scale. The first, Mr. Alexander Davison, was employed to purchase barrack-stores for the Government on commission. He was intrusted with this duty by the barrack-master general, as a person of extensive mercantile experience, to avoid the uncertainty of trusting to contractors. Mr. Davison was to receive a commission of 2½ per cent. Instead of buying in the best and cheapest markets, he himself became the seller, thus making a profit on the goods and receiving the commission as well; or, in the words of Mr. Justice Grose, Davison, when “receiving a stipend to check the frauds of others, and insure the best commodities at the cheapest rate, became the tradesman and seller of the article, and had thereby an interest to increase his own profit, and to commit that fraud it was his duty to prevent.” Davison disgorged some £18,000 of his ill-won profits, and this was taken into consideration in his sentence, which was limited to imprisonment in Newgate for twenty-one months. The other delinquent was Mr. Valentine Jones, who had been appointed commissary-general and superintendent of forage and provisions in the West Indies in 1795. A large British force was at that time stationed in the West Indian Islands, which entailed vast disbursements from the public exchequer. The whole of this money passed through the hands of Mr. Jones. His career of fraud began directly he took over his duties. Mr. Higgins, a local merchant, came to him proposing to renew contracts for the supply of the troops, but Mr. Jones would only consent to their renewal on condition that he shared Mr. Higgins’ profits. Higgins protested, but at length yielded. Within three years the enormous sum of £87,000 sterling was paid over to Jones as his share in this nefarious transaction. Mr. Jones was tried at the King’s Bench and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment in Newgate.

Soon afterwards a person of very high rank was committed to Newgate. This was the Marquis of Sligo, who was convicted of enticing British men-of-war’s men to desert, and sentenced to imprisonment, with a fine of £5000. Lord Sligo went to Malta soon after leaving College, and there hired a brig, the ‘Pylades,’ intending to make a yachting tour in the Grecian Archipelago. The admiral at Malta and other naval officers helped Lord Sligo to fit out the ‘Pylades,’ and he was welcomed on board the various king’s ships. From one of these several trusty seamen were shortly afterwards missing. Their captain trusted to Lord Sligo’s honour that he had not decoyed these men, and that he would not receive them; but at that moment the deserters were actually on board the ‘Pylades,’ having been enticed from the service by Lord Sligo’s servants. The ‘Pylades’ then went on her cruise along the Mediterranean. Suspicion seems to have still rested on Lord Sligo, and after leaving Palermo the ‘Pylades’ was chased and brought to by H.M.S. ‘Active.’ A boat boarded the ‘Pylades,’ her crew was mustered and examined, but the deserters had been securely hidden in the after hold, and were not discovered. A little later Lord Sligo sailed for Patmos, where some of the crew landed and were left behind; among them were the men-of-war’s-men, through whom the whole affair was brought to light. Lord Sligo was arrested on his return to England, and tried at the Old Bailey. The evidence was conclusive. In the course of the trial a letter was put in from Lord Sligo, to the effect that if the business was brought into court he should do his best to defend himself; if he did not succeed, he had an ample fortune, and could pay the fines. No money, however, could save him from incarceration, and in accordance with the sentence of Sir William Scott, who was supported on the bench by Lord Ellenborough and Mr. Baron Thompson, the Marquis of Sligo was sent to Newgate for four months.

CHAPTER II.
NEWGATE DOWN TO 1818.

Newgate still overcrowded—Some statistics—Description of interior—The various “sides” and wards—Their dimensions and uses—Debtors in Middlesex, generally paltry debts and colossal costs—Various debtors’ prisons in London described—The King’s Bench—The Fleet—The Marshalsea—The Compters, Ludgate, Giltspur Street, and Borough—Debtors in Newgate—Fees extorted—Garnish—Scanty food—Little bedding—Squalor and wretchedness prevail throughout—Constant quarrels and fighting—Discipline maintained only by prisoner wardsmen—Their tyranny and extortion—A new debtors’ prison indispensable—Building of Whitecross Street—The criminal side—Indiscriminate association of all classes—The middle yard greatly crowded with transports awaiting deportation, and with whom mere children were constantly mixed—Deterioration rapid—Mock courts for trials of new-comers who would not adopt the ways of the gaol—Case of a decent man completely ruined—Greater ease in the master felons’ side—Fees—The best accommodation was in the state side, and open to all who could pay—High fees charged—Cobbett in state side, and the Marquis of Sligo—The press yard—Recklessness of the condemned—Cashman—The condemned cells—Summary of glaring defects in Newgate—Scanty diet—Irons—Visitors admitted in crowds, including low females—Crimes constantly being hatched in Newgate—The Corporation roused to reform Newgate—Appoint committee to examine other gaols—Its report, and many useful recommendations—Few are carried out.

UNDER the conditions referred to in the previous chapter, with criminals and misdemeanants of all shades crowding perpetually into its narrow limits, the latter state of Newgate was worse than the first. The new gaol fell as far short of the demands made on it as did the old. The prison population fluctuated a great deal, but it was almost always in excess of the accommodation available, and there were times when the place was full to overflowing. Neild[22] gives some figures which well illustrate this. On the 14th June, 1800, there were 199 debtors and 289 felons in the prison. On the 27th April, in the following year, these numbers had risen to 275 and 375 respectively, or 650 in all. For two more years these high figures were steadily maintained, and in 1803 the total rose to 710. After that they fell as steadily, till, 1808, the lowest point was touched of 197 debtors and 182 felons, or 379 in all. The numbers soon increased, however, and by 1811 had again risen to 629; and Mr. Neild was told that there had been at one time 300 debtors and 900 criminals in Newgate, or 1200 prisoners in all. Previous to that date there had been 700 or 800 frequently, and once, in Mr. Akerman’s time, 1000. Trustworthy evidence is forthcoming to the effect that these high figures were constantly maintained for many months at a time. The inadequacy of the gaol was noticed and reported upon again and again by the grand juries of the city of London, who seldom let a session go by without visiting Newgate. In 1813 the grand jury made a special presentment to the Court of Common Council, pointing out that on the debtors’ side, which was intended for only 100, no less than 340 were crowded, to the great inconvenience and danger of the inmates. On the female side matters were much worse; “the apartments set apart for them, being built to accommodate 60 persons, now contain about 120.” Returns laid before the House of Commons showed that 6439 persons had been committed to Newgate in the three years between 1813 and 1816, and this number did not include the debtors, a numerous class, who were still committed to Newgate pending the completion of the White Cross Street prison.

In order to realize the evils entailed by incarceration in Newgate in these days, it is necessary to give some account of its interior as it was occupied and appropriated in 1810. Full details of the arrangements are to be found in Mr. Neild’s ‘State of Prisons in England, Scotland, and Wales,’ published in 1812. The gaol at that date was divided into eight separate and more or less distinct departments, each of which had its own wards and yard. These were—

i. The male debtors’ side consisted of a yard forty-nine feet by thirty-one, leading to thirteen wards on various floors, and a day room. Of these wards, three were appropriated to the “cabin side,” so called because they each contained four small rooms or “cabins” seven feet square, intended to accommodate a couple of prisoners apiece, but often much more crowded.[23] Two other wards were appropriated to the master’s side debtors; they were each twenty-three feet by fourteen and a half, and supposed to accommodate twenty persons. The eight remaining wards were for the common side debtors, long narrow rooms—one thirty-six feet, six twenty-three feet, and the eighth eighteen, the whole about fifteen feet wide. The various wards were all about eleven feet in height, and were occupied as a rule by ten to fifteen people when the prison was not crowded, but double the number was occasionally placed in them. The day room was fitted with benches and settles after the manner of the tap in a public-house.

ii. The female debtors’ side consisted of a court-yard forty-nine by sixteen feet, leading to two wards, one of which was thirty-six feet by fifteen, and the other eighteen by fifteen; and they nominally held twenty-two persons. A high wall fifteen feet in height divided the females’ court-yard from the men’s.

iii. The chapel yard was about forty-three feet by twenty-five. It had been for some time devoted principally to felons of the worst types, those who were the oldest offenders, sentenced to transportation, and who had narrowly escaped the penalty of death. This arrangement was, however, modified after 1811, and the chapel yard was allotted to misdemeanants and prisoners awaiting trial. The wards in this part were five in number, all in dimensions twenty feet by fifteen, with a sixth ward fifteen feet square. These wards were all fitted with barrack-beds, but no bedding was supplied. The chapel yard led to the chapel, and on the staircase were two rooms frequently set apart for the king’s witnesses, those who had turned king’s evidence, whose safety might have been imperilled had they been lodged with the men against whom they had informed. But these king’s witnesses were also put at times into the press yard among the capital convicts, seemingly a very dangerous proceeding, or they lodged with the gatesmen, the prisoner officers who had charge of the inner gates.

iv. The middle yard was at first given up to the least heinous offenders. After 1812 it changed functions with the chapel yard. It was fifty feet by twenty-five, and had five wards each thirty-eight by fifteen. At one end of the yard was an arcade, directly under the chapel, in which there were three cells, used either for the confinement of disorderly and refractory prisoners, or female convicts ordered for execution.

v. The master felons’ side consisted of a yard the same size as the preceding, appropriated nominally to the most decent and better-behaved prisoners, but really kept for the few who had funds sufficient to gain them admission to these more comfortable quarters. Here were also lodged the gatesmen, the prisoners who had charge of the inner gates, and who were intrusted with the duty of escorting visitors from the gates to the various wards their friends occupied.

vi. The state side was the part stolen from the female felons’ side. It was large and comparatively commodious, being maintained on a better footing than any other part of the prison. The inmates were privileged, either by antecedents or the fortunate possession of sufficient funds to pay the charges of the place. Neild takes it for granted that the former rather than the latter prevailed in the selection, and tells us that in the state side “such prisoners were safely associated whose manners and conduct evince a more liberal style of education, and who are therefore lodged apart from all other districts of the gaol.” The state side contained twelve good-sized rooms, from twenty-one by eighteen feet to fifteen feet square, which were furnished with bedsteads and bedding.

vii. The press yard was that part set aside for the condemned. Its name and its situation were the same as those of the old place of carrying out the terrible sentence inflicted on accused persons who stood mute.[24] The long narrow yard still remained as we saw it in Jacobite times, and beyond it was now a day room for the capital convicts or those awaiting execution. Beyond the press yard were three stories, condemned cells, fifteen in all, with vaulted ceilings nine feet high to the crown of the arch. The ground floor cells were nine feet by six; those on the first floor were rather larger on account of a set-off in the wall; and the uppermost were the largest, for the same reason. Security was provided for in these condemned cells by lining the substantial stone walls with planks studded with broad-headed nails; they were lighted by a double-grated window two feet nine inches by fourteen inches; and in the doors, which were four inches thick, a circular aperture had been let in to give ventilation and secure a free current of air. In each cell there was a barrack bedstead on the floor without bedding.

viii. The female felons were deprived of part of the space which the architect had intended for them. More than half their quadrangle had been partitioned off for another purpose, and what remained was divided into a master’s and a common side for female felons. The two yards were adjoining, that for the common side much the largest. There were nine wards in all on the female side, one of them in the attic, with four casements and two fireplaces, being allotted for a female infirmary, and the rest being provided with barrack beds, and in dimensions varying from thirty feet by fifteen to fifteen feet by ten.

The eight courts above enumerated were well supplied with water; they had dust-bins, sewers, and so forth, “properly disposed,”[25] and the city scavenger paid periodical visits to the prison. The prisoners had few comforts, beyond the occasional use of a bath at some distance, situated in the press yard, to which access was granted rarely and as a great favour. But they were allowed the luxury of drink—if they could pay for it. A recent reform had closed the tap kept by the gaoler within the precincts, but there was still a “convenient room” which served, and “near it a grating through which the debtors receive their beer from the neighbouring public-houses. The felons’ side has a similar accommodation, and this mode of introducing the beverage is adopted because no publican as such can be permitted to enter the interior of this prison.”[26] The tap-room and bar were just behind the felons’ entrance lodge, and beyond it was a room called the “wine room,” because formerly used for the sale of wine, but in which latterly a copper had been fixed for the cooking of provisions sent in by charitable persons. “On the top of the gaol,” continues Neild, “are a watch-house and a sentry-box, where two or more guards, with dogs and firearms, watch all night. Adjoining the felons’ side lodge is the keeper’s office, where the prison books are kept, and his clerk, called the clerk of the papers, attends daily.”[27]

Having thus briefly described the plan and appropriation of the prison, I propose to deal now with the general condition of the inmates, and the manner of their life. Of these the debtors, male and female, formed a large proportion. The frequency and extent of processes against debtors seventy or eighty years ago will appear almost incredible in an age when insolvent acts and bankruptcy courts do so much to relieve the impecunious, and imprisonment for debt has almost entirely disappeared.[28] But at the time of which I am writing the laws were relentless against all who failed to meet their engagements. The number of processes against debtors annually was extraordinary. Neild gives, on the authority of Mr. Burchell, the under sheriff of Middlesex, a table showing the figures for the year ending Michaelmas 1802. In that period upwards of 200,000 writs had been issued for the arrests of debtors in the kingdom, for sums varying from fourpence to £500 and upwards. Fifteen thousand of these were issued in Middlesex alone, which at that time was reckoned as only a fifteenth of Great Britain. The number of arrests actually made was 114,300 for the kingdom, and 7020 for Middlesex. Barely half of these gave bail bonds on arrests, and the remainder went to prison. Quite half of the foregoing writs and arrests applied to sums under £30. Neild also says that in 1793, 5719 writs and executions for debts between £10 and £20 were issued in Middlesex, and the aggregate amount of debts sued for was £81,791. He also makes the curious calculation that the costs of these actions if undefended would have amounted to £68,728, and if defended, £285,950; in other words, that to recover eighty odd thousand pounds, three times the amount would be expended.

An elaborate machinery planned for the protection of the trader, and altogether on his side, had long existed for the recovery of debts. Alfred the Great established the Court Baron, the Hundred Court, and the County Court, which among other matters entertained pleas for debt. The County Court was the sheriff’s, who sat there surrounded by the bishop and the magnates of the county; but as time passed, difficulties and delays in obtaining judgment led to the removal of causes to the great Court of King’s Bench, and the disuse of the inferior courts. So much inconvenience ensued, that in 1518 the Corporation obtained from Parliament an act empowering two aldermen and four common councilmen to hold Courts of Requests, or Courts of Conscience, to hear and determine all causes of debt under 40s. arising within the city. These courts were extended two centuries later to several large provincial towns, and all were in full activity when Neild wrote, and indeed supplied the bulk of the poor debtors committed to prison. These courts were open to many and grave objections. The commissioners who presided were “little otherwise than self-elected,[29] and when once appointed continued to serve sine die;”[30] they were generally near in rank to the parties whose causes they decided. Often a commissioner had to leave the bench because he was himself a party to the suit that was sub judice. The activity as well as the futility of these courts may be estimated from the statement given by Neild, that 1312 debtors were committed by them to Newgate between 1797 and 1808, and that no more than 197 creditors recovered debts and costs. The latter indeed hung like millstones round the neck of the unhappy insolvent wretches who found themselves in limbo. Costs were the gallons of sack to the pennyworth of debt. Neild found at his visit to Newgate in 1810, fourteen men and women who had lain there ten, eleven, and thirteen years for debts of a few shillings, weighted by treble the amount of costs. Thus, amongst others, Thomas Blackburn had been committed on October 15th for a debt of 1s. 5d., for which the costs were 6s. 10d. Thomas Dobson, on 22nd August, 1799, for 1s., with costs of 8s. 10d.; and Susannah Evans, in October the same year, for 2s., with costs of 6s. 8d. Other cases are recorded elsewhere, as at the Giltspur Street Compter, where in 1805 Mr. Neild found a man named William Grant detained for 1s. 9d., with costs of 5s., and John Lancaster for 1s. 8d., with costs of 7s. 6d. “These surely, I thought,” says Mr. Neild, “were bad enough! But it was not so.” He recites another most outrageous and extraordinary case, in which one John Bird, a market porter, was arrested and committed at the suit of a publican for the paltry sum of 4d., with costs of 7s. 6d. Bird was, however, discharged within three days by a subscription raised among his fellow-prisoners.

Mr. Buxton, in his ‘Inquiry into the System of Prison Discipline,’ quotes a case which came within his own knowledge of a boy sent to prison for non-payment of one penny. The lad in question was found in Coldbath Fields prison, to which he had been sent for a month in default of paying a fine of forty shillings. He had been in the employ of a corn-chandler at Islington, and went into London with his master’s cart and horse. There was in the City Road a temporary bar, with a collector of tolls who was sometimes on the spot and sometimes not. The boy declared he saw no one, and accordingly passed through without paying the toll of a penny. For this he was summoned before a magistrate, and sentenced as already stated. The lad was proved to be of good character and the son of respectable parents. Mr. Buxton’s friends at once paid the forty shillings, and the boy was released.

The costs in heavier debts always doubled the sum; if the arrest was made in the country it trebled it. Neild gives a list of the various items charged upon a debt of £10, which included instructions to sue, affidavit of debt, drawing præcipe (£1 5s.), capias, fee to officer on arrest, affidavit of service, and many more, amounting in all to twenty-seven, and costing £11 15s. 8d., within ten days.[31]

Before dealing with the debtors in Newgate, I may refer incidentally to those in other London prisons, for Newgate was not the only place of durance for these unfortunate people. There were also the King’s Bench, the Fleet, and the Marshalsea prisons especially devoted to them, whilst Ludgate, the Giltspur Street, and Borough Compters also received them—the latter two being also a prison for felons and vagrants arrested within certain limits.

The King’s Bench was a national prison, in which were confined all debtors arrested for debt or for contempt of the court of the King’s Bench. The population generally amounted to from five hundred to seven hundred, the accommodation being calculated for two hundred. Every new-comer was entitled to a “chummage” ticket, but did not always get it, being often obliged to pay a high rent for a bed at the coffee-house or in some room which was vacated by its regular occupant. No fixed rates or rules governed the hiring out of rooms or parts of a room, and all sorts of imposition was practised. The best, or at least the most influential prisoners, got lodging in the State House, which contained “eight large handsome rooms.” Besides those actually resident within the walls, another two hundred more or less took advantage of “the rules,” and lived outside within a circumference of two miles and a half. In these cases security was given for the amount of the debt, and a heavy fee at the rate of £8 per £100, with £4 for every additional hundred. Besides these, a number had the privilege of a “run on the key,” which allowed a prisoner to go into the rules for the day. The foregoing rentals and payments for privileges, together with fees exacted on commitment and discharge, went to the marshal or keeper of the prison, whose net annual income thus entirely derived from the impecunious amounted to between three and four thousand pounds. The office of marshal had been hereditary, but in the 27th Geo. II. the right of presentation was bought by the Crown for £10,500. The marshal was supposed to be resident either within the prison or the rules. He seems to have felt no responsibility as to the welfare or comfort of those in charge, and out of whom he made all his money. The prison was always in “the most filthy state imaginable.”[32] The half or wholly starved prisoners fished for alms or food at the gratings. When they were sick no more notice was taken of them than of a dog. A man dying of liver complaint lay on the cold stones without a bed or food to eat. Dissolute habits prevailed on all sides; drunkenness was universal, gambling perpetual. The yards were taken up with rackets and five courts, and here and there were “bumble puppy grounds,” a game in which the players rolled iron balls into holes marked with numbers. How to make most profit out of the wretched denizens of the gaol was the marshal’s only care. He got a rent for the coffee-house and the bake-house; the keeper of the large tap-room called the Brace, because it was once kept by two brothers named Partridge, also paid him toll. The sale of spirits was forbidden, but gin could always be had at the whistling shops, where it was known as Moonshine, Sky Blue, Mexico, and was consumed at the rate of a hogshead per week.

The Fleet, which stood in Farringdon Street, was a prison for debtors and persons committed for contempt by the courts of Chancery, Exchequer, and Common Pleas. It was so used for the date of the abolition of the Star Chamber in the 16th Charles I. The shameful malpractices of Bambridge, the warden of the Fleet at the commencement of the eighteenth century, are too well known to need more than a passing reference. A committee of the House of Commons investigated the charges against Bambridge, who was proved to have connived at the escape of some debtors, and to have been guilty of extortion to others. One Sir William Rich, Bart., he had loaded with heavy irons. In consequence of these disclosures, both Bambridge and Huggin, his predecessor in the office, were committed to Newgate, and many reforms instituted. But the condition of the prison and its inmates remained unsatisfactory to the last. It contained generally from six to seven hundred inmates,[33] while another hundred more or less resided in the rules outside. The principle of “chummage” prevailed as in the King’s Bench, but a number of rooms, fifteen more or less, were reserved for poor debtors under the name of Bartholomew Fair. The rentals of rooms and fees went to the warden, whose income was £2372. The same evils of overcrowding, uncleanliness, want of medical attendance, absence or neglect of divine service, were present as in the King’s Bench, but in an exaggerated form. The Committee on Gaols[34] reported that “although the house of the warden looked into the court, and the turnkeys slept in the prison, yet scenes of riot, drunkenness, and disorder were most prevalent.” The state of morals was disgraceful. Any woman obtained admission if sober, and if she got drunk she was not turned out. There was no distinct place for the female debtors, who lived in the same galleries as the men. Disturbances were frequent, owing to the riotous conduct of intoxicated women. Twice a week there was a wine and beer club held at night, which lasted till two or three in the morning. In the yard behind the prison were places set apart for skittles, fives, and tennis, which strangers frequented as any other place of public amusement.

Matters were rather better at the Marshalsea. This very ancient prison, which stood in the High Street, Southwark, was used for debtors arrested for the lowest sums within twelve miles of the palace of Whitehall; also for prisoners committed by the Admiralty Court. At one time the Marshalsea was the receptacle of pirates, but none were committed to it after 1789. The court of the Marshalsea was instituted by Charles I. in the sixth year of his reign, to be held before the steward of the royal household, the knight marshal, and the steward of the court, with jurisdiction to hold pleas in all actions within the prescribed limits. The court was chiefly used for the recovery of small debts under £10, but its business was much reduced by the extension of the Courts of Conscience. The prison was a nest of abuses, like its neighbour the King’s Bench, and came under the strong animadversion of the Gaol Committee of 1729. As the business of the Marshalsea Court declined, the numbers in its prison diminished. The population, as reported by the committee in 1814, averaged about sixty, and the prison, although wives and children resided within the walls, was not overcrowded. Their conduct too was orderly on the whole. Drunkenness was not common, chiefly because liquor was not to be had freely, although the tapster paid a rent of two guineas a week for permission to sell it. The inmates, who euphemistically styled themselves “collegians,” were governed by rules which they themselves had framed, and under which subscriptions were levied and fines imposed for conduct disapproved of by the “college.” A court of the collegians was held every Monday to manage its affairs, at which all prisoners were required to attend. A committee of collegians was elected to act as the executive, also a secretary or accountant to receive monies and keep books, and a master of the ale-room, who kept this the scene of their revels clean, and saw that boiling water was provided for grog. Bad language, quarrelling, throwing water over one another was forbidden on pain of fine and being sent to Coventry; but the prevailing moral tone may be guessed from the penalty inflicted upon persons singing obscene songs before nine p.m. Yet the public opinion of the whole body seems to have checked dissipation. The poorer prisoners were not in abject want, as in other prisons, owing to many charitable gifts and bequests, which included annual donations from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Steward of the Household, the steward and officers of the Marshalsea Court, and others. Legacies had also been left to free a certain number of debtors, notably that of £100 per annum left by a Mr. Henry Allnutt, who was long a prisoner in the Marshalsea, and came into a fortune while there. His bequest, which was charged upon his manor at Goring, Oxon, and hence called the Oxford Charity, was applied only to the release of poor debtors whom £4 each could free. The supreme control of the Marshalsea was vested in the marshal of the royal household; but although he drew a salary of £500 a year, he did nothing beyond visiting the prison occasionally, and left the administration to the deputy marshal. The latter’s salary, with fees, the rent of the tap and of the chandler’s shop, amounted to about £600 a year.

The compters of Ludgate, Giltspur Street, and the Borough were discontinued as debtors’ prisons (as was Newgate also) on the opening of Whitecross prison for debtors in 1815. Ludgate to the last was the debtors’ prison for freemen of the city of London, clergymen, proctors, attorneys, and persons specially selected by the Corporation. At one time the Ludgate debtors, accompanied by the keeper, went outside and beyond the prison to call on their creditors, and try to arrange their debts, but this practice was discontinued. There were fifteen rooms of various sizes, and as the numbers imprisoned rarely exceeded five-and-twenty, the place was never overcrowded, while the funds of several bequests and charities were applied in adding to the material comfort of the prisoners. The Giltspur Street Compter received sheriffs’ debtors, also felons, vagrants, and night charges. It was generally crowded, as debtors who would have gone to the Poultry Compter were sent to Giltspur Street when the former was condemned as unfit to receive prisoners.[35] The demands for fees were excessive in Giltspur Street. Those who could not pay were thrown into the wards with the night charges, and denied admission to the “charity wards,” which partook of all the benefits of bequests and donations to poor debtors. The Borough Compter was in a disgraceful state to the last. The men’s ward had an earth, or rather a mud, floor, and was so unfit to sleep on that it had not been used for many years, so that the men and women associated together indiscriminately. The rooms had no fireplaces, so it mattered little that no coals were allowed. There were no beds or bedding, no straw even. In one room Mr. Neild found a woman ill of a flux shut up with three men; the latter raised eighteenpence among them to pay for a truss of straw for the poor woman to lie on. Neild found the prisoners in the Borough Compter ragged, starving, and dirty.

I come now to the debtors in Newgate. The quarters they occupied were divided, as I have said,[36] into three principal divisions—the master’s side, the cabin side, and the common side. Payment of a fee of 3s. gained the debtor admission to the two first named; those who could pay nothing went, as a matter of course, to the common side; a further fee was, however, demanded from the new-comer before he was made free of either the master’s or the cabin side. This was the reprehensible claim for “garnish,” which had already been abolished in all well-conducted prisons, but which still was demanded in Newgate. Garnish on the cabin side was a guinea at entrance for coals, candles, brooms, &c., and a gallon of beer on discharge; on the master’s side it was thirteen and fourpence, and a gallon of beer on entrance, although Mr. Newman, in his evidence in 1814, said it was more, and gave the garnish for the common side at that sum, which is five shillings more than Mr. Neild says was extorted on the common side. Numerous tyrannies were practised on all who would not and could not pay the garnish. They were made to wash and swab the ward, or they were shut out from the ward fireplace, and forbidden to pass a chalked line drawn on the floor, and so were unable either to warm themselves or to cook their food. Besides these fees, legitimate and illegitimate, there were others which must be paid before release. The sheriff demanded 4s. 6d. for his liberate, the gaoler 6s. 10d. more, and the turnkey 2s.; and thus when the debtor’s debt had been actually paid, or when he had abandoned his property to the creditors, and, almost destitute, looked forward to his liberty, he was still delayed until he had paid a new debt arising “only out of a satisfaction of all his former debts.” The fees were not always extorted, it is true; nor was non-payment made a pretext for further imprisonment, thanks to the humanity of the gaoler, or the funds provided by various charities.

There was this much honest forbearance in Newgate in these days, that debtors who could afford the cabin and master’s side were not permitted to share in the prison charities. These were lumped together into a general fund, and a calculation made as to the amount that might be expended per week from the whole sum, so that the latter might last out the year. It generally ran to about six pounds per week. The money, which at one time had been distributed quarterly, and all went in drink, was after 1807, through the exertions of the keeper[37] of the gaol, spent in the purchase of necessaries. But this weekly pittance did not go far when the debtors’ side was crowded, as it often was; notably as when numbers filled Newgate in anticipation of Lord Redesdale’s bill for insolvent debtors, and there were as many as three hundred and fifty prisoners in at one time. The city also allowed the poor debtors fourteen ounces of bread daily, and their share of eight stone of meat, an allowance which never varied, issued once a week, and divided as far as it would go—a very precarious and uncertain ration. The bread was issued every alternate day; and while some prisoners often ate their whole allowance at once, others who arrived just after the time of distribution were often forty-eight hours without food. The latter might also be six days without meat. Share in the weekly allowance of meat might also be denied to debtors who had not paid “garnish,” as well as in the weekly grant from the charitable fund. Hence starvation stared many in the face,[38] unless friends from outside came to their assistance, or the keeper made them a special grant of 6d. per diem out of the common stock; or the sixpenny allowance was claimed for the creditors, which seldom happened, owing to the expense the process entailed. The poor debtors were not supplied with beds. Those who could pay the price might hire them from each other, or from persons who made a trade of it, or they might bring their beds with them into the prison. Failing any of these methods, seeing that straw was forbidden for fear of fire, they had to be satisfied with a couple of the rugs provided by the city, the supply of which was, however, limited, and there were not always enough to give bedding to all. The stock was diminished by theft; female visitors carried them out of the prisons, or the debtors destroyed them when the weather was warm, and they were not in great demand, in order to convert them into mop-heads or cleaning-rags. Sometimes rugs were urgently required and not forthcoming; a severe winter set in, the new stock had not been supplied by the contractors, and the poor debtors perished of cold. Again, there was no regular allowance of fuel. Coals were purchased out of the garnish money and the charitable fund; so were candles, salt, pepper, mops and brooms. But the latter could have been of little service. Dirt prevailed everywhere; indeed the place, with its oak floors caulked with pitch, and smoked ceilings, could not be made even to look clean while there was no obligation of personal cleanliness on individuals, who often came into the prison in filthy rags. Only now and again, in extreme cases, an unusually nasty companion was stripped, haled to the pump, and left under it in a state of nature until he was washed clean.

The squalor and uncleanness of the debtors’ side was intensified by constant overcrowding. Prisoners were committed to it quite without reference to its capacity. No remonstrance was attended to, no steps taken to reduce the number of committals, and the governor was obliged to utilize the chapel as a day and night room. Besides this, although the families of debtors were no longer permitted to live with them inside the gaol, hundreds of women and children came in every morning to spend the day there, and there was no limitation whatever to the numbers of visitors admitted to the debtors’ side. Friends arrived about nine a.m., and went out at nine p.m., when as many as two hundred visitors have been observed leaving the debtors’ yards at one time. The day passed in revelry and drunkenness. Although spirituous liquors were forbidden, wine and beer might be had in any quantity, the only limitation being that not more than one bottle of wine or one quart of beer could be issued at one time. No account was taken of the amount of liquors admitted in one day, and debtors might practically have as much as they liked, if they could only pay for it. No attempt was made to check drunkenness, beyond the penalty of shutting out friends from any ward in which a prisoner exceeded. Quarrelling among the debtors was not unfrequent. Blows were struck, and fights often ensued. For this and other acts of misconduct there was the discipline of the refractory ward, or “strong room” on the debtors’ side. Bad cases were removed to a cell on the felons’ side, and here they were locked in solitary confinement for three days at a time.

Order throughout the debtors’ side was preserved and discipline maintained by a system open to grave abuses, and which had the prescription of long usage, and which was never wholly rooted out for many years to come. This was the pernicious plan of governing by prisoners, or of setting a favoured few in authority over the many. The head of the debtors’ prison was a prisoner called the steward, who was chosen by the whole body from six whom the keeper nominated. This steward was practically supreme. All the allowances of food passed through his hands; he had the control of the poor-box for chance charities, he collected the garnish money, and distributed the weekly grant from the prison charitable fund. In the latter duties he was, however, supervised by three auditors, freely chosen by the prisoners among themselves. The auditors were paid a shilling each for their services each time the poor-box was opened. The steward was also remunerated for his trouble. He had a double allowance of bread, deducted, of course, from the already too limited portion of the rest, and no doubt made the meat also pay toll. Under the steward there were captains of wards, chosen in the same way, and performing analogous duties. These subordinate chiefs were also rewarded out of the scanty prison rations. The same system was extended to the criminal side, and cases were on record of the place of wardsman being sold for considerable sums. So valuable were they deemed, that as much as fifty guineas was offered to the keeper for the post.

Enough has been said, probably, to prove that there was room for improvement in the condition and treatment of debtors in the prisons of the city of London. This gradually was forced upon the consciousness of the Corporation, and about 1812 application was made to Parliament for funds to build a new debtors’ prison. Authority was given to raise money on the Orphans’ Fund to the extent of £90,000. A site was purchased between Red Lion and White Cross streets, and a new prison planned, which would accommodate the inmates of Newgate and of the three compters, Ludgate, Giltspur Street, and the Poultry, or about four hundred and seventy-six in all. The evils of association for these debtors were perpetuated, although the plan provided for the separation of the various contingents committed to it. There was no lack of air and light for the new gaol, and several exercising yards. The completion of this very necessary building was, however, much delayed for want of funds, and it was not ready to relieve Newgate till late in 1815. The reforms which were to be attempted in that prison, more particularly as regarded the classification of prisoners, and which were dependent on the space to be gained by the removal of the debtors, could not be carried out till then. It is to be feared that long after the opening of White Cross Street prison, Newgate continued to be a reproach to those responsible for its management.

I pass now to the criminal side of Newgate, which consisted of the six quarters or yards already enumerated and described.[39] The inmates of this part, as distinguished from the debtors, were comprised in four classes:—(1) those awaiting trial; (2) persons under sentence of imprisonment for a fixed period, or until they shall have paid certain fines; (3) transports awaiting removal to the colonies, and (4) capital convicts, condemned to death and awaiting execution. At one time the whole of these different categories were thrown together pell-mell, young and old, the untried with the convicted. An imperfect attempt at classification was, however, made in 1812, and a yard was as far as possible set apart for the untried, or class (1), with whom, under the imperious demand for accommodation, were also associated the misdemeanants, or class (2). This was the chapel yard, with its five wards, which were calculated to hold seventy prisoners, but often held many more. A further sub-classification was attempted by separating at night those charged with misdemeanours from those charged with felony, but all mingled freely during the day in the yard. The sleeping accommodation in the chapel-yard wards, and indeed throughout the prison, consisted of a barrack bed, which was a wooden flooring on a slightly inclined plane, with a beam running across the top to serve as a pillow. No beds were issued, only two rugs per prisoner. When each sleeper had the full lateral space allotted to him, it amounted to one foot and a half on the barrack bed; but when the ward was obliged to accommodate double the ordinary number, as was frequently the case, the sleepers covered the entire floor, with the exception of a passage in the middle. All the misdemeanants, whatever their offence, were lodged in this chapel ward. As many various and, according to our ideas, heinous crimes came under this head, in the then existing state of the law, the man guilty of a common assault found himself side by side with the fraudulent, or others who had attempted abominable crimes. In this heterogeneous society were also thrown the unfortunate journalists to whom I have already referred,[40] and on whom imprisonment in Newgate was frequently adjudged for so-called libels, or too out-spoken comments in print. It was particularly recommended by the Committee on Gaols in 1814 that some other and less mixed prison should be used for the confinement of persons convicted of libels. But this suggestion was ignored. Indeed the partial classification attempted seems to have been abandoned within a year or two. The Hon. H. G. Bennet, who visited Newgate in 1817, saw in one yard, in a total of seventy-two prisoners, thirty-five tried and thirty-seven untried. Of the former, three were transports for life, four for fourteen years, and three of them persons sentenced to fines or short imprisonment—one for little more than a month. Two of the untried were for murder, and several for house-breaking and highway robbery. Nor were the misdemeanants and bail prisoners any longer separated from those whose crimes were of a more serious character. Mr. Bennet refers to a gentleman confined for want of bail, who occupied a room with five others—two committed by the Bankruptcy Commissioner, one for perjury, and two transports. Persons convicted of publishing libels were still immured in the same rooms with transports and felons.

The middle yard, as far as its limits would permit, was appropriated to felons and transports. The wards here were generally very crowded. Each ward was calculated to hold twenty-four, allowing each individual one foot and a half; “a common-sized man,” says the keeper, Mr. Newman, “can turn in nineteen inches.”[41] These twenty-four could just sleep on the barrack bed; when the number was higher, and it often rose to forty, the surplus had to sleep on the floor. The crowding was in consequence of the delay in removing transports. These often remained in Newgate for six months, sometimes a year, in some cases longer; in one, for seven years—that of a man sentenced to death, for whom great interest had been made, but whom it was not thought right to pardon. Occasionally the transports made themselves so useful in the gaol that they were passed over. Mr. Newman admitted that he had petitioned that certain “trusty men” might be left in the gaol. Constantly associated with these convicted felons were numbers of juveniles, infants of tender years. There were frequently in the middle yard seven or eight children, the youngest barely nine, the oldest only twelve or thirteen, exposed to all the contaminating influences of the place. Mr. Bennet mentions also the case of young men of better stamp, clerks in city offices, and youths of good parentage, “in this dreadful situation,” who had been rescued from the hulks through the kindness and attention of the Secretary of State. “Yet they had been long enough,” he goes on to say, “in the prison associated with the lowest and vilest criminals, with convicts of all ages and characters, to render it next to impossible but that, with the obliteration of all sense of self-respect, the inevitable consequence of such a situation, their morals must have been destroyed; and though distress or the seduction of others might have led to the commission of this their first offence, yet the society they were driven to live in, the language they daily heard, and the lessons they were taught in this academy, must have had a tendency to turn them into the world hardened and accomplished in the ways of vice and crime.”

Mr. Buxton, in the work already quoted, instances another grievous case of the horrors of indiscriminate association in Newgate. It was that of a person “who practised in the law, and who was connected by marriage with some very respectable families. Having been committed to Clerkenwell, he was sent on to Newgate in a coach, handcuffed to a noted house-breaker, who was afterwards cast for death. The first night in Newgate, and for the subsequent fortnight, he slept in the same bed with a highwayman on one side, and a man charged with murder on the other. Spirits were freely introduced, and although he at first abstained, he found he must adopt the manners of his companions, or that his life would be in danger. They viewed him with some suspicion, as one of whom they knew nothing. He was in consequence put out of the protection of their internal law.” Their code was a subject of some curiosity. When any prisoner committed an offence against the community or against an individual, he was tried by a court in the gaol. A prisoner, generally the oldest and most dexterous thief, was appointed judge, and a towel tied in knots was hung on each side in imitation of a wig. The judge sat in proper form; he was punctiliously styled “my lord.” A jury having been selected and duly sworn, the culprit was then arraigned. Justice, however, was not administered with absolute integrity. A bribe to the judge was certain to secure acquittal, and the neglect of the formality was as certainly followed by condemnation. Various punishments were inflicted, the heaviest of which was standing in the pillory. This was carried out by putting the criminal’s head through the legs of a chair, and stretching out his arms and tying them to the legs. The culprit was then compelled to carry the chair about with him. But all punishments might readily be commuted into a fine to be spent in gin for judge and jury.

The prisoner mentioned above was continually persecuted by trials of this kind. The most trifling acts were magnified into offences. He was charged with moving something which should not be touched, with leaving a door open, or coughing maliciously to the disturbance of his companions. The evidence was invariably sufficient to convict, and the judge never hesitated to inflict the heaviest penalties. The unfortunate man was compelled at length to adopt the habits of his associates; “by insensible degrees he began to lose his repugnance to their society, caught their flash terms and sung their songs, was admitted to their revels, and acquired, in place of habits of perfect sobriety, a taste for spirits.” His wife visited him in Newgate, and wrote a pitiable account of the state in which she found her husband. He was an inmate of the same ward with others of the most dreadful sort, “whose language and manners, whose female associates of the most abandoned description, and the scenes consequent with such lost wretches, prevented me from going inside but seldom, and I used to communicate with him through the bars from the passage.” One day he was too ill to come down and meet her. She went up to the ward and found him lying down, “pale as death, very ill, and in a dreadfully dirty state, the wretches making game of him, and enjoying my distress; and I learned he had been up with the others the whole night. Though they could not force him to gamble, he was compelled to drink, and I was obliged afterwards to let him have five shillings to pay his share, otherwise he would have been stripped of his clothes.”

Felons who could pay the price were permitted, irrespective of their character or offences, to purchase the greater ease and comfort of the master’s side. The entrance fee was at least 13s. 6d. a head, with half-a-crown a week more for bed and bedding, the wards being furnished with barrack bedsteads, upon which each prisoner had the regulation allowance of sleeping room, or about a foot and a half laterally. These fees were in reality a substantial contribution towards the expenses of the gaol; without them the keeper declared that he could not pay the salaries of turnkeys and servants, nor keep the prison going at all. Besides the gaol fees, there was garnish of half-a-guinea, collected by the steward, and spent in providing coals, candles, plates, knives, and forks; while all the occupants of this part of the prison supported themselves; they had the ration of prison bread only, but they had no share in the prison meat or other charities, and they or their friends found them in food. All who could scrape together the cash seem to have gladly availed themselves of the privilege of entering the master’s side. It was the only way to escape the horrors, the distress, penury, and rags of the common yards. Idleness was not so universally the rule in this part of the gaol. Artizans and others were at liberty to work at their trades, provided they were not dangerous. Tailoring and shoemaking was permitted, but it was deemed unsafe to allow a carpenter or blacksmith to have his tools. All the money earned by prisoners was at their own disposal, and was spent almost habitually in drink, chambering, and wantonness.

The best accommodation the gaol could offer was reserved for the prisoners on the state side, from whom still higher fees were exacted, with the same discreditable idea of swelling the revenues of the prison. To constitute this the aristocratic quarter, unwarrantable demands were made upon the space properly allotted to the female felons,[42] and no lodger was rejected, whatever his status, who offered himself and could bring grist to the mill. The luxury of the state side was for a long time open to all who could pay—the convicted felon, the transport awaiting removal, the lunatic whose case was still undecided,[43] the misdemeanant tried or untried, the debtor who wished to avoid the discomfort of the crowded debtors’ side, the outspoken newspaper editor, or the daring reporter of parliamentary debates. The better class of inmate complained bitterly of this enforced companionship with the vile, association at one time forbidden by custom, but which greed and rapacity long made the rule. The fee for admission to the state side, as fixed by the table of fees, was three guineas, but Mr. Newman declared that he never took more than two. Ten and sixpence a week more was charged as rent for a single bed; where two or more slept in a bed the rent was seven shillings a week each. Prisoners who could afford it sometimes paid for four beds, at the rate of twenty-eight shillings, and so secured the luxury of a private room. A Mr. Lundy, charged with forgery, was thus accommodated on the state side for upwards of five years. But the keeper protested that no single prisoner could thus monopolize space if the state side was crowded. The keeper went still further in his efforts to make money. He continued the ancient practice of letting out a portion of his own house, and by a poetical fiction treated it as an annexe of the state side. Mr. Davison, sent to Newgate for embezzlement, and whose case is given in the preceding chapter, was accommodated with a room in Mr. Newman’s house at the extravagant rental of thirty guineas per week; Mr. Cobbett was also a lodger of Mr. Newman’s; and so were any members of the aristocracy, if they happened to be in funds—among whom was the Marquis of Sligo in 1811.

The female felons’ wards I shall describe at length in the next chapter, which will deal with Mrs. Fry’s philanthropic exertions at this period in this particular part of the prison. These wards were always full to overflowing; sometimes double the number the rooms could accommodate were crowded into them. There was a master’s side for females who could pay the usual fees, but they associated with the rest in the one narrow yard common to all. The tried and the untried, young and old, were herded together; sometimes girls of thirteen, twelve, even ten or nine years of age, were exposed to “all the contagion and profligacy which prevailed in this part of the prison.” There was no separation even for the women under sentence of death, who lived in a common and perpetually crowded ward. Only when the order of execution came down were those about to suffer placed apart in one of the rooms in the arcade of the middle ward.

I have kept till the last that part of the prison which was usually the last resting-place of so many. The old press yard has been fully described in a previous chapter.[44] The name still survived in the new press yard, which was the receptacle of the male condemned prisoners. It was generally crowded, like the rest of the prison. Except in murder cases, where the execution was generally very promptly performed, strange and inconceivable delay occurred in carrying out the extreme sentence. Hence there was a terrible accumulation of prisoners in the condemned cells. Once, during the long illness of George III., as many as one hundred were there waiting the “Report,” as it was called. At another time there were fifty, one of whom had been under sentence a couple of years. Mr. Bennet speaks of thirty-eight capital convicts he found in the press yard in February 1817, five of whom had been condemned the previous July, four in September, and twenty-nine in October. This procrastination bred certain callousness. Few realizing that the dreadful fate would overtake them, dismissed the prospect of death, and until the day was actually fixed, spent the time in roystering, swearing, gambling, or playing at ball. Visitors were permitted access to them without stint; unlimited drink was not denied them provided it was obtained in regulated quantities at one time. These capital convicts, says Mr. Bennet, “lessened the ennui and despair of their situation by unbecoming merriment, or sought relief in the constant application of intoxicating stimulants. I saw Cashman[45] a few hours before his execution, smoking and drinking with the utmost unconcern and indifference.” Those who were thus reckless reacted upon the penitent who knew their days were numbered, and their gibes and jollity counteracted the ordinary’s counsels or the independent preacher’s earnest prayers. For while Roman Catholics and Dissenters were encouraged to see ministers of their own persuasion, a number of amateurs were ever ready to give their gratuitous ministrations to the condemned.

The prisoners in the press yard had free access during the day to the yard and large day room; at night they were placed in the fifteen cells, two, three, or more together, according to the total number to be accommodated. They were never left quite alone for fear of suicide, and for the same reason they were searched for weapons or poisons. But they nevertheless frequently managed to secrete the means of making away with themselves, and accomplished their purpose. Convicted murderers were kept continuously in the cells on bread and water, in couples, from the time of sentence to that of execution, which was about three or four days generally, from Friday to Monday, so as to include one Sunday, on which day there was a special service for the condemned in the prison chapel. This latter was an ordeal which all dreaded, and many avoided by denying their faith. The condemned occupied an open pew in the centre of the chapel, hung with black; in front of them, upon a table, was a black coffin in full view. The chapel was filled with a curious but callous congregation, who came to stare at the miserable people thus publicly exposed. Well might Mr. Bennet write that the condition of the condemned side was the most prominent of the manifold evils in the present system of Newgate, “so discreditable to the metropolis.”

Yet it must have been abundantly plain to the reader that the other evils existing were great and glaring. A brief summary of them will best prove this. The gaol was neither suitable nor sufficiently large. It was not even kept weather-tight. The roof of the female prison, says the grand jury in their presentment in 1813, let in the rain. Supplies of common necessaries, such as have now been part of the furniture of every British gaol for many years, were meagre or altogether absent. The rations of food were notoriously inadequate, and so carelessly distributed, that many were left to starve. So unjust and unequal was the system, that the allowance to convicted criminals was better than that of the innocent debtor, and the general insufficiency was such that it multiplied beyond all reason the number of visitors, many of whom came merely as the purveyors of food to their friends.

The prison allowances were eked out by the broken victuals generously given by several eating-house keepers in the city, such as Messrs. Birch of Cornhill and Messrs. Leach and Dollimore of Ludgate Hill. These were fetched away in a large tub on a truck by a turnkey. Amongst the heap was often the meat that had made turtle soup, which, when heated and stirred together in a saucepan, was said to be very good eating. The bedding was scanty; fuel and light had to be purchased out of prisoners’ private means; clothing was issued but rarely, even to prisoners almost in nakedness, and as a special charitable gift. Extortion was practised right and left. Garnish continued to be demanded long after it had disappeared in other and better-regulated prisons. The fees on reception and discharge must be deemed exorbitant, when it is remembered the impoverished class who usually crowded the gaol; and they were exacted to relieve a rich corporation from paying for the maintenance of their own prison. This imposition of fees left prisoners destitute on their discharge, without funds to support them in their first struggle to recommence life, with ruined character, bad habits, and often bad health contracted in the gaol. A further and a more iniquitous method of extorting money was still practised, that of loading newly-arrived prisoners until they paid certain fees. Ironing was still the rule, not only for the convicted, but for those charged with felonies; only the misdemeanants escaped. At the commencement of every sessions, such of the untried as had purchased “easement” of irons were called up and re-fettered, preparatory to their appearance in the Old Bailey. Irons were seldom removed from the convicted until discharge; sometimes the wearer was declared medically unfit, or he obtained release by long good conduct, or the faithful discharge of some petty office, such as gatesman or captain of a ward. The irons weighed from three to four pounds, but heavier irons, seven or eight pounds’ weight, were imposed in case of misconduct; and when there had been an attempt at escape, the culprit was chained down to the floor by running a chain through his irons which prevented him from climbing to the window of his cell. Among other excuses offered for thus manacling all almost without exception, was that it was the best and safest method of distinguishing a prisoner from a stranger and temporary visitor. Clothes or prison uniform would not have served the purpose, for a disguise can be rapidly and secretly put on, whereas irons cannot well be exchanged without loss of time and attracting much attention.[46]

The unchecked admission of crowds of visitors to the felons’ as well as the debtors’ side was another unmixed evil. By this means spirits, otherwise unattainable and strictly prohibited, were smuggled into the gaol. Searches[47] were made certainly, but they were too often superficial, or they might be evaded by a trifling bribe. Hence the frequent cases of drunkenness, of which no notice was taken, unless people grew riotous in their cups, and attracted attention by their disorderly behaviour. Another frightful consequence of this indiscriminate admission was the influx of numbers of abandoned women, only a few of whom had the commendable prudery to pass themselves off as the wives of prisoners. Any reputed, and indeed any real, wife might spend the night in Newgate if she would pay the shilling fee, commonly known as the “bad money,” a base payment which might have done something towards increasing the prison receipts, had it not been appropriated by the turnkey who winked at this evasion of the rules. Among the daily visitors were members of the criminal classes still at large, the thieves and burglars who carried on the active business of their profession, from which their confederates were temporarily debarred. One notorious character, while a prisoner awaiting transfer to the hulks, kept open house, so to speak, and entertained daily within the walls a select party of the most noted thieves in London. This delectable society enticed into their set a clerk who had been imprisoned for fraud, and offered him half the booty if he would give full information as to the transactions and correspondence of his late employers. Owing to the facility of intercourse between inside and outside, many crimes were doubtless hatched in Newgate. Some of the worst and most extensive burglaries were planned there. Forged notes had been fabricated, false money coined, and both passed out in quantities to be circulated through the country. “I believe,” says Mr. Bennet in the letter already largely quoted, “that there is no place in the metropolis where more crimes are projected or where stolen property is more secreted than in Newgate.”

These malpractices were fostered by the absence of all supervision and the generally unbroken idleness. Although attempted partially at Bridewell, and more systematically at the new Millbank penitentiary, but just open (1816), the regular employment of prisoners had never yet been accepted as a principle in the metropolitan prisons. Insuperable difficulties were still supposed to stand in the way of any general employment of prisoners at their trades. There was fear as to the unrestricted use of tools, limits of space, the interference of the ill-disposed, who would neither work nor let others do so, and the danger of losing material, raw or manufactured. Many years were to elapse before these objections should be fairly met and universally overcome. It was not strange, therefore, that the inmates of Newgate should turn their unoccupied brains and idle hands to all manner of mischief; that when they were not carousing, plotting, or scheming, they should gamble with dice or cards, and play at bumble puppy or some other disreputable game of chance.

The report of the Committee of the House of Commons painted so black a picture of Newgate as then conducted, that the Corporation were roused in very shame to undertake some kind of reform. The above-mentioned report was ordered to be printed upon the 9th May. Upon the 29th July the same year, the court of aldermen appointed a committee of its own body, assisted by the town clerk, Mr. Dance, city surveyor, son to the architect of Newgate, and Mr. Addison, keeper of Newgate, to make a visitation of the gaols supposed to be the best managed, including those of Petworth and Gloucester.[48] This committee was to compare allowances, examine rules, and certify as to the condition of prisoners; also to make such proposals as might appear salutary, and calculated to improve Newgate and the rest of the city gaols.

This committee made its report in September the following year, and an excellent report it is, so far as its recommendations are concerned. The committee seems to have fully realized, even at this early date (1815), many of the indispensable conditions of a model prison according to modern ideas. It admitted the paramount necessity for giving every prisoner a sleeping cell to himself, an amount of enlightenment which is hardly general among European nations at this the latter end of the nineteenth century,[49] several of which still fall far short of our English ideal, that all prisoners should always be in separate cells by night, and those of short sentences by day. It recommended day cells or rooms for regular labour, which should be compulsory upon all transports and prisoners sentenced to hard labour, the work being constant and suitable, with certain hours of relaxation and for food and exercise. The personal cleanliness of all prisoners was to be insisted upon; they should be made to wash at least once a day, with the penalty of forfeiting the day’s allowance of food, an increase of which the committee had recommended. The provision of more baths was also suggested, and the daily sweeping out of the prison. The clothes of prisoners arriving dirty, or in rags, should be fumigated before worn in the gaol, but as yet no suggestion was made to provide prison uniform. A laundry should be established, and a matron appointed on the female side, where all the prisoners’ washing could be performed. Proper hours for locking and unlocking prisoners should be insisted upon; a bell should give notice thereof, and of meal-hours, working-hours, or of escapes.

The committee took upon itself to lay down stringent rules for the discipline of the prison. The gaoler should be required to visit every part and see every prisoner daily; the chaplain should perform service, visit the sick, instruct the prisoners, “give spiritual advice and administer religious consolation” to all who might need them;[50] the surgeon should see all prisoners, whether ill or well, once a week, and take general charge of the infirmaries. All three, governor, chaplain, and surgeon, should keep journals, which should be inspected periodically by the visiting magistrates. It should be peremptorily forbidden to the keeper or any officer to make a pecuniary profit out of the supplies of food, fuel, or other necessaries. No prisoner should be allowed to obtain superior accommodation on the payment of any fees. Fees indeed should be generally abolished, garnish also. No prisoners should in future be ironed, except in cases of misconduct, provided only that their security was not jeopardized, and dependent upon the enforcement of another new rule, which recommended restrictions upon the number of visitors admitted. No wine or beer should be in future admitted into or sold in the gaol, except for the use of the debtors, or as medical comforts for the infirmary. Drunkenness, if it ever occurred, should be visited with severe punishment; gaming of all sorts should be peremptorily forbidden under heavy pains and penalties. The feelings of the condemned prisoners should no longer be outraged by their exposure in the chapel, and the chapel should be rearranged, so that the various classes might be seated separately, and so as not to see each other.

It will hardly be denied that these proposals went to the root of the matter. Had they been accepted in their entirety, little fault could in future have been found with the managers of Newgate. In common justice to them, it must be admitted that immediate effect was given to all that could be easily carried out. The state side ceased to exist, and the female prisoners thus regained the space of which their quadrangle had been robbed. The privileges of the master’s side also disappeared; fees were nominally abolished, and garnish was scotched, although not yet killed outright. A certain number of bedsteads were provided, and there was a slight increase in the ration of bread. But here the recommendations touched at once upon the delicate subject of expense, and it is clear that the committee hesitated on this score. It made this too the excuse for begging the most important issue of the whole question. The committee did not deny the superior advantages offered by such prisons as Gloucester and Petworth, but it at once deprecated the idea that the city could follow the laudable example thus set in the provinces. “Were a metropolitan prison erected on the same lines, with all the space not only for air and exercise, but for day rooms and sleeping cells,” it would cover some thirty acres, and cost a great deal more than the city, with the example of Whitecross Street prison before it, could possibly afford. The committee does not seem to have yet understood that Newgate could be only and properly replaced by a new gaol built on the outskirts, as Holloway eventually was,[51] and permitted itself to be altogether countered and checked in its efforts towards reform by the prohibitory costliness of the land about Newgate. With the seeming impossibility of extending the limits of the prison as it then stood, all chances of classification and separation vanished, and the greatest evils remained untouched. All the committee could do in this respect was to throw the responsibility on others. It pointed out that the Government was to blame for the overcrowding, and might diminish it if it chose. It was very desirable that there should be a more speedy removal of transports from Newgate to the ships. Again, there was the new Millbank penitentiary now ready for occupation. Why not relieve Newgate by drawing more largely upon the superior accommodation which Millbank offered?

CHAPTER III.
PHILANTHROPY IN NEWGATE.

Absence of religious and moral instruction in Newgate a hundred years ago—Chaplains not always zealous—Unprofessional amateur enthusiasts minister to the prisoners—Christian Knowledge Society—Silas Told, his life and work—Wesley leads him to prison visitation—Goes to Newgate regularly—Chaplain opposes his visits—Attends the condemned to the gallows—Attends Mary Edmondson—The gentlemen Highwaymen—Mrs. Brownrigg—Alexander Cruden of the ‘Concordance’ also visits Newgate—More precise account of a neglectful Chaplain—Dr. Forde—His hatred of amateur preachers—In his element in the chair of a ‘free-and-easy’—Private philanthropy active—Various societies formed—Prison schools—The female side the most disgraceful part of the prison—Mrs. Fry’s first visit—Her second visit—Awful description of interior of gaol—Ill-treatment of female prisoners—Their irons—Where Mrs. Fry commenced—The School—The Matron—Work obtained—Rules framed—Rapid improvement of Newgate—Female prison reformed—Publicity follows—Newgate becomes a show.

AMONG the many drawbacks from which the inmates of Newgate suffered through the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth century, was the absence of proper religious and moral instruction. The value of the ministrations of the ordinary, who was the official ghostly adviser, entirely depended upon his personal qualities. Now and again he was an earnest and devoted man, to whom the prisoners might fully open their hearts. More often he was careless and indifferent, satisfied to earn his salary by the slightest and most perfunctory discharge of his sacred duties. There were ordinaries whose fame rested rather upon their powers of digestion than in polemics or pulpit oratory. The Newgate chaplain had to say grace at city banquets, and was sometimes called upon to eat three consecutive dinners without rising from the table. One in particular was noted for his skill in compounding a salad, another for his jovial companionship. But the ordinary took life easy, and beyond conducting the services, did little work. Only when executions were imminent was he especially busy. It behoved then to collect matter for his account of the previous life and the misdeeds of the condemned, with their demeanour at Tyburn, and this, according to contemporary records, led him to get all the information he could from the malefactors who passed through his hands. In the history of the press yard there is an account of the proceedings of the chaplain, Mr. Smith, which may be somewhat over-coloured, but which has the appearance of truth. It was the ordinary’s custom to give interviews in his private closet to those condemned to death, and cross-examine them closely. One day a young fellow was brought before him, to whom he said at once, “Well, boy, now is the time to unbosom thyself to me. Thou hast been a great sabbath-breaker in thy time I warrant thee? The neglect of going to church regularly has brought thee under these unhappy circumstances.” “Not I, good sir,” was the reply; “I never neglected going to some church, if I was in health, morning and evening every Lord’s day.” The lad told truth, for his business took him to such places of resort for the better carrying on his trade, which was that of a pickpocket. Mr. Smith was not to be done out of his confession. “No sabbath-breaker? then thou hast been an abominable drunkard?” This the criminal denied, declaring that he had always had a mortal aversion to strong drinks. The chaplain continued to press the criminal, but could find that he had been guilty of nothing more than thieving, and as this was a topic he could not enlarge upon in his pamphlet, he dismissed the lad, to be entered in his account as an obstinate, case-hardened rogue.

But while the official lacked zeal or religious fervour, there were not wanting others more earnest and enthusiastic to add their unprofessional but devoted efforts to the half-hearted ministrations of the ordinary of Newgate. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, when the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge was first formed, Dr. Bray and other members visited Newgate, and made its inmates their especial care for a time. A prominent figure in the philanthropic annals of Newgate a little later is that of Silas Told, who devoted many years of his life to the spiritual needs of the prisoners. Told’s career is full of peculiar interest. He was a pious child; both father and mother were religious folk, and brought him up carefully. According to his own memoirs, when quite an infant he and his sister Dulcibella were wont to wander into the woods and fields to converse about “God and happiness.” Told passed through many trials and vicissitudes in his early years. At thirteen he went to sea as an apprentice, and suffered much ill-usage. He made many voyages to the West Indies and to the Guinea coast, being a horrified and unwilling witness of some of the worst phases of the slave trade. He fell into the hands of piratical Spaniards, was cast away on a reef, saved almost by a miracle, last of all was pressed on board a man-of-war. Here, on board H.M.S. ‘Phœnix,’ his religious tendencies were strengthened by a pious captain, and presently he married and left the sea for ever. After this he became a schoolmaster in Essex, then a clerk and book-keeper in London. Here he came under the influence of John Wesley, and although predisposed against the Methodists, he was profoundly impressed by their leader’s preaching. While listening to a sermon by John Wesley on the suddenness of conversion, Told heard another voice say to him, “This is the truth,” and from that time forth he became a zealous Methodist.

It was Wesley who led him to prison visitation. He was at that time schoolmaster of the Foundry school, and his call to his long and devoted labours in Newgate were brought about in this wise. “In the year 1744,” to quote his own words, “I attended the children one morning at the five o’clock preaching, when Mr. Wesley took his text out of the twenty-fifth chapter of St. Matthew. When he read ‘I was sick and in prison, and ye visited me not,’ I was sensible of my negligence in never visiting the prisoners during the course of my life, and was filled with horror of mind beyond expression. This threw me well-nigh into a state of despondency, as I was totally unacquainted with the measures requisite to be pursued for that purpose. However, the gracious God, two or three days after, sent a messenger to me in the school, who informed me of the malefactors that were under sentence of death, and would be glad of any of our friends who could go and pray with them. The messenger, whose name was Sarah Peters, gave me to understand that they were all much awakened, and that one of them, John Lancaster, was converted, and full of the grace of God. In consequence of this reviving information, I committed my school without an hour’s delay to my trusty usher, and went with Sarah Peters to Newgate, where we had admittance to the cell wherein they were confined.”

Silas Told found Lancaster in a state of religious exaltation, thanking God that he had been sent to Newgate, and praying while they knocked his irons off, till even the attendant sheriff shed tears.

Silas accompanied the condemned men to Tyburn, and saw the gallows for the first time. He tells us that he went not without much shame and fear, because he clearly perceived the greater part of the spectators considered him as one of the sufferers. Lancaster, on arriving at the fatal tree, lifted up his eyes thereto, and said, “Blessed be God,” then prayed extemporary in a very excellent manner, and the others behaved with great discretion. Lancaster was friendless, and no one came forward to give the body interment; so the “surgeon’s mob” secured it, and carried it over to Paddington for dissection. Scarcely had it disappeared before a party of sailors came on the scene and demanded what had become of it. They followed the “surgeon’s mob,” recovered the body, and carried it in state through Islington and Hounsditch till they were tired. Then they dropped it upon the first doorstep. The story ends most dramatically, and Told declares that an old woman, disturbed by the uproar, came down and recognized in John Lancaster’s corpse the body of her own son.

After this first visit Told went regularly to Newgate. He describes the place, twenty-one years later, but still remembered vividly, as “such an emblem of the infernal pit as he never saw before.” However, he struggled bravely on, having a constant pressure upon his mind “to stand up for God in the midst of them,” and praying much “for wisdom and fortitude.” He preached as often as he was permitted to both felons and debtors. But for the first few years, when attending the malefactors, he met with so many repulses from the keeper and ordinary, as well as from the prisoners themselves, that he was often greatly discouraged. “But notwithstanding I more vehemently pressed through all,” becoming the more resolute and “taking no denial.” His most bitter opponent, as was not unnatural, was the ordinary, Mr. Taylor, who would constantly station himself on Sunday mornings a few doors from Newgate, and wait there patiently for a couple of hours or more to obstruct his entrance, at the same time forbidding the turnkeys to give him admittance. Told’s persistence generally got him through, so that most Sunday mornings he had an opportunity of preaching on the debtors’ side to a congregation of forty or more. His influence among the debtors was so great that they readily formed themselves, at his request, into a society or organization, bound by rules and regulations to strict religious observances. In this he was ably seconded by the “circumspection” of two or three prisoners who highly approved of his proposals, and exercised a close watch on the others, whom they would not “suffer to live in any outward sin.” For a considerable time the debtors paid regular attention to his preachings and the meetings of the society. After some time, however, the ordinary “raised a great tumult,” and managed ever after to shut Silas Told out from that side of the prison.

Told was not to be repressed entirely. In spite of all opposition, he still visited the felons, among whom there was a blessed work, especially among the condemned malefactors. He frequently preached during the space which intervened between sentence and execution; he constantly visited the sick in all parts of the prison, which he tells us he had “reason to believe was made a blessing to many of their souls.” His zeal was so great that he spared no pains to do all the good in his power, “embracing every opportunity, both in hearing and speaking, so that in process of time he preached in every prison, as well as in every workhouse, in and about London, and frequently travelled to almost every town within twelve miles of the metropolis.”

Silas Told has left us several of his personal experiences in attending upon the condemned. One of the most interesting cases is that of Mary Edmonson, who was convicted of murdering her aunt, on slight evidence, and whose guilt seems doubtful. When the time of her departure for Tyburn approached, Silas begged the sheriff to let him visit her as soon as possible. The sheriff asked him if he was a clergyman. “No, sir,” replied Told. “Are you a Dissenting minister?” “I answered him ‘No.’ ” “What are you then?” he went on. Silas replied that he was one who preached the gospel, and who wished to be the means of bringing the prisoner to confession. The sheriff then bade Told seize hold of his bridle-rein, and go by his side to the place of execution; although he cautioned him against the attempt, there being a riotous mob all along the streets, who were fiercely incensed against the poor condemned woman. “As we were proceeding on the road,”—let Silas tell his own story,—“the sheriff’s horse being close to the cart, I looked at her from under the horse’s bridle, and said, ‘My dear, look to Jesus.’ This salutary advice quickened her spirit, insomuch that although she did not look about her before, yet she turned herself round to me and joyfully answered, ‘Sir, I bless God I can look to Jesus for my comfort!’ This produced a pleasant smile on her countenance, which when the sons of violence perceived, they d—d her in a shameful manner; this was accompanied with a vengeful shout, ‘See how bold she is! See how the ---- laughs!’

“At length we came to the gallows, where many officers were stationed on horseback, besides numbers more on foot, furnished with constables’ staves. When the cart was backed under the gallows, a very corpulent man trod on my foot with such weight that I really thought he had taken it quite off; however, the sheriff soon cleared the way, and formed an arrangement of constables round the cart, then directed some of them to put me into it, in order that I might be of all the service to the malefactor which lay in my power; the sheriff himself standing behind the cart, the better to avail himself of my discourses with her. When she was tied up I began to address her nearly in the same words I did at the Peacock, pressing upon her an acknowledgment of the murder in the most solemn manner, but she declared her innocence in the presence of the sheriff. I then interrogated her. ‘Did you not commit the fact? Had you no concern therein? Were you not interested in the murder?’ She answered, ‘I am as clear of the whole affair as I was the day my mother brought me into the world.’ The sheriff on hearing these words shed plenty of tears, and said, ‘Good God! it is a second Coleman’s case!’ This circumstance likewise brought tears from many persons who heard her. When I was getting out of the cart the executioner put the handkerchief over her eyes, but she quickly moved it away, and, addressing herself to the multitude, begged them to pray that God would bring to light, when she was departed, the cause of the assassination, saying she had no doubt but the prayers of such persons would be heard; but repeated her innocence, solemnly declaring that she was as ignorant of the crime for which she was going to suffer as at the day of her birth; and added also, ‘I do not lay anything to the charge of my Maker, He has an undoubted right to take me out of this world as seemeth Him good; and although I am clear of this murder, yet I have sinned against Him in many various instances; but I bless God He hath forgiven me all my sins.’ Her kinsman then came up into the cart, and would fain have saluted her; but she mildly turned her face aside, strongly suspecting him to be the assassin.

“After her kinsman had gone out of the cart, the executioner a second time was putting the handkerchief over her face, when she again turned it aside, looking at the sheriff, and saying, ‘I think it cruel that none is suffered to pray by me.’ The sheriff then desired me, for God’s sake, to go a second time into the cart and render my prayers with her, which when finished, she began to pray extempore, and in a most excellent manner. When she had concluded her prayer, the executioner performed his part, and being turned off, her body dropped against my right shoulder, nor did she once struggle or move, but was as still as if she had hung for three hours.”

One other case I will extract from Silas Told, as it possesses some peculiar features. It is that of the amateur highwaymen who took to the road as a fitting frolic to end a day’s pleasure. Messrs. Morgan, Whalley, Brett, and Dupree, and two more, had dined freely at Chelmsford to celebrate an election. Having “glutted themselves with immoderate eating and drinking,” they went out on the highway to rob the first person they came across. This happened to be an Essex farmer, whom they stripped of all he had. The farmer got help, followed them into Chelmsford, where they were captured, sent to London, tried at the Old Bailey, and cast for death. They were all of good station—Brett the son of a clergyman in Dublin, Whalley a man of fortune, Dupree a gentleman, and Morgan an officer on board one of His Majesty’s ships of war. The last was engaged to Lady E—— Howard, a daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, who frequently visited Mr. Morgan in Newgate, Told being generally present at their interviews. Lady E—— went daily to the king, as did many other persons of great influence, to beg Mr. Morgan’s life; but His Majesty steadfastly rejected all petitions, stating that to do so would be to show partiality and a want of justice. But the devoted woman would not forego all hope, and, the morning before the execution, again appeared, and fell upon her knees at the king’s feet. “My lady,” said His Majesty, “there is no end to your importunity. I will spare his life upon condition that he is not acquainted therewith till he arrives at the place of execution.” This was accordingly carried. Brett, Whalley, and Dupree were actually tied up to the gallows. Morgan and two others followed in a second cart, when the sheriff rode up with the respite for Morgan.

“It is hard to express”—I again quote from Told—“the sudden alarm this made among the multitude; and when I turned round and saw one of the prisoners out of the cart, falling to the ground, he having fainted away at the sudden news, I was seized with terror, as I thought it was a rescue rather than a reprieve; but when I beheld Morgan put into a coach, and perceived that Lady E. H. was seated therein, my fear was at an end.

“As soon as Morgan was gone, a venerable gentleman, addressing himself to Dupree, begged him to look steadfastly to God, in whose presence he would shortly appear, and hoped the mercy his companion had received would have no bad effect upon him. Dupree, with all calmness and composure of mind, said, ‘Sir, I thank God that him they reprieved; it doesn’t by any means affect me.’ This gave the gentleman much satisfaction. When prayers were ended, I addressed each of them in the most solemn words I was capable of, which I hope was not in vain, as they all appeared entirely resigned to their fate. Brett earnestly craved the prayers of the multitude, and conjured them all to take warning by the untimely end of the three objects of their present attention. When they were turned off, and the mob nearly dispersed, I hastened back to Newgate, and there seriously conversed with Morgan, who, in consequence of the unexpected reprieve, was scarcely recovered.”

Silas Told continued his labours for many years. In 1767 he visited the notorious Mrs. Brownrigg, who was sentenced to be hanged for whipping her servant-maid to death, and whom he accompanied to the gallows. His death occurred in 1779. He lived to hear of Howard’s philanthropic exertions, and to see the introduction of some small measure of prison reform.

While Silas Told was thus engaged, another but a more erratic and eccentric philanthropist paid constant visits to Newgate. This was Alexander Cruden, the well-known, painstaking compiler of the ‘Concordance.’ For a long time he came daily to the gaol, to preach and instruct the prisoners in the gospel, rewarding the most diligent and attentive with money, till he found that the cash thus disbursed was often spent in drink the moment his back was turned. He did more good than this. Through Mr. Cruden’s solicitations a sentence of death upon a forger, Richard Potter, was commuted to one of transportation.

More precise details of the manner in which a Newgate ordinary interpreted his trust will be found in the evidence of the Rev. Brownlow Forde, LL.D., before the committee of 1814. Dr. Forde took life pretty easy. Had a prisoner sent for him, he told the committee, he might have gone, but as no one did send, except they were sick and thought themselves at death’s door, he confined his ministrations to the condemned, whom he visited twice a week in the day room of the press yard, or daily after the order for execution had arrived. He repudiated the notion that he had anything to do with the state of morals of the gaol. He felt no obligation to instruct youthful prisoners, or attend to the spiritual needs of the mere children so often thrown into Newgate. He never went to the infirmary unless sent for, and did not consider it his duty to visit the sick, and often knew nothing of a prisoner’s illness unless he was warned to attend the funeral. Among other reasons, he said that as the turnkeys were always busy, there was no one to attend him. While the chaplain was thus careless and apathetic, the services he conducted were little likely to be edifying or decorous. The most disgraceful scenes were common in the prison chapel. As the prisoners trooped into the galleries they shouted and halloed to their friends in the body of the church. Friends interchanged greetings, and “How d’ye do, Sall?” was answered by “Gallows well, Conkey Beau,” as the men recognized their female acquaintances, and were recognized in turn. The congregation might be pretty quiet after the chaplain had made his appearance, but more often it was disorderly from first to last. Any disposed to behave well were teased and laughed at by others. Unrestricted conversation went on, accompanied by such loud yawning, laughing, or coughing as almost impeded the service. No one in authority attempted to preserve order; the gatesmen, themselves prisoners, might expostulate, but the turnkeys who were present ignored any disturbance until reminded of their duty by the chaplain. The keeper never attended service. It was suggested to him that he might have a pew in the chapel with a private entrance to it from his own house, but nothing came of the proposal. It was not incumbent upon the prisoners, except those condemned to death, to attend chapel. Sometimes it was crowded, sometimes there was hardly a soul. In severe weather the place, in which there was no fire, was nearly empty. It was very lofty, very cold, and the prisoners, ill clad, did not care to shiver through the service. On “curiosity days,” those of the condemned sermon, more came, including debtors and visitors from outside, who thronged to see the demeanour of the wretched convicts under the painful circumstances already described. The service must have been conducted in a very slovenly and irreverent manner. Dr. Forde had no clerk, unless it chanced that some one in the condemned pew knew how to read. If not, there were sometimes no responses, and the “whole service was apt to be thrown into confusion.”[52]

A man who did so little himself could hardly be expected to view with much favour the undisciplined efforts of amateurs and outsiders. In his opinion the prisoners were only harassed and worried by the Dissenting ministers and others who “haunted the gaol.” Dr. Forde said they (the prisoners) did not like it. “It was not to be expected of them, with their habits, that they should be crammed with preaching and prayers.” They bore with the visitation, however, hoping to get from the preacher a loaf, or money, or bread and cheese; although the tables were occasionally turned on them, and the visitor, according to Dr. Forde, “would eat up the mutton chop and drink the beer of some well-to-do prisoner, then go to prayers, and depart.” These ministers he styled Methodist preachers, or “clergymen who affect to be methodistical preachers,” although one, according to him, was a “raggedly-dressed Thames lighterman,” who presumed to come in and expound the Scriptures. Dr. Forde makes no mention of Mr. Baker, who must have been a constant visitor in his day—a “white-headed old man” who was in frequent attendance upon the prisoners when Mrs. Fry began her labours, and who had for years “devoted much time and attention to unostentatious but invaluable visits in Newgate.”[53]

Dr. Forde seems to have been more in his element when taking the chair at a public-house ‘free-and-easy.’ In the ‘Book for a Rainy Day,’ already quoted, Mr. Smith gives us an account of a visit paid to Dr. Forde at a public-house in Hatton Garden. “Upon entering the club-room, we found the Doctor most pompously seated in a superb masonic chair, under a stately crimson canopy placed between the windows. The room was clouded with smoke, whiffed to the ceiling, which gave me a better idea of what I had heard of the ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’ than any place I had seen. There were present at least a hundred associates of every denomination.”

It is consoling to find that while officials slumbered, private philanthropy was active, and had been in some cases for years. Various societies and institutions had been set on foot to assist and often replace public justice in dealing with criminals. The Marine Society grew out of a subscription started by Justices Fielding and Welch, in 1756, for the purpose of clothing vagrant and friendless lads and sending them on board the fleet. The Philanthropic Society had been established in 1789 by certain benevolent persons, to supply a home for destitute boys and girls, and this admirable institution steadily grew and prospered. In 1794 it moved to larger premises, and in 1817 it had an income of £6000 a year, partly from subscriptions and legacies, partly from the profit on labour executed by its inmates.[54] In 1816 another body of well-meaning people, moved by the “alarming increase of juvenile delinquency in the metropolis,” formed a society to investigate its causes, inquire into the individual cases of boys actually under sentence, and afford such relief upon release as might appear deserved or likely to prevent a relapse into crime. The members of this society drew up a list containing seven hundred names of the friends and associates of boys in Newgate, all of whom they visited and sought to reform. They went further, and seriously discussed the propriety of establishing a special penitentiary for juveniles, a scheme which was never completely carried out. Another institution was the Refuge for the Destitute, which took in boys and girls on their discharge from prison, to teach them trades and give them a fair start in life. There were also the Magdalen Hospital and the Female Penitentiary, both of which did good work amongst depraved women.

Matters had improved somewhat in Newgate after the report of the committee in 1814, at least as regards the juveniles. A school had been established, over which the new ordinary, Mr. Cotton, who about this time succeeded Dr. Forde, presided, and in which he took a great interest. The chaplain was in communication with the Philanthropic and other institutions, and promising cases were removed to them. The boys were kept as far as possible apart from the men, but not at first from one another. Hence in the one long room they occupied and used for all purposes, eating, drinking, and sleeping, the elder and more vitiated boys were still able to exercise a baneful influence over the young and innocent. More space became available by the removal of the debtors to Whitecross Street, and then the boys were lodged according to categories in four different rooms. Mr. Cotton believed that the boys benefited morally from the instruction and care they received. This juvenile school was one bright spot in the prevailing darkness of Newgate at that particular time. Another and a still more remarkable amelioration in the condition of the prisoners was soon to attract universal attention. The great and good work accomplished by that noble woman Mrs. Fry on the female side of Newgate forms an epoch in prison history, and merits a particular description.

Bad as were the other various courts and so called “sides” in Newgate prison, the quadrangle appropriated to the females was far worse. Its foul and degraded condition had attracted the sympathies of Elizabeth Fry as early as 1813. The winter had been unusually severe, and Mrs. Fry had been induced by several Friends, particularly by William Forster, to visit Newgate and endeavour to alleviate the sufferings of the female prisoners. The space allotted to the women was at that time still curtailed by the portion given over to the state side.[55] They were limited to two wards and two cells, an area of about one hundred and ninety-two superficial yards in all, into which, at the time of Mrs. Fry’s visit, some three hundred women with their children were crowded, all classes together, felon and misdemeanant, tried and untried; the whole under the superintendence of an old man and his son. They slept on the floor, without so much as a mat for bedding. Many were very nearly naked, others were in rags; some desperate from want of food, some savage from drink, foul in language, still more recklessly depraved in their habits and behaviour. Everything was filthy beyond description. The smell of the place was quite disgusting. The keeper himself, Mr. Newman, was reluctant to go amongst them. He strove hard to dissuade Mrs. Fry from entering the wards, and failing in that, begged her at least to leave her watch in his office, assuring her that not even his presence would prevent its being torn from her. Mrs. Fry’s own account fully endorses all this. “All I tell thee is a faint picture of the reality; the filth, the closeness of the rooms, the ferocious manners and expressions of the women towards each other, and the abandoned wickedness which everything bespoke, are quite indescribable.” “One act, the account of which I received from another quarter, marks the degree of wretchedness to which they were reduced at that time. Two women were seen in the act of stripping a dead child for the purpose of clothing a living one.”[56]

Mrs. Fry must have gone again, for she wrote under date Feb. 16th, 1813—“Yesterday we were some hours in Newgate with the poor female felons, attending to their outward necessities; we had been twice previously. Before we went away dear Anna Buxton uttered a few words in supplication, and very unexpectedly to myself I did also. I heard weeping, and I thought they appeared much tendered. A very solemn quiet was observed; it was a striking scene, with the poor people around in their deplorable condition.” Mrs. Fry’s charity extended to the gift of clothing, for it is recorded in her memoirs that many members of her domestic circle had long a vivid recollection of the “green baize garments,” and their pleasure in assisting to prepare them.

Nearly four years elapsed before Elizabeth Fry resumed her visits. Newgate and what she had seen there had no doubt made a deep impression on her mind, but a long illness and family afflictions had prevented her from giving her philanthropic yearnings full play. She appears to have recommenced her visits about Christmas 1816, and on Feb. 16th, 1817, there is an entry in her journal to the effect that she had been “lately much occupied in forming a school in Newgate for the children of the poor prisoners, as well as the young criminals.” It was in this way that she struck at the hearts of these poor degraded wretches, who were only too eager to save their children from a life of crime. “The proposal was received,” Mrs. Fry says, “even by the most abandoned with tears of joy.” The three intervening years between 1813 and 1816 had brought no improvement in the female side. Its inmates—the very scum of the town—were filthy in their habits and disgusting in their persons. Mrs. Fry tells us she found the railings in the inner yard crowded with half-naked women, struggling together for the front situations with the most boisterous violence, and begging with the utmost vociferation. As double gratings had now been fixed at some distance apart to prevent close communication between prisoners and their visitors, the women had fastened wooden spoons to the end of long sticks, which they thrust across the space as they clamoured for alms. Mrs. Fry tells us that she felt as if she were going into a den of wild beasts, and that she well recollects quite shuddering when the door closed upon her, and she was locked in with such a herd of novel and desperate companions. The women, according to another eye-witness, sat about the yard on the stones, squalid in attire, ferocious in aspect. On this occasion a woman rushed out from the ward “yelling like a wild beast;” she made the circuit of the yard, brandishing her arms and tearing the caps or coverings from the heads of the other women. In spite of these terrible scenes, the ladies, several Friends having joined with Mrs. Fry, continued to give their attention to the school. “It was in our visits to the school,” she afterwards observed, when giving evidence before the Parliamentary committee of 1818, “where some of us attended every day, that we were witnesses of the dreadful proceedings that went forward on the female side of the prison; the begging, swearing, gaming, fighting, singing, dancing, dressing up in men’s clothes; the scenes are too bad to be described, so that we did not think it suitable to admit young persons with us.” This awful place had long been aptly entitled “Hell above ground.”

It was not strange that these miserable women should be absolutely unsexed. They were often subjected to brutal ill-treatment even before their arrival at Newgate. Many were brought to the prison almost without clothes. If coming from a distance, as in the case of transports lodged in Newgate until embarkation, they were almost invariably ironed, and often cruelly so. One lady saw the female prisoners from Lancaster Castle arrive, not merely handcuffed, but with heavy irons on their legs, which had caused swelling and inflammation. Others wore iron-hoops round their legs and arms, and were chained to each other. On the journey these poor souls could not get up or down from the coach without the whole of them being dragged together. A woman travelled from Cardigan with an iron hoop round her ankle, and fainted when it was removed. This woman’s story was, that during a long imprisonment she had worn an iron hoop round her waist, a second round her leg above the knee, a third at the ankle, and all these connected by chains. In the waist hoop were two bolts or fastenings, in which her hands were confined at night when she went to bed. Her bed was only of straw. These wretched and ill-used creatures might be forgiven if they at times broke out into rebellion. For a long time it was the practice with the female transports to riot previous to their departure from Newgate, breaking windows, furniture, or whatever came in their reach. Their outrageous conduct continued all the way from the gaol to the water-side, whither they were conveyed in open waggons, noisy and disorderly to the last, amidst the jeers and shouts of the assembled crowds.

Mrs. Fry, as I have said, endeavoured first to form a school. For this purpose an unoccupied room was set apart by the authorities. Although looking upon her experiment as hopeless, she received cordial support from the sheriffs, the governor, Mr. Newman, and the ordinary of Newgate, Mr. Cotton. The prisoners selected from among themselves a schoolmistress, Mary Connor by name, who had been committed for stealing a watch, and “who proved eminently qualified for her task.” The school, which was for children only and young persons under twenty-five, prospered, and by degrees the heroic band of ladies were encouraged to greater efforts. The conduct of the prisoners, their entreaties not to be excluded from the benefits of the school, inspired Mrs. Fry with confidence, and she resolved to attempt the introduction of order, industry, and religious feeling into Newgate. In April 1817 eleven members of the Society of Friends and another lady, the wife of a clergyman, formed themselves into “an association for the improvement of the female prisoners in Newgate.”[57] These devoted persons gave themselves up entirely to their self-imposed task. With no interval of relaxation, and with but few intermissions from the call of other and more imperious duties, they lived among the prisoners.[58] They arrived, in fact, at the hour of unlocking, and spent the whole day in the prison.

The more crying needs of the Newgate female prison at that date are indicated in a memorandum found among Mrs. Fry’s papers. It was greatly in need of room, she said. The women should be under the control and supervision of female, and not, as heretofore, of male officers. The number of visitors should be greatly curtailed, and all communications between prisoners and their friends should take place at stated times, under special rules. The prisoners should not be dependent on their friends for food or clothing, but should have a sufficiency of both from the authorities. Employment should be a part of their punishment, and be provided for them by Government. They might work together in company, but should be separated at night according to classes, under a monitor. Religious instruction should be more closely considered. It was to supply these needs that the committee devoted its efforts, the ladies boldly promising that if a matron could be found who would engage never to leave the prison day or night, they would find employment for the prisoners and the necessary funds until the city could be induced to meet the expense.

The matron was found, and the first prison matron appointed, an elderly respectable woman, who proved competent, and discharged her duties with fidelity. Mrs. Fry next sought the countenance and support of the governor and chaplain, both of whom met her at her husband’s house to listen to her views and proposals. Mr. Cotton, the ordinary, was not encouraging; he frankly told her that “this, like many other useful and benevolent designs for the improvement of Newgate, would inevitably fail.” Mr. Newman, however, bade her not despair; “but he has since confessed that when he came to reflect on the subject, and especially upon the character of the prisoners, he could not see even the possibility of success. Both, however, promised their warmest co-operation.” Mrs. Fry next saw one of the sheriffs, asking him to obtain a salary for the matron, and a room in the prison for the Ladies’ Committee. This sheriff, Mr. Bridges, was willing to help her if his colleagues and the Corporation agreed, “but told her that his concurrence or that of the city would avail her but little—the concurrence of the women themselves was indispensable; and that it was in vain to expect such untamed and turbulent spirits would submit to the regulations of a woman armed with no legal authority, and unable to inflict any punishment.” Nevertheless, the two sheriffs met Mrs. Fry at Newgate one Sunday afternoon. The women, seventy in number, were assembled, and asked whether they were prepared to submit to the new rules. All “fully and unanimously” agreed to abide by them, to the surprise of the sheriffs, who doubted their submitting to such restraints. Upon this the sheriffs addressed the prisoners, telling them that the scheme had official support; then turning to Mrs. Fry, one of the two magistrates said, “Well, ladies, you see your materials.”

The next business was to obtain work. It had occurred to Mrs. Fry that the manufacture of clothing for Botany Bay would be a suitable sort of employment, and she accordingly called upon the city firm, Messrs. Richard Dixon and Co., of Fenchurch Street, who had hitherto supplied these articles. She told them plainly that she was seeking to deprive them of a part of their trade, whereupon they magnanimously altogether relinquished it, feeling loth “to obstruct her laudable designs.” The work obtained, the work-room was next prepared. The sheriffs sent in carpenters, and the old prison laundry was speedily cleaned, whitewashed, and got ready; after which Mrs. Fry assembled all the convicted prisoners, told them her views and hopes, read them her proposed rules, which, as she did not come among them with “any absolute or authoritative pretensions,” should be put to the vote. The women present voluntarily subscribed to all, although they were stringent, and aimed at the reform of evil and probably long-cherished habits. These rules need not be inserted here at length. It will suffice to say that they laid down the principle of constant employment at knitting, needlework, or so forth; that begging, swearing, gambling, quarrelling, and immoral conversation were forbidden; that the women should submit themselves to their monitors, elected by themselves, to the yard-keeper, similarly elected, and to the matron; that personal cleanliness, a quiet, orderly demeanour, and silence at the work-tables should be incumbent on all.

These rules were not only adopted readily, but strictly observed. In one month a complete transformation had taken place in the women. At first Mrs. Fry had wished to keep this gratifying result a secret, but it was thought expedient to report progress to the Corporation, so that the new system might be approved and established by the authority of the city. On a day fixed the Lord Mayor, accompanied by the sheriffs and several aldermen, attended at Newgate, and saw with their own eyes the remarkable change effected in so short a time. The daily routine went on before them exactly as usual. The prisoners assembled; one of the ladies read a chapter in the Bible, then the women proceeded quietly to their work. “Their attention during the time of reading, their orderly and sober deportment, their decent dress, the absence of anything like tumult, noise, or contention, the obedience and respect showed by them, and the cheerfulness exhibited in their countenance and manners, conspired to excite the astonishment and admiration of their visitors. Many of these knew Newgate, had visited it a few months before, and had not forgotten the painful impressions made by a scene exhibiting perhaps the very utmost limits of misery and guilt.”[59] The city magistrates at once accepted the results achieved. Mrs. Fry’s rules were adopted into the prison system, power was conferred on the ladies to punish the refractory, and the salary of the matron was incorporated with the regular expenses of the prison.

The evidence of a gentleman who visited Newgate within a fortnight of the adoption of the new rules may fitly be added here. He went one day to call on Mrs. Fry at the prison, and was conducted to the women’s side. “On my approach,” he says, “no loud or dissonant sounds or angry voices indicated that I was about to enter a place which I was credibly assured had long had for one of its titles that of ‘Hell above ground.’ The court-yard into which I was admitted, instead of being peopled with beings scarcely human, blaspheming, fighting, tearing each other’s hair, or gaming with a filthy pack of cards for the very clothes they wore, which often did not suffice even for decency, presented a scene where stillness and propriety reigned. I was conducted by a

decently-dressed person, the newly-appointed yards-woman, to the door of a ward where at the head of a long table sat a lady belonging to the Society of Friends. She was reading aloud to about sixteen women prisoners, who were engaged in needlework around it. Each wore a clean-looking blue apron and bib, with a ticket having a number on it suspended from her neck by a red tape. They all rose on my entrance, curtsied respectfully, and then at a signal given resumed their seats and employments. Instead of a scowl, leer, or ill-suppressed laugh, I observed upon their countenances an air of self-respect and gravity, a sort of consciousness of their improved character, and the altered position in which they were placed. I afterwards visited the other wards, which were the counterparts of the first.”

The efforts of the ladies, which had been at first concentrated upon the convicted, were soon directed also upon the untried. These still continued in a deplorable state, quarrelling and disorderly, bolder and more reckless because they were in doubt as to their future fate. Unhappily the same measure of success did not wait upon the attempt on this side. Many of these women counted upon an early release, and would not take heartily to work, although when they did they were “really and essentially improved.” Nor could it be expected that the new régime could be established without occasional insubordination and some backsliding. The rules were sometimes broken. Spirits had been introduced more than once; six or seven cases of drunkenness had occurred. But the women were careful not to break out before the ladies; if they swore, it was out of hearing, and although they still played cards, it was when the ladies’ backs were turned. Mrs. Fry told the Parliamentary committee how she expostulated with the women when she found they still gambled, and how she impressed upon them, “if it were true that there were cards in the prison,” that she should consider it a proof of their regard if they would have the candour and kindness to bring her their packs. By and by a gentle tap came at her door as she sat alone with the matron, and a trembling woman entered to surrender her forbidden cards; another and another followed, till Mrs. Fry had soon five packs of cards in her possession. The culprits fully expected reproof, but Mrs. Fry assured them that their fault was fully condoned, and, much to their surprise, rewarded them for their spontaneous good feeling. This seems to have been in the ascendant on the whole, and at the end of the first year it was satisfactorily proved to competent judges, the past and present Lord Mayor, the sheriffs, gaolers, and various grand juries, the ordinary, and others, that an extraordinary change for the better had shown itself in the conduct of the females.

The work done in Newgate soon obtained much publicity, to the undoubted and manifest distaste of those who had accomplished it. It was first noticed in the newspapers by the well-known Robert Owen, who adduced it as a proof of the effects of kindness and regular habits. Prison discipline was at this time attracting attention, and Mrs. Fry’s labours were very remarkable in this line. Very soon the female side at Newgate became quite a show. Every one of any status in society, every distinguished traveller, all people with high aims or deep feelings, were constrained to visit the prison. Royalty for the first time took an interest in the gaol. The Duke of Gloucester was among the visitors, and was escorted round by Mrs. Fry in person. Another day she was engaged with the Chancellor of the Exchequer; on a third with the Home Secretary and the Speaker of the House of Commons. Still higher and more public honour was done to this noble woman by the Marquis of Lansdowne in the House of Lords, who in 1818, in moving an address on the state of the English prisons, spoke in terms of the highest eulogy of what had been effected “by Mrs. Fry and other benevolent persons in Newgate.” After this, admission to view the interior of Newgate was eagerly sought by numbers of persons whose applications could not well be refused, in spite of the inconvenience occasioned by thus turning a place of durance into a sentimental lounge. A more desirable and useful result of these ministrations was the eagerness they bred in others to imitate this noble example. Numbers of persons wrote to Mrs. Fry from all parts of the country, seeking advice and encouragement as to the formation of similar societies. Even magistrates appealed to her regarding the management of their prisons. In consequence of the numerous communications received by the Newgate Association, a “corresponding committee” was formed to give information and send replies. Letters came from various capitals of Europe, including St. Petersburgh, Turin, and Amsterdam, which announced the formation of Ladies’ Societies for prison visiting.

During many years following its inauguration, the “Ladies’ Association” continued their benevolent exertions with marked and well-deserved success. They did not confine their labours to Newgate, but were equally active in the other metropolitan prisons. They also made the female transports their peculiar charge, and obtained many reforms and ameliorations in the arrangement of the convict ships, and the provision for the women on landing at the Antipodes. That the first brilliant successes should be long and continuously maintained could hardly be expected. As time passed and improvements were introduced, there was not the same room for active intervention, and it was difficult to keep alive the early fire. The energy of the Ladies’ Committee might not exactly flag, but it came later on to be occasionally misapplied. And it will be found in a later chapter, that the inspectors of prisons were not altogether satisfied with the ground taken up by the association.

CHAPTER IV.
THE BEGINNINGS OF PRISON REFORM.

Prison reform generally taken up—Mr. Neild’s visitation—Howard’s great work repeated—Neglect of prisons not the fault of the legislature—Numerous gaol Acts passed, but not carried out by local authorities—Prison Discipline Society formed in 1817—Its distinguished members—Mr. Buxton a leading spirit—His views and arguments for insisting on prison reform—Idea of classification first given in gaol Act of 1784, but never carried out—The society animadverts upon condition of various prisons—The Borough compter—Guildford—Irons—Their weight—Overcrowding—Underground dungeons—“The pit”—A few brilliant exceptions—Bury St. Edmunds—Ilchester—Newgate compared badly with last-named, but diet improved, and irons removed from untried—Complete reform still indispensable for real improvement—Prisoners committed to Newgate taken through the streets in gangs, chained—Opponents of reform—Sydney Smith laughs at efforts of Prison Discipline Society—It continues to work undeterred—Gives attention to tread-wheels—Also to plans for prison construction—Faulty prison architecture—Society rewarded by new legislation, and devotes itself to seeing that new Acts are observed—Borough prisons the worst—Acts did not apply to them—Great diversity of practice and discipline prevail—Various hours of labour—Borough gaols continue bad because municipalities beyond reach of the law—Description of worst borough gaols—Newgate continues a bye-word—Its shortcomings—Further legislation—Report of Lords’ Committee in 1835—Reform of Municipal Corporations brings about reform in borough prisons.

WHILE Mrs. Fry was diligently engaged upon her self-imposed task in Newgate, other earnest people, inspired doubtless by her noble example, were stirred up to activity in the same great work. It began to be understood that prison reform could only be compassed by continuous and combined effort. The pleadings, however eloquent, of a single individual were unable to more than partially remedy the widespread and colossal evils of British prisons. Howard’s energy and devotion were rewarded by lively sympathy, but the desire to improve which followed his exposures was but short-lived. It was so powerless against the persistent neglect of those intrusted with prison management, that, five-and-twenty years later, Mr. Neild, a second Howard, as indefatigable and self-sacrificing, found by personal visitation that the condition of gaols throughout the kingdom was, with a few bright exceptions, still deplorable and disgraceful. Mr. Neild was compelled to admit in 1812 that “the great reformation produced by Howard was in several places merely temporary: some prisons that had been ameliorated under the persuasive influence of his kind advice were relapsing into their former horrid state of privation, filthiness, severity, or neglect; many new dungeons had aggravated the evils against which his sagacity could not but remonstrate; the motives for a transient amendment were becoming paralyzed, and the effect had ceased with the cause.”

I have shown in a previous chapter what Newgate was at this period, despite a vast expenditure and boasted efforts to introduce reforms. Some of the county gaols, and one or two borough gaols, had been rebuilt, generally through the personal activity of influential and benevolent local magnates, but the true principles of prison construction were as yet but imperfectly understood, and such portions of the “improved” gaols of that period as were still extant a few years back, contrast ludicrously with the prison architecture based upon a century’s experience of our own age.

The neglect of prison reform in those days was not to be visited upon the legislature. The executive, although harassed by internal commotion and foreign war, was not entirely callous to the crying need for amelioration in gaols. Measures remedial, although at best partial and incomplete, were introduced from time to time. Thus in 1813 the exaction of gaol fees had been forbidden by law, and two other acts more peremptory and precise followed on the same subject in succeeding years. In 1814 a bill was brought in to insist upon the appointment of chaplains in gaols, and when this had passed into law, it was subsequently amplified, and the rates of salaries fixed. Various acts were also passed to consolidate and amend previous gaol acts. The erection of new prison buildings was made imperative under certain conditions and following certain rules; the principle of classification was freshly enunciated; prison regulations were framed for general observance. But the effect of this legislation was rather weakened by the remoteness of the pressure exercised. The onus of improvement lay upon the magistracy, the local authorities administering local funds, and they were not threatened with any particular penalties if they evaded or ignored the new acts. Moreover, the laws applied more particularly to county jurisdictions. The borough gaols, those in fact under corporate management, were not included in the new measures; it was hoped that their rulers would hire accommodation in the county prisons, and that the inferior establishments would in course of time disappear. Yet the borough gaols were destined to survive many years, and to exhibit for a long time to come all the worst features of gaol mismanagement.

It was in 1817 that a small band of philanthropists resolved to form themselves into an association for the improvement of prison discipline. They were hopeless of any general reform by the action of the executive alone. They felt that private enterprise might with advantage step in, and by the collection and diffusion of information, and the reiteration of sound advice, greatly assist the good work. The association was organized under the most promising auspices. A king’s son, the Duke of Gloucester, was the patron; among the vice-presidents were many great peers of the realm, several bishops, and a number of members of the House of Commons, including Mr. Manners Sutton, Mr. Sturges Bourne, Sir James Mackintosh, Sir James Scarlett, and William Wilberforce. An active committee was appointed, comprising many names already well known, some of them destined to become famous in the annals of philanthropy. One of the moving spirits was the Honourable H. G. Bennet, M.P., whose vigorous protests against the lamentable condition of Newgate have already been recorded. Mrs. Fry’s brother, Mr. Samuel Hoare, Junior, was chairman of the committee, on which also served many noted members of the Society of Friends—Mr. Gurney, Mr. Fry, Messrs. Forster, and Mr. T. F. Buxton, the coadjutor of Wilberforce in the great anti-slavery struggle. Mr. Buxton had already been associated with Mrs. Fry in the Newgate visitation, and his attention had thus been drawn to the neglected state of English prisons. When in Belgium he had examined with great satisfaction the admirable management of the great “Maison de Force” at Ghent,[60] which Howard had eulogized some forty years before. Mr. Buxton communicated what he had seen at Ghent to the Prison Discipline Society, and was induced to make the account public. In order to give greater value to the pamphlet, he personally visited several English gaols, and pointed his observations by drawing forcible contrasts between the good and bad.

Mr. Buxton’s small work on prison discipline[61] gave a new aspect to the question he had so much at heart. For the first time the doctrine was enunciated that prisoners had rights of their own. The untried, and in the eyes of the law still innocent, could claim pure air, wholesome and sufficient food, and opportunities for exercise. They had a right, Mr. Buxton affirmed, to be employed in their own crafts, provided it could be safely followed in prison. “You have no right,” he says, addressing the authorities, “to subject a prisoner to suffering from cold, by want of bed-clothing by night or firing by day; and the reason is plain: you have taken him from his home, and have deprived him of the means of providing himself with the necessaries or comforts of life, and therefore you are bound to furnish him with moderate indeed but suitable accommodation.” “You have for the same reason,” he goes on, “no right to ruin his habits by compelling him to be idle, his morals by compelling him to mix with a promiscuous assemblage of hardened and convicted criminals, or his health by forcing him at night into a damp, unventilated cell, with such crowds of companions as very speedily render the air foul and putrid; or to make him sleep in close contact with the victims of contagious and loathsome disease, or amidst the noxious effluvia of dirt and corruption. In short, attention to his feelings, mental and bodily, a supply of every necessary, abstraction from evil society, the conservation of his health and industrious habits, are the clear, evident, undeniable rights of an unconvicted prisoner.” Nor even when found guilty and his liberty forfeited did his privileges cease. The law appointed a suitable punishment for the offence; it was for those charged with the administration of the law to guard carefully against any aggravation of that punishment, to see that “no circumstances of severity are found in his treatment which are not found in his sentence.” No judge ever condemned a man to be half-perished with cold by day, or half-suffocated with heat by night. “Who ever heard of a criminal being sentenced to catch the rheumatism or the typhus fever?” “Disease, cold, famine, nakedness, and contagious and polluted air are not lawful punishments in the hands of the civil magistrates; nor has he a right to poison or starve his fellow-creatures.”[62] “The convicted delinquent has his rights,” said Mr. Buxton authoritatively. “All measures and practices in prison which may injure him in any way are illegal, because they are not specified in his sentence; he is therefore entitled to a wholesome atmosphere, decent clothing and bedding, and a diet sufficient to support him.”

These somewhat novel but undoubtedly indisputable propositions were backed up, not by sound arguments only, but by the letter of the law. As Mr. Buxton pointed out, many old acts of parliament designed to protect the prisoner were still in full force. Some might be in abeyance, but they had never been repealed, and some were quite freshly imported upon the Statute Book. As far back as the reign of Charles II., a law was passed[63] declaring that sufficient provision should be made for the relief and setting on work of “poor and needy prisoners committed to the common jail for felony and other misdemeanours, who many times perish before their trial; and the poor there living idle and unemployed become debauched, and come forth instructed in the practice of thievery and lewdness.” As a remedy, justices of the peace were empowered to provide materials for the setting of poor prisoners to work, and to pay overseers or instructors out of the county rates. Again, the 22 Charles II. c 20 ordered the gaoler to keep felons and debtors “separate and apart from one another, in distinct rooms, on pain of forfeiting his office and treble damages to the party aggrieved.” A much later act, the 14 Geo. III. c. 59 (1774), which was contemporaneous with Howard’s first journeys, laid down precise rules as regards cleanliness, and the proper supply of space and air. This act set forth that “whereas the malignant fever commonly called the jail distemper is found to be owing to want of cleanliness and fresh air in the several jails, the fatal consequences whereof might be prevented if the justices of the peace were duly authorized to provide such accommodations in jails as may be necessary to answer this salutary purpose, it is enacted that the justices shall order the walls of every room to be scraped and white-washed once every year.” Ventilators, hand and others, were to be supplied. An infirmary, consisting of two distinct rooms, one for males and one for females, should be provided for the separate accommodation of the sick. Warm and cold baths, or “commodious bathing tubs,” were to be kept in every gaol, and the prisoners directed to wash in them before release. These provisions were almost a dead letter. Yet another act passed in 1791, if properly observed, should have insured proper attention to them. By the 31 Geo. III. c. 46, s. 5, two or more justices were appointed visitors of prisons, and directed to visit and inspect three times every quarter. They were to report in writing to quarter sessions as to the state of the gaol, and as to all abuses which they might observe therein.

The most important gaol act of that early period, however, was the 24 Geo. III. c. 54, s. 4 (1784), which was the first legislative attempt to compel the classification of prisoners, or their separation into classes according to their categories or crimes. It was made incumbent upon the justices to provide distinct places of confinement for five classes of prisoners, viz.—

1. Prisoners convicted of felony.

2. Prisoners committed on a charge or suspicion of felony.

3. Prisoners guilty of misdemeanours.

4. Prisoners charged with misdemeanours.

5. Debtors.

It was further ordered that male prisoners should be kept perfectly distinct from the females. King’s evidences were also to be lodged apart. Infirmaries separating the sexes were also to be provided, a chapel too, and warm and cold baths. “Care also was to be taken that the prisoners shall not be kept in any apartment underground.”

In an early report of the Prison Discipline Improvement Society, published some six-and-thirty years after the promulgation of this act, the flagrant and persistent violations of it and others, which had continued through that long period, are forcibly pointed out. In 1818, out of five hundred and eighteen prisons in the United Kingdom, to which a total of upwards of one hundred thousand prisoners had been committed in the year, only twenty-three prisons were divided according to law; fifty-nine had no division whatever to separate males and females; one hundred and thirty-six had only one division for the purpose; sixty-eight had only two divisions, and so on. In four hundred and forty-five prisons no work of any description had been introduced for the employment of prisoners; in the balance some work was done, but with the most meagre results. The want of room was still a crying evil. In one hundred gaols, capable of accommodating only eight thousand five hundred and forty-five persons, as many as thirteen thousand and fifty-seven were crowded. Many of the gaols were in the most deplorable condition: incommodious, as has been stated, insecure, unhealthy, and unprovided with the printed or written regulations required by law. To specify more particularly one or two of the worst, it may be mentioned that in the Borough Compter the old evils of indiscriminate association still continued unchecked. All prisoners passed their time in absolute idleness, or killed it by gambling and loose conversation. The debtors were crowded almost inconceivably. In a space twenty feet long by six wide, twenty men slept on eight straw beds, with sixteen rugs amongst them, and a piece of timber for a bolster. Mr. Buxton, who found this, declared that it seemed physically impossible, but he was assured that it was true, and that it was accomplished by “sleeping edgeways.” One poor wretch, who had slept next the wall, said he had been literally unable to move for the pressure. “In the morning the stench and heat were so oppressive that he and every one else on waking rushed unclothed into the yard;” and the turnkey told Mr. Buxton that the “smell on first opening the door was enough to knock down a horse.” The hospital was filled with infectious cases, and in one room, seven feet by nine, with closed windows, where a lad lay ill with fever, three other prisoners, at first perfectly healthy, were lodged. Of course they were seized with the fever; so that the culprit, in addition to his sentence, had to endure by “the regulations of the city a disease very dangerous in its nature,” and ran the risk of a lingering and painful death.[64]

At Guildford prison, which Mr. Buxton also visited in 1818, there was no infirmary, no chapel, no work, no classification. The irons, which nearly every one wore, were remarkably heavy; those double ironed could not take off their small clothes.[65] No prison dress was allowed, and half the inmates were without shirts or shoes or stockings. The diet was limited to dry bread, which was of the best certainly, and a pound and a half in weight. Matters were on much the same footing at St. Albans. They were far worse at Bristol, although at Mr. Buxton’s visit a new gaol was in process of erection, the first step towards reform since Howard’s visitation in 1774. In 1818 the old gaol was so densely packed that it was nearly impossible to pass through the yards for the throng. One hundred and fifty were lodged in a prison just capable of holding fifty-two. In the crowd, all of them persons who had “no other avocation or mode of livelihood but thieving,” Mr. Buxton counted eleven children—children hardly old enough to be released from the nursery. All charged with felony were in heavy irons, without distinction of age. All were in ill health; almost all were in rags; almost all were filthy in the extreme. The state of the prison, the desperation of the prisoners, broadly hinted in their conversation and plainly expressed in their conduct, the uproar of oaths, complaints, and obscenity, “the indescribable stench,” presented together a concentration of the utmost misery and the utmost guilt. It was “a scene of infernal passions and distresses,” says Buxton, “which few have imagination sufficient to picture, and of which fewer still would believe that the original is to be found in this enlightened and happy country.”

There was still worse to come. Having explored the yards and adjacent day rooms, and sleeping cells, a door was unlocked, the visitors were furnished with candles, and they descended eighteen long steps into a vault. At the bottom was a circular space, through which ran a narrow passage, and the sides of which were fitted with barrack bedsteads. The floor was on the level of the river, and very damp. The smell at one o’clock of the day “was something more than can be expressed by the term disgusting.” On the dirty bedstead lay a wretched being in the throes of severe illness. The only ventilation of this pit, this “dark, cheerless, damp, unwholesome cavern—a dungeon in its worst sense”—was by a kind of chimney, which the prisoners kept hermetically sealed, and which had never been opened in the memory of the turnkey. Untried persons were often lodged in this nauseous underground den, and sometimes slept in “the pit,” loaded with heavy irons for a whole year, waiting the gaol delivery. Confinement for twelve months in the Bristol gaol was counted a punishment equivalent to seven years’ transportation.

In this prison there was no female infirmary. Sick women and their children remained in the ordinary wards, and propagated disease. No prison dress was allowed; no reception-room was provided, no soap, towels, or baths. The bedclothes consisted only of a single “very slight” rug. The allowance of food daily to felons was a fourpenny loaf, a price which in those days fluctuated enormously—as much as a hundred per cent. in a couple of years; but as no similar variation occurred in the prisoner’s appetite, his ration was somewhat precarious. As for the debtors, they had no allowance whatever, and were often in imminent danger of starvation. With all this, the inmates were crowded together at night to such a degree as to excite surprise that they should escape suffocation. There reigned through the whole edifice a chilly, damp, unwholesome atmosphere, and the effluvia from the prisoners was so nauseous that the chaplain found it necessary to take his place before they entered chapel, as he could not otherwise have faced the smell.

It is consoling to know that there were a few brilliant exceptions to this cruel, callous neglect. Already, as early as 1818, a prison existed at Bury St. Edmunds which was a model for imitation to others at that time, and which even fulfilled many of the exacting requirements of modern days. The great principles of classification, cleanliness, and employment were closely observed. There were eighty-four separate sleeping-cells, and unless the gaol was overcrowded, every inmate passed the night alone, and in comparative comfort, with a bed and proper bedding. The prison stood on a dry, airy situation outside the town. Prisoners on reception were treated as they are now-a-days—bathed, dressed in prison clothes, and inspected by the surgeon. No irons were worn except as a punishment. Personal cleanliness was insisted upon, and all parts of the prison were kept scrupulously clean. There was an infirmary, properly found and duly looked after. No idleness was permitted among the inmates. Trades were taught, or prisoners were allowed to follow their own if suitable. There was, besides, a mill for grinding corn, somewhat similar to a turn-spit, which prisoners turned by walking in rows. This made exertion compulsory, and imposed hard labour as a proper punishment. Another gaol, that of Ilchester, was also worthy of all commendation. It exhibited all the good points of that at Bury. At Ilchester the rule of employment had been carried further. A system not adopted generally till nearly half a century later had already prevailed at Ilchester. The new gaol had been in a great measure constructed by the prisoners themselves. Masons, bricklayers, carpenters, painters had been employed upon the buildings, and the work was pronounced excellent by competent judges. Industrial labour had also been introduced with satisfactory results. Blanket weaving and cloth spinning was carried on prosperously, and all the material for prisoners’ apparel was manufactured in the gaol. There were work-rooms for wool-washing, dyeing, carding, and spinning. The looms were constantly busy. Tailors were always at work, and every article of clothing and bedding was made up within the walls. There was a prison laundry too, where all the prisoners’ linen was regularly washed. The moral welfare of the inmates was as closely looked after as the physical. There was an attentive chaplain, a schoolmaster, and regular religious and other instruction.

Compared with those highly meritorious institutions Newgate still showed but badly. Its evils were inherent and irremediable, but some ameliorating measures had been introduced, mainly through the exertions of a new governor, Mr. Brown, who succeeded Mr. Newman at Newgate in 1817.[66] The most noticeable of the improvements introduced was a better regulation of dietaries within the prison. The old haphazard system, by which meat was issued in bulk, a week’s allowance at a time, was abolished, and there was a regular scale of daily rations adopted. The diet was now ample. It consisted of a pound and a half of bread per diem; for breakfast a pint of gruel; for dinner half a pound of boiled meat, or a quart of soup with vegetables, on alternate days. The food was properly prepared in the prison kitchen. Meat was no longer issued raw, to be imperfectly cooked before a ward fire and bolted gluttonously, the whole two pounds at one sitting. Mr. Brown confidently asserted that no gaol in England now fed its inmates so well as did Newgate. So plentiful was this dietary, that although the old permission remained in force of allowing the friends of prisoners to bring them supplies from outside, the practice was falling into abeyance, and the prisoners seldom required private assistance to eke out their meals.[67] It was also claimed for the more ample and more orderly distribution of victuals, that the general health of the prisoners had greatly improved. Mr. Brown also, much to his own credit, brought about the abandonment of the practice of ironing all prisoners as a matter of course.

In 1818 prisoners awaiting trial in Newgate, were at length relieved from this illegal infliction. Convicts were not even compelled to wear irons, providing they behaved well. It was found that shackles might be safely dispensed with, even in the case of the most desperate characters. This was effected by stopping the nearly indiscriminate admission of visitors, which had hitherto prevailed all over the gaol. Ironing it will be remembered,[68] was a distinguishing badge, so that when the gaol was cleared the free might be readily known from the captive, and escapes prevented. Under the new rule visitors were not allowed to pass into the interior of the prison, but were detained between the grating. This change led to some discontent, until it was found that the much greater boon of relief from irons accompanied it, and the reform was quietly accepted. Indeed the best consequences followed from the removal of irons. The prisoners were much better disposed; there were no riots, and fewer disturbances.

But nothing short of radical reform and complete reconstruction could touch the deep-seated evils of association, overcrowding, and idleness. The first still produced deplorable results—results to be observable for many years to come. Mr. Buxton mentions the case of a boy whose apparent innocence and artlessness had attracted his attention. He had been committed for an offence for which he was acquitted. He left Newgate utterly corrupted, and after lapsing into crime, soon returned with a very different character. Other cases of moral deterioration have already been recorded. Some attempt was made to reduce the overcrowding, on the recommendation of the House of Commons Committee of 1818, but this applied only a partial remedy. The bulk of the prisoners were still left in idleness. A few fortunate criminals, many of them kept back from transportation on purpose, who were skilled in trades, were employed at them. Painters, plasterers, and carpenters were allowed to follow their handicrafts, with the reward of sixpence per diem and a double allowance of food. They used their own tools, and this without any dangerous consequences as regards facilitating the escape of others, thus disposing of the objection so long raised against the industrial employment of prisoners in Newgate. But this boon of toil was denied to all but a very limited number. As the Prison Discipline Society pertinently observed in a report dated 1820, “It is obvious that reformation must be materially impeded, and in some cases utterly defeated, when the prisoners are defectively classed, remain without constant inspection or employment, and are consequently condemned to habits of idleness and dissipation.”

Newgate prisoners were the victims to another most objectionable practice which obtained all over London. Persons committed to a metropolitan gaol at that time were taken in gangs, men and women handcuffed together, or linked on to a long chain, unless they could afford to pay for a vehicle out of their own funds. Even then they were not certain of the favour, for I find a reference to a decent and respectable woman sent to Newgate, who handed a shilling to the escort warder to provide her with a hackney coach; but this functionary pocketed the cash, and obliged the woman to walk, chained to the rest. As the miserable crew filed through the public streets, exposed to the scornful gaze of every passenger, they were followed by a crowd of reckless boys, who jeered at and insulted them. Many thus led in procession were in a shocking condition of dirt and misery, frequently nearly naked, and often bearing upon them the germs, more or less developed, of contagious disease. “Caravans,” the forerunners of the prison vans, were first made use of about 1827. That the need for prison reform was imperative may be gathered from the few out of many instances I have adduced, yet there were those who, wedded to ancient ideas, were intolerant of change; they would not admit the existence of any evils. One smug alderman, a member of the House of Commons, sneered at the ultra philanthropy of the champions of prison improvement. Speaking on a debate on prison matters, he declared that “our prisoners have all that prisoners ought to have, without gentlemen think they ought to be indulged with Turkey carpets.” The Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline was taxed with a desire to introduce a system tending to divest punishment of its just and salutary terrors; an imputation which the Society indignantly and very justly repudiated, the statement being, as they said, “refuted by abundant evidence, and having no foundation whatever in truth.”

Among those whom the Society found arrayed against it was Sydney Smith, who, in a caustic article contributed to the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ protested against the pampering of criminals. While fully admitting the good intentions of the Society, he condemned their ultra humanitarianism as misplaced. He took exception to various of the proposals of the Society. He thought they leant too much to a system of indulgence and education in gaols. He objected to the instruction of prisoners in reading and writing. “A poor man who is lucky enough,” he said, “to have his son committed for a felony educates him under such a system for nothing, while the virtuous simpleton who is on the other side of the wall is paying by the quarter for these attainments.” He was altogether against too liberal a diet; he disapproved of industrial occupations in gaols, as not calculated to render prisons terrible. “There should be no tea and sugar, no assemblage of female felons around the washing-tub, nothing but beating hemp and pulling oakum and pounding bricks—no work but what was tedious, unusual.”... “In prisons, which are really meant to keep the multitude in order, and to be a terror to evil-doers, there must be no sharings of profits, no visiting of friends, no education but religious education, no freedom of diet, no weavers’ looms or carpenters’ benches. There must be a great deal of solitude, coarse food, a dress of shame, hard, incessant, irksome, eternal labour, a planned and regulated and unrelenting exclusion of happiness and comfort.”[69]

Undeterred by these sarcasms and misrepresentations, the Society pursued its laudable undertaking with remarkable energy and great singleness of purpose. The objects it had in view were set forth in one of its earliest meetings. It sought to obtain and diffuse useful information, to suggest beneficial regulations, and circulate tracts demonstrating the advantages of classification, constant inspection, regular employment, and humane treatment generally, with religious and moral instruction. It earnestly advocated the appointment of female officers to take exclusive charge of female prisoners, a much-needed and, according to our ideas, indispensable reform, already initiated by the Ladies’ Committee at Newgate.[70] It made the subject of the newly-invented tread-wheels, or stepping-wheels, as they were at first called, its peculiar affair, and obtained full details, from places where they had been adopted, of the nature of these new machines,[71] the method by which they were worked, and the dietaries of the prisoners employed upon them. Nor did it confine itself to mere verbal recommendations. The good it tried to do took active shape in the establishment of temporary refuges—at Hoxton for males, and in the Hackney Road for females—for the reception of deserving cases discharged from prison. The governor of Newgate and other metropolitan prisons had orders of admission to this refuge, which he could bestow on prisoners on release, and so save the better-disposed or the completely destitute from lapsing at once into crime. The refuge, which had for its object the training of its inmates in habits of industry, and in moral and religious duty, and which after a time sought to provide them with suitable situations, was supported entirely out of the funds of the Society. At the time of its greatest prosperity, its annual income from donations and subscriptions was about £1600.

Another point to which the Society devoted infinite pains was the preparation of plans for the guidance of architects in the construction of prisons. A very valuable volume published by the Society traced the progress of prison architecture from the days when the gaol was the mere annexe of the baronial or episcopal castle, or a dungeon above or below the gate of a town, to the first attempts at systematic reconstruction carried out under the advice and supervision of Howard.[72] It is interesting to observe that the plan of “radiation,” by which the prison blocks radiated from a central hall, like spokes in a wheel, was introduced as early as 1790 by Mr. Blackburn, an architect of eminence who was very largely employed in the erection of prison buildings at the close of the last century. With some important modifications this principle of radiation is still the rule. The Society did not limit its remarks to the description of what had already been done, but it offered suggestions for future buildings, with numerous carefully-executed drawings and designs of the model it recommended for imitation. Experience has since shown that in some respects these plans are defective, especially in the placing of the governor’s residence in the centre of the prison. It was thought that this would guarantee constant supervision and inspection, but it did nothing of the kind, and only the presence of warders on duty is found now-a-days to be really efficacious. The main recommendations, however, are based upon common sense, and none are more commendable than that which deprecates the excessive ornamentation of the external parts of the edifice. “The new gaols,” as Howard says, “having pompous fronts, appear like palaces to the lower class of people, and many persons are against them on this account.” The Prison Society reproves the misdirected efforts of ambitious architects, who by a lavish and improvident expenditure of public money sought to “rank the prisons they built among the most splendid buildings of the city or town.” Absence of embellishment is in perfect unison with the character of the establishment. These are principles fully recognized now-a-days, and it may fairly be conceded that the Prison Discipline Society’s ideal differed little from that kept in view in the construction of the latest and best modern gaols.

After a few years of active exertion the Society was rewarded by fresh legislation. To its efforts, and their effect upon Parliament and the public mind, we must attribute the new Gaol Acts of 4 Geo. IV. cap. 64, and 5 Geo. IV. cap. 85, which having gone through several sessions, at last became law in 1823-4. By the preamble of the first-named act it was declared “expedient to introduce such measures and arrangements as shall not only provide for the safe custody, but shall also tend more effectually to preserve the health and improve the morals of the prisoners, and shall insure the proper measure of punishment to convicted offenders.” Accordingly due provision was made for the enforcement of hard labour on all prisoners sentenced to it, and for the employment of all others. As a rider to this enactment, it was laid down that any prisoner who could work and would not had no claim to be supported in gaol, “unless such ability (to work) should cease by reason of sickness, infirmity, the want of sufficient work, or from any other cause.” It was distinctly laid down that male and female prisoners should be confined in separate buildings or parts of the prison, “so as to prevent them from seeing, conversing, or holding any intercourse with each other.” Classification was insisted upon, in the manner laid down by the 24 Geo. III. cap. 54,[73] with such further separation as the justices should deem conducive to good order and discipline. Female prisoners were in all cases to be under the charge of female officers. Every prison containing female prisoners was to have a matron who was to reside constantly in the prison. The religious and moral welfare of the prisoners were to be attended to, the first by daily services, the latter by the appointment of schoolmasters and instruction in reading and writing. Last, but not least, the use of irons was strictly forbidden, “except in cases of urgent and absolute necessity,” and every prisoner was to be provided with a hammock or cot to himself, suitable bedding, and, if possible, a separate cell. The second act, passed in the following year, enlarged and amended the first, and at the same time gave powers to the House to call for information as to the observance of its provisions.

The promulgation of these two Gaol Acts strengthened the hands of the Prison Discipline Society enormously. It had now a legal and authoritative standard of efficiency to apply, and could expose all the local authorities that still lagged behind, or neglected to comply with the provisions of the new laws. The Society did not shrink from its self-imposed duty, but continued year after year, with unflagging energy and unflinching spirit, to watch closely and report at length upon the condition of the prisons of the country. For this purpose it kept up an extensive correspondence with all parts of the kingdom, and circulated queries to be answered in detail, whence it deduced the practice and condition of every prison that replied. Upon these and the private visitations made by various members the Society obtained the facts, often highly damnatory, which were embodied in its annual reports. The progress of improvement was certainly extremely slow. It was long before the many jurisdictions imitated the few. Gaols, of which the old prison at Reading was a specimen, were still left intact. In that prison, with its cells and yards arranged within the shell of an ancient abbey chapel, the prisoners, without firing, bedding, or sufficient food, spent their days “in surveying their grotesque prison, or contriving some means of escape by climbing the fluted columns which supported the Gothic arches of the aisles, and so passing by the roof down into the garden and on to freedom.” In a county prison adjoining the metropolis, the separation between the male and female quarters was supposed to be accomplished by the erection of an iron railing; in this same prison capital convicts were chained to the floor until execution. In another gaol not far off male and female felons still occupied the same room—underground, and reached by a ladder of ten steps. In others the separation between the sexes consisted in a hanging curtain, or an imaginary boundary line, and nothing prevented parties from passing to either side but an empty regulation which all so disposed could defy. Numbers of the gaols were still unprovided with chaplains, and the prisoners never heard Divine service. In many others there were no infirmaries, no places set apart for the confinement of prisoners afflicted with dangerous and infectious disorders. No attempt was made to maintain discipline. Half the gaols had no code of rules properly prepared and sanctioned by the judges, according to law.

By degrees, however, the changes necessary to bring the prisons into conformity with the recent acts were attempted, if not actually introduced into the county prisons, to which, with a few of the more important city or borough prisons, these acts more especially applied.[74] Most of the local authorities embarked into considerable expenditure, determined to rebuild their gaols de novo on the most approved pattern, or to reappropriate, reconstruct, and patch up the existing prisons till they were more in accordance with the growing requirements of the times. Religious worship became more generally the rule; chaplains were appointed, and chapels provided for them; surgeons and hospitals also. Workshops were built at many prisons, various kinds of manufactures and trades were set on foot, including weaving, matting, shoe-making, and tailoring. The interior of one prison was illuminated throughout with gas,—still a novelty, which had been generally adopted in London only four years previously,—“a measure which must greatly tend to discourage attempts to escape.” There were tread-wheels at most of the prisons, and regular employment thereon or at some other kind of hard labour. In many places too where the prisoners earned money by their work, they were granted a portion of it for their own use after proper deduction for maintenance. Only a few glaring evils still demanded a remedy. The provision of separate sleeping cells was still quite inadequate. For instance, in twenty-two county gaols there were 1063 sleeping cells in all (in 1823), and the average daily number committed that year amounted to 3985. The want of sleeping cells long continued a crying need. Four years later the Prison Society reported that in four prisons, which at one time of the year contained 1308 prisoners, there were only sixty-eight sleeping rooms or cells, making an average of nineteen persons occupying each room. At the New Prison, Clerkenwell, which had become the principal reception gaol of Middlesex, and so took all the untried, the sleeping space per head was only sixteen inches, and often as many as 293 men[75] had to be accommodated on barrack beds occupying barely 390 feet lineal. The “scenes of tumult and obscenity” in these night rooms are said to have been beyond description; a prisoner in one nocturnal riot lost an eye. Yet to Clerkenwell were now committed the juveniles, and all who were inexperienced in crime.

Great want of uniformity in treatment in the various prisons was still noticeable, and was indeed destined to continue for another half century, in other words, until the introduction of the Prison Act of 1877.[76] At the time of which I am writing there was great diversity of practice as regards the hours of labour. In some prisons the prisoners worked seven hours a day, in others ten and ten and a half. The nature of the employment varied greatly in severity, especially the tread-wheel labour. In some county gaols, as I have already said, female prisoners were placed upon the tread-wheel; in others women were very properly exempted from it, and also from all severe labour. Earnings were very differently appropriated. Here the prisoners were given the whole amount, there a half or a third. Sometimes this money might be expended in the purchase of extra articles of food.[77] The rations varied considerably everywhere. It was still limited to bread in some places, the allowance of which varied from one to three pounds; in others meat, soup, gruel, beer were given. Here and there food was not issued in kind, but a money allowance which the prisoner might expend himself. Bedding and clothing was still denied, but only in a few gaols; in others both were supplied in ample quantities, the cost varying per prisoner from twenty shillings to five pounds. It was plain that although the law had defined general principles of prison government, too much discretion was still left to the magistracy to fill in the details. The legislature only recommended, it did not peremptorily insist. Too often the letter of the law was observed, but not its spirit.

One great impediment to wide amelioration was that a vast number of small gaols lay out of reach of the law. When the new acts were introduced, numerous prisons under local jurisdiction were exempted from the operation of the law. They were so radically bad that reform seemed hopeless, and it was thought wiser not to bring them under provisions which clearly could not be enforced. Mr. Peel, who as Home Secretary had charge of the bill, which became the 4 Geo. IV. cap. 64, said that he had abstained from legislating for these small jurisdictions “on mature deliberation.” “It is not,” he said, “that I am insensible of the lamentable and disgraceful situation in which many of them are, but I indulge a hope that many of them will contract with the counties, that many of them will build new gaols, and that when in a year or two we come to examine their situation, we shall find but few which have not in one or other of these ways removed the grievance of which such just complaint is made. When that time arrives I shall not hesitate to ask Parliament for powers to compel them to make the necessary alterations, for it is not to be endured that these local jurisdictions should remain in the deplorable situation in which many of them now are.”

At this time there were in England one hundred and seventy boroughs, cities, towns, and liberties which possessed the right of trying criminals for various offences. Nearly every one of these jurisdictions had its own prison, and there were one hundred and sixty such gaols in all. Many of them consisted of one or two rooms at most. The total number of prisoners they received during the year varied from two persons to many hundreds. It was in these gaols, withdrawn from the pressure of authority, that the new rules were invariably ignored. The right and privilege of the borough to maintain its own place of confinement was so “ancient and indisputable,” that for long no idea of interfering with them was entertained. All that was urged was that the borough magistracy had no right to govern their gaols so as to corrupt those committed, “to the injury of the peace and morals of the public.” As time passed, however, these magistrates made no effort at reform. They neither built new gaols nor contracted with the counties, as had been expected, for the transfer of their prisoners. As the Society put it in 1827, “the friends to the improvement of prison discipline will regret to learn that the gaols attached to corporate jurisdictions continue to be the fruitful sources of vice and misery, debasing all who are confined within their walls, and disseminating through their respective communities the knowledge and practice of every species of criminality.” The Society proceeded to support this indictment by facts. It is much the old story. The prisoners were lodged in rooms whence they could converse with passengers in the streets, and freely obtain spirits and other prohibited articles. All descriptions of offenders congregated together in the felons’ wards. The keeper and his officers resided at a distance from the gaol, and left its inmates to their own devices. There was no decency whatever in the internal arrangements; still no separation of the sexes, no means of ablution or other necessary services. One borough prison consisted of nothing more than a couple of cells, about ten yards square, and absolutely nothing more. In another borough, with a population of ten thousand, the prison was of the same dimensions. One cell was a dungeon, and the other an “improper and unhealthy abode for any human being,” with a watercourse running through it.

Most of these small gaols were still in existence and in much the same state eight years later, as is shown by the report of the Commissioners to inquire into the state of the municipal corporations in 1835. An examination of this report shows how even the most insignificant township had its gaol. Thus Dinas Mwddy, in Merionethshire, had, “besides the pinfold and the stocks or crib, a little prison.” Clun, in Shropshire, had a lock-up under the town hall. At Eye, in Suffolk, the gaol was part of the poor-house; so it was at Richmond, in Yorkshire, where the master of the workhouse was also keeper of the gaol. At Godmanchester there was no gaol, but a cage to secure prisoners till they could be taken before a magistrate. Kidderminster had a prison, one damp chill room, “the only aperture through which air could be admitted being an iron grating level with the street, through the bars of which quills or reeds were inserted, and drink conveyed to the prisoners.” At Walsall, in Staffordshire, the gaol consisted of six cells, frequently so damp that the moisture trickled down the walls; there was not space for air or exercise, and the prison allowance was still limited to bread and water.

Newgate through all these years continued a bye-word with the Society. Some reforms had certainly been introduced, such as the abolition of irons, already referred to, and the establishment of male and female infirmaries. The regular daily visitation of the chaplain was also insisted upon. But it was pointed out in 1823 that defective construction must always bar the way to any radical improvement in Newgate. Without enlargement no material change in discipline or interior economy could possibly be introduced. The chapel still continued incommodious and insufficient; female prisoners were still exposed to the full view of the males, the netting in front of the gallery being perfectly useless as a screen. In 1824 Newgate had no glass in its windows, except in the infirmary and one ward of the chapel yard; and the panes were filled in with oiled paper, an insufficient protection against the weather; and as the window-frames would not shut tight, the prisoners complained much of the cold, especially at night. There was a diminution in the numbers in custody, due to the adoption of the practice of not committing at once to Newgate every offender for trial at the Old Bailey, but nothing had been done to improve the prison buildings. In 1827 the Society was compelled to report that “no material change had taken place in Newgate since the passing of the prison laws,[78] and that consequently the observance of their most important provisions was habitually neglected.” It was enacted that the court of aldermen should make rules for the government of the prison, and that these should be posted publicly within the walls. As yet no rules or regulations had been printed or prepared. By another clause of the Gaol Act, two justices were to be appointed to visit the prison at least thrice in every quarter, and “oftener if occasion required.” These justices were to inspect every part of the prison, and examine into the state and condition of prisoners. The city justices had not fulfilled this obligation. Idleness was still the general rule for all prisoners in Newgate, in defiance of the law. There was no instruction of adult prisoners, in accordance with the law. The sleeping accommodation was still altogether contrary to the latest ideas. The visits of friends was once more unreservedly allowed, and these incomers freely brought in extra provisions and beer. Last, and worst of all, the arrangements for keeping the condemned prisoners between sentence and execution were more than unsatisfactory. They were not confined apart from each other, but were crowded thirty or forty together in the press yard, so that “corrupt conversation obliterated from the mind of him who is doomed to suffer every serious feeling and valuable impression.”[79] I shall have more to say on this subject, and upon the state of Newgate generally, in the following chapter.

The Prison Society did not relax its efforts as time passed, but its leading members had other and more pressing claims upon their energies. Mr. Buxton had succeeded to the great work which William Wilberforce had commenced, and led the repeated attacks upon slavery in British colonies till the whole body of the slaves were manumitted in 1833. In the year immediately preceding this, Parliament was too busy with the great question of its own reform to spare much time for domestic legislation. Nevertheless a committee of the House of Commons was appointed in 1831 to report upon the whole system of secondary punishments, which dealt with gaols of all classes, as well as transportation. This committee animadverted strongly upon the system in force at the metropolitan gaols, and more especially upon the condition of Newgate, where “prisoners before and after trial are under no efficient superintendence,” and where “there was no restraint, or attempt at restraint.” Mr. Samuel Hoare was examined by this committee, and stated that in his opinion Newgate, as the common gaol of Middlesex, was wholly inadequate to the proper confinement of its prisoners. From the moment of a person’s committal he was certain to be plunged deeper and deeper in guilt. The prisoners were crowded together in the gaol, contrary to the requirements of the 4 Geo. IV. Again in 1835 prisons and their inmates became once more the care of the senate, and the subject was taken up this time by the House of Lords. A committee was appointed, under the presidency of the Duke of Richmond, “to inquire into and report upon the several gaols and houses of correction in the counties, cities, and corporate towns within England and Wales; upon the rules and discipline therein established with regard to the treatment of unconvicted as well as convicted persons.” The committee was also to report upon the manner in which sentences were carried out, and to recommend any alterations necessary in the rules in order to insure uniformity of discipline. It met on the 31st March, 1835, and continued its sittings well into July, during which time a host of witnesses were examined, and the committee presented three separate reports, embodying recommendations which may be said to have formed the basis of modern prison management.

It was laid down as a first and indispensable principle that uniformity of discipline should prevail everywhere, a theory which did not become a practical fact for forty more years. As a means of securing this uniformity, it was suggested that the rules framed for prison government should be subjected to the Secretary of State for approval, and not, as heretofore, to the judges of assize; that, both to check abuses and watch the progress of improvement, inspectors of prisons should be appointed, who should visit all the prisons from time to time and report to the Secretary of State. It was recommended that the dietaries should be submitted and approved like the rules; that convicted prisoners should not receive any food but the gaol allowance; that food and fuel should be issued in kind, and never provided by the prisoners themselves out of monies granted them. The use of tobacco, hitherto pretty generally indulged in both by men and women, should be strictly prohibited, “as a stimulating luxury inconsistent with any notion of strict discipline and the due pressure of just punishment.” Prison officers should not have any share in prisoners’ earnings, which should be paid into general prison funds, and no part of them handed over to the prisoners themselves. As a means of increasing the severity of imprisonment, letters and visits from outside should not be permitted during the first six months of an imprisonment. Various other recommendations were made as regards the appointment of chaplain and schoolmasters; the limitation of the powers of wardsmen, or prisoners employed in positions of trust, who should not be permitted to traffic with their fellow-prisoners in any way. The committee most of all insisted upon the entire individual separation of prisoners, except during the hours of labour, religious worship, and instruction, as “absolutely necessary for preventing contamination, and for securing a proper system of prison discipline.” This was the first enunciation of the system of separate confinement, which was eventually to replace the attempted arrangement of prisoners by classes according to antecedents and crimes, an incomplete and fallacious method of preventing contamination. The Lords’ Committee fully recognized the painful fact that the greatest mischief followed from the intercourse which was still permitted in so many prisons; to use its words, “the comparatively innocent are seduced, the unwary are entrapped, and the tendency to crime in offenders not entirely hardened is confirmed by the language, the suggestions, and the example of more depraved and systematic criminals.”

This committee, as well as the one preceding it, also reported in terms of strong reprobation on the small prisons and gaols still under the borough corporations. The Commons’ Committee gave it as their opinion that they were in a deplorable state. The same language was used by the commissioners appointed to inquire into the municipal corporations in 1835, when speaking more particularly of the borough gaols. In these the commissioners found “additional proof of the evils of continuing the present constitution of the local tribunals. Instances rarely occur in which the borough gaols admit of any proper classification of the prisoners. In some large towns, as at Berwick on Tweed, Southampton, and Southwark, they (the prisons) are in a very discreditable condition. In many of the smaller boroughs they are totally unfit for the confinement of human beings. In these places the prisoners are often without a proper supply of air and light; frequently the gaols are mere dungeons under the town hall.... It was frequently stated in evidence that the gaol of the borough was in so unfit a state for the reception of prisoners, that plaintiffs were unwilling to consign the defendants against whom they had obtained execution to confinement within its walls.” The Lords’ Committee on Gaols were of the same opinion, and considered the prisons under corporate or peculiar jurisdiction in a very unsatisfactory condition. They therefore recommended that the prisoners should be removed to the county gaols from such prisons as were past improvement, and that the borough funds should be charged for the accommodation. The whole question was again dealt with in Lord John Russell’s bill for the reform of the municipal corporations, and with a more liberal election of town councillors, and the establishment of municipal institutions upon a proper footing, the borough gaols were brought more into accordance with the growing demand for a more humane system of prison management.

CHAPTER V.
THE FIRST REPORT OF THE INSPECTORS OF PRISONS.

Appointment of inspectors of prisons—Their names and antecedents—Mr. Crawford and Mr. Whitworth Russell at once visit Newgate, and make a searching inquiry—Find old evils still present—Overcrowding no longer excusable—Want of classification—The governor, Mr. Cope, blamed for this—Prisoners’ treatment—No beds, uncleanly, and in rags—Baleful despotism of prisoner wardsmen, who have more power than the officers—Again proofs of Mr. Cope’s neglect—Scenes of horror in Newgate—Gambling, drinking, debauchery—Flash books allowed—Libel of Stockdale v. Hansard grows out of this—Serious affrays in the wards—Prisoners badly wounded by one another—Extra and luxurious food admitted—Also visitors of both sexes indiscriminately—Same evils to a lesser degree on female side—Ladies’ Association—No real separation of the sexes—Mr. Cope an offender in this respect—The press-yard or condemned convicts’ yard the worst of all—Culpable and indiscriminate association—Brutal behaviour of many of those sentenced to death—The ordinary checked in his zeal—Criminal lunatics allowed to remain in Newgate—House of Commons’ prisoners monopolize hospital and best accommodation in the gaol—Abuses of State Side revived in their case—Evils rampant briefly recapitulated by inspectors—Their report raises a storm in the city—Protest of the Corporation—Some attempt at reform—Many of the charges reiterated in later reports—No radical reform possible without complete reconstruction.

IN the preceding chapter I have been tempted by the importance of the general question to give it prominence and precedence over the particular branch of which I am treating. Newgate has remained rather in the background while the whole of the gaols as a body were under discussion. But this digression was necessary in order to present a more complete picture of the state of gaols in the early part of the present century, just before the public mind was first awakened to the need for thorough reform. I shall now return to the great gaol of the city of London, and give a more detailed account of its condition and inner life as the inspectors of prisons found them in 1835-6. These gentlemen were appointed in October 1835, owing to the strong representations of the Lords’ Committee,[80] backed up by the evidence of several influential witnesses. Mr. Samuel Hoare, when examined, considered it indispensably necessary, to carry out whatever system might be established, that inspectors should watch over the observance of the law. He saw no objection on the score of their probable interference with the local jurisdiction, but he would not arm them with any authority lest their co-operation might be offensive. Sir Frederick Roe was of the same opinion as regards the appointment, but he would give the inspectors the power of acting as well as reporting. They should be persons, he thought, selected from the highest class; the duty was most important, one which required discretion, judgment, and knowledge of law, with sufficient insight and experience to discover defects in prison discipline. These considerations no doubt had weight with those who made the selection of the first inspectors, and the two gentlemen appointed were probably the most fitted in England to be so employed. One was Mr. William Crawford, the other the Rev. Whitworth Russell.

The first named had long been an active philanthropist, devoting himself more particularly to the reformation of juvenile criminals.[81] William Crawford had been one of the promoters and managers of the Philanthropic Society’s farm school. Later on he had devoted himself to the personal investigation of the prisons of the United States. At that time the mild and intelligent prison discipline in force in Pennsylvania, the legacy of the old Quaker immigrants, had made such prisons as Auburn a model for imitation. Several European states had despatched emissaries to examine and report upon them. France had sent MM. Beaumont and De Tocqueville, who subsequently published several interesting works on the subject. England was represented by Mr. Crawford, and the result of his inquiry was given to the public as an appendix to the House of Commons’ ‘Report on Secondary Punishments.’ It is an able and exhaustive state paper, testifying to the keenness of the writer’s perception, and his unremitting labour in pursuing his researches. Mr. Crawford was thoroughly versed in the still imperfectly understood science of prison management, and fully qualified for his new duties.

The second inspector, the Rev. Whitworth Russell, was the chaplain of Millbank penitentiary, the great architectural experiment which grew out of the strong representations of Jeremy Bentham and others, and was the first national recognition of the principle that punishment must be reformatory as well as deterrent.

Messrs. Crawford and Russell proceeded to carry out their new functions with commendable energy, and without a moment’s loss of time. The ink was barely dry upon their letters of appointment before they appeared at Newgate, and commenced a searching investigation. They attended early and late; they mustered the prisoners, examined into their condition, took voluminous evidence from all classes of individuals, from the governor down to the convict in the condemned cells. They visited the wards after locking-up time, and saw with their own eyes what went on. Having started with the proposition that the metropolitan prisons must monopolize their attention, as constituting, to use their own words, “a subject of magnitude and importance sufficient to exclude other gaols,” they soon narrowed their inquiry still further, and limited it to Newgate alone. Newgate indeed became the sole theme of their first report. The fact was that the years as they passed, nearly twenty in all, had worked but little permanent improvement in this detestable prison. Changes introduced under pressure had been only skin deep. Relapse was rapid and inevitable, so that the latter state of the prison was worse than the first. The disgraceful overcrowding had been partially ended, but the same evils of indiscriminate association were still present; there was the old neglect of decency, the same callous indifference to the moral well-being of the prisoners, the same want of employment and of all disciplinary control.

All these evils were set forth at length in the inspectors’ first report. There was no longer the faintest possible excuse for overcrowding. The numbers now committed to Newgate had sensibly diminished. The prison had become more or less a place of detention only, harbouring mainly those awaiting trial. To these were still added an average of about fifty expecting the last penalty of the law; a certain number of transports awaiting removal to the colonies; an occasional prisoner or two committed by the Houses of Parliament, the Courts of King’s Bench, Common Pleas, and Exchequer, the Commissioners of bankruptcy and of taxes; smugglers, and a larger number sentenced for very short terms, and for offences of the most varying description, by the Central Criminal Court. The sum total thus produced was inconsiderable compared with the hundreds that had formerly filled the gaol, and the whole by proper management might have been so accommodated as to prevent overcrowding. But incredible as it may appear, the authorities of Newgate declined to avail themselves of the advantages offered them, and when the population fell they shut up one half the gaol and crowded up the other. Some rooms remained quite empty and unoccupied, while others were full to overflowing. Not only were the wards thus needlessly crammed, and for no reason but the niggardliness of the corporation which refused a proper supply of bedding, but the occupants of each were huddled together indiscriminately. The inspectors found in the same wards in the chapel yard the convicted and the untried, the felon and the misdemeanant, the sane and the insane, the old and young offender. The classification prescribed by the Gaol Act, which laid down that certain prisoners should not intermix, was openly neglected, and “the greatest contempt shown for the law.” In another part there were men charged with and convicted of unnatural offences shut up with lads of tender years; minor offenders charged with small thefts or non-payment of small sums were cheek by jowl with convicts sentenced to long terms of transportation. In the master’s side yard, which had only one washing place, as many as seventy-eight prisoners, frequently more, were associated together, “of every variety of age, habit, and delinquency, without employment, oversight, or control.” In the middle yard it was still worse. “Here,” say the inspectors, “are herded together the very worst class of prisoners; certainly a more wretched combination of human beings can hardly be imagined. We have reason to fear that poverty, ragged clothes, and an inability to pay the ward dues, elsewhere exacted for better accommodation, consign many of the more petty and unpractised offenders to this place, where they inevitably meet with further contamination from the society of the most abandoned and incorrigible inmates of the gaol.”

No doubt the governor for the time being, Mr. Cope, was in a great measure to blame for all this, and for the want of proper classification. I shall have occasion to speak again, and more at length, of Mr. Cope’s careless and perfunctory discharge of his many manifest duties, but I shall here confine myself to animadverting on his neglect as regards the appropriation of his prison. He was unable to give any reason whatever for not utilizing the whole of the wards. He saw certain rooms fill up, and yet took no steps to open others that were locked up and empty. He blamed the construction of Newgate for the neglect of classification, and was yet compelled to confess that he had made no attempt whatever to carry it out. The fact was, he did not keep the classification of prisoners on first arrival in his own hands, nor even in that of his officers. A new prisoner’s fate, as to location, rested really with a powerful fellow-prisoner. The inspectors found that prisoners had their places assigned to them by the inner gatesman, himself a convicted prisoner, and a “wardsman” or responsible head of a room. The wardsman still exacted dues, of which more directly, and this particular official took excellent care to select as residents for his own ward those most suitable from his own point of view. “So great is the authority exercised by him, and so numerous were his opportunities of showing favouritism, that all the prisoners may be said to be in his power. If a man is poor and ragged, however inexperienced in crime, or however trifling may be the offence for which he has been committed, his place is assigned among the most depraved, the most experienced, and the most incorrigible offenders in the middle yard.” It must be admitted that so far but little effort had been made to counteract the evils of indiscriminate association.

It was not likely that a system which left innocent men—for the great bulk of new arrivals were still untried—to be pitchforked by chance anywhere, into any sort of company, within this the greatest nursery of crime in London, should exercise even the commonest care for the personal decency or comfort of the prisoners. Their treatment was also a matter of chance. They still slept on rope mats on the floor, herded together in companies of four or more to keep one another warm, and under the scanty covering of a couple of dirty stable-rugs apiece. So closely did they lie together, that the inspectors at their night visits found it difficult in stepping across the room to avoid treading on them. Sometimes two mats were allotted to three sleepers. Sometimes four slept under the same bedding, and left their mats unoccupied. The rugs used were never washed; an order existed that the bedding should be taken into the yards to be aired, but it was not very punctually obeyed. The only convenience for personal ablutions were the pumps in the yards, and the far-off baths in the condemned or press-yard. Water might not be taken into the ward for washing purposes. There was some provision of clothing, but it was quite insufficient, and nothing at all was given if prisoners had enough of their own to cover their nakedness. The inspectors paraded the prisoners, and found them generally ragged and ill-clad, squalid and filthy in the extreme; many without stockings, and with hardly shoes to their feet; some, who had the semblance of covering on the upper part of their feet, had no soles to the shoes, and their bare feet were on the ground. This, too, was in the depth of the winter, and during a most inclement season. The allowance of food was not illiberal, but its issue was precarious, and dependent on the good will of the wardsmen, who measured out the portions to each according to his eye, and not with weights and measures, no turnkey being present. Too much was left to the wardsman. It was he who could issue small luxuries; he sold tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco, although prohibited, and extra beer. He charged a weekly sum as ward dues for the use of knives, forks, and plates—a perpetuation under another form of the old detestable custom of garnish. He had power where his exactions were resisted of making the ward most uncomfortable for the defaulter. He could trump up a false complaint against his fellow-prisoner, and so get him punished; he might keep him from the fire, or give him his soup or gruel in a pail instead of a basin.

The authority of these wardsmen so improperly exalted, and so entirely unchecked, degenerated into a baneful despotism. They bought their offices from one another, and were thus considered to have a vested interest in them. Their original capital had been a few shillings, and for this they purchased the right to tax their fellows to the extent of pounds per week. The wardsman had a monopoly in supplying provisions, gave dinner and breakfast at his own price, and was such complete master of the ward that none of its inmates were suffered to make tea or coffee for themselves lest it should interfere with his sales. He made collections when it suited him for ward purposes, to be spent as he chose, in candles and so forth. When the wardsman was a man of some education, with some knowledge of legal chicanery gained by personal experience, he might add considerably to his emoluments by drawing briefs and petitions for his fellows. There was a recognized charge of 5s. per brief, for a petition of from 1s. 6d. to 8s., according to its length, and by these payments a wardsman had been known to amass as much as £40. The man intrusted with this privilege was often the inner gatesman, the prisoner official already mentioned, who held the fate of new arrivals as regards location in his hands. It was not strange that he should sometimes misuse his power, and when prisoners were not to be cajoled into securing his legal services, had been known to employ threats, declaring that he was often consulted by the governor as to a prisoner’s character, in view of speaking to it at the trial, and he could easily do them a good turn—or a very bad one. The brief-drawing gatesman and wardsman at the time of the inspectors’ first visit must have been a particularly powerful personage. He was on the most intimate and improperly familiar terms with the turnkeys, had a key of both the master’s side and middle side yards, was the only person present at the distribution of beer, and was trusted to examine, and, if he chose, pass in, all provisions, money, clothes, and letters brought for prisoners by their friends.

All the wardsmen alike were more or less irresponsible. The turnkeys complained bitterly that these old prisoners had more power than they themselves. The governor himself admitted that a prisoner of weak intellect who had been severely beaten and much injured by a wardsman did not dare complain, the victim of this cruel ill-usage having “more fear of the power of the wardsman to injure him, than confidence in the governor’s power to protect him.” These wardsmen, besides thus ruling the roast, had numerous special privileges, if such they can be called. They were not obliged to attend chapel, and seldom if ever went; “prisoners,” said one of them under examination, “did not like the trouble of going to chapel.” They had a standing bedstead to sleep on, and a good flock mattress; double allowance of provisions, filched from the common stock. Nobody interfered with them or regulated their conduct. They might get drunk when so disposed, and did so frequently, alone or in company. Evidence was given before the inspectors of eight or ten prisoners seen “giddy drunk, not able to sit upon forms.” The female wards-women were also given to intemperance. The matron deposed to having seen the gates-woman “exceedingly drunk,” and having been insulted by her. There was no penalty attached to drunkenness. A wardsman did not necessarily lose his situation for it. Nor was drink the only creature comfort he might enjoy. He could indulge in snuff if a snuff-taker, and might always smoke his pipe undisturbed; for although the use of tobacco had been prohibited since the report of the Lords Committee, it was still freely introduced into the prison.

Probably authority would not have been so recklessly usurped by the wardsmen had not the proper officials too readily surrendered it. The turnkeys left the prisoners very much to themselves, never entering the wards after locking-up time, at dusk, till unlocking next morning, and then only went round to count the number. Many of them were otherwise and improperly occupied for hours every day in menial services for the governor, cleaning his windows or grooming his horse. One turnkey had been so employed several hours daily for nearly eleven years. It was not strange that subordinates should neglect their duty when superiors set the example. Nothing was more prominently brought out by the inspectors than the inefficiency of the governor at that time, Mr. Cope. He may have erred in some points through ignorance, but in others he was clearly guilty of culpable neglect. We have seen that he took no pains to classify and separate prisoners on reception. This was only one of many grave omissions on his part. He did not feel it incumbent on himself to visit his prison often or see his prisoners. The act prescribed that he should do both every twenty-four hours, but days passed without his entering the wards. The prisoners declared that they did not see him oftener than twice a week; one man who had been in the condemned ward for two months, said the governor only came there four times. Again, a turnkey deposed that his chief did not enter the wards more than once a fortnight.

But it is only fair to Mr. Cope to state that he himself said he went whenever he could find time, and that he was constantly engaged attending sessions and going with drafts to the hulks. But when he did visit, his inspections were of the most superficial character; sometimes he looked at his bolts and bars, but he never examined the cupboards, coal-boxes, or other possible hiding-places for cards, dice, dangerous implements, or other prohibited articles. He only attended chapel once on Sunday, never on the week-day, and generally devoted the time service was in progress to taking the descriptions of newly-arrived prisoners. He really did not know what passed in his gaol, and was surprised when the inspectors proved to him that practices of which he was ignorant, and which he admitted that he reprehended, went on without hindrance. He was satisfied to let matters run on as in the old times, he said in his own justification; with him what was, was right, and evils that should have been speedily rooted out remained because they had the prescription of long usage. He kept no daily journal of occurrences, and nothing, however important, was recorded at the time. The aldermen never called upon him to report, and left him nearly unsupervised and uncontrolled. In his administration of discipline he was quite uncertain; the punishments he inflicted were unequal, and it was not the least part of the blame imputed to him that he made special favourites of particular prisoners, retaining of his own accord in Newgate, and for years, felons who should have been sent beyond the seas. But, indeed, his whole rule was far too mild, and under this mistaken leniency the interior of the gaol was more like a bear-garden or the noisy purlieus of a public-house than a prison.

It was the same old story—evil constantly in the ascendant, the least criminal at the mercy of the most depraved. Under the reckless contempt for regulations, the apathy of the authorities, and the undue ascendancy of those who, as convicted felons, should have been most sternly repressed, the most hardened and the oldest in vice had the best of it, while the inexperienced beginner went to the wall. Edward Gibbon Wakefield,[82] who spent three years in Newgate a little before the time of the inspectors’ first report, said with justice that “incredible scenes of horror occur in Newgate.” It was, moreover, in his opinion undoubtedly the greatest nursery of crime in London. The days were passed in idleness, debauchery, riotous quarrelling, immoral conversation, gambling, indirect contravention of parliamentary rules, instruction in all nefarious processes, lively discourse upon past criminal exploits, elaborate discussion of others to be perpetrated after release. No provision whatever was made for the employment of prisoners, no materials were purchased, no trade instructors appointed. There was no school for adults; only the boys were taught anything, and their instructor, with his assistant, were convicted prisoners. Idle hands and unoccupied brains found in mischief the only means of whiling away the long hours of incarceration. Gaming of all kinds, although forbidden by the Gaol Acts, was habitually practised. This was admitted in evidence by the turnkeys, and was proved by the appearance of the prison tables, which bore the marks of gaming-boards deeply cut into them. Prisoners confessed that it was a favourite occupation, the chief games being “shoving halfpence” on the table, pitch in the hole, cribbage, dominoes, and common tossing, at which as much as four or five shillings would change hands in an hour.

But this was not the only amusement. Most of the wards took in the daily papers, the most popular being the ‘Times,’ ‘Morning Herald,’ and ‘Morning Chronicle’; on Sunday the ‘Weekly Dispatch,’ ‘Bell’s Life,’ and the ‘Weekly Messenger.’ The newsman had free access to the prison; he passed in unsearched and unexamined, and, unaccompanied by an officer, went at once to his customers, who bought their paper and paid for it themselves. The news-vendor was also a tobacconist, and he had thus ample means of introducing to the prisoners the prohibited but always much-coveted and generally procurable weed. In the same way the wardsman laid in his stock to be retailed. Other light literature besides the daily journals were in circulation: novels, flash songs, play-books, such as ‘Jane Shore,’ ‘Grimm’s German Tales,’ with Cruikshank’s illustrations, and publications which in these days would have been made the subject of a criminal prosecution. One of these, published by Stockdale, the inspectors styled “a book of the most disgusting nature.”[83] There was also a good supply of Bibles and prayers, the donation of a philanthropic gentleman, Captain Brown, but these, particularly the Bibles, bore little appearance of having been used. Drink, in more or less unlimited quantities, was still to be had. Spirits certainly were now excluded; but a potman, with full permission of the sheriffs, brought in beer for sale from a neighbouring public-house, and visited all the wards with no other escort than the prisoner gatesman. The quantity to be issued per head was limited by the prison regulations to one pint, but no steps were taken to prevent any prisoner from obtaining more if he could pay for it. The beer-man brought in as much as he pleased; he sold it without the controlling presence of an officer. Not only did prisoners come again and again for a “pint,” but large quantities were carried off to the wards to be drunk later in the day.

There were more varied, and at times, especially when beer had circulated freely, more uproarious diversions. Wrestling, in which legs were occasionally broken, was freely indulged in; also such low games as “cobham,” leap-frog, puss in the corner, and “fly the garter,” for which purpose the rugs were spread out to prevent feet slipping on the floor. Feasting alternated with fighting. The weekly introduction of food, to which I shall presently refer, formed the basis of luxurious banquets, washed down by liquor and enlivened by flash songs and thrilling long-winded descriptions of robberies and other “plants.” There was much swearing and bad language, the very worst that could be used, from the first thing in the morning to the last thing at night.[84] New arrivals, especially the innocent and still guileless debutant, were tormented with rude horse-play, and assailed by the most insulting “chaff.” If any man presumed to turn in too early he was “toed,” that is to say, a string was fastened to his big toe while he was asleep, and he was dragged from off his mat, or his bedclothes were drawn away across the room. The ragged part of the prisoners were very anxious to destroy the clothes of the better dressed, and often lighted small pieces of cloth, which they dropped smouldering into their fellow-prisoners’ pockets. Often the victim, goaded to madness, attacked his tormentors; a fight was then certain to follow. These fights sometimes took place in the daytime, when a ring was regularly formed, and two or three stood by the door to watch for the officer’s approach. More often they occurred at night, and were continued to the bitter end. The prisoners in this way administered serious punishment on one another. Black eyes and broken noses were always to be seen.

More cruel injuries were common enough, which did not result from honest hand-to-hand fights. The surgeon’s journal produced to the inspectors contained numerous entries of terrible wounds inflicted in a cowardly way. “A serious accident: one of the prisoners had a hot poker run into his eye.” “A lad named Matthew White has had a wound in his eye by a bone thrown at him, which very nearly destroyed vision.” “There was a disturbance in the transport yard yesterday evening, and the police were called in. During the tumult a prisoner, ... who was one of the worst of the rioters, was bruised about the head and body.” “Watkins’ knee-joint is very severely injured.” “A prisoner Baxter is in the infirmary in consequence of a severe injury to his wrist-joint.” Watkins’ case, referred to above, is made the subject of another and a special report from the surgeon. He was in the transport side, when one of his fellows, in endeavouring to strike another prisoner with a large poker, missed his aim, and struck Watkins’ knee.... Violent inflammation and extensive suppuration ensued, and for a considerable time amputation seemed inevitable. After severe suffering prolonged for many months, the inflammation was subdued, but the cartilage of the knee-joint was destroyed, and he was crippled for life. On another occasion a young man, who was being violently teased, seized a knife and stabbed his tormentor in the back. The prisoner who used the knife was secured, but it was the wardsman, and not the officers, to whom the report was made, and no official inquiry or punishment followed.

Matters were at times still worse, and the rioting went on to such dangerous lengths as to endanger the safety of the building. On one occasion a disturbance was raised which was not quelled until windows had been broken and forms and tables burnt. The officers were obliged to go in among the prisoners to restore order with drawn cutlasses, but the presence and authority of the governor himself became indispensable. The worst fights occurred on Sunday afternoons; but nearly every night the act of locking up became, from the consequent removal of all supervision, the signal for the commencement of obscene talk, revelry, and violence.

Other regulations laid down by the Gaol Acts were still defied. One of these was that prisoners should be restricted to the gaol allowance of food; but all could still obtain as much extra, and of a luxurious kind, as their friends chose to bring them in. Visitors were still permitted to come with supplies on given days of the week, about the only limitation being that the food should be cooked, and cold; hot meat, poultry, and fish were also forbidden. But the inspectors found in the ward cupboards mince-pies and other pasties, cold joints, hams, and so forth. Many other articles were introduced by visitors, including money, tobacco, pipes, and snuff. From the same source came the two or three strong files which the inspectors found in one ward, together with four bradawls, several large iron spikes, screws, nails, and knives; “all of them instruments calculated to facilitate attempts at breaking out of prison, and capable of becoming most dangerous weapons in the hands of desperate and determined men.” The nearly indiscriminate admission of visitors, although restricted to certain days, continued to be an unmixed evil. The untried might see their friends three times a week, the convicted only once. On these occasions precautions were supposed to be taken to exclude bad characters, yet many persons of notoriously loose life continually obtained egress. Women saw men if they merely pretended to be wives; even boys were visited by their sweethearts. Decency was, however, insured by a line of demarcation, and visitors were kept upon each side of a separated double iron railing. But no search was made to intercept prohibited articles at the gate, and there was no permanent gate-keeper, which would have greatly helped to keep out bad characters. Some idea of the difficulty and inconvenience of these lax regulations as regards visiting, may be gathered from the statement that as many as three hundred were often admitted on the same day—enough to altogether upset what small show of decorum and discipline was still preserved in the prison. Perhaps the worst feature of the visiting system was the permission accorded to male prisoners “under the name of husbands, brothers, and sons” to have access to the female side on Sundays and Wednesdays, in order to visit their supposed relations there.

On this female side, where the Ladies’ Association still reigned supreme, more system and a greater semblance of decorum was maintained. But there were evils akin to those on the male side, prominent amongst which was the undue influence accorded to prisoners. A female prisoner kept the registers. Wards-women were allowed much the same authority, with the same temptations to excess, and intoxication was not unknown among them and others. The clothing was still meagre and ragged: the washing places insufficient, and wanting in decency; in some yards the pump was the only provision, and this in a place within sight of visitors, of the windows of the male turnkeys, and unprotected from the weather. There was the same crowding in the sleeping arrangements as on the male side; the same scarcity of bedding. It was a special evil of this part of the prison, that the devotional exercises, originally so profitable, had grown into a kind of edifying spectacle, which numbers of well-meaning but inquisitive people were anxious to witness. Thus, when the inspectors visited there were twenty-three strangers, and only twenty-eight prisoners. The presence of so many strangers, many of them gentlemen, distracted the prisoners’ attention, and could not be productive of much good.

The separation of the sexes was not indeed rigidly carried out in Newgate as yet. We have seen that male prisoners visited their female relations and friends on the female side. Besides this, the gatesman who prepared the briefs had interviews with female prisoners alone while taking their instructions; a female came alone and unaccompanied by a matron to clean the governor’s office in the male prison; male prisoners carried coal into the female prison, when they saw and could speak or pass letters to the female prisoners; and the men could also at any time go for tea, coffee, and sugar to Mrs. Brown’s shop, which was inside the female gate. In the bail-dock, where most improper general association was permitted, the female prisoners were often altogether in the charge of male turnkeys. The governor was also personally responsible for gross contravention of this rule of separation, and was in the habit of drawing frequently upon the female prison for prisoners to act as domestic servants in his own private dwelling. Some member of the Ladies’ Association observed and commented upon the fact that a “young rosy-cheeked girl” had been kept by the governor from transportation, while older women in infirm health were sent across the seas. His excuse was that he had given the girl his promise that she should not go, an assumption of prerogative which by no means rested with him; but he afterwards admitted that the girl had been recommended to him by the principal turnkey, who knew something of her friends. This woman was really his servant, employed to help in cleaning, and taken on whenever there was extra work to be done. The governor had a great dislike, he said, to seeing strangers in his house. This girl had been first engaged on account of the extra work entailed by certain prisoners committed by the House of Commons, who had been lodged in the governor’s own house. The house at this time was full of men and visitors; waiters came in from the taverns with meals. Some of the prisoners had their valets, and all these were constantly in and out of the kitchen where this female prisoner was employed. There was revelling and roystering, as usual, with “high life below-stairs.” The governor sent down wine on festive occasions, of which no doubt the prisoner housemaid had her share. It can hardly be denied that the governor, in his treatment of this woman, was acting in flagrant contravention of all rules.

Eighteen years had elapsed since the formation of the “Ladies’ Association,” and Mrs. Fry with her colleagues still laboured assiduously in Newgate, devoting themselves mainly to the female prison, although their ministrations were occasionally extended to the male side. The inspectors paid tribute to the excellence of the motives of these philanthropic ladies, and recognized the good they did. They had introduced “much order and cleanliness,” had provided work for those who had hitherto passed their time in total idleness, and had made the treatment of female transports on the way to New South Wales their especial care. They had tried, moreover, by their presence and their pious, disinterested efforts, to restrain the dissolute manners and vicious language of the unhappy and depraved inmates. But it was already plain that they constituted an independent authority within the gaols; they were frequently in conflict with the chaplain, who not strangely resented the orders issued by the aldermen, that women should be frequently kept from chapel in order that they might attend the ladies’ lectures and exhortations. The admission of a crowd of visitors to assist in these lay services has already been remarked upon; as the inspectors pointed out, it had the bad effect of distracting attention, it tended to “dissipate reflection, diminish the gloom of the prison, and mitigate the punishment which the law has sentenced the prisoner to undergo.”

It is to be feared too that although the surface was thus whitewashed and decorous, much that was vicious still festered and rankled beneath, and that when the restraining influences of the ladies were absent, the female prisoners relapsed into immoral and uncleanly discourse. Even in the daytime, when supervision was withdrawn, “the language used to be dreadful,” says one of the women when under examination; “swearing and talking of what crimes they had committed, and how they had done it.” Another witness declared she had heard the most shocking language in the yard; she said “she had never witnessed such scenes before, and hopes she never shall again—it was dreadful!” After locking-up time, which varied, as on the male side, according to the daylight, the scenes were often riotous and disgraceful. The poor, who could afford no luxuries, went to bed early, but were kept awake by the revelries of the rich, who supped royally on the supplies provided from outside, and kept it up till ten or eleven o’clock. There were frequent quarrels and fights; shoes and other missiles were freely bandied about; and with all this “the most dreadful oaths, the worst language, too bad to be repeated,” were made use of every night.

Bad as were the various parts of the gaol already dealt with, there still remained one where the general callous indifference and mismanagement culminated in cruel culpable neglect. The condition of the capitally-convicted prisoners after sentence was still very disgraceful. The side they occupied, still known as the press-yard, consisted of two dozen rooms and fifteen cells. In these various chambers, until just before the inspectors made their report, all classes of the condemned, those certain to suffer, and the larger number who were nearly certain of a reprieve, were jumbled up together, higgledy-piggledy, the old and the young, the murderer and the child who had broken into a dwelling.[85] All privacy was impossible under the circumstances. At times the numbers congregated together were very great; as many as fifty and sixty, even more, were crowded indiscriminately into the press-yard. The better-disposed complained bitterly of what they had to endure; one man declared that the language of the condemned rooms was disgusting, that he was dying a death every day in being compelled to associate with such characters. In the midst of the noisy and blasphemous talk no one could pursue his meditations; any who tried to pray became the sport and ridicule of his brutal fellows.

Owing to the repeated entreaties of the criminals who could hardly hope to escape the gallows, some show of classification was carried out, and when the inspectors visited Newgate they found the three certain to die in a day-room by themselves; in a second room were fourteen more who had every hope of a reprieve. The whole of these seventeen had, however, a common airing-yard, and took their exercise there at the same time, so that men in the most awful situation, daily expecting to be hanged, were associated continually with a number of those who could look with certainty on a mitigation of punishment. The latter, light-hearted and reckless, conducted themselves in the most unseemly fashion, and “with as much indifference as the inmates of the other parts of the prison.” They amused themselves after their own fashion; played all day long at blind-man’s-buff and leap-frog, or beat each other with a knotted handkerchief, laughing and uproarious, utterly unmindful of the companionship of men upon whom lay the shadow of an impending shameful death. “Men whose cases were dangerous, and those most seriously inclined, complained of these annoyances,” so subversive of meditation, so disturbing to the thoughts; they suffered sickening anxiety, and wished to be locked up alone. This indiscriminate association lasted for months, during the whole of which time the unhappy convicts who had but little hope of commutation were exposed to the mockery of their reckless associates.

The brutal callousness of the bulk of the inmates of the press-yard may be gathered from the prison punishment-book, which frequently recorded such entries as the following: “Benjamin Vines and Daniel Ward put in irons for two days for breaking the windows of the day room in the condemned cells.” “Joseph Coleman put in irons for three days for striking one of the prisoners,” in the same place. There were disputes and quarrels constantly among these doomed men; it was a word and blow, an argument clenched always with a fight. The more peaceably disposed found some occupation in making Newgate tokens, leaden hearts,[86] and “grinding the impressions off penny-pieces, then pricking figures or words on them to give to their friends as memorials.” Turnkeys occasionally visited the press-yard, but its occupants were under little or no control. The chaplain, who might have been expected to make these men his peculiar care, and who at one time had visited them frequently, often several times a week, had relaxed his efforts, because, according to his own account, he was so frequently stopped in the performance of his duties. In his evidence before the inspectors he declared that “for years he gave his whole time to his duties, from an early hour in the morning till late in the afternoon. He left off because he was so much interfered with and laughed at, and from seeing that no success attended his efforts, owing to the evils arising from association.” Latterly his ministrations to the condemned had been restricted to a visit on Sunday afternoons, and occasionally about once a fortnight on a week-day.

It is only fair to Mr. Cotton to add that, according to his own journal, he was unremitting in his attentions to convicts who were actually cast for death, and the day of whose execution was fixed. He had no doubt a difficult mission to discharge; on the one hand, the Ladies’ Association, supported and encouraged by public approval, trenched upon his peculiar province; on the other, the governor of the gaol sneered at his zeal, stigmatized his often most just strictures on abuses as “a bundle of nonsense,” and the aldermen, when he appealed to them for protection and countenance, generally sided with his opponents. Nevertheless the inspectors summed up against him. While admitting that he had had many difficulties to contend with, and that he had again and again protested against the obstacles thrown in his way, the inspectors “cannot forbear expressing their opinion that he might have shown greater perseverance, in the face of impediments confessedly discouraging,” as regards the private teaching of prisoners; and they went on to say that “a resolved adherence, in spite of discouragements the most disheartening, to that line of conduct which his duty imposed on him, would, it is probable, have eventually overcome the reluctance of some of the prisoners at least, and would have possessed so much moral dignity as effectually to rebuke and abash the profane spirit of the more insolent and daring of the criminals.”

The lax discipline maintained in Newgate was still further deteriorated by the presence of two other classes of prisoners who ought never to have been inmates of such a gaol. One of these were the criminal lunatics, who were at this time and for long previous continuously imprisoned there. As the law stood since the passing of the 9th Geo. IV. c. 40, any two justices might remove a prisoner found to be insane, either on commitment or arraignment, to an asylum, and the Secretary of State had the same power as regards any who became insane while undergoing sentence. These powers were not invariably put in force, and there were in consequence many unhappy lunatics in Newgate and other gaols, whose proper place was the asylum. At the time the Lords’ Committee sat there were eight thus retained in Newgate, and a return in the appendix of the Lords’ report gives a total of thirty-nine lunatics confined in various gaols, many of them guilty of murder and other serious crimes. The inspectors in the following year, on examining the facts, found that some of these poor creatures had been in confinement for long periods: at Newgate and York Castle as long as five years; “at Ilchester and Morpeth for seven years; at Warwick for eight years, at Buckingham and Hereford for eleven years, at Appleby for thirteen years, at Anglesea for fifteen years, at Exeter for sixteen years, and at Pembroke for not less a period than twenty-four years.”

It was manifestly wrong that such persons, “visited by the most awful of calamities,” should be detained in a common prison. Not only did their presence tend greatly to interfere with the discipline of the prison, but their condition was deplorable in the extreme. The lunatic became the sport of the idle and the depraved. His cure was out of the question; he was placed in a situation “beyond all others calculated to confirm his malady and prolong his sufferings.” The matter was still further complicated at Newgate by the presence within the walls of sham lunatics. Some of those included in the category had actually been returned as sane from the asylum to which they had been sent, and there was always some uncertainty as to who was mad and who not. Prisoners indeed were known to boast that they had saved their necks by feigning insanity. It was high time that the unsatisfactory state of the law as regards the treatment of criminal lunatics should be remedied, and not the least of the good services rendered by the new inspectors was their inquiry into the status of these unfortunate people, and their recommendation to improve it.

The other inmates of the prison of an exceptional character, and exempted from the regular discipline, such as it was, were the ten persons committed to Newgate by the House of Commons in 1835. These were the gentlemen concerned in the bribery case at Ipswich in 1835, when a petition was presented against the return of Messrs. Adam Dundas and Fitzroy Kelly. Various witnesses, including Messrs. J. B. Dasent, Pilgrim, Bond, and Clamp, had refused to give evidence before the House of Commons’ Committee; a Speaker’s warrant was issued for their arrest when they absconded. Mr. J. E. Sparrow and Mr. Clipperton, the parliamentary agents of the members whose election was impugned, were implicated in aiding and abetting the others to abscond, and a Mr. O’Mally, counsel for the two M.P.’s, was also concerned. Pilgrim and Dasent were caught and given into the custody of the sergeant-at-arms, and the rest were either arrested or they surrendered. A resolution at once passed the House without division to commit the whole to Newgate, where they remained for various terms. Dasent and Pilgrim were released in ten days, on making due submission. O’Mally sent in a medical certificate, declaring that the imprisonment was endangering his life, and after some question he was also released. The rest were detained for more than a month, it being considered that they were the most guilty, as being either professional agents, who advised the others to abscond, or witnesses who did not voluntarily come forward when the chance was given them.

Many of the old customs once prevalent in the State Side, so properly condemned and abolished, were revived for the convenience of these gentlemen, whose incarceration was thus rendered as little like imprisonment as possible. A certain number, who could afford the high rate of a guinea per diem, fixed by the under sheriff, were lodged in the governor’s house, slept there, and had their meals provided for them from the Sessions House or London Coffee-House. A few others, who could not afford a payment of more than half a guinea, were permitted to monopolize a part of the prison infirmary, where the upper ward was exclusively appropriated to their use. They also had their meals sent in, and, with the food, wine almost ad libitum. A prisoner, one of the wardsmen, waited on those in the infirmary; the occupants of the governor’s house had their own servants, or the governor’s. As a rule, visitors, many of them persons of good position, came and went all day long, and as late as nine at night; some to the infirmary, many more to the governor’s house. There were no restraints, cards and backgammon were played, and the time passed in feasting and revelry. Even Mr. Cope admitted that the committal of this class of prisoners to Newgate was most inconvenient, and the inspectors expressed themselves still more strongly in reprehension of the practice. The infirmary at this particular period epitomized the condition of the gaol at large. It was diverted from its proper uses, and, as the “place of the greatest comfort,” was allotted to persons who should not have been sent to Newgate at all. All the evils of indiscriminate association were strongly accentuated by the crowd collected within its narrow limits. “It may easily be imagined,” say the inspectors, in speaking of the prison generally, “what must be the state of discipline in a place filled with characters so various as were assembled there, where the tried and the untried, the sick and the healthy, the sane and the insane, the young and the old, the trivial offender and the man about to suffer the extreme penalty of the law, are all huddled together without discrimination, oversight, or control.”

Enough has probably been extracted from this most damnatory report to give a complete picture of the disgraceful state in which Newgate still remained in 1835. The inspectors, however, honestly admitted that although the site of the prison was convenient, its construction was as bad as bad could be. Valuable space was cumbered with many long and winding passages, numerous staircases, and unnecessarily thick and cumbrous inner walls. The wards were in some cases spacious, but they were entirely unsuited for separation or the inspection of prisoners. The yards were narrow and confined, mainly because the ground plan was radically vicious. These were evils inseparable from the place. But there were others remediable under a better system of management. More attention to ventilation, which was altogether neglected and inadequate, would have secured a better atmosphere for the unhappy inmates, who constantly breathed an air heavy, and, when the wards were first opened in the morning, particularly offensive.

Again, the discipline commonly deemed inseparable from every place of durance was entirely wanting. The primary object of committing a prisoner to gaol, as the inspectors pointed out, was to deter not only the criminal himself, but others from crime, and “to dispose him, by meditation and seclusion, to return to an honest life.” But at Newgate the convicted prisoner, instead of privation and hard fare, “is permitted to purchase whatever his own means or the means of his friends in or out of prison can afford, and he can almost invariably procure the luxuries of his class of life, beer and tobacco, in abundance. Instead of seclusion and meditation, his time is passed in the midst of a body of criminals of every class and degree, in riot, debauchery, and gaming, vaunting his own adventures, or listening to those of others; communicating his own skill and aptitude in crime, or acquiring the lessons of greater adepts. He has access to newspapers, and of course prefers that description which are expressly prepared for his own class, and which abound in vulgar adventure in criminal enterprise, and in the histories of the police, the gaol, and the scaffold. He is allowed intercourse with prostitutes who, in nine cases out of ten, have originally conduced to his ruin; and his connection with them is confirmed by that devotion and generosity towards their paramours in adversity for which these otherwise degraded women are remarkable. Having thus passed his time, he returns a greater adept in crime, with a wider acquaintance among criminals, and, what perhaps is even more injurious to him, is generally known to all the worst men in the country; not only without the inclination, but almost without the ability of returning to an honest life.”

These pungent and well-grounded strictures applied with still greater force to the unconvicted prisoner, the man who came to the prison innocent, and still uncontaminated, to be subjected to the same baneful influences, and to suffer the same moral deterioration, whether ultimately convicted or set free. The whole system, or more correctly the want of system, was baneful and pernicious to the last degree. The evils of such association were aggravated by the unbroken idleness; one “evil inflamed the other;” reformation or any kind of moral improvement was impossible; the prisoner’s career was inevitably downward, till he struck the lowest depths. “Forced and constant intercourse with the most depraved individuals of his own class; the employment of those means and agents by which the lowest passions and the most vulgar propensities of man are perpetually kept in the highest state of excitement—drink, gaming, obscene and blasphemous language; utter idleness, the almost unrestricted admission of money and luxuries; uncontrolled conversation with visitors of the very worst description—prostitutes, thieves, receivers of stolen goods; all the tumultuous and diversified passions and emotions which circumstances like these must necessarily generate, forbid the faintest shadow of a hope that in a soil so unfavourable for moral culture, any awakening truth, salutary exhortation, or imperfect resolutions of amendment can take root or grow.”

Strong as were the foregoing remarks, the inspectors wound up their report in still more trenchant language, framing a terrible indictment against those responsible for the condition of Newgate. Their words deserve to be quoted in full.

“We cannot close these remarks,” say the inspectors, “without an expression of the painful feelings with which we submit to your Lordship[87] this picture of the existing state of Newgate. That in this vast metropolis, the centre of wealth, civilization, and information; distinguished as the seat of religion, worth, and philanthropy, where is to be found in operation every expedient by which Ignorance may be superseded by Knowledge, Idleness by Industry, and Suffering by Benevolence; that in the metropolis of this highly-favoured country, to which the eyes of other lands turn for example, a system of prison discipline such as that enforced in Newgate should be for a number of years in undisturbed operation, not only in contempt of religion and humanity, but in opposition to the recorded denunciations of authority, and in defiance of the express enactments of the law, is indeed a subject which cannot but impress every considerate mind with humiliation and sorrow. We trust, however, that the day is at hand when this stain will be removed from the character of the city of London, and when the first municipal authority of our land will be no longer subjected to the reproach of fostering an institution which outrages the rights and feelings of humanity, defeats the ends of justice, and disgraces the profession of a Christian country.”

The publication of this report raised a storm in the city, and the corporation was roused to make an immediate protest. A committee of aldermen was forthwith appointed to report upon the inspectors’ report, and the result was another lengthy blue book, printed in the parliamentary papers, 1836, traversing where it was possible the statements of the inspectors, and offering explanation and palliation of such evils as could not be denied. The inspectors retorted without loss of time, reiterating their charges, and pointing out that the committee of aldermen by its own admission justified the original allegations. It was impossible to deny the indiscriminate association; the gambling, drinking, smoking, quarrelling in the gaol; the undue authority given to prisoners, the levying of garnish under another name, the neglect of the condemned convicts, the filthy condition of the wards, the insufficiency of bedding and clothing, the misemployment of officers and prisoners by the governor. The corporation evidently had the worst of it, and began to feel the necessity for undertaking the great work of reform. Next year we find the inspectors expressing their satisfaction that “the full and faithful exposure which we felt it our duty to make of Newgate has been productive of at least some advantage, inasmuch as it has aroused the attention of those upon whom parliamentary reports and grand jury presentments had hitherto failed to make the slightest impression.”

The measures of improvement introduced were mainly as follows: the fixing of “inspection holes” in the doors and walls, so as to insure more supervision; of windows opening into the well-holes, to give better light and ventilation; the construction of bed-places, three tiers high alongside the walls for males, two tiers for females; the provision of dining-rooms and dining-tables. The infirmary was enlarged, the admission of visitors limited, and the passing of articles prevented by a wire screen. The windows were to be glazed and painted to prevent prisoners from looking out; baths, fumigating places for clothing, wash-house, and the removal of dust-bins, completed the new arrangements in the main prison. In the press-yard, the press-room and ward above it were parcelled out into nine separate sleeping cells; each was provided with an iron bedstead, and a small desk at which the condemned man might read or write. But the one great and most crying evil remained unremedied. “The mischief of gaol associations,” say the inspectors, “which has been demonstrably proved to be the fruitful source of all the abuses and irregularities which have so long disgraced Newgate, is not only permitted still to exist in the prison, but is rendered more powerful than before.”... In endeavouring to arrest contamination, prisoners were more closely confined, and associated in smaller numbers; but this had the effect of throwing them into closer contact, and of making them more intimately acquainted with, more directly influential upon, one another.

In the inspectors’ fourth report, dated 1839, they return to the charge, and again call the corporation to task for their mismanagement of Newgate. Abuses and irregularities, which had been partially remedied by the reform introduced in 1837, were once more in the ascendant. “In our late visits,” they say, “we have seen manifest indications of a retrograde movement in this respect, and a tendency to return to much of that laxity and remissness which formerly marked the management of this prison.” Again the following year the inspectors repeat their charge. “The prominent evils of this prison (Newgate)—evils which the alterations made within the last four years have failed to remove—are the association of prisoners, and the unusual contamination to which such association gives rise. For nearly twenty-two hours out of the twenty-four the prisoners are locked up, during which time no officer is stationed in the ward with them.” They go on to say—“Newgate is only less extensively injurious than formerly because it is less crowded. The effects of the imprisonment are to vitiate its inmates, to extend their acquaintanceship with each other, to corrupt the prisoner charged with an offence of which he may be innocent, and to confirm in guilt the young and inexperienced offender.”

The reports as the years flow on reiterate the same complaints. Much bitterness of feeling is evidently engendered, and the corporation grows more and more angry with the inspectors. The prison officials appear to be on the side of the inspectors, to the great dissatisfaction of the corporation, who claimed the full allegiance and support of its servants. In a resolution passed by the Court of Aldermen on 18th March, 1842, I find it ordered “that the ordinary of Newgate be restricted from making any communications to the Home Office or the Inspectors of Prisons, and that he be required wholly to confine himself to the performance of his duty as prescribed by Act of Parliament.” The inspectors were not to be deterred, however, by any opposition from the earnest discharge of their functions, and continued to report against Newgate. In their tenth report they state that they are compelled by an imperative sense of duty to advert in terms of decided condemnation to the lamentable condition of the prisons of the city of London,—Newgate, Giltspur St. Compter, and the City Bridewell,—in which the master evil of gaol association and consequent contamination still continues to operate directly to the encouragement of crime. “The plan adopted for ventilating the dining-room on the ‘master’s side’ and that of the middle yard is very inefficient; it consists of several circular perforations, about two inches in diameter, slanting downwards from the top of the walls to the outside adjoining the slaughter-houses of Newgate market; and occasionally, in hot weather, instead of ventilating the apartments, they only serve to convey the offensive effluvia arising from the decaying animal matter into the dining-rooms. Sometimes the stench in hot weather is said to be very bad. Many rats also come through these so-called ventilators, as they open close to the ground at the back of the prison.” At the same time the inspectors animadvert strongly upon the misconduct of prisoners and the frequency of prison punishments, both offences and punishments affording a sufficient index to the practices going forward; and they wind up by declaring that a strict compliance with their duties gave them no choice “but to report matters as we found them, and again and again to protest against Newgate as it at present exists.”

No complete and permanent improvement was indeed possible while Newgate remained unchanged. It was not till the erection of the new prison at Holloway in 1850, and the entire internal reconstruction of Newgate according to new ideas, that the evils so justly complained of and detailed in this chapter were entirely removed. But these are matters which will occupy a later page in my narrative.

CHAPTER VI.
EXECUTIONS (continued).

Executions not always in front of Newgate after discontinuance of Tyburn—Old Bailey by degrees monopolizes the business—Description of the new gallows—Same system had already been used in Dublin—“The fall of the leaf”—Last case of burning before Newgate—Phœbe Harris, in 1788—Crowds as great as ever at the Old Bailey, and as brutal as of old—Pieman, ballad-monger, and “rope”-seller did a roaring trade—Governor Wall—His demeanour and dress—Enormous crowd at Wall’s execution—Also at that of Holloway and Haggerty—Frightful catastrophe and terrible loss of life in the crowd—The same anticipated at execution of Bellingham, but avoided by extreme precautions taken—Crowds to see Fauntleroy and Courvoisier suffer—Description of an execution in 1851—The demeanour, generally, of the condemned—Long protracted uncertainty as to their fate—Awful levity displayed—Reasons for delay—The Recorder’s report—Its arrival—Communicated to convicts by chaplain—Tenderness really shown to those certain to die—Chaplain improves the occasion in preaching the condemned sermon—The chapel service on day it was preached described—Demeanour of the condemned described in detail—Abstract of a condemned sermon—Service and returning thanks by the respited the day after the execution—Callousness of those present—Crowded congregation to hear Courvoisier’s condemned sermon, and dense throng to see him hanged—Amelioration of the criminal code—Executions more rare—Capital punishment gradually restricted to murderers—Dissection of the bodies abolished—Some details of dissection—Public exhibition of bodies also discontinued—The body of Williams, who murdered the Marrs, so shown—Hanging in chains given up—Failures at executions—Culprits fight for life—Case of Charles White, of Luigi Buranelli, of William Bousfield—Calcraft and his method of hanging—Other hangmen—Story of the cost of a hangman.

I PROPOSE to return now to the subject of Newgate executions, which we left at the time of the discontinuance of the long-practised procession to Tyburn. The reasons for this change were fully set forth in a previous chapter.[88] The terrible spectacle was as demoralizing to the public, for whose admonition it was intended, as the exposure was brutal and cruel towards the principal actors. The decision to remove the scene of action to the immediate front of the gaol itself was in the right direction, as making the performance shorter and diminishing the area of display. But the Old Bailey was not exclusively used; at first, and for some few years after 1784, executions took place occasionally at a distance from Newgate. This was partly due to the survival of the old notion that the scene of the crime ought also to witness the retribution; partly perhaps because residents in and about the Old Bailey raised a loud protest against the constant erection of the scaffold in their neighbourhood. As regards the first, I find that in 1786 John Hogan, the murderer of a Mr. Odell, an attorney who resided in Charlotte Street, Rathbone Place, was executed on a gibbet in front of his victim’s house. Lawrence Jones, a burglar, was in 1793 ordered for execution in Hatton Garden, near the house he had robbed; and when he evaded the sentence by suicide, his body was exhibited in the same neighbourhood, “extended upon a plank on the top of an open cart, in his clothes, and fettered.” Again, as late as 1809 and 1812, Execution Dock, on the banks of the Thames, was still retained. Here John Sutherland, commander of the British armed transport ‘The Friends,’ suffered on the 29th June, 1809, for the murder of his cabin-boy, whom he stabbed after much ill-usage on board the ship as it lay in the Tagus. On the 18th December, 1812, two sailors, Charles Palm and Sam Tilling, were hanged at the same place for the murder of their captain, James Keith, of the trading vessel ‘Adventure,’ upon the high seas. They were taken in a cart to the place of execution, amidst a vast concourse of people. “Palm, as soon as he was seated in the cart, put a quid of tobacco into his mouth, and offered another to his companion, who refused it with indignation.... Some indications of pity were offered for the fate of Tilling; Palm, execration alone.”[89]

But the Old Bailey gradually, and in spite of all objections urged, monopolized the dread business of execution. The first affair of the kind on this spot was on the 3rd December, 1783, when, in pursuance of an order issued by the Recorder to the sheriffs of Middlesex and the keeper of His Majesty’s gaol, Newgate, a scaffold was erected in front of that prison for the execution of several convicts named by the Recorder. “Ten were executed; the scaffold hung with black; and the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, having petitioned the sheriffs to remove the scene of execution to the old place, were told that the plan had been well considered, and would be persevered in.” The following 23rd April, it is stated that the malefactors ordered for execution on the 18th inst. were brought out of Newgate about eight in the morning, and suspended on a gallows of a new construction. “After hanging the usual time they were taken down, and the machine cleared away in half-an-hour. By practice the art is much improved, and there is no part of the world in which villains are hanged in so neat a manner, and with so little ceremony.”

A full description of this new gallows, which was erected in front of the debtors’ door, is to be found in contemporary records. “The criminals are not exposed to view till they mount the fatal stage. The last part of the stage, or that next to the gaol, is enclosed by a temporary roof, under which are placed two seats for the reception of the sheriffs, one on each side of the stairs leading to the scaffold. Round the north, west, and south sides are erected galleries for the reception of officers, attendants, &c., and at the distance of five feet from the same is fixed a strong railing all round the scaffold to enclose a place for the constables. In the middle of this machinery is placed a movable platform, in form of a trap-door, ten feet long by eight wide, on the middle of which is placed the gibbet, extending from the gaol across the Old Bailey. This movable platform is raised six inches higher than the rest of the scaffold, and on it the convicts stand; it is supported by two beams, which are held in their place by bolts. The movement of the lever withdraws the bolts, the platform falls in;” and this, being much more sudden and regular than that of a cart being drawn away, has the effect of immediate death. A broadsheet dated April 24th, 1787,[90] describing an execution on the newly-invented scaffold before the debtors’ door, Newgate, says, “The scaffold on which these miserable people suffered is a temporary machine which was drawn out of the yard of the sessions house by horses; ... it is supported by strong posts fixed into grooves made in the street; ... the whole is temporary, being all calculated to take to pieces, which are preserved within the prison.”

This contrivance appears to have been copied with improvements from that which had been used in Dublin at a still earlier date, for that city claims the priority in establishing the custom of hanging criminals at the gaol itself. The Dublin “engine of death,” as the gallows are styled in the account from which the following description is taken, consisted of an iron bar parallel to the prison wall, and about four feet from it, but strongly affixed thereto with iron scroll clamps. “From this bar hang several iron loops, in which the halters are tied. Under this bar at a proper distance is a piece of flooring or platform, projecting somewhat beyond the range of the iron bar, and swinging upon hinges affixed to the wall. The entrance upon this floor or leaf is from the middle window over the gate of the prison; and this floor is supported below, while the criminals stand upon it, by two pieces of timber, which are made to slide in and out of the prison wall through apertures made for that purpose. When the criminals are tied up and prepared for their fate, this floor suddenly falls down, upon withdrawing the supporters inwards. They are both drawn at once by a windlass, and the unhappy culprits remain suspended.” This mode of execution, it is alleged, gave rise to the old vulgar “chaff,” “Take care, or you’ll die at the fall of the leaf.” The machinery in use in Dublin is much the same as that employed at many gaols now-a-days. But the fall apart and inwards of two leaves is considered superior. The latter is the method still followed at Newgate.

The sentences inflicted in front of Newgate were not limited to hanging. In the few years which elapsed between the establishment of the gallows at Newgate and the abolition of the practice of burning females for petty treason, more than one woman suffered this penalty at the Old Bailey. One case is preserved by Catnach, that of Phœbe Harris, who in 1788 was “barbariously” (sic in the broadsheet) executed and burnt before Newgate for coining. She is described as a well-made little woman, something more than thirty years of age, of a pale complexion and not disagreeable features. “When she came out of prison she appeared languid and terrified, and trembled greatly as she advanced to the stake, where the apparatus for the punishment she was about to experience seemed to strike her mind with horror and consternation, to the exclusion of all power of recollectedness in preparation for the approaching awful moment.” She walked from the debtors’ door to a stake fixed in the ground about half-way between the scaffold and Newgate Street. She was immediately tied by the neck to an iron bolt fixed near the top of the stake, and after praying fervently for a few minutes, the steps on which she stood were drawn away, and she was left suspended. A chain fastened by nails to the stake was then put round her body by the executioner with his assistants. Two cart-loads of faggots were piled about her, and after she had hung for half-an-hour the fire was kindled. The flames presently burned the halter, the body fell a few inches, and hung then by the iron chain. The fire had not quite burnt out at twelve, in nearly four hours, that is to say. “A great concourse of people attended on this melancholy occasion.”

The change from Tyburn to the Old Bailey had worked no improvement as regards the gathering together of the crowd or its demeanour. As many spectators as ever thronged to see the dreadful show, and they were packed into a more limited space, disporting themselves as heretofore by brutal horse-play, coarse jests, and frantic yells. It was still the custom to offer warm encouragement or bitter disapproval, according to the character and antecedents of the sufferer. The highwayman, whose exploits many in the crowd admired or emulated, was cheered and bidden to die game; the man of better birth could hope for no sympathy, whatever his crime. At the execution of Governor Wall, in 1802, the furious hatred of the mob was plainly apparent in their appalling cries. His appearance on the scaffold was the signal for three prolonged shouts from an innumerable populace, “the brutal effusion of one common sentiment.” It was said that so large a crowd had never collected since the execution of Mrs. Brownrigg, nor had the public indignation risen so high. Pieman and ballad-monger did their usual roaring trade amidst the dense throng. No sooner was the “job” finished than half-a-dozen competitors appeared, each offering the identical rope for sale at a shilling an inch. One was the “yeoman of the halter,” a Newgate official, the executioner’s assistant, whom Mr. J. T. Smith,[91] who was present at the execution, describes as “a most diabolical-looking little wretch—Jack Ketch’s head man.” The yeoman was, however, under-sold by his wife, “Rosy Emma,” exuberant in talk and hissing hot from Pie Corner, where she had taken her morning dose of gin-and-bitters.[92] A little further off, says Mr. Smith, was “a lath of a fellow past three-score years and ten, who had just arrived from the purlieus of Black Boy Alley, woebegone as Romeo’s apothecary, exclaiming, ‘Here’s the identical rope at sixpence an inch.’ ”

Mr. Smith’s account of the condemned convict, whose cell he was permitted to enter, may be inserted here. He was introduced by the ordinary, Dr. Forde, a name familiar to the reader,[93] who met him at the felons’ door “in his canonicals, and with his head as stiffly erect as a sheriff’s coachman.” The ordinary “gravely uttered, ‘Come this way, Mr. Smith.’ As we crossed the press yard a cock crew, and the solitary clanking of a restless chain was dreadfully horrible. The prisoners had not risen.” They entered a “stone cold room,” and were presently joined by the prisoner. “He was death’s counterfeit, tall, shrivelled, and pale; and his soul shot out so piercingly through the port-holes of his head, that the first glance of him nearly petrified me.... His hands were clasped, and he was truly penitent. After the yeoman had requested him to stand up, ‘he pinioned him,’ as the Newgate phrase is, and tied the cord with so little feeling that the governor (Wall), who had not given the wretch his accustomed fee, observed, ‘You have tied me very tight,’ upon which Dr. Forde ordered him to slacken the cord, which he did, but not without muttering. ‘Thank you, sir,’ said the governor to the doctor, ‘it is of little moment.’ He then made some observations to the attendant about the fire, and turning to the doctor, questioned him. ‘Do tell me, sir; I am informed I shall go down with great force; is it so?’ After the construction and action of the machine had been explained, the doctor asked the governor what kind of men he had commanded at Goree, where the murder for which he was condemned had been committed. ‘Sir,’ he answered, ‘they sent me the very riff-raff.’ The poor soul then joined the doctor in prayer, and never did I witness more contrition at any condemned sermon than he then evinced. The sheriff arrived, attended by his officers, to receive the prisoner from the keeper. A new hat was partly flattened on his head, for, owing to its being too small in the crown, it stood many inches too high behind. As we were crossing the press yard, the dreadful execrations of some of the felons so shook his frame that he observed ‘the clock had struck;’ and quickening his pace, he soon arrived at the room where the sheriff was to give a receipt for his body, according to the usual custom. Before the colonel[94] had been pinioned he had pulled out two white handkerchiefs, one of which he bound over his temples so as nearly to conceal his eyes, the other he kept between his hands. Over the handkerchief around his brows he placed a white cap, the new hat being on top of all. He was dressed in a mixed-coloured loose coat with a black collar, swandown waistcoat, blue pantaloons, and white silk stockings. Thus apparelled he ascended the stairs at the debtors’ door, and stepped out on to the platform, to be received, as has been said, by prolonged yells. These evidently deprived him of the small portion of fortitude he had summoned up. He bowed his head under extreme pressure of ignominy, and at his request the ordinary drew the cap further down over his face, when in an instant, without waiting for any signal, the platform dropped, and he was launched into eternity.”

Whenever the public attention had been specially called to a particular crime, either on account of its atrocity, the doubtfulness of the issue, or the superior position of the perpetrator, the attendance at the execution was certain to be tumultuous, and the conduct of the mob disorderly. This was notably the case at the execution of Holloway and Haggerty in 1807, an event long remembered from the fatal and disastrous consequences which followed it. They were accused by a confederate, who, goaded by conscience, had turned approver, of the murder of a Mr. Steele, who kept a lavender warehouse in the city, and who had gardens at Feltham, whither he often went to distil the lavender, returning to London the same evening. One night he was missing, and after a long interval his dead body was discovered, shockingly disfigured, in a ditch. This was in 1802. Four years passed without the detection of the murderers, but in the beginning of 1807 one of them, at that time just sentenced to transportation, made a full confession, and implicated Holloway and Haggerty. They were accordingly apprehended and brought to trial, the informer, Hanfield by name, being accepted as king’s evidence. Conviction followed mainly on his testimony; but the two men, especially Holloway, stoutly maintained their innocence to the last. Very great excitement prevailed in the town throughout the trial, and this greatly increased when the verdict was known.

An enormous crowd assembled to witness the execution, amounting, it was said, to the hitherto unparalleled number of 40,000. By eight o’clock not an inch of ground in front of the platform was unoccupied. The pressure soon became so frightful that many would have willingly escaped from the crowd; but their attempts only increased the general confusion. Very soon women began to scream with terror; some, especially of low stature, found it difficult to remain standing, and several, although held up for some time by the men nearest them, presently fell, and were at once trampled to death. Cries of Murder! murder! were now raised, and added greatly to the horrors of the scene. Panic became general. More women, children, and many men were borne down, to perish beneath the feet of the rest. The most affecting and distressing scene was at Green Arbour Lane, just opposite the debtors’ door of the prison. Here a couple of piemen had been selling their wares; the basket of one of them, which was raised upon a four-legged stool, was upset. The pieman stooped down to pick up his scattered stock, and some of the mob, not seeing what had happened, stumbled over him. No one who fell ever rose again. Among the rest was a woman with an infant at the breast. She was killed, but in the act of falling she forced her child into the arms of a man near her, and implored him in God’s name to save it; the man, needing all his care for his own life, threw the child from him, and it passed along the heads of the crowd, to be caught at last by a person who struggled with it to a cart and deposited it there in safety. In another part seven persons met their death by suffocation.

In this convulsive struggle for bare existence people fought fiercely with one another, and the weakest, of course the women, went under. One cart-load of spectators having broken down, some of its occupants fell off the vehicle, and were instantly trampled to death. This went on for more than an hour, and until the malefactors were cut down and the gallows removed; then the mob began to thin, and the streets were cleared by the city marshals and a number of constables. The catastrophe exceeded the worst anticipations. Nearly one hundred dead and dying lay about; and after all had been removed, the bodies for identification, the wounded to hospitals, a cart-load of shoes, hats, petticoats, and fragments of wearing apparel were picked up. St. Bartholomew’s Hospital was converted into an impromptu Morgue, and all persons who had relatives missing were admitted to identify them. Among the dead was a sailor lad whom no one knew; he had his pockets filled with bread and cheese, and it was generally supposed that he had come a long distance to see the fatal show.

A tremendous crowd assembled when Bellingham was executed in 1812 for the murder of Spencer Percival, at that time prime minister; but there were no serious accidents, beyond those caused by the goring of a maddened, over-driven ox which forced its way through the crowd. Precautions had been taken by the erection of barriers, and the posting of placards at all the avenues to the Old Bailey, on which was printed, “Beware of entering the crowd! Remember thirty poor persons were pressed to death by the crowd when Haggerty and Holloway were executed!” The concourse was very great, notwithstanding these warnings. It was still greater at Fauntleroy’s execution in 1824, when no less than 100,000 persons assembled, it was said. Every window and roof which could command a view of the horrible performance was occupied. All the avenues and approaches, places even whence nothing whatever could be seen of the scaffold, were blocked by persons who had overflowed from the area in front of the gaol. At Courvoisier’s execution in 1840 it was the same, or worse. As early as six a.m. the number assembled already exceeded that seen on ordinary occasions; by seven a.m. the whole space was so thronged that it was impossible to move one way or the other. Some persons were kept for more than five hours standing against the barriers, and many nearly fainted from exhaustion. Every window had its party of occupants; the adjoining roofs were equally crowded. High prices were asked and paid for front seats or good standing room. As much as £5 was given for the attic story of the Lamb’s Coffee House; £2 was a common price for a window. At the George public-house to the south of the drop, Sir W. Watkin Wynn, Bart., hired a room for the night and morning, which he and a large party of friends occupied before and during the execution; in an adjoining house, that of an undertaker, was Lord Alfred Paget, also with several friends. Those who had hired apartments spent the night in them, keeping up their courage with liquids and cigars. Numbers of ladies were present, although the public feeling was much against their attendance. One well-dressed woman fell out of a first-floor window on to the shoulders of the crowd below, but neither she nor any one else was greatly hurt. The city authorities had endeavoured to take all precautions against panic and excitement among the crowd, and caused a number of stout additional barriers to be erected in front of the scaffold, and although one of these gave way owing to the extraordinary pressure, no serious accident occurred.

Some years later an eye-witness published a graphic account of one of these scenes.[95] Soon after midnight on the Sunday night, for by this time the present practice of executing on Monday morning had been pretty generally introduced, the crowd began to congregate in and about the Old Bailey. Gin-shops and coffee-houses were the first to open doors, and touts began to bid for tenants for the various rooms upstairs. Cries of “Comfortable room!” “Excellent situation!” “Beautiful prospect!” “Splendid view!” resounded on every side. By this time the workmen might be heard busily erecting the gallows; the sounds of hammer and saw intermingled with the broad jeers and coarse jests of the rapidly increasing mob. One by one the huge uprights of black timber were fitted together, until presently the huge stage loomed dark above the crowd which was now ranged round the barriers; a throng of people whom neither rain, snow, storm, nor darkness ever hindered from attending the show. They were mainly members of the criminal

classes; their conversation was of companions and associates of former years, long ago imprisoned, transported, hanged, while they, hoary-headed and hardened in guilt, were still at large. They talked of the days when the convicts were hung up a dozen or more in a row; of those who had shown the white, and those who had died game. The approaching ceremony had evidently no terrors for these “idolaters of the gallows.” With them were younger men and women: the former already vowed to the same criminal career, and looking up to their elders with the respect due to successful practitioners; the latter unsexed and brutalized by dissipation, slipshod and slovenly, in crushed bonnet and dirty shawl, the gown fastened by a single hook, their harsh and half-cracked voices full of maudlin, besotted sympathy for those about to die. “Above the murmur and tumult of that noisy assembly, the lowing and bleating of cattle as they were driven into the stalls and pens of Smithfield fell with a strange unnatural sound upon the ear.... Hush! the unceasing murmur of the mob now breaks into a loud deep roar, a sound as if the ocean had suddenly broken through some ancient boundary, against which its ever restless billows had for ages battered; the wide dark sea of heads is all at once in motion; each wave seems trying to overleap the other as they are drawn onwards towards this outlet. Every link in that great human chain is shaken, along the whole lengthened line has the motion jarred, and each in turn sees, coiled up on the floor of the scaffold like a serpent, the hangman’s rope! The human hand that placed it there was only seen for a moment, as it lay, white and ghastly, upon the black boards, and then again was as suddenly withdrawn, as if ashamed of the deed it had done. The loud shout of the multitude once more subsided, or only fell upon the abstracted ear like the dreamy murmur of an ocean shell. Then followed sounds more distinct and audible, in which ginger-beer, pies, fried fish, sandwiches, and fruit were vended under the names of notorious murderers, highwaymen, and criminals, famous in the annals of Newgate for the hardihood they had displayed in the hour of execution, when they terminated their career of crime at the gallows. Threading his way among these itinerant vendors was seen the meek-faced deliverer of tracts, the man of good intentions, now bonneted, now laughed at, the skirt of his seedy black coat torn across; yet, though pulled right and left, or sent headlong into the crowd by the swing of some brutal and muscular arm, never once from that pale face passed away its benign and patient expression, but ever the same form moved along in the fulfilment of his mission, in spite of all persecution. Another fight followed the score which had already taken place; this time two women were the combatants. Blinded with their long hair, they tore at each other like two furies; their bonnets and caps were trodden underfoot in the kennel, and lay disregarded beside the body of the poor dog which, while searching for its master in the crowd, was an hour before kicked to death by the savage and brutal mob.

“Another deep roar, louder than any which had preceded it, broke from the multitude. Then came the cry of ‘Hats off!’ and ‘Down in front!’ as at a theatre. It was followed by the deep and solemn booming of the death-bell from the church of St. Sepulchre—the iron knell that rang upon the beating heart of the living man who was about to die; and with blanched cheek, and sinking, we turned away from the scene.”

In thus describing the saturnalia before the gallows I have been drawn on somewhat beyond the period with which I am at present dealing. Let me retrace my steps, and speak more in detail of the treatment of the condemned in those bloodthirsty and brutally indifferent days, and of their demeanour after sentence until the last penalty was paid. One of the worst evils was the terrible and long-protracted uncertainty as to the result. In the case of convicted murderers only was prompt punishment inflicted, and with them indeed this despatch amounted to undue precipitancy. Forty-eight hours was the limit of time allowed to the unhappy man to make his peace, and during that time he was still kept on a bare allowance of bread and water. But the murderers formed only a small proportion of the total number sentenced to death, and for the rest there was a long period of anxious suspense, although in the long run mercy generally prevailed, and very few capitally convicted for crimes less than murder actually suffered. Thus in the years between May 1st, 1827, and 30th April, 1831, no less than four hundred and fifty-one sentences of death for capital crimes were passed at the Old Bailey; but of these three hundred and ninety-six were reversed by the king in council, and only fifty-two were really executed. Already the severity of our criminal code, and the number of capital felonies upon the statute book, had brought a reaction; and while the courts adhered to the letter of the law, appeals were constantly made to the royal prerogative of mercy. This was more particularly the practice in London. Judges on assize were satisfied with simply recording a sentence of death against offenders whom they did not think deserved the extreme penalty. At the Old Bailey almost every one capitally convicted by a jury was sentenced to be hanged. The result in the latter case was left in the first place to the king in council, but there was a further appeal then, as now, to the king himself, or practically to the Home Secretary. Neither in town or country were cases entirely taken on their own merits. Convicted offenders might have good or bad luck; they might be arraigned when their particular crime was uncommon, and were then nearly certain to escape; or theirs might be one of many, and it might be considered necessary to “make an example.” In this latter it might fairly be said that a man was put to death less for his own sins than for the crimes of others.

The absurdity of the system, its irregularity and cruelty, were fully touched upon by the inspectors of prisons in their first report. They found at Newgate, under disgraceful conditions as already described,[96] seventeen capital convicts, upon all of whom the sentence of death had been passed. Eventually two only of the whole number suffered; two others were sentenced to three months’ imprisonment, and the balance to varying terms. Nothing could be more strongly marked than the contrast between the ultimate destiny of different individuals all abiding the same awful doom: on the one hand the gallows, on the other a short imprisonment. The inspectors very properly desired to call attention to the inevitable tendency in this mode of dealing with “the most awful sanctions of the law,” to make those sanctions an object of contemptuous mockery. The consequences were plainly proved to the inspectors. Capitally convicted prisoners did, as a matter of fact, “treat with habitual and inexpressible levity the sentence of death.” Of this I have treated at length in the last chapter.

The time thus spent varied considerably, but it was seldom less than six weeks. It all depended upon the sovereign’s disposition to do business. Sometimes the Privy Council did not meet for months, and during all that time the convicts languished with hope nearly indefinitely deferred. When the council had decided, the news was conveyed to Newgate by the Recorder, who made his “report,” as it was called. The time of the arrival of this report was generally known at Newgate, and its contents were anxiously awaited by both convicts in the press-yard and their friends collected in a crowd outside the gates. Sometimes the report was delayed. On one occasion, Mr. Wakefield tells us, the Recorder, who had attended the council at Windsor, did not deliver the report till the following day. “The prisoners and their friends, therefore, were kept in a state of the most violent suspense for many hours, during which they counted the moments—the prisoners in their cells as usual, and their friends in the street in front of Newgate, where they passed the night. I have heard the protracted agony of both classes described by those who witnessed it in terms so strong, that I am unwilling to repeat them.”...[97] “The crowd of men and women who passed the night in front of Newgate, began, as soon as the hour was passed when they had expected the report, to utter imprecations against the Recorder, the Secretary of State, the Council, and the King; they never ceased cursing until the passion of anger so excited was exchanged for joy in some and grief in others. I myself heard more than one of those whose lives were spared by that decision of the council, afterwards express a wish to murder the Recorder for having kept them so long in suspense.”

The Recorder’s report generally reached Newgate late at night. Its receipt was immediately followed by the promulgation of its contents to the persons most closely concerned, which was done with a sort of ceremony intended to be impressive. The whole of the convicts were assembled together in one ward, and made to kneel down. To them entered the chaplain or ordinary of Newgate in full canonicals, who in solemn tones communicated to each in turn the fate in store for him. The form of imparting the intelligence was generally the same. “So-and-so, I am sorry to tell you that it is all against you;” or, “A. B., your case has been taken into consideration by the king in council, and His Majesty has been mercifully pleased to spare your life.” The fatal news was not always received in the same way. The men who were doomed often fell down in convulsions upon the floor. Sometimes any who had had a narrow escape fainted, but the bulk of those respited looked on with unfeeling indifference. The concluding part of the ceremony was, for those who had been pardoned, to recite a thanksgiving to God and the king.

It is satisfactory to be able to record that some consideration was shown the capital convict actually awaiting execution. Even so severe a critic as Mr. Wakefield states that “a stranger to the scene would be astonished to observe the peculiar tenderness, I was going to add respect, which persons under sentence of death obtain from all the officers of the prison. Before sentence a prisoner has only to observe the regulations of the gaol in order to remain neglected and unnoticed. Once ordered to the cells, friends of all classes suddenly rise up; his fellow-prisoners, the turnkeys, the chaplain, the keepers, and the sheriffs all seem interested in his fate, and he can make no reasonable request that is not at once granted by whomsoever he may address. This rule has some, but very few, exceptions; such as where a hardened offender behaves with great levity and brutality, as if he cared nought for his life, and thought every one anxious to promote his death.” Mr. Wakefield goes on to remark that persons convicted of forgery “excited an extraordinary degree of interest in all who approached them.” This was noticeable with Fauntleroy, who, on account of his birth and antecedents, was allowed to occupy a turnkey’s room, and kept altogether separate from the other prisoners until the day of his death. It cannot be denied, however, that the ordinary’s treatment was somewhat unfeeling, and in proof thereof I will quote an extract from the reverend gentleman’s own journal. He seems to have improved the occasion when preaching the condemned sermon before Fauntleroy, by pointing a moral from that unhappy man’s own case. For this the chaplain was a few days later summoned before the gaol committee of aldermen, and informed that the public would not in future be admitted to hear the condemned sermon. “I was also informed,” writes Mr. Cotton, “that this resolution was in consequence of their (the aldermen’s) disapproving of the last discourse delivered by me, previous to the execution of Henry Fauntleroy for uttering a forged security, in which it was said I had enlarged upon the heinous nature of his crime, and warned the public to avoid such conduct. I was informed that this unnecessarily harassed his feelings, and that the object of such sermons was solely to console the prisoner, and that from the time of his conviction nothing but what is consolatory should be addressed to a criminal. One of the aldermen, moreover, informed me that the whole court of aldermen were unanimous in their opinion on this subject. As to the exclusion of strangers on these occasions, the experience I have had convinces me that one, and perhaps the only, good of an execution, i. e. the solemn admonition to the public, will thereby be lost.”

Probably the reader will side with the aldermen against the ordinary. This episode throws some doubt upon the tenderness and proper feeling exhibited by the chaplain towards the most deserving members of his criminal flock; and the idea will be strengthened by the following account of the Sunday service in the prison chapel on the occasion when the condemned sermon was preached. The extract is from Mr. E. Gibbon Wakefield’s brochure, the date 1828, just three years after Fauntleroy’s death. Strangers were now excluded, but the sheriffs attended in state, wearing their gold chains, while behind their pew stood a couple of tall footmen in state liveries. The sheriffs were in one gallery; in the other opposite were the convicts capitally convicted who had been respited. Down below between the galleries was the mass of the prison population; the schoolmaster and the juvenile prisoners being seated round the communion-table, opposite the pulpit. In the centre of the chapel was the condemned pew, a large dock-like erection painted black. Those who sat in it were visible to the whole congregation, and still more to the ordinary, whose desk and pulpit were just in front of the condemned pew, and within a couple of yards of it. The occupants of this terrible black pew were the last always to enter the chapel. Upon the occasion which I am describing they were four in number; and here I will continue the narrative in Mr. Wakefield’s own words:—

“First is a youth of eighteen, condemned for stealing in a dwelling-house goods valued above five pounds. His features have no felonious cast; ... he steps boldly with head upright, looks to the women’s gallery, and smiles. His intention is to pass for a brave fellow, but the attempt fails; he trembles, his knees knock together, and his head droops as he enters the condemned pew. The next convict is clearly and unmistakably a villain. He is a hardened offender, previously cast for life, reprieved, transported to Australia, and since returned without pardon. For this offence the punishment is death. He has, however, doubly earned his sentence, and is actually condemned for burglary committed since his arrival in England. His look at the sheriffs and the ordinary is full of scorn and defiance. The third convict is a sheep-stealer, a poor ignorant fellow in whose crime are mitigating circumstances, but who is left to die on the supposition that this is not his first conviction, and still more because a good many sheep have of late been stolen by other people. He is quite content to die; indeed the chaplain and others have brought him firmly to believe that his situation is enviable, and that the gates of heaven are open to receive him.” The last of the four is said to have been a clergyman of the Church of England,[98] condemned for forgery, “a miserable old man in a tattered suit of black. Already he is half dead. Great efforts have been made to save his life. Friends, even utter strangers, have interceded for him, and to the last he has buoyed himself up by hope of reprieve. Now his doom is sealed irrevocably, and he has given himself up to despair. He staggers towards the pew, reels into it, stumbles forward, flings himself on the ground, and, by a curious twist of the spine, buries his head under his body. The sheriffs shudder, their inquisitive friends crane forward, the keeper frowns on the excited congregation, the lately smirking footmen close their eyes and forget their liveries, the ordinary clasps his hands, the turnkeys cry ‘Hush!’ and the old clerk lifts up his cracked voice, saying, ‘Let us sing to the praise and glory of God.’

“The morning hymn is sung first, as if to remind the condemned that next morning at eight a.m. they are to die. The service proceeds. At last the burial service is reached. The youth alone is able to read, but from long want of practice he is at a loss to find the place in his prayer-book. The ordinary observes him, looks to the sheriffs, and says aloud, ‘The service for the dead!’ The youth’s hands tremble as they hold the book upside down. The burglar is heard to mutter an angry oath. The sheep-stealer smiles, and, extending his arms upwards, looks with a glad expression to the roof of the chapel. The forger has never moved.

“Let us pass on. All have sung ‘the Lamentation of a Sinner,’ and have seemed to pray ‘especially for those now awaiting the awful execution of the law.’ We come to the sermon.