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Title: The Chronicles of Newgate, vol. 1/2

Author: Arthur Griffiths

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
CHRONICLES OF NEWGATE, VOL. 1/2 ***

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Contents of Vol. I..
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The Prison Gate.

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.

IN TWO VOLUMES.—VOL. I.

LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL
(Limited)
1884
[All rights reserved.]

Bungay:

CLAY AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.

PREFACE.
WHEN I undertook the work of which these two volumes are the result, I
scarcely realized the extent of the task before me. Now at the termination of
my labours, which have extended over a period of nearly five years, I
cannot give my work to the public without regret that it has not been
accompanied by deeper study and more widespread research. But I have, in
truth, been almost overwhelmed by the mass of materials at hand. These
always increased enormously with every digression, and I found at length
that I must be satisfied with what I had instead of seeking for more. Even
with this restriction I have often been compelled to reject much, to
epitomize and perhaps unduly abbreviate what I have used. A really copious
and detailed history of Newgate would be a most voluminous affair. This
well-known prison, which has stood for centuries upon the same site, is in
itself an epitome of the criminal history of England; to have traced its
chronicles down from epoch to epoch, closely and minutely, would have
been wearisome to the reader. There is a family resemblance in crimes in all
ages; when, therefore, the more prominent cases have been selected for
description, a general impression will have been conveyed of the whole. I
have followed this principle throughout, and have endeavoured to present a
general, but not too detailed, picture of the various criminal periods through
which Newgate has passed.
But the claims of Newgate on the public interest are not limited to the
melancholy histories of those whom it has held in durance. Newgate, as the
annexe of the Old Bailey, or great criminal law court of this city, has ever
been closely connected with the administration of justice in this country. In
its records are to be read the variations of our Statute Book. We may trace at
Newgate the gradual amelioration of the penal code, from the days of its
pitiless ferocity, to the time when, thanks to the incessant protests of
humanitarian and philanthropist, a milder system of punishment became the
rule. All this has found more than a passing mention in my pages. Again,
Newgate, the city jail, the chief prison of the chief town in the kingdom,
might have been expected to lead the van in prison reform; that it remained
constantly, from the first and almost to the last, one of the worst-kept
prisons in the kingdom, reflects but little credit upon those responsible for

its management. The fact, however, that crying evils were constantly
present in the great jail, brings Newgate at once into close connection with
the whole subject of prison reform. To represent Newgate as it existed even
before Howard commenced his crusade, and long afterwards, has naturally,
therefore, fallen within the scope of my work. Nor have I confined myself
strictly to this prison, but I have endeavoured to trace the slow progress of
improvement throughout the whole country from first to last.
I cannot conclude these brief remarks without adding a few words of
thanks to those who have assisted me in my undertaking. I have received
much valuable information from Sidney Smith, Esq., the last Governor of
Newgate; from Mr. Mapperson, its last chief warder; and from many other
officials of the prison. But most of all am I indebted to my friend, William
Linton, Esq., formerly Governor of Petworth and Nottingham prisons, who
has long rendered me the most cordial assistance and co-operation. I am
also very grateful to my friend, Colonel Goff, for many of the original
illustrations which embellish the book.
November, 1883.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER I.
MEDIEVAL NEWGATE 22
CHAPTER II.
NEWGATE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 60
CHAPTER III.
NEWGATE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (DOWN TO THE GREAT FIRE) 96
CHAPTER IV.
NEWGATE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY (AFTER THE GREAT FIRE) 143
CHAPTER V.
IN THE PRESS-YARD 199
CHAPTER VI.
EXECUTIONS 231
CHAPTER VII.
ESCAPES 286
CHAPTER VIII.
THE GAOL CALENDAR 317
CHAPTER IX.
THE GAOL CALENDAR (continued) 375
CHAPTER X.
THE GAOL FEVER 424
CHAPTER XI.
THE NEW GAOL 454

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

VOL. I.
PAGE
THE PRISON GATE Frontispiece
THE GAOLER 5
THE THEW, OR PILLORY FOR WOMEN 33
ANCIENT PILLORY IN PARIS To face p. 36
PORTRAIT OF RICHARD WHITTINGTON To face p. 54
DEATH-BED OF WHITTINGTON 57
SKEFFINGTON’S GYVES 75
TORTURE IN THE TOWER To face p. 76
THE TORTURE OF THE BOOT 81
HENRIETTA MARIA DOING PENANCE AT TYBURN To face p. 112
THE GATE 145
“MULLED SACK” 173
TITUS OATES IN THE PILLORY 193
ROBERT OCKAM IN THE PILLORY 235
IN THE TORTURE CHAMBER To face p. 246
THE NEW GALLOWS IN THE OLD BAILEY To face p. 283
MR. AKERMAN 307
FARO’S DAUGHTERS 335
BACK PREMISES OF THE KEEPER’S APARTMENT To face p. 338
ARRESTING THE HANGMAN ON A CHARGE OF MURDER 358
JAMES MACLANE 400
WILLIAM PARSONS 408
NEWGATE IN FLAMES To face p. 468

CHRONICLES OF NEWGATE.

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.[1]
Brief survey of Newgate—The first gaol—Its antiquity—Its inmates and general condition—
Whittington’s prison—Rebuilt after the Fire—Misgovernment, neglect, and injustice—Capital
convicts and executions—First dawn of reform—A new Newgate built by Dance—State of interior
continues deplorable—Mrs. Fry—The first inspectors of prisons—Amelioration long insisted upon
introduced at last—Newgate closed in 1880.

IN antiquity and varied interest Newgate prison yields to no place of
durance in the world. A gaol has stood on this same site for almost a
thousand years. The first prison was nearly as old as the Tower of London,
and much older than the Bastille. Hundreds of thousands of “felons and
trespassers” have from first to last been incarcerated within. To many it
must have been an abode of sorrow, suffering, and unspeakable woe, a kind
of terrestrial inferno, to enter which was to abandon every hope.
Imprisonment was often lightly and capriciously inflicted in days before our
liberties were fully won, and innumerable victims of tyranny and
oppression have been lodged in Newgate. Political troubles also sent their
quota. The gaol was the halfway-house to the scaffold or the gallows for
turbulent or short-sighted persons who espoused the losing side; it was the
starting-place for that painful pilgrimage to the pillory or whipping-post
which was too frequently the punishment for rashly uttered libels and
philippics against constituted power. Newgate, again, was on the high road
to Smithfield; in times of intolerance and fierce religious dissensions
numbers of devoted martyrs went thence to suffer for conscience’ sake at
the stake. For centuries a large section of the permanent population of
Newgate, as of all gaols, consisted of offenders against commercial laws.
While fraudulent bankrupts were hanged, others more unfortunate than
criminal were clapped into gaol to linger out their lives without the chance
of earning the funds by which alone freedom could be recovered. Debtors
of all degrees were condemned to languish for years in prison, often for the
most paltry sums. The perfectly innocent were also detained. Gaol
deliveries were rare, and the boon of arraignment and fair trial was
strangely and unjustly withheld, while even those acquitted in open court
were often haled back to prison because they were unable to discharge the
gaoler’s illegal fees. The condition of the prisoners in Newgate was long
most deplorable. They were but scantily supplied with the commonest

necessaries of life. Light scarcely penetrated their dark and loathsome
dungeons; no breath of fresh air sweetened the fetid atmosphere they
breathed; that they enjoyed the luxury of water was due to the munificence
of a Lord Mayor. Their daily subsistence was most precarious. Food,
clothing, fuel were doled out in limited quantities as charitable gifts;
occasionally prosperous citizens bequeathed small legacies to be expended
in the same articles of supply. These bare prison allowances were further
eked out by the chance seizures in the markets; by bread forfeited as
inferior or of light weight, and meat declared unfit to be publicly sold. All
classes and categories of prisoners were herded indiscriminately together:
men and women, tried and untried, upright but misguided zealots with
hardened habitual offenders. The only principle of classification was a
prisoner’s ability or otherwise to pay certain fees; money could purchase
the squalid comfort of the master’s side, but no immunity from the baleful
companionship of felons equally well furnished with funds and no less
anxious to escape the awful horror of the common side of the gaol. The
weight of the chains, again, which, till quite recently, innocent and guilty
alike wore, depended upon the price a prisoner could pay for “easement of
irons,” and it was a common practice to overload a new-comer with
enormous fetters and so terrify him into lavish disbursement. The gaol at all
times was so hideously overcrowded that plague and pestilence perpetually
ravaged it, and the deadly infection often spread into the neighbouring
courts of law.
The foregoing is an imperfect but by no means overcoloured picture of
Newgate as it existed for hundreds of years, from the twelfth century,
indeed, to the nineteenth. The description is supported by historical records,
somewhat meagre at first, perhaps, but becoming more and more ample and
better substantiated as the period grows less remote. We have but scant
information as to the first gate-house gaol. Being part and parcel of the city
fortifications, it was intended mainly for defence, and the prison
accommodation which the fate afforded with its dungeons beneath, and
garrets above, must have been of the most limited description. More pains
were no doubt taken to keep the exterior strong and safe against attack, than
to render the interior habitable, and we may conclude that the moneys
willed by Whittington for the re-edification of Newgate were principally
expended on the restoration and improvements of the prison. “Whit’s
palace,” as rebuilt by Whittington’s executors, lasted for a couple of

centuries, and was throughout that period the principal gaol for the
metropolis. Reference is constantly made to it in the history of the times. It
was the natural receptacle for rogues, roysterers, and masterless men. It is
described as a hot-bed of vice, a nursery of crime. Drunkenness, gaming,
profligacy of the vilest sort, went forward in the prison without let or
hindrance. Contemporary petitions, preserved in the State papers, penned
by inmates of Newgate pining for liberty, call their prison-house a foul and
noisome den. The gaoler for the time being was certain to be a brutal
partisan of the party in power, especially bitter to religious or political
opponents who fell into his hands. But too frequently also he was a
rapacious, extortionate, over-reaching despot, whose first and only thought
was to turn the prisoners into profit, and make all the money he could out of
those whom the law put completely in his power.
With occasional, but not always sufficient,
repairs, but without structural alterations,
Whittington’s Newgate continued to serve down to
the seventeenth century. About 1629 it was in a state
of utter ruin, and such extensive works were
undertaken to re-edify it that the security of the gaol
was said to be endangered, and it was thought better
to pardon most of the prisoners before they set
themselves free. Lupton, in his ‘London
Carbonadoed,’ speaks of Newgate as “new-fronted
and new-faced” in 1638. Its accommodations must
have been sorely tried in the troublous years which
followed. It seems to have been in the time of the
Commonwealth when “our churches were made into
prisons,” and demands for space had greatly
multiplied, that Newgate was increased by the addition of the buildings
belonging to the Phœnix Inn in Newgate Street. The great fire of 1666
gutted, if not completely destroyed, Newgate, and its reconstruction became
imperative. Some say Wren was the architect of the new prison, but the fact
is not fully substantiated. Authentic and detailed information has, however,
been preserved concerning it; it is figured in a familiar woodcut which may
be seen in every modern history of London, while a full description of the
interior, both plan and appropriation, has been left by an anonymous writer,
who was himself an inmate of the gaol[2]. The prison was still subordinated

to the gate, which was an ornate structure, with great architectural
pretensions. But as a writer in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ well put it about
a century ago, “The sumptuousness of the outside but aggravated the misery
of the wretches within.” Some effort was made to classify, and the Newgate
of that day contained five principal divisions or sides: there was the
master’s side, for debtors and felons respectively; the common side, for
those same two classes of prisoners; and lastly the press yard, for prisoners
of note. The right to occupy the master’s side was a luxury dearly
purchased, but the accommodation obtained, albeit indifferent, was palatial
to that provided for the impecunious on the common side. The only inmates
of the Newgate prison I am now describing who were comparatively well
off, were those admitted to the press yard; a division composed of “large
and spacious rooms” on all the three floors of the prison, and deemed by a
legal fiction to be part of the governor’s house.
How desperate was the case of the bulk of the inmates of Newgate will
be amply set forth as my narrative proceeds. A few brief facts will suffice
here to give a general idea of this foul prison house. The whole place except
the press yard was so dark that candles, “links or burners,” were used all
day long; the air was so inconceivably disgusting, that the ventilator on the
top of the prison could exercise no remedial effect. That malignant disease,
the gaol fever, was chronic, and deaths from it of frequent occurrence.
Doctors could be got with difficulty to attend the sick in Newgate, and it
was long before any regular medical officer was appointed to the prison.
Evil was in the ascendant throughout; wickedness and profligacy prospered;
the weakest always went to the wall. Tyranny and oppression were widely
practised: not only were the gaolers extortionate, but their subordinates, the
inferior turnkeys, even the bed-makers, and the gate-keeper’s wife levied
black mail on the pretence of affording relief, and with threats or actual ill-
usage when payment was withheld. Certain favoured prisoners wielded
recognized authority over their fellows. Unwritten but accepted customs
suffered the general body to exact “garnish,” or “chummage,” from new
comers, fees for the privilege of approaching the fire, and generally for
immunity from persecution, the sums thus raised being forthwith expended
in strong drink. The “cellarmen” were selected prisoners who could sell
candles at their own prices, and got a percentage upon the liquors
consumed, with other advantages. Other prisoners were employed in the
distribution of food; in the riveting and removing of shackles; even in the

maintenance of discipline, and when so acting were armed with a flexible
weapon, “to the great terror and smart of those who dispute their authority.”
Into these filthy dens, where misery stalked rampant and corruption
festered, unhappy prisoners brought their families, and the population was
greatly increased by numbers of innocent persons, women, and even
children, to be speedily demoralized and utterly lost. Lunatics raving mad
ranged up and down the wards, a terror to all they encountered. Common
women were freely admitted; mock marriages were of constant occurrence,
and children were frequently born within the precincts of the gaol. There
was but little restriction upon the entrance of visitors. When any great
personage was confined in Newgate, he held daily levees and received
numbers of fashionable folk. Thus Count Konigsmark, when arrested for
complicity in the murder of Mr. Thynne, “lived nobly” in the keeper’s
house, and was daily visited by persons of quality. When political prisoners,
Jacobite rebels, or others were incarcerated, their sympathizers and
supporters came to “comfort them” by sharing their potations. Even a
notorious highwayman like Maclane, according to Horace Walpole,
entertained great guests, and it was the “mode” for half the world to drive to
Newgate and gaze on him in the “condemned hold.”
In sharp contrast with the privations and terrible discomforts of the
poorer sort was the wild revelry of these aristocratic prisoners of the press
yard. They had every luxury to be bought with money, freedom alone
excepted, and that was often to be compassed by bribing dishonest officials
to suffer them to escape. They kept late hours, collecting in one another’s
rooms to roar out seditious songs over innumerable bowls of punch. At
times they exhibited much turbulence, and refused to be locked up in the
separate chambers allotted to them. No attempt was made to coerce them,
or oblige them to observe due decorum and submit to the discipline of the
prison. Yet while they thus experienced ill-placed and unjust leniency,
others far less culpable were ground down till they were “slowly murdered
there by the intolerable horrors of the place.”
As a general rule the movement of offenders through Newgate was
pretty rapid. The period of imprisonment for debtors might be often
indefinitely prolonged, and there was the well-known case of Major
Bernardi and his companions, who were detained for forty years in
Newgate without trial or the chance of it. Some, too, languished awaiting
transfer to the West Indian or American plantations by the contractors to

whom they were legally sold. But for the bulk of the criminal prisoners
there was one speedy and effectual system of removal, that of capital
punishment. Executions were wholesale in those times. The code was
sanguinary in the extreme. The gallows tree was always heavily laden.
There was every element of callous brutality in the manner of inflicting the
extreme penalty of the law. From the time of sentence to the last dread
moment the convict was exhibited as a show, or held up to public contempt
and execration. Heartless creatures flocked to the gaol chapel to curiously
examine the aspect of condemned malefactors. Men who had but a short
time to live mingled freely with their fellow-prisoners, recklessly carousing,
and often making a boast that they laughed to scorn and rejected the well-
meant ministrations of the ordinary.
The actual ceremony was to the last degree cold-blooded and wanting in
all the solemn attributes fitting the awful scene. The doomed was carried in
an open cart to Tyburn or other appointed place; the halter already encircled
his neck, his coffin was at his feet, by his side the chaplain or some devoted
amateur philanthropist and preacher striving earnestly to improve the
occasion. For the mob it was a high day and holiday; they lined the route
taken by the ghastly procession, encouraging or flouting the convict
according as he happened to be a popular hero or unknown to criminal
fame. In the first case they cheered him to the echo, offered him bouquets of
flowers, or pressed him to drink deep from St. Giles’s Bowl; in the latter
they pelted him with filth and overwhelmed him with abuse. The most
scandalous scenes occurred on the gallows. The hangman often quarrelled
with his victim over the garments, which the former looked upon as a
lawful perquisite, and which the latter was disposed to distribute among his
friends; now and again the rope broke, or the drop was insufficient, and
Jack Ketch had to add his weight to the hanging body to assist
strangulation. Occasionally there was a personal conflict, and the hangman
was obliged to do his office by sheer force. The convicts were permitted to
make dying speeches, and these orations were elaborated and discussed in
Newgate weeks before the great day; while down in the yelling crowd
beneath the gallows spurious versions were hawked about and rapidly sold.
It was a distinct gain to the decency and good order of the metropolis when
Tyburn and other distant points ceased to be the places of execution, and
hangings were exclusively carried out in front of Newgate, just over the
debtors’ door. But some of the worst features of the old system survived.

There was still the melodramatic sermon, in the chapel hung with black,
before a large congregation collected simply to stare at the convicts
squeezed into one pew, who in their turn stared with mixed feelings at the
coffin on the table just before their eyes. There was still the same
tumultuous gathering to view the last act in tragedy, the same bloodthirsty
mob swaying to and fro before the gates, the same blue-blooded spectators,
George Selwyn or my Lord Tom Noddy, who breakfasted in state with the
gaoler, and so got a box seat or rented window opposite at an exorbitant
rate. The populace were like degenerate Romans in the amphitheatre
waiting for the butchery to begin. They fought and struggled desperately for
front places: people fell and were trampled to death, hoarse roars came from
thousands of brazen throats, which swelled into a terrible chorus as the
black figures of the performers on the gallows stood out against the sky.
“Hats off!” “Down in front!” these cries echoed and re-echoed in increasing
volume, and all at once abruptly came to an end—the bolt had been drawn,
the drop had fallen, and the miserable wretch had gone to his long home.
The policy which had brought about the substitution of Newgate for
Tyburn no doubt halted halfway, but it was enlightened, and a considerable
move towards the private executions of our own times. It was dictated by
the more humane principles which were gradually making head in regard to
criminals and crime. Many more years were to elapse, however, before the
eloquence of Romilly was to bear fruit in the softening of our sanguinary
penal code. But already John Howard had commenced his labours, and his
revelations were letting in a flood of light upon the black recesses of prison
life. It is to the credit of the authorities of the City of London that they
recognized the necessity for rebuilding Newgate on a larger and more
improved plan before the publication of Howard’s reports. The great
philanthropist made his first journey of inspection towards the end of 1773;
in the following year he laid the information he had obtained before the
House of Commons, and in 1777 published the first edition of his
celebrated ‘State of Prisons.’ As early as 1755 the Common Council had
condemned Newgate in no measured terms; declared it to be habitually
overcrowded with “victims of public justice, under the complicated
distresses of poverty, nastiness, and disease,” who had neither water, nor air,
nor light in sufficient quantities; the buildings were old and ruinous, and
incapable of any “improvement or tolerable repairs.” It was plainly
admitted that the gaol ought to be at once pulled down. But as usual the

difficulty of providing funds cropped up, and the work, though urgent, was
postponed for some years. The inadequacy of the prison was so obvious,
however, that the matter was presently brought before a committee of the
House of Commons, and the necessity for rebuilding clearly proved. A
committee of the Corporation next met in 1767 to consider ways and
means, and they were fortified in their decision to rebuild by convincing
evidence of the horrible condition of the existing prison. A letter addressed
to the committee by Sir Stephen Jansen stigmatizes it as “an abominable
sink of beastliness and corruption.” He spoke from full knowledge, having
been sheriff when the prison was decimated by gaol fever. In the same year
Parliamentary powers were obtained to raise money to rebuild the place,
and the new Newgate was actually commenced in 1770, when Lord Mayor
Beckford, father of “Vathek” Beckford, laid the first stone. Its architect was
George Dance, and the prison building, which still stands to speak for itself,
has been counted one of his finest works. Howard, who gives this historic
prison the first place in his list, must have visited it while the new buildings
were in progress. The plan did not find favour with him, but he enters into
no particulars, and limits his criticisms to remarking, “that without more
than ordinary care the prisoners in it will be in great danger of gaol fever.”
According to modern notions the plan was no doubt faulty in the extreme.
Safe custody, a leading principle in all prison construction, was compassed
at the expense of most others. The prison façade is a marvel of strength and
solidity, but until reappropriated in recent years its interior was a limited
confined space, still darkened, and deprived of ventilation, by being
parcelled out into courts, upon which looked the narrow windows of the
various wards.
The erection of the “new and commodious gaol,” as it is described in an
Act of the period, proceeded rapidly, but three or four years after Howard’s
visit it was still uncompleted. This Act recites what had been done, referring
to the valuable, extensive areas, which had been taken in for the
construction of this great prison, and provides additional funds. In 1780,
however, an unexpected catastrophe happened, and the new buildings were
set on fire by the Lord George Gordon rioters, and so much damaged that
the most comprehensive repairs were indispensable. These were executed in
1782. Many years were to elapse before any further alterations or
improvements were made.

It was soon evident that Dance’s Newgate, imposing and appropriate as
were its outlines and façade, by no means satisfied all needs. The progress
of enlightenment was continuous, while complaints that would have been
stifled or ignored previously were now occasionally heard. Yet the wretched
prisoners continued to be closely packed together. Transportation had now
been adopted as a secondary punishment, and numbers who escaped the
halter were congregated in Newgate waiting removal beyond the seas. The
population of the prison had amounted to nearly six hundred at one time in
1785. According to a presentment made by the Grand Jury in 1813, in the
debtors’ side, built for one hundred, no less than three hundred and forty
were lodged; in the female felons’ ward there were one hundred and twenty
in space intended for only sixty. These females were destitute and in rags,
without bedding, many without shoes. In later years the figures rose still
higher, and it is authoritatively stated that there were as many as eight, nine,
even twelve hundred souls immured within an area about three-quarters of
an acre in extent. We have the evidence of trustworthy persons that grievous
abuses still continued unchecked. All prisoners were still heavily ironed
until large bribed had been paid to obtain relief. All manner of unfair
dealing was practised towards the prisoners. The daily allowance of food
was unequally divided. Bread and beef were issued in the lump, and each
individual had to scramble and fight for his share. Prisoners had no bedding
beyond a couple of dirty rugs. Exorbitant gaol fees were still demanded on
all sides; the Governor eked out his income by what he could extort, and his
subordinates took bribes wherever they could get them. It was customary to
sell the place of wardsman, with its greater ease and power of oppression, to
the highest bidder among the prisoners. Unlimited drinking was allowed
within the walls; the prison tap, with the profits on sales of ale and spirits,
was a part of the Governor’s perquisites. All this time there was
unrestrained intercommunication between the prisoners; the most depraved
were free to contaminate and demoralize their more innocent fellows.
Newgate was then, and long continued, a school and nursery for crime. It
was established beyond doubt that burglaries and robberies were frequently
planned in the gaol, while forged notes and false money were often
fabricated within the walls and passed out into the town.
The disclosure of these frightful evils led to a Parliamentary inquiry in
1814, and the worst facts were fully substantiated.[3] The prison was not
water-tight, rain came in through the roof; broken windows were left

unglazed; it was generally very dirty; the gaoler admitted that with its
smoked ceilings and floors of oak, caulked with pitch, it never could look
clean. The prisoners were not compelled to wash, and cleanliness was only
enforced by a general threat to shut out visitors. Sometimes a more than
usually filthy person was stripped, put under the pump, and forced to go
naked out into the yard. The poor debtors were in terrible straits, herded
together, and dependent upon the casual charities for supplies. Birch, the
well-known tavern-keeper, and others, sent in broken victuals, generally the
stock meat which had helped to make the turtle-soup for civic feasts. The
chaplain took life very easy, and, beyond preaching to those who cared to
attend chapel, ministered but little to the spiritual wants of his charge. His
indifference was strongly condemned in the report of the Commons
Committee. The chapel congregation was generally disorderly: prisoners
yawned, and coughed, and talked enough to interrupt the service; women
were in full view of the men, and many greetings, such as “How do you do,
Sall?” often passed from pew to pew. No attempt was made to keep
condemned convicts, male or female, separate from other prisoners; they
mixed freely with the rest, saw daily any number of visitors, and had
unlimited drink.
It was a little before the publication of the Committee’s Report that that
noble woman, Mrs. Fry, first visited Newgate. The awful state of the female
prison, as she found it, is described in her memoirs. Three years elapsed
between her first visit and her second. In the interval, the report last quoted
had borne some fruit. An Act had been brought in for the abolition of gaol
fees; gaol committees had been appointed to visit and check abuses, and
something had been done to ameliorate the condition of the neglected
female outcasts. Yet the scene within was still dreadful, and permanent
amelioration seemed altogether beyond hope. What Mrs. Fry quickly
accomplished against tremendous difficulties, is one of the brightest facts in
the whole history of philanthropy. How she persevered in spite of prediction
of certain failure; how she won the co-operation of lukewarm officials; how
she provided the manual labour for which these poor idle hands were eager,
and presently transformed a filthy den of corruption into a clean and
whitewashed workroom, in which sat rows of women, recently so desperate
and degraded, stitching and sewing orderly and silent: these extraordinary
results with the most unpromising materials will be found detailed in a
subsequent page.[4]

There was no one, unfortunately, to undertake the same great work upon
the male side. “The mismanagement of Newgate had been for years
notorious,” says the Hon. H. G. Bennet, in a letter addressed to the
Common Council, “yet there is no real reform. The occasional humanity of
a sheriff may remedy an abuse, redress a wrong, cleanse a sewer, or
whitewash a wall, but the main evils of want of food, air, clothing, bedding,
classification, moral discipline remain as before.” But appeals, however
eloquent, were of small avail. Time passed, and at last there was a general
impetus towards prison reform. The question became cosmopolitan. Close
inquiry was made into the relative value of systems of punishment at home
and abroad. Millbank Penitentiary was erected at the cost of half a million,
to give full scope to the experiment of reformation. Public attention was
daily more and more called to prison management. Yet through it all
Newgate remained almost unchanged. It was less crowded, perhaps, since
having been relieved by the opening of the Giltspur Street Compter, and
that was all that could be said. In 1836, when the newly-appointed
Government inspectors made their first report, the internal arrangements of
Newgate were as bad as ever. These inspectors were earnest men, who had
made prisons and prison management a study. One was the Rev. Whitworth
Russell, for many years chaplain of Millbank; the other Mr. Crawford, who
had written an admirable State paper upon the prisons of the United States,
the result of long personal investigation.
The report framed a strong indictment against the Corporation, who were
mainly responsible. Well might the inspectors close it with an expression of
poignant regret, not unmixed with indignation, at the frightful picture
presented of the existing state of Newgate.[5] The charges were
unanswerable, the only remedy immediate and searching reform. As a
matter of fact various abuses and irregularities were put an end to the
following year, but the alterations, so said the inspectors in a later report,
only introduced the outward semblance of order. “The master evil, that of
gaol association, and consequent contamination, remained in full activity.”
Year after year the inspectors repeated their condemnatory criticisms, but
were unable to effect any radical change. For quite another decade,
Newgate continued a by-word with prison reformers. In 1850, Colonel,
afterwards Sir Joshua Jebb, told the select committee on prison discipline,
that he considered Newgate, from its defective construction, one of the
worst prisons in England. Captain Williams, a prison inspector, was of the

same opinion, and called Newgate quite the worst prison in his district. The
fact was, limitation of area rendered it quite impossible to reconstitute
Newgate and bring it up to the standard of modern prison requirements.
Either great additions must be made to the site, an operation likely to be
exceedingly costly, or a new building must be erected elsewhere. These
points had already been discussed repeatedly and at length by gaol
committees and the Court of Aldermen, and a decision finally arrived at, to
erect a new prison on the Tufnell Park Estate, in the north of London. And
this, now known as Holloway Prison, was opened in 1852.
Newgate, relieved of the unnatural demands upon its accommodation,
was easily and rapidly reformed. It became now simply a place of detention
for city prisoners, an annexe of the Old Bailey, filled and emptied before
and after the sessions. Considerable sums were expended in reconstructing
the interior and providing the largest possible number of separate cells for
the confinement of the limited number of prisoners who now required to be
accommodated. As such it continued to serve until the year 1880, when,
under the principles of concentration which formed the basis of the Prison
Act of 1877, it was closed. It was found the House of Detention at
Clerkenwell had sufficient space to accommodate all prisoners awaiting
trial at the Central Criminal Court, and that Newgate prison was not wanted
except when the sessions were actually sitting. It ceased, therefore, to be
used except as a temporary receptacle at such times, but it is also still the
metropolitan place of execution.

CHAPTER I.

MEDIÆVAL NEWGATE.

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

THE earliest authentic mention of Newgate as a gaol or prison for felons and
trespassers occurs in the records of the reign of King John. In the following
reign, A.D. 1218, Henry III. expressly commands the sheriffs of London to
repair it, and promises to reimburse them for their outlay from his own
exchequer. This shows that at that time the place was under the direct
control of the king, and maintained at his charges. The prison was above the
gate, or in the gate-house, as was the general practice in ancient times. Thus
Ludgate was long used for the incarceration of city debtors. To the gate-
house of Westminster were committed all offenders taken within that city;
and the same rule obtained in the great provincial towns, as at Newcastle,
Chester, Carlisle, York, and elsewhere. Concerning the gate itself, the New
Gate and its antiquity, opinions somewhat differ. Maitland declares it to be
“demonstrable” that Newgate was one of the four original gates of the city;
“for after the fire of London in 1666,” he goes on to say, “in digging a
foundation for the present Holborn bridge, the vestigia of the Roman
military way called Watling Street were discovered pointing directly to this
gate; and this I take to be an incontestable proof of an original gate built
over the said way in this place.” Maitland in this conjecture altogether
departs from the account related by Stowe. The latter gives a precise and
circumstantial description of the building of Newgate, which he calls the
fifth principal gate of the city. There is, however, every reason to suppose

that a gate had existed previously hereabouts in the city wall, and the site of
the new gate is identical with one which was long called Chamberlain’s
Gate, because that official had his court in the Old Bailey hard by.
According to Stowe, Newgate was erected about the time of Stephen or the
first Henry under the following circumstances. After the destruction of the
old cathedral church of St. Paul in 1086, Mauritius, Bishop of London,
resolved to build an entirely new edifice upon the site, intending to
construct a work so grand that “men judged it would never be performed, it
was so wonderful to them for height.”[6] In pursuance of his great scheme
the Bishop enclosed a large space of ground for cemetery and churchyard,
and in doing so stopped up and obstructed the great thoroughfare from
Aldgate in the east to Ludgate in the west. The traffic now was driven to
choose between two long detours: one passing to the northward of the new
cemetery wall, and so by Paternoster Row, Ave Maria Lane, and Bowyer
Row, to Ludgate; the other, still more circuitous, by Cheape and Watling
Street, thence southward through Old Change, west through Carter Lane, up
Creadlam north, and finally westward again to Ludgate. These routes, as
Stowe observes, were “very cumbersome and dangerous both for horse and
man. For remedy whereof a new gate was made and so called, by which
men and cattle, with all manner of carriages, might pass more directly (as
before) from Aldgate through West Cheape to St. Paul’s on the north side,
through St. Nicholas Shambles and Newgate market to Newgate, and from
thence to any part westward over Holborn Bridge, or turning without the
gate into Smithfield and through Iseldon (Islington) to any part north and by
west.”
Of that ancient Newgate, city portal and general prison-house combined,
but scant records remain. A word or two in the old chroniclers, a passing
reference in the history of those troublous times, a few brief and formal
entries in the city archives—these are all that have been handed down to us.
But we may read between the lines and get some notion of mediæval
Newgate. Foul, noisome, terrible are the epithets applied to this densely-
crowded place of durance.[7] It was a dark, pestiferous den, then, and for
centuries later, perpetually ravaged by deadly diseases.
Its inmates were of all categories. Prisoners of State and the most
abandoned criminals were alike committed to it. Howel, quoted by Pennant,
states that Newgate was used for the imprisonment of persons of rank long
before the Tower was applied to that purpose. Thus Robert de Baldock,

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

go forward without control.” At length the frequency of robberies and
murders produced the great penal statute of the 13 Edward I. (1287). By this
Act it was decreed that no stranger should wear any weapon, or be seen in
the streets after the ringing of the couvre-feu bell at St. Martin’s-le-Grand;
that no vintners and victuallers should keep open house after the ringing of
the said bell under heavy fines and penalties; that “whereas it was
customary for profligates to learn the art of fencing, who were thereby
emboldened to commit the most unheard-of villanies, no such school should
be kept in the city for the future upon the penalty of forty marks for every
offence.” Most of the aforesaid villanies were said to be committed by
foreigners who from all parts incessantly crowded to London; it was
therefore ordered that no person not free of the city should be suffered to
reside therein; and even many of those that were were obliged to give
security for their good behaviour.[8]
The ‘Liber Albus,’ as translated by Riley, gives the penalties for
brawling and breaking the peace about this date. It was ordained that any
person who should draw a sword, misericorde (a dagger with a thin blade
used for mercifully despatching a wounded enemy), or knife, or any arm,
even though he did not strike, should pay a fine to the city of half a mark, or
be imprisoned in Newgate for fifteen days. If he drew blood the fine was
twenty shillings, or forty days in Newgate; in striking with the fist two
shillings, or eight days’ imprisonment, and if blood was drawn forty pence,
or twelve days. Moreover, the offenders were to find good sureties before
release, and those on whom the offence was committed had still “recovery
by process of law.”
Nor were these empty threats. The laws and ordinances against prowlers
and vagabonds, or “night-walkers,” as they were officially styled, were
continually enforced by the attachment of offenders. Many cases are given
in the memorials of London. Thus, 4 Edw. II. A.D. 1311: Elmer de Multone
was attached on indictment as a common night-walker in the ward of
Chepe; “in the day,” it was charged, “he was wont to entice persons and
strangers unknown to a tavern and there deceive them by using false dice.”
He was furthermore indicted “in Tower ward for being a cruiser and night-
walker against the peace, as also for being a common ‘rorere.’[9] Multone
was committed to prison. Others met with similar treatment. John de
Rokeslee was attached as being held suspected of evil and of beating men
coming into the city;” “Peter le Taverner, called Holer,” the same, and for

going with sword and buckler and other arms; John Blome was indicted “as
a common vagabond[10] for committing batteries and other mischiefs in the
ward of Aldresgate and divers other wards.” “A chaplain,” our modern
curate, Richard Heryng, was attached on similar charges, but was acquitted.
Not only were the “roarers” themselves indicted when taken in this act, but
also those who harboured them, like John Baronu mentioned in the same
document as attached “for keeping open house at night, and receiving night-
walkers and players at dice.” The prohibition against fencing-masters was
also rigorously enforced, as appears by the indictment of “Master Roger le
Skirmisour, for keeping a fencing school for divers men, and for enticing
thither the sons of respectable persons so as to waste and spend the property
of their fathers and mothers upon bad practices, the result being that they
themselves become bad men. Master Roger, upon proof of a jury that he
was guilty of the trespasses aforesaid, was committed to Newgate.”
Incarceration in Newgate, however, was meted out
promptly for other offences than those against which the
last-mentioned legislation was directed. Priests guilty of
loose living, Jews accused rightly or wrongly, now of
infanticide, of crucifying children, now of coining and
clipping, found themselves in the gaol for indefinite
periods. People, again, who adulterated or sold bad food
were incontinently clapped into gaol. Thus William
Cokke of Hesse (or Hayes) was charged with carrying a
sample of wheat in his hand in the market within
Newgate, and following one William, the servant of
Robert de la Launde Goldmsith, about from sack to sack,
as the latter was seeking to buy wheat, telling him that
such wheat as the sample could not be got for less than
twenty-one pence per bushel, whereas on the same day and at the same hour
the same servant could have bought the same wheat for eighteen pence.
Cokke, when questioned before the Mayor, Recorder, and certain aldermen,
acknowledged that he had done this to enhance the price of wheat to the
prejudice of all the people. He was in consequence committed to gaol, and
sentenced also to have the punishment of the pillory. The same fate
overtook Alan de Lyndeseye and Thomas de Patemere, bakers, who were
brought before the bench at Guildhall, and with them “bread they had made
of false, putrid, and rotten materials, through which persons who bought

such bread were deceived and might be killed.” The fear of imprisonment,
again, was before the eyes of all who sought to interfere with the freedom
of the markets. Thus it is recorded in the ordinances of the cheesemongers,
that “whereas the hokesters (hucksters) and other who sell such wares by
retail do come and regrate such cheese and butter before prime rung, and
before that the commonalty had been served, may it be ordained that no
such hokesters shall buy of any foreigner before the hour of prime on pain
of imprisonment at the will of the Mayor.” Similar penalties were decreed
against “regrating” fish and other comestibles for the London markets.
In 1316 Gilbert Peny was bound in the third time in default for selling
bread deficient in weight. He had been twice drawn on the hurdle, and it
was therefore now adjudged that he should be drawn once more, and should
then forswear the trade of a baker in the city for ever. One of many similar
cases is that of William Spalyng, who, for selling putrid beef at “les
Stokkes,” the stocks market near Walbrook, was put upon the pillory, and
the carcases were burnt beneath. Another who made shoes of unlawful
material had them forfeited. Bakers who stole dough from the moulding-
boards of other bakers were exposed on the pillory with the dough hung
about their necks[11].
Richard le Forester, for attempting to defraud with
a false garland or metal chaplet for the head, was
sentenced to stand in the pillory, and afterwards to
forswear the city for a year and a day. Traders
convicted of having blankets vamped in foreign parts
with the hair of oxen and of cows were punished, and
the blankets were burnt under the pillory on Cornhill.
Similarly, false gloves, braces, and pouches were
burnt in the High Street of Chepe near the stone
cross there. John Penrose, a taverner, convicted of
selling unsound wine, was adjudged to drink a
draught of the said wine, and the remainder was then
poured out on his head. Alice, wife of Robert de
Cranstom, was put in the thew, or pillory for women,
for selling ale by short measure; and so was Margery
Hore for selling putrid soles, the fish being burnt,
and the cause of her punishment proclaimed. Two servants of John Naylere
were placed in the stocks upon Cornhill for one hour, and their sacks burnt

beside them, for selling a deficient measure of charcoal, while their
master’s three horses were seized and detained by the Mayor’s sergeant
until he (Naylere) came and answered for the aforesaid falsity and deceit.
William Avecroft, having unsound wine, the sheriffs were ordered to pour
all the wine in the street and wholly make away with it, according to the
custom of the city.
The ‘Liber Albus’ contains other ordinances against brawlers and loose
livers. The former, whether male or female, were taken to the thew, a form
of pillory, carrying a distaff dressed with flax and preceded by minstrels.
The latter, whether male, female, or clerics, were marched behind music to
Newgate, and into the Tun in Cornhill.[12] Repeated offences were visited
with expulsion, and the culprits were compelled to forswear the city for
ever. The men on exposure had their heads and beards shaved, except a
fringe on their heads two inches in breadth; women who made the penance
in a hood of “rag” or striped cloth had their hair cut round about their heads.
Worse cases of both sexes were shaved like “an appealer,” or false informer.
The crime of riotous assembling was very sharply dealt with, as appears
from the proclamation made in the King’s (Edward III.) departure for
France. It was then ordained that “no one of the city, of whatsoever
condition he shall be, shall go out of the city to maintain parties, such as
taking leisure, or holding days of love (days of reconciliation between
persons at variance), or making other congregations within the city or
without in disturbance of the peace of our lord the king, or in affray of the
people, and to the scandal of the city.” Any found guilty thereof were to be
taken and put into the prison of Newgate, and there retained for a year and
day; and if he was a freeman of the city, he lost his freedom for ever.
The city authorities appear to have been very jealous of their good name,
and to have readily availed themselves of Newgate as a place of punishment
for any who impugned it. A certain John de Hakford, about the middle of
the fourteenth century, was charged with perjury in falsely accusing the
chief men in the city of conspiracy. For this he was, presumably upon proof,
remanded by the Mayor and aldermen to Newgate, there to remain until
they shall be better advised as to their judgment. A little later on, Saturday
the morrow of St. Nicholas (6 Dec., 1364), this judgment was delivered, to
the effect that the said John shall remain in prison for one whole year and a
day, and the said John within such year shall four times have the
punishment of the pillory, that is to say, one day in each quarter of the year,

beginning on the Saturday aforesaid, and in this manner: “The said John
shall come out of Newgate without hood or girdle, barefoot and unshod,
with a whetstone hung by a chain from his neck and lying on his breast, it
being marked with the words ‘a false liar,’ and there shall be a pair of
trumpets trumpeting before him in his way to the pillory, and there the
cause of this punishment shall be solemnly proclaimed, and the said John
shall remain in the pillory for three hours of the day, and from thence shall
be taken back to Newgate in the same manner, there to remain until his
punishment be completed in manner aforesaid.” This investiture of the
whetstone was commonly used as a punishment for misstatement;[13] for it
is recorded in 1371 that one Nicholas Mollere, servant of John Toppesfield,
smith, had the punishment of the pillory and whetstone for “circulating
lies,” amongst others that the prisoners at Newgate were to be taken to the
Tower of London, and that there was to be no longer a prison at Newgate.
Again in 1383, William Berham for slandering the Mayor was adjudged
to be put upon the pillory on the same day, there to stand for one hour of the
day with one large whetstone hung from his neck in token of the lie he told
against the Mayor, and another smaller whetstone in token of a lie told
against a lesser personage. After that he was to be taken back to Newgate,
and thence for the five following days

ANCIENT PILLORY IN PARIS.

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

execution of the judgment aforesaid. Upon this an axe was brought into
court by an officer of sheriffs, and the hand of the said William was laid
upon the block there to be cut off. Whereupon John Rove (the alderman
aggrieved), in reverence of our lord the king, and at the request of divers
lords, who entreated for the said William, begged of the Mayor and
aldermen that the judgment might be remitted, which was granted
accordingly. The culprit was, however, punished by imprisonment, with
exposure on the pillory, wearing a whetstone, and he was also ordered to
carry a lighted wax candle weighing three pounds through Chepe and Fleet
Streets to St. Dunstan’s church, where he was to make offering of the same.
But, however sensitive of their good name, the Mayor and aldermen of
those times seem to have been fairly upright in their administration of the
law. The following case shows this. A man named Hugh De Beone,
arraigned before the city coroner and sheriff for the death of his wife, stood
mute, and refused to plead, so as to save his goods after sentence. For thus
“refusing his law of England,” the justiciary of our lord the king for the
delivery of the gaol of Newgate, committed him back to prison, “there in
penance to remain until he should be dead.”[14]
The punishment inflicted, the goods thus saved were handed over to the
defunct criminal’s executor as appears from the following. “Be it
remembered that on Saturday next before the Feast of the Apostles Simon
and Jude (28 October), in the eleventh year of King Edward, after the
conquest, the third, came John Fox, citizen and vintner of London, before
Gregory de Nortone, Recorder, and Thomas de Margus, chamberlain of the
Guildhall of London, into the chamber of the Guildhall aforesaid, and
acknowledged that he had received of Walter de Moedone and Ralph de
Uptone, late sheriffs of London, the goods and chattels underwritten in the
presence of John de Shirborne, coroner, and the Sheriff of London
aforesaid, on the oath of Edward de Mohaut, pellifer,[15] and others.” The
inventory of goods is curious, and is perhaps worth quoting at length. There
were—
One mattress, value 4s.; six blankets and one serge, 13s. 6d.; one green
carpet, 20s.; one torn coverlet, with shields of cendale, 4s.; one coat, and
one surcoat, of worstede, 40d.; one robe perset, furred, 20s.; one robe of
medly, furred, one mask, one old fur, almost consumed by moths, 6d.; one
robe of scarlet, furred, 16s.; one robe of perset, 7s.; one surcoat, with a hood
of ray, 2s. 6d.; one coat, with a hood of perset, 1s. 6d.; one surcoat, and one

coat of ray, 6s. 1d.; one green hood of cendale, with edging, 6d.; seven linen
sheets, 5s.; one table-cloth, 2s.; three table-cloths, 1s. 6d.; and a great many
other articles, including “brass pots,” “aundirons,” “tonour,” “iron herce,”
“savenapes,” bringing the total value to £12 18s. 4d.
Long years elapsed between the building of Newgate and the date when
the city gained complete jurisdiction over the prison. King Henry III.’s
orders to repair the gaol at his own charge has been mentioned already.
Forty years later the same monarch pretended to be keenly concerned in the
good government of Newgate. Returning from Bordeaux when his son
Edward had married the King of Spain’s sister, Henry had passed through
Dover and reached London on St. John’s day. The city sent to congratulate
him on his safe arrival, the messengers taking with them a humble offering
of one hundred pounds. The avaricious king was dissatisfied, and instead of
thanking them, intimated that if they would win his thanks they must
enlarge their present; whereupon they gave him “a valuable piece of plate of
exquisite workmanship, which pacified him for the present.” But Henry was
resolved to squeeze more out of the wealthy burgesses of London. An
opportunity soon offered when a clerk convict, one John Frome, or Offrem,
[16] charged with murdering a prior, and committed for safe custody to
Newgate, escaped therefrom. The murdered man was a cousin of Henry’s
queen, and the king, affecting to be gravely displeased at this gross failure
in prison administration, summoned the mayor and sheriffs to appear before
him and answer the matter. The mayor laid the fault from him to the
sheriffs, forasmuch as to them belonged the keeping of all prisoners within
the city. The mayor was therefore allowed to return home, but the sheriffs
remained prisoners in the Tower “by the space of a month or more”; and yet
they excused themselves in that the fault rested chiefly with the bishop’s
officers, the latter having, at their lord’s request, sent the prisoner to
Newgate, but being still themselves responsible with the bishop for his safe
keeping. These excuses did not satisfy the king, who, “according to his
usual justice,” says Noorthouck, “demanded of the city, as an atonement of
the pretended crime, no less than the sum of three thousand marks.” The
fine was not immediately forthcoming, whereupon he degraded both the
sheriffs, and until the citizens paid up the enormous sum demanded, he
caused the chief of them to be seized and clapped into prison.
The city was ready enough, however, to purchase substantial privileges
in hard cash. Many of its early charters were thus obtained from necessitous

kings. In this way the Corporation ransomed, so to speak, its ancient
freedom and the right of independent government.
In 1327 a further point was gained. The support of the citizens had been
freely given to Queen Isabella and her young son in the struggle against
Edward II. On the accession of Edward III. a new charter, dated in the first
year of his reign, was granted to the city of London. After confirming the
ancient liberties, it granted many new privileges; chief among them was the
concession that the Mayor of London should be one of the justices for gaol
delivery of Newgate, and named in every commission for that purpose. The
king’s marshal might in future hold no court within the boundary of the city,
nor were citizens to be called upon to plead beyond them for anything done
within the liberties. No market might be kept within seven miles of London,
while the citizens were permitted to hold fairs and a court of “pye powder”
therein; in other words, a court for the summary disposal of all offences
committed by hawkers or pedlers, or perambulating merchants, who have
les pieds poudrés, or are “dusty-footed.”[17] Other privileges were obtained
from the king during his reign. A second charter granted them the bailiwick
of Southwark, a village which openly harboured “felons, thieves, and other
malefactors,” who committed crimes in the city and fled to Southwark for
sanctuary; and a third guaranteed them against the competition of foreign
merchants, who were forbidden to sell by retail in the city, to keep any
house, or act as broker therein. Again, the election of the mayor was
established on a more settled plan, and vested in the mayor and aldermen
for the time being. Another charter conceded to the Corporation the honour
of having gold and silver maces borne before the chief functionary, who
about this period became first entitled to take rank as Lord Mayor. The vast
wealth and importance of this great civic dignitary was to be seen in the
state he kept up. The Lord Mayor even then dispensed a princely
hospitality, and one eminent citizen in this reign, Henry Picard by name,
had the honour of entertaining four sovereigns at his table, viz. the kings of
England, France, Scotland, and Cyprus, with the Prince of Wales and many
more notables. This Picard was one of the Guild of Merchant Vintners of
Gascony, a Bordeaux wine merchant, in fact, and a Gascon by birth,
although a naturalized subject of the English king. The Vintners gave the
city several lord mayors.
Richard II. was not so well disposed towards the city. Recklessly
extravagant, wasteful and profuse in his way of living, he was always in

straits for cash. The money needed for his frivolous amusements and
ostentatious display he wrung from the Corporation by seizing its charters,
which were only redeemed by the payment of heavy fines. The sympathies
of the city were therefore with Henry Bolingbroke in the struggle which
followed. It was able to do him good service by warning him of a plot
against his life, and Henry, now upon the throne, to show his gratitude, and
“cultivate the good understanding thus commenced with the city, granted it
a new charter.” The most important clause of Henry’s charter was that
which entrusted the citizens, their heirs and successors, with the custody “as
well of the gates of Newgate and Ludgate, as all other gates and posterns in
the same city.” The same clause gave them the office of gathering the tolls
and customs in Cheap, Billingsgate, and Smithfield there rightfully to be
taken and accustomed;[18] “and also the tronage, that is to say, the weighing
of lead, wax, pepper, allom, madder, and other like wares, within the said
city for ever.” The great concession was, however, in the reign of Edward
IV., whose charter was the fullest and most explicit of any previously
granted. By this the mayor, recorder, and aldermen who had been Lord
Mayor were constituted perpetual justices of the peace of the city; they
were also appointed justices of oyer and terminer; their customs were to be
accepted as established beyond controversy by the declaration of the mayor
through the recorder; they were exempted from serving as jurors, and so
forth, beyond the city. The borough of Southwark was once more clearly
placed under the jurisdiction of the city; the citizens were entitled to the
goods and chattels of traitors and felons, and the privilege of the annual
Southwark Fair, with the pie powder court, was confirmed.
By this time the gate and prison must have passed under the control of
the civic authorities. They had, however, already enjoyed the privilege of
contributing to its charges. This appears from an entry as far back as
September 1339, in the account of expenditure of Thomas de Maryus,
chamberlain. The item is for “moneys delivered to William Simond,
Sergeant of the Chamber, by precept of the mayor and aldermen, for
making the pavement within Newgate, £7 6s. 8d.” How complete became
the power and responsibility of the Corporation and its officers is to be seen
in the account given in the ‘Liber Albus’ of the procedure when new
sheriffs were appointed.[19] They were sworn on appointment, and with
them their officers, among whom were the governor of Newgate and his
clerk. After dinner on the same day of appointment the old and new sheriffs

repaired to Newgate, where the new officials took over all the prisoners “by
indenture” made between them and the old.[20] They were also bound to
“place one safeguard there at their own peril,” and were forbidden to “let
the gaol to fenn or farm.” Other restrictions were placed upon them. It was
the sheriffs’ duty also, upon the vigil of St. Michael, on vacating their
office, to resign into the hands of the mayor for the time being the keys of
Newgate, the Cocket or Seal of Newgate, and all other things pertaining
unto the said sheriffwick.[21] All the civic authorities, mayor, sheriffs,
aldermen, and their servants, including the gaoler of Newgate, were
forbidden to brew for sale, keep an oven, or let carts for hire; “nor shall they
be regrators of provisions, or hucksters of ale, or in partnership with such.”
Penalties were attached to the breach of these regulations. It was laid down
that any who took the oath and afterwards contravened it, or any who would
not agree to abide by the ordinance, should be forthwith “ousted from his
office for ever.” It was also incumbent upon the sheriffs to put “a man
sufficient, and of good repute, to keep the gaol of Newgate in due manner,
without taking anything of him for such keeping thereof, by covenant made
in private or openly.” Moreover, the gaoler so appointed swore before the
Lord Mayor and aldermen that “neither he nor any of them shall take fine or
extortionate charge from any prisoner by putting on or taking off his irons,
or shall receive moneys extorted from such prisoners.” He was permitted to
levy fourpence from each upon release, “as from ancient time has been the
usage, but he shall take fees from no person at his entrance there;” indeed,
he was warned that if he practised extortion he would be “ousted from his
office,” and punished at the discretion of the mayor, aldermen, and common
council of the city.
It will be made pretty plain, I think, in subsequent pages, that these wise
and righteous regulations were both flagrantly ignored and systematically
contravened. The rule against farming out the prison may have been
observed, and it may not be clearly proved that the sheriffs ever took toll
from the gaoler. But the spirit of the law, if not its letter, was broken by the
custom which presently grew general of making the gaolership a
purchaseable appointment. The buying and selling of offices, of army
commissions, for instance, as we have seen practised within recent years, at
one time extended also to the keeperships of gaols. It is recorded in the
Calendar of State papers that one Captain Richardson agreed for his place
as keeper of Newgate for £3000. A larger sum, viz. £5000, was paid by John

Huggins to Lord Clarendon, who “did by his interest” obtain a grant of the
office of keeper of the Fleet prison for the life of Huggins and his son. One
James Whiston, in a book entitled ‘England’s Calamities Discovered, or
Serious Advice to the Common Council of London,’[22] strongly
remonstrates against this practice, which he stigmatizes as “bartering justice
for gold.” His language is plain and forcible. “Shall the public houses built
at the city charges [it appears that at that time Ludgate, Newgate, the Fleet,
and the Compters were all put up to the highest bidder] be sold for private
lucre?... He that sells a gaoler’s place sells the liberty, the estate, the person,
nay, the very lives of the prisoners under his jurisdiction.” “Purchased
cruelty,” the right to oppress the prisoners, that is to say, in order to recover
the sums spent in buying the place, “is now grown so bold that if a poor
man pay not extortionary fees and ruinous chamber-rent, he shall be thrown
into holes and common sides to be devoured by famine, lice, and disease. I
would fain know,” he asks, “by what surmise of common sense a keeper of
a prison can demand a recompense or fee from a prisoner for keeping him
in prison?... Can he believe that any person can deserve a recompense for
opening the door of misery and destruction?... But now such is the
confidence of a purchaser, that to regain his sum expended he sells his tap-
house at prodigious rates, ... he farms his sheets to mere harpies, and his
great key to such a piece of imperious cruelty (presumably his chief
turnkey) as is the worst of mankind.” Following the same line of argument,
he says “it will perhaps be thought impertinent to dispute a gaoler’s
demands for admitting us into his loathsome den, when even the common
hangman, no doubt encouraged by such examples, will scarce give a
malefactor a cast of his office without a bribe, demands very formally his
fees, forsooth, of the person to be executed, and higgles with him as nicely
as if he were going to do him some mighty kindness.” Eventually an act
was passed specifically forbidding the sale of such places. This statute
affirms that “none shall buy, sell, let, or take to farm, the office of under-
sheriff, gaoler, bailiff, under pain of £500, half to the king and half to him
that shall sue.”
Before leaving the subject of the sheriffs’ jurisdiction in regard to
Newgate, it may be interesting to refer to a conflict between them and the
Corporation as to the right to appoint the gaoler. It is recorded in the State
papers, under date March 1, 1638, that Isaac Pennington and John
Wollaston were elected and sworn sheriffs for the ensuing year. They went,

according to ancient custom, to Newgate, where, having received the keys
and the charge of the prisoners from the former sheriffs, they substituted for
the actual keeper one James Francklin, who about the 15th of the following
October died. Accordingly the sheriffs appointed and settled Henry
Wollaston as keeper of the gaol, who peaceably executed the duties of that
place for six weeks. The rest of the story is best told in the language of the
record. After that time “the Lord Mayor and aldermen, never charging
Wollaston with any miscarriage, sent for him to their court at Guildhall, and
demanded of him the keys of the said prison, who refusing to deliver them
to any without the consent of the sheriffs, was then detained until some
officers were sent from the said court, who forcibly brought the officer’s
servants intrusted with the said keys and prisoners by the said Wollaston,
and, without the knowledge or consent of the said sheriffs, delivered them
to Richard Johnson, a young man not free of the city, clerk to the recorder,
whom they (the sheriffs, from whom this protest comes) consider to be very
unfit for such a trust. For redress, the sheriffs by all fair means have applied
themselves divers times to the Lord Mayor and court of aldermen, who
refuse to restore the said Wollaston. The sheriffs conceive that the trust and
keeping of the said gaol, both by law and reason, ought to be in their
disposition, and that it is inseparable, incident to, and of common right
belonging to their office, they being liable to punishments for any escapes,
and amerciaments for non-appearance of prisoners in Her Majesty’s courts
of justice, with many other such like damages and fears.”
How the case was finally settled does not appear. But the matter was one
in which the king (Charles I.) would probably claim to have a voice. The
appointment might be in the gift and actually made by the Corporation, but
the city authorities were often invited by the Court to put in some royal
nominee, a request which might easily be interpreted into a command. Thus
in April 1594, the Lords of the Council addressed the mayor, aldermen, and
sheriffs, soliciting them to appoint Richard Hutchman, one of Her Majesty’s
sergeants-at-arms, keeper of Newgate, vice Dios, deceased. In June the
Corporation reply that they regret they cannot appoint Hutchman. The
Lords’ Council now issue a peremptory order to place him in office, which
was done, but the Corporation was not to be beaten. Next year a fresh
representation is made to the Lords in Council, stating the reasons why the
city authorities had dismissed Mr. Hutchman from his place.

Another State paper, dated 1633, gives a draft of a letter recommending
one A. B. for the appointment of keeper, vacant by the “nomination of one
not deemed to have been legally put in.” Some seventy years later,
according to another authority, the question was definitely settled. In this
(dated 1708) it is set forth that “the keeper of the prison holds that place of
great trust under the queen (Anne), giving about £8000 security, and the
prison is turned over to each of the new sheriffs when sworn in by
delivering them a key. The place is in the gift of the Lord Mayor and
aldermen.”
Let us return to Mediæval Newgate. Whatever the authority, whether
royal or civic, the condition of the inmates must have been wretched in the
extreme, as the few brief references to them in the various records will
sufficiently prove. The place was full of horrors; the gaolers rapacious and
cruel. In 1334 an official inquiry was made into the state of the gaol, and
some of the atrocities practised were brought to light. Prisoners detained on
minor charges were cast into deep dungeons, and there associated with the
worst criminals. All were alike threatened, nay tortured, till they yielded to
the keepers’ extortions, or consented to turn approvers and swear away the
lives of innocent men. These poor prisoners were dependent upon the
charity and good-will of the benevolent for food and raiment. As far back as
1237 it is stated that Sir John Pulteney gave four marks by the year to the
relief of prisoners in Newgate. In the year 1385 William Walworth, the
stalwart mayor whose name is well remembered in connection with Wat
Tyler’s rebellion, gave “somewhat” with the same good object. “So have
many others since,” says the record. The water supply of the prison, Stowe
tells, was also a charitable gift. “Thomas Knowles, grocer, sometime Mayor
of London, by license of Reynold, prior of St. Bartholomew’s in Smithfield,
and also of John Wakering, master of the hospital of St. Bartholomew, and
his brethren, conveyed the waste of water at the cistern near unto the
common fountain and Chapel of St. Nicholas (situate by the said hospital)
to the gaols of Ludgate and Newgate, for the relief of the prisoners.”
In 1451, by the will of Phillip Malpas, who had been a sheriff some
twelve years previous, the sum of £125 was bequeathed to “the relief of
poor prisoners.” This Malpas, it may be mentioned here, was a courageous
official, ready to act promptly in defence of city rights. In 1439 a prisoner
under escort from Newgate to Guildhall was rescued from the officer’s
hands by five companions, after which all took sanctuary at the college of

St. Martin’s-le-Grand.[23] “But Phillip Malpas and Robert Marshal, the
sheriffs of London, were no sooner acquainted with the violence offered to
their officer and the rescue of their prisoner, than they, at the head of a great
number citizens, repaired to the said college, and forcibly took from thence
the criminal and his rescuers, whom they carried in fetters to the Compter,
and thence, chained by the necks, to Newgate.”
For food the prisoners were dependent upon alms or upon articles
declared forfeit by the law. Thus some bread of light weight, seized on the
10th August 1298, was ordered to be given to the prisoners in Newgate.
Again, the halfpenny loaf of light bread of Agnes Foting of Stratford was
found wanting 7 shillings (or 4⅕ oz.) in weight; therefore it was adjudged
that her bread should be forfeited, and it also was sent unto the gaol. All
food sold contrary to the statutes of the various guilds was similarly
forfeited to the prisoners. The practice of giving food was continued
through succeeding years, and to a very recent date. A long list of charitable
donations and bequests might be made out, bestowed either in money or in
kind. A customary present was a number of stones of beef. Some gave
penny loaves, some oatmeal, some coals. Without this benevolence it would
have gone hard with the poor population of the Gatehouse gaol. It was not
strange that the prison should be wasted by epidemics, as when in 1414 “the
gaoler died and prisoners to the number of sixty-four;” or that the inmates
should at times exhibit a desperate turbulence, taking up arms and giving
constituted authority much trouble to subdue them, as in 1457 when they
broke out of their several wards in Newgate, and got upon the leads, where
they defended themselves with great obstinacy against the sheriffs and their
officers, insomuch that they, the sheriffs, were obliged to call the citizens to
their assistance, whereby the prisoners were soon reduced to their former
state.
The evil effects of incarceration in Newgate may be further judged by
the fate which overtook the city debtors who were temporarily removed
thither from Ludgate. An effort had been made in 1419 to put pressure upon
them as a class. An ordinance was issued by Henry V. closing the Ludgate
prison for debtors. It had been found that “many false men of bad
disposition and purpose have been more willing to take up their abode
there, so as to waste and spend their goods upon the ease and license that
there is within, than pay their debts.” Wherefore it was ordained that “all
prisoners therein shall be removed and safely carried to Newgate, there to

remain each in such keeping as his own deserts shall demand.” The order
was, however, very speedily rescinded. A later ordinance in the same year
sets forth that “whereas, through the abolition and doing away with the
prison of Ludgate, which was formerly ordained for the good and comfort
of citizens and other reputable persons, and also by reason of the fœtid and
corrupt atmosphere that is in the hateful gaol of Newgate, many persons
who lately were in the said prison of Ludgate, who in the time of William
Sevenoke, late mayor, for divers great offences which they had there
compassed were committed to the said gaol (of Newgate), are now dead,
who might have been living, it is said, if they had

The Gaoler

remained at Ludgate abiding in peace there; and seeing that every person is
sovereignly bound to support and be tender to the lives of men, the which

God hath bought so dearly with His precious blood; therefore Richard
Whittington, now mayor (1419), and the aldermen, on Saturday the 2nd
November, have ordained and established that the gaol of Ludgate shall be a
prison from henceforth to keep therein all citizens and other reputable
persons whom the mayor, aldermen, sheriffs, or chamberlain of the city
shall think proper to commit and send to the same, provided always that the
warder shall be a good and loyal man, giving sufficient surety,” &c. Ten or
twelve years later a similar exodus from Ludgate to Newgate and back
again took place. “On the Tuesday next after Palm Sunday 1431, all the
prisoners of Ludgate were conveyed into Newgate by Walter Chartsey and
Robert Large, sheriffs of London, and on the 13th April the same sheriffs
(through the false suggestion of John Kingesell, gaoler of Newgate) did
fetch from thence eighteen persons, freemen, and these were led to the
Counters pinioned as if they had been felons. But on the 16th June Ludgate
was again appointed for freemen, prisoners for debt, and the same day the
same freemen entered by ordinance of the mayor, aldermen, and commons;
and by them Henry Deane, tailor, was made keeper of Ludgate.”
One other charitable bequest must be referred to here, as proving that the
moral no less than the physical well-being of the prisoners was occasionally
an object of solicitude. In the reign of Richard II. a prayer-book was
specially bequeathed to Newgate in the following terms:—
“Be it remembered that on the 10th day of June, in the 5th year (1382),
Henry Bever, parson of the church of St. Peter in Brad Street (St. Peter the
Poor, Broad Street), executor of Hugh Tracy, Chaplain, came here before
the mayor and aldermen and produced a certain book called a ‘Porte
hors,’[24] which the same Hugh had left to the gaol of Newgate, in order that
priests and clerks there imprisoned might say their service from the same,
there to remain so long as it might last. And so in form aforesaid the book
was delivered unto David Bertelike, keeper of the gate aforesaid, to keep it
in such manner so long as he should hold that office; who was also then
charged to be answerable for it. And it was to be fully allowable for the said
Henry to enter the gaol aforesaid twice in the year at such times as he
should please, these times being suitable times, for the purpose of seeing
how the book was kept.”[25]
We are without any very precise information as to the state of the prison
building throughout these dark ages. But it was before everything a gate-
house, part and parcel of the city fortifications, and therefore more care and

attention would be paid to its external than its internal condition. It was
subject, moreover, to the violence of such disturbers of the peace as the

Death-bed of Whittington.

followers of Wat Tyler, of whom it is written that, having spoiled strangers
“in most outrageous manner, entered churches, abbeys, and houses of men
of law, which in semblable sort they ransacked, they also brake up the
prisons of Newgate and of both the Compters, destroyed the books, and set
the prisoners at liberty.” This was in 1381. Whether the gaol was
immediately repaired after the rebellion was crushed does not appear; but if
so, the work was only partially performed, and the process of dilapidation
and decay must soon have recommenced, for in Whittington’s time it was
almost in ruins. That eminent citizen and mercer, who was three times
mayor, and whose charitable bequests were numerous and liberal, left
moneys in his will for the purpose of rebuilding the place, and accordingly
license was granted in 1422, the first year of Henry VI.’s reign, to his
executors, John Coventre, Jenken Carpenter, and William Grove, “to re-
edify the gaol of Newgate, which they did with his goods.” This building,
such as it was, continued to serve until the commencement of the
seventeenth century.
In 1629 a petition from the gaoler to the king sets forth[26] that “by
reason of the great ruins of the gaol it is now in hand to be repaired.” The
gaoler further states that there is great danger lest in time of repair some of

the prisoners should escape, and prays directions to the Lord Mayor and
Recorder to certify how many prisoners are capable of His Majesty’s mercy,
and to the Attorney General to prepare pardons. This document is under-
written, “Reference to Recorder to certify, and to the Attorney General to
prepare, a pardon;” following which is a recommendation from Sir Heneage
Finch (the first-named official) to release forty-four. Subsequently the east
side of Newgate was “begun to be repaired, Sir James Campbell being
mayor, and finished the year following, Sir Robert Drury, Baronet, being
mayor.” The expense was borne wholly or partly by the locality, as the
records show in 1632 an account of the assessment of the parish of St.
Stephen Walbrook, in which “two fifteenths were to be gathered for
repairing Newgate.” It is this re-edification which is referred to in Lupton’s
‘London Carbonadoed,’ 1638, who speaks of Newgate as new fronted and
new faced.
I have been unable to ascertain any exact figure of this old Newgate,
either in its ancient or improved aspect. The structure, such as it was,
suffered so severely in the great fire of 1666 that it became necessary to
rebuild it upon new and more imposing lines.
This may be described as the third edifice: that of the twelfth century
being the first, and Richard Whittington’s the second. Of this third prison
details are still extant, and I propose to describe it fully on a later page.[27]

CHAPTER II.

NEWGATE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

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

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

book,” in other words, the simple act of reading aloud, was deemed
sufficient. So flagrant was the evasion of the law, that gaolers for a certain
fee would assist accused persons to obtain a smattering of letters, whereby
they might plead their “clergy” in court. It may be added that although the
abuse of the privilege was presently greatly checked, it was not until the
reign of William and Mary that benefit of clergy was absolutely denied to
burglars, pickpockets, and other heinous offenders.
Yet there were occasional spasmodic intervals of extraordinary severity.
Twenty thieves, says Sir Thomas More in his ‘Utopia,’ might then be seen
hanging on a single gibbet. Special legislation was introduced to deal with
special crimes. Although there was an appropriateness in the retribution
which overtook him, the sentence inflicted upon the Bishop of Rochester’s
cook in 1531, under a new act passed on purpose, was ferociously cruel.
This man, one Richard Rose or Rouse, was convicted of having poisoned
sixteen persons with porridge specially prepared to put an end to his master.
The crime had been previously almost unknown in England, and special
statutory powers were taken to cope with it. An act was at once passed
defining the offence to be high treason, and prescribing boiling to death as
the penalty. Rose was accordingly, after conviction, boiled alive in
Smithfield. It may be added that this cruel statute, which may be read in
extenso in Froude, was soon afterwards repealed, but not before another
culprit, Margaret Davy by name, had suffered under its provisions for a
similar offence.
Newgate, like all other gaols, was at times scandalously over-crowded,
not only with the felons and trespassers who long languished waiting trial,
but with far less guilty offenders. There were also the debtors and the
conscience prisoners: the delinquents whose crime was impecuniosity or
commercial failure, and the independent thinkers who stoutly maintained
their right to profess forms of belief at variance with the government creed
of the hour. It is only a passing glimpse that we get of the meaner sort of
criminal committed to Newgate in these times. The gaol, as I have said, was
but the ante-chamber to something worse. It was the starting-point for the
painful promenade to the pillory. The jurors who were forsworn “for
rewards or favour of parties were judged to ride from Newgate to the pillory
in Cornhill with paper mitres on their heads, there to stand, and from thence
again to Newgate.”[31] Again, the ringleaders of false inquests, Darby,
Smith, and Simson by name, were, in the first year of Henry’s reign (1509),

condemned to ride about the city with their faces to the horses’ tails, and
paper on their heads, and were set on the pillory at Cornhill. After that they
were brought back to Newgate, where they died for very shame.[32]
A longer story and a heavier doom was that of the ’prentice lads who
upon ‘Evil May-day,’ as it was afterwards called, raised a tumult in the city
against the competition of foreign workmen, who were about this time
established in great numbers in the suburbs. One John Lincoln, a
meddlesome city broker, was so much exercised at this foreign interference
that he went about seeking a parson who would declaim against it from the
pulpit. One Dr. Bell or Bele, who was to preach at the Spital Church, agreed
to read from the pulpit a bill which this Lincoln had drawn up, and which
set forth the wrongs suffered by native artificers and merchants. Dr. Bell
followed the reading by an inflammatory sermon upon the text Pugna pro
Patria, by which “many a light-headed person took courage and openly
spoke against” the foreigners. As divers ill things had been done of late by
these strangers, the people’s rancour was kindled most furiously against
them. Conflicts took place in the streets between “the young men of the
city” and the strangers, so that several of the former were committed to
Newgate. Among others Stephen Studley, skinner, and Stephenson Betts.
Then arose “a secret rumour that on May-day following the city would slay
all the aliens.” News thereof reached Cardinal Wolsey, who summoned the
Lord Mayor, and desired him to take all due precautions. It was settled by
agreement between the Corporation and the cardinal that every citizen
should be commanded to shut up his doors after nine at night, and keep his
servants within. It so chanced that Alderman Sir John Mundy the same
night, coming from his ward, found two young men playing at the bucklers,
and many others looking on. The order for early closing had not indeed
been fully circulated as yet. Sir John Mundy ordered the combatants to
desist, and on their hesitation was for sending them to the Compter. But the
apprentices rose against the alderman, crying, “’Prentices! clubs! clubs!” A
crowd soon collected, the alderman took to flight, and by eleven at night
there were in Cheap six or seven hundred “serving-men, watermen,
courtiers, and others,” and out of St. Paul’s Churchyard came some three
hundred more. The mob, growing riotous, attacked the Compter and
released all prisoners confined therein for “hurting the strangers”; thence
they went to Newgate and set free Studley and Betts. Gaining courage by
these excesses, they ranged the streets, throwing sticks and stones, spoiling

all they found. The strangers were the principal victims. The house of one
Mewtas, a Picard, and those of other Frenchmen residing at the Greengate,
Leadenhall, were broken open and plundered. The riot continued till three
in the morning, “at which time they began to withdraw, but by the way were
taken by the mayor and others, and sent to the Tower, Newgate and the
Compters to the number of three hundred.”
The king took very summary measures for the punishment of the rioters.
Bell the preacher was arrested and sent to the Tower. A commission of oyer
and terminer was forthwith opened at the Guildhall, and the whole of the
prisoners, to the number of two hundred and seventy-eight, were marched
through the streets, tied with ropes, and put upon their trial. Lincoln the
ringleader and other thirteen were sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and
quartered; for execution whereof ten pairs of gallows were put up in divers
parts of the city: “before each of the Compters, at Newgate, St. Martin’s,
Aldersgate, and Bishopgate, which gallows were set on wheels, to be
removed from street to street and door to door as the prisoners were to be
executed.” Lincoln suffered death, but the rest were reprieved pending the
king’s pleasure. He lay at his manor of Greenwich just then, and thither the
mayor, recorder, and divers aldermen repaired to beg mercy for the city. But
Henry VIII. was not to be easily appeased. He still blamed the city
authorities for not checking these disorders in a more determined fashion,
and referred them for answer to his chancellor the cardinal. Wolsey granted
them his favour for a consideration, and counselled them to again petition
the king. They came to him, therefore, at his palace of Westminster, to the
number of four hundred men, in their shirts, bound together with ropes, and
with halters about their necks, and were at first sharply rebuked by the
cardinal, who told them they deserved death. But at the earnest entreaty of
the attendant lords, who were much moved by the humiliating sight, they
were pardoned and dismissed. The gallows in the city were taken down, and
all in durance were set free. Thus ended the “black waggon,” as the
procession of citizens was called, but “not, as it is thought, without paying a
considerable sum of money to the cardinal to stand their friend, for at that
time he was in such power he did all with the king.”[33]
A few further extracts will serve to describe some other criminal inmates
of Newgate in those times. The quotations are from the ‘Remembrancia,’
1579-1664. Searches appear to have been regularly made for suspected
persons, who when caught were committed to ward. Thus, 1519, a search

was made in the house of William Solcocke in Holborne, and it was found
that one Christopher Tyllesley had lain there two nights. “He has no master,
and is committed to Newgate.” Again, “in the house of Christopher
Arundell one Robert Bayley: has no master, and is committed to Newgate.”
To Newgate were also committed any who were bold enough to malign the
great Cardinal Wolsey, in the plenitude of his power, as was Adam Greene
in June 1523, a prisoner in Ludgate, who repeated to the keeper what he had
heard from a “bocher” (butcher), to the effect that Wolsey had told the king
that all London were traitors to his Grace. Greene was warned to keep
silent, but he said “he would abide by it, for he had it from a substantial
man who would also abide by it.”
It was not less dangerous to let the tongue wag too freely against the city
authorities. Articles are exhibited (April, 1524) against “John Sampye,
tailor, for saying (1) that he had been wrongfully imprisoned in the Compter
by the Mayor of London and Nicholas Partriche, alderman; (2) that they had
no power to send any man to ward; (3) that many were cast away by lying
in the Compter and Newgate at the command of the Corporation.” The
Corporation appear also to have dealt in a very high-handed fashion with
the city bakers, possibly to break down their monopoly, but a little on
personal private grounds. In 1526 the bakers petition Wolsey for redress,
setting forth that they have always been accustomed to “occupy the making
and selling of bread for the city, and since the time of Edward II. have been
used to take up wheat arriving in London at the price given them by the
mayor; but within the last five years certain persons, aldermen and others,
out of malice to the mystery and under colour of common weal, have
procured that all the wheat coming to the city should be garnered at the
Bridge House, and the bakers suffered to buy no other.... Lately the mayor
and aldermen tried to compel the bakers to buy two thousand quarters of
musty wheat at 12s. when sweet wheat may be bought for 7s. or 8s.” When
some bakers refused the mayor sent them to Newgate for eleven days, and
shut up their houses and shops, not allowing their wives or families to visit
them or buy their bread.
Now and again more serious crimes are recorded. In March 1528,
Stephen reports to Thomas Cromwell that between the hours of six and
seven, “five thieves knocked at the door of Roderigo the Spaniard, which
dwelleth next the goldsmith against your door.[34] Being asked who was
there, they answered one from the Court, to speak with Roderigo. When the

door was opened three of them rushed in and found the said Roderigo
sitting by the fire with a poor woman dwelling next to Mrs. Wynsor. Two
tarried and kept the door, and strangled the poor woman that she should not
cry. They then took Roderigo’s purse, and killed him by stabbing him in the
belly, but had not fled far before two of them were taken and brought to
Newgate.”
Debtors were too small fry to be often referred to in the chronicles of the
times. Now and again they are mentioned as fitting objects for charity, royal
and private. In the king’s book of payments is the following entry, under
date May 1515. “Master Almoner redeeming prisoners in Newgate,
Ludgate, and the Compter, £20.” The State Papers, 1581, contain a
commission to the Lord Mayor, recorder, and sheriffs of London, and many
others, all charitable folk, and some sixty in number, to compound with the
creditors of poor debtors, at that time prisoners in Newgate, Ludgate, and
the two Compters of the city. Although debtors in gaol who volunteered for
service on shipboard were discharged by proclamation from the demands of
their creditors, as a general rule committal to Newgate on account of
monetary mismanagement appears to have been more easily compassed
than subsequent release. The same volume of State Papers contains a
petition from Richard Case to Lord Burghley, to the effect that he had been
committed to Newgate “upon the unjust complaint of Mr. Benedict Spinola,
relative to the lease of certain lands and tenements in London.” The
petitioner further “desires to be discharged from prison, and to have the
queen’s pardon,” but there is no allusion to his enlargement.[35] The
impolicy of confining debtors was not to be fully realized till three more
centuries had passed away. But as early as 1700 a pamphlet preserved in the
‘Harleian Miscellany,’ and entitled ‘Labour in Vain,’ anticipates modern
feeling and modern legislation. The writer protests against the
imprisonment of debtors, which he compares to shutting up a cow from
herbage when she gives no milk. “In England we confine people to starve,
contrary to humanity, mercy, or policy. One may as reasonably expect his
dog,” he says, “when chained to a post should catch a hare, as that poor
debtors when in gaol should get wherewithal to pay their debts.”
Details of the incarceration and sufferings of prisoners for conscience
sake, in an age when polemics were backed up by the strong arm of the law,
are naturally to be met with more frequently in the partisan writings of the
time. Throughout the reigns of Henry VIII., Mary, and even in that of

Elizabeth, intolerance stalked rampant through the land, filling the prisons
and keeping Smithfield in a blaze. Henry was by turns severe on all creeds.
Now Protestants, now Catholics suffered. He began as an ardent champion
of Romish doctrines, and ended by denying the supremacy of the Pope. In
the first stage he persecuted so-called heretics, in the second he despoiled
Church property, and sent monks and priors to gaol and to the gallows.
Foxe gives a long and detailed list of the Protestant martyrs from first to
last. One of the most prominent was Richard Bayfield, a monk of Bury,
who became an inmate of Newgate. Foxe relates[36] that a letter of inquiry
was issued by the Bishop of London to the Lord Mayor and sheriffs to be
present at St. Paul’s on the 20th November 1531, to receive the said Richard
Bayfield, alias Soundesam, “a relapsed heretic after sentence.” The sheriffs
carried him to Newgate, whence they were commanded again to bring him
into Paul’s upper choir, there to give attendance upon the bishop. Later on
they are ordered to have him into the vestry, and then to bring him forth
again in Antichrist’s apparel to be degraded before them. “When the bishop
had degraded him,” says old Foxe, “kneeling upon the highest step of the
altar, he took his crosier staff and smote him on the breast that he threw him
down backwards and brake his head, and that he swooned; and when he
came to himself again he thanked God that he was delivered from the
malignant Church of Antichrist, and that he was come into the true sincere
Church of Jesus Christ militant here on earth; ... and so was he led forth
through the choir to Newgate, and there rested about an hour in prayer, and
so went to the fire in his apparel manfully and joyfully, and there for lack of
a speedy fire was two quarters of an hour alive.”
Henry was, however, impartial in his severity. In 1533 he suffered John
Frith, Andrew Hewett, and other Protestants, to the number of twenty-
seven, to be burned for heresy. The years immediately following he hunted
to death all who refused to acknowledge him as the head of the Church.
Besides such imposing victims as Sir Thomas More, and Fisher, Bishop of
Rochester, many priests suffered. In 1534 the prior of the London
Carthusians, the prior of Hexham, Benase, a monk of Sion College, and
John Haite, vicar of Isleworth, together with others,[37] were sentenced to be
hanged and quartered at Tyburn. In 1538 a friar, by name Forrest, was
hanged in Smithfield upon a gallows, quick, by the middle and armholes,
“and burnt to death for denying the king’s supremacy and teaching the same
in confession to many of the king’s subjects.” Upon the pile by which

Forrest was consumed was also a wooden image, brought out of Wales,
called “Darvell Gatheren,” which the Welshmen “much worshipped, and
had a prophecy amongst them that this image would set a whole forest on
fire, which prophecy took effect.”[38]
The greatest trials were reserved for the religious dissidents who dared to
differ with the king. Henry was vain of his learning and of his polemical
powers. No true follower of Luther, he was a Protestant by policy rather
than conviction, and he still held many tenets of the Church he had
disavowed. These were embodied and promulgated in the notorious Six
Articles, otherwise “the whip with six tails,” or the Bloody Statute, so
called from its sanguinary results. The doctrines enunciated were such that
many could not possibly subscribe to them; the penalties were “strait and
bloody,” and very soon they were widely inflicted. Foxe, in a dozen or more
pages, recounts the various presentments against individuals, lay and
clerical, for transgressing one or more of the principles of the Six Articles;
and adds to “the aforesaid, Dr. Taylor, parson of St. Peter’s, in Cornhill;
South, parish priest of Allhallows, in Lombard Street; Some, a priest; Giles,
the king’s beerbrewer, at the Red Lion, in St. Katherine’s; Thomas
Lancaster, priest; all which were imprisoned likewise for the Six Articles.”
“To be short,” he adds, “such a number out of all parishes in London, and
out of Calais, and divers other quarters, were then apprehended through the
said inquisition, that all prisons in London, including Newgate, were too
little to hold them, insomuch that they were fain to lay them in the halls. At
last, by the means of good Lord Audeley, such pardon was obtained of the
king that the said Lord Audeley, then Lord Chancellor, being content that
one should be bound for another, they were all discharged, being bound
only to appear in the Star Chamber the next day after All Souls, there to
answer if they were called; but neither was there any person called, neither
did any appear.”[39]
Bonner, then Bishop of London, and afterwards one of the queen’s
principal advisers, had power to persecute even under Henry. The Bible had
been set up by the king’s command in St. Paul’s, that the public might read
the sacred word. “Much people used to resort thither,” says Foxe, to hear
the reading of the Bible, and especially attended the reading of one John
Porter, “a fresh young man, and of a big stature,” who was very expert. It
displeased Bonner that this Porter should draw such congregations, and

sending for him, rebuked him very sharply for his reading. Porter defended
himself, but Bonner charged him with making expositions on the text,
and gathering “great multitudes about him to make
tumults.” Nothing was proved against Porter, but “in
fine Bonner sent him to Newgate, where he was
miserably fettered in irons, both legs and arms, with
a collar of iron about his neck, fastened to the wall
in the dungeon; being there so cruelly handled that
he was compelled to send for a kinsman of his,
whose name is also Porter, a man yet alive, and can
testify that it is true, and dwelleth yet without
Newgate. He, seeing his kinsman in this miserable
case, entreated Jewet, the keeper of Newgate, that
he might be released out of those cruel irons, and so,
through friendship and money, had him up among
other prisoners, who lay there for felony and Skeffington’s Gyves.
murder.” Porter made the most of the occasion, and
after hearing and seeing their wickedness and blasphemy, exhorted them to
amendment of life, and “gave unto them such instructions as he had learned
of in the Scriptures; for which his so doing he was complained, and so
carried down and laid in the lower dungeon of all, oppressed with bolts and
irons, where, within six or eight days, he was found dead.”
But the most prominent victim to the Six Articles was Anne Askew, the
daughter of Sir William Askew, knight, of Lincolnshire. She was married to
one Kyme, but is best known under her maiden name. She was persecuted
for denying the Real Presence, but the proceedings against her were pushed
to extremity, it was said, because she was befriended in high quarters. Her
story is a melancholy one. First one Christopher Dene examined her as to
her faith and belief in a very subtle manner, and upon her answers had her
before the Lord Mayor, who committed her to the Compter. There, for
eleven days, none but a priest was allowed to visit her, his object being to
ensnare her further. Presently she was released upon finding sureties to
surrender if required, but was again brought before the king’s council at
Greenwich. Her opinions in matters of belief proving unsatisfactory, she
was remanded to Newgate. Thence she petitioned the king, also the Lord
Chancellor Wriottesley, “to aid her in obtaining just consideration.”
Nevertheless, she was taken to the Tower, and there tortured. Foxe puts the

following words into her mouth: “On Tuesday I was sent from Newgate to
the sign of the Crown, where Master Rich and the Bishop of London, with
all their power and flattering words, went about to persuade me from God,
but I did not esteem their glosing pretences.... Then Master

Torture in The Tower.

Rich sent me to the Tower, where I remained till three o’clock.” At the
Tower strenuous efforts were made to get her to accuse others. They pressed
her to say how she was maintained in prison; whether divers gentlewomen
had not sent her money. But she replied that her maid had “gone abroad in
the streets and made moan to the ’prentices,” who had sent her alms. When
further urged, she admitted that a man in a blue coat had delivered her ten
shillings, saying it came from my Lady Hertford, and that another in a
violet coat had given her eight shillings from my Lady Denny—“whether it
is true or not I cannot tell.” “Then they said three men of the council did

maintain me, and I said no. Then they did put me on the rack because I
confessed no ladies or gentlemen to be of my opinion, and thereon they
kept me a long time; and because I lay still, and did not cry, my Lord
Chancellor and Master Rich took pains to rack me with their own hands till
I was nigh dead. Then the lieutenant (Sir Anthony Knevet) caused me to be
loosed from the rack. Incontinently I swooned, and then they recovered me
again. After that I sat two long hours, reasoning with my Lord Chancellor,
on the bare floor.” At last she was “brought to a house and laid in a bed with
as weary and painful bones as ever had patient Job; I thank my Lord God
there-for. Then my Lord Chancellor sent me word, if I would leave my
opinion, I should want nothing; if I did not, I should forthwith to Newgate,
and so be burned....”
Foxe gives full details of her torture in the Tower. At first she was let
down into a dungeon, and the gaoler, by command of Sir Anthony Knevet,
pinched her with the rack. After this, deeming he had done enough, he was
about to take her down, but Wriottesley, the Lord Chancellor, “commanded
the lieutenant to strain her on the rack again; which, because he denied to
do, tendering the weakness of the woman, he was threatened therefore
grievously of the said Wriottesley, saying he would signify his disobedience
to the king. And so consequently upon the same, he (Wriottesley) and
Master Rich, throwing off their gowns, would needs play the tormentors
themselves.... And so, quietly and patiently praying unto the Lord, she
abode their tyranny till her bones and joints were almost plucked asunder, in
such sort as she was carried away in a chair.” Then the chancellor galloped
off to report the lieutenant to the king; but Sir Anthony Knevet forestalled
by going by water, and obtained the king’s pardon before the complaint was
made. “King Henry,” says Foxe, “seemed not very well to like of their so
extreme handling of the woman.”
Soon after this Mistress Askew was again committed to Newgate,
whence she was carried in a chair to Smithfield, “because she could not
walk on her feet by means of her great torments. When called upon to
recant she refused, as did the martyrs with her.” Whereupon the Lord
Mayor, commanding fire to be put under them, cried, “Fiat Justitia,” and
they were burned.
The Maryan persecutions naturally filled Newgate. It would weary the
reader to give lengthened descriptions of the many martyrs who passed
through that prison to Smithfield. But a few of the victims stand

prominently forward. Two of the earliest were John Rogers, vicar of St.
Sepulchre and prebendary of St. Paul’s, and Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester.
Rogers was the proto-martyr—the first sacrificed to the religious
intolerance of Mary and her advisers. Foxe says that after being a prisoner
in his own house for a long time, Rogers was “removed to the prison called
Newgate, where he was lodged among thieves and murderers for a great
space.” He was kept in Newgate “a full year,” Rogers tells us himself, “at
great costs and charges, having a wife and ten children to find; and I had
never a penny of my livings, which was against the law.” He made “many
supplications” out of Newgate, and sent his wife to implore fairer treatment;
but in Newgate he lay, till at length he was brought to the Compter in
Southwark, with Master Hooper, for examination. Finally, after having been
“very uncharitably entreated,” he was “unjustly, and most cruelly, by
wicked Winchester condemned.” The 4th February, 1555, he was warned
suddenly by the keeper’s wife of Newgate to prepare himself for the fire,
“who being then found asleep, scarce with much shogging could be
awakened.” Being bidden to make haste, he remarked, “If it be so, I need
not tie my points.” “So was he had down first to Bonner to be degraded,
whom he petitioned to be allowed to talk a few words with his wife before
his burning”—a reasonable request, which was refused. “Then the sheriffs,
Master Chester and Master Woodroove, took him to Smithfield; and his
wife and children, eleven in number, ten able to go, and one at the breast,
met him as he passed. This sorrowful sight of his own flesh and blood could
nothing move him, but that he constantly and cheerfully took his death with
wonderful patience in the defence and quarrel of Christ’s gospel.”[40]
While detained in Newgate, Master Rogers devoted himself to the
service of the ordinary prisoners, to whom he was “beneficial and liberal,”
having thus devised “that he with his fellows should have but one meal a
day, they paying, notwithstanding, the charges of the whole; the other meal
should be given to them that lacked on the other (or common) side of the
prison. But Alexander their keeper, a strait man and a right Alexander, a
coppersmith indeed, ... would in no case suffer that.”
This Alexander Andrew, or Alexander, as he is simply called, figures in
contemporary records, more especially in the writings of Foxe, as a perfect
type of the brutal gaoler. “Of gaolers,” says Foxe, “Alexander, keeper of
Newgate, exceeded all others.” He is described as “a cruel enemy of those
that lay there (Newgate) for religion. The cruel wretch, to hasten the poor

lambs to the slaughter, would go to Bonner, Story, Cholmley, and others,
crying out,

The Torture Of The Boot.

‘Rid my prison! rid my prison! I am too much pestered by these
heretics.” Alexander’s reception of an old friend of his, Master Philpot,
committed to Newgate,[41] is graphically told by the old chronicler. “‘Ah,
thou hast well done to bring thyself hither,’ he says to Philpot. ‘I must be
content,’ replied Philpot, ‘for it is God’s appointment, and I shall desire you
to let me have some gentle favour, for you and I have been of old
acquaintance.’ ‘Well,’ said Alexander, ‘I will show you great gentleness and
favour, so thou wilt be ruled by me.’ Then said Master Philpot, ‘I pray you
show me what you would have me to do.’ He said, ‘If you will recant I will
show you any pleasure I can.’ ‘Nay,’ said Master Philpot, ‘I will never
recant whilst I have my life, for it is most certain truth, and in witness
thereof I will seal it with my blood.’ Then Alexander said, ‘This is the
saying of the whole pack of you heretics.’ Whereupon he commanded him
to be set upon the block, and as many irons upon his legs as he could bear,
for that he would not follow his wicked mind.... ‘But, good Master
Alexander, be so much my friend that these irons may be taken off.’ ‘Well,’
said Alexander, ‘give me my fees, and I will take them off; if not, thou shalt

wear them still.’ Then Master Philpot said, ‘Sir, what is your fee?’ He said
four pounds was his fee. ‘Ah,’ said Master Philpot, ‘I have not so much; I
am but a poor man, and I have been long in prison.’ ‘What wilt thou give
me, then?’ said Alexander. ‘Sir,’ said he, ‘I will give you twenty shillings,
and that I will send my man for, or else I will lay my gown to gage. For the
time is not long, I am sure, that I shall be with you, for the bishop said I
should be soon despatched.’ Then said Alexander unto him, ‘What is that to
me?’ and with that he departed for a time, and commanded him to be had
into limbo. And so his commandment was fulfilled; but before he could be
taken from the block the clerk would have a groat. Then one Willerence,
steward of the house, took him on his back and carried him down his man
knew not whither. Wherefore Master Philpot said to his man, ‘Go to Master
Sheriff, and show him how I am used, and desire Master Sheriff to be good
unto me;’ and so his servant went straightway, and took an honest man with
him.
“And when they came to Master Sheriff, which was Master Ascham, and
showed him how Master Philpot was handled in Newgate, the sheriff,
hearing this, took his ring off his finger and delivered it unto that honest
man that came with Master Philpot’s man, and bade him go unto Alexander
the keeper and command him to take off his irons and handle him more
gently, and give his man again that which he had taken from him. And when
they came to the said Alexander and told their message from the sheriff,
Alexander took the ring, and said, ‘Ah, I perceive that Master Sheriff is a
bearer with him and all such heretics as he is, therefore to-morrow I will
show it to his betters;’ yet at ten by the clock he went to Master Philpot
where he lay and took off his irons, and gave him such things as he had
taken before from his servant.”
Alexander’s zeal must have been very active. In 1558 it is recorded that
twenty-two men and women were committed to Newgate for praying
together in the fields about Islington. They were two and twenty weeks in
the prison before they were examined, during which Alexander sent them
word that if they would hear a mass they should be delivered. According to
Foxe a terrible vengeance overtook this hard-hearted man. He died very
miserably, being so swollen that he was more like a monster than a man.
The same authority relates that other persecutors came to a bad end.
Bishop Hooper soon followed Rogers to the stake. The same Monday
night, Feb. 4, 1555, the keeper of Newgate gave him an inkling that he

should be sent to Gloucester to suffer death, “and the next day following,
about four o’clock in the morning before day, the keeper with others came
to him and searched him and the bed wherein he lay, to see if he had written
anything, and then he was led to the sheriffs of London and other their
officers forth of Newgate, to a place appointed not far from Dunstan’s
Church, Fleet Street, where six of the Queen’s Guards were appointed to
receive him and to carry him to Gloucester, ...” where execution was to be
done.
We obtain a curious insight into the gaol at Newgate during Mary’s reign
from the narrative of the ‘Hot Gospeller.’ Edward Underhill, a yeoman of
the Guard, was arrested in 1553 for “putting out” a ballad which attacked
the Queen’s title. Underhill was carried before the Council, and there got
into dispute with Bourne, a fanatic priest whom he called a papist. “Sir John
Mason asked what he meant by that, and he replied, ‘If you look among the
priests of Paul’s you will find some mumpsimusses there. This caused much
heat, and he was committed to Newgate.” At the door of the prison he wrote
to his wife, asking her to send his night-gown, Bible, and lute, and then he
goes on to describe Newgate as follows:[42]—
“In the centre of Newgate was a great open hall; as soon as it was
supper-time the board was covered in the same hall. The keeper, whose
name was Alexander, with his wife came and sat down, and half a dozen
prisoners that were there for felony. Underhill being the first that for
religion was sent into that prison. One of the felons had served with him in
France. After supper this good fellow, whose name was Bristow, procured
one to have a bed in his (Underhill’s) chamber who could play well upon a
rebeck. He was a tall fellow, and after one of Queen Mary’s guard, yet a
Protestant, which he kept secret, or else he should not have found such
favour as he did at the keeper’s hands and his wife’s, for to such as loved
the gospel they were very cruel. ‘Well,’ said Underhill, ‘I have sent for my
Bible, and, by God’s grace, therein shall be my daily exercise; I will not
hide it from them.’ ‘Sir,’ said he, ‘I am poor; but they will bear with you, for
they see your estate is to pay well; and I will show you the nature and
manner of them, for I have been here a good while. They both do love
music very well; wherefore, you with your lute, and I to play with you on
my rebeck, will please them greatly. He loveth to be merry and to drink
wine, and she also. If you will bestow upon them, every dinner and supper,

a quart of wine and some music, you shall be their white son, and have all
the favour they can show you.’
“The honour of being ‘white son’ to the governor and governess of
Newgate was worth aspiring after. Underhill duly provided the desired
entertainment. The governor gave him the best room in the prison, with all
other admissible indulgences.
“At last, however, the evil savours, great unquietness, with over many
draughts of air, threw the poor gentleman into a burning ague. He shifted
his lodgings, but to no purpose; the evil savours followed him. The keeper
offered him his own parlour, where he escaped from the noise of the prison;
but it was near the kitchen, and the smell of the meat was disagreeable.
Finally the wife put him away in her store closet, amidst her best plate,
crockery, and clothes, and there he continued to survive till the middle of
September, when he was released on bail through the interference of the
Earl of Bedford.”
There was a truce to religious persecution for some years after Mary’s
death. Throughout Edward’s reign and the better part of Elizabeth’s it was
only the ordinary sort of criminal who was committed to the gaol of
Newgate. The offences were mostly coining, horse-stealing, and other kinds
of thefts. “One named Ditche was apprehended at the sessions holden at
Newgate on 4th December, 1583, nineteen times indicted, whereof he
confessed eighteen, who also between the time of his apprehension and the
said sessions impeached many for stealing horses, whereof (divers being
apprehended) ten were condemned and hanged in Smithfield on the 11th
December, being Friday and horse-market there.”[43] The ‘Remembrancia’
gives a letter from Mr. Valentine Dale, one of the masters of the Court of
Requests, to the Lord Mayor, stating that the wife of John Hollingshead had
petitioned the Queen to grant a reprieve and pardon to her husband, a
condemned felon, and directing the execution to be stayed, and a full
account of his behaviour and offence forwarded to Her Majesty. The Lord
Mayor in reply says that he had called before him the officers of Newgate,
who stated that Hollingshead had been for a long time a common and
notorious thief. This was the fourth time he had been in Newgate for
felonies, and upon the last occasion he had been branded with the letter T
(thief). Coiners were very severely dealt with. The offence was treason, and
punished as such. There are many cases on record, such as—“On the 27th
of January Phillip Meshel, a Frenchman, and two Englishmen were drawn

from Newgate to Tyburn, and there hanged. The Frenchman quartered who
had coined gold counterfeit; of the Englishmen, the one had clipped silver,
and the other cast testers of tin.” “The 30th of May Thomas Green,
goldsmith, was drawn from Newgate to Tyburn, and there hanged, headed,
and quartered, for clipping of coin, both gold and silver.”
Towards the end of the reign, in spite of the stringent acts against
vagrancy, the country swarmed with rogues and beggars—vagabonds who
laid the farmers under contribution, and terrified all honest folk out of their
lives. In London crime was rampant. Even then it had its organization; there
were houses which harboured thieves, in which schools were maintained for
the education of young pickpockets. Maitland tells us that in the spring of
1585, Fleetwood the recorder with several other magistrates searched the
town and discovered seven houses of entertainment for felons. They found
also that one Walton, a gentleman born, once a prosperous merchant, “but
fallen into decay,” who had kept an alehouse which had been put down, had
begun a “new business.” He opened his house for the reception of all the
cut-purses in and about the city. In this house was a room to learn young
boys to cut purses. Two devices were hung up; one was a pocket, the other
was a purse. The pocket had in it certain counters, and was hung round with
hawk’s bells, and over them hung a little sacring[44] bell. The purse had
silver in it, and he that could take out a counter without any noise was
allowed to be a public foyster; and he that could take a piece of silver out of
the purse without noise of any of the bells was adjudged a clever nypper.
These places gave great encouragement to evil-doers in these times, but
were soon after suppressed.
In 1581 a fresh religious persecution began, happily without the
sanguinary accessories of that of Mary’s reign. Elizabeth had no love for the
puritans; she also began now to hate and fear the papists. Orthodoxy was
insisted upon. People who would not go to church were sent first to prison,
then haled before sessions and fined a matter of twenty pounds each. Still
worse fared the adherents or emissaries of Rome. Years before (1569) a
man, John Felton, had been drawn from Newgate into Paul’s Churchyard,
and there hanged and quartered as a traitor for affixing a bull of Pope Pius
V. on the gate of the Bishop of London’s palace. In 1578 it is recorded that
“the papists are stubborn.” So also must have been the puritans. “One
Sherwood brought before the Bishop of London behaved so stubbornly that
the bishop will show no more favour to those miscalled puritans.” Next

began a fierce crusade against the “seminary” priests, who swarmed into
England like missionaries, despatched in partibus infidelium to minister to
the faithful few and bring back all whom they could to the fold. Newgate
was now for ever full of these priests. They adopted all manner of disguises,
and went now as soldiers, now as private gentlemen, now openly as divines.
They were harboured and hidden by faithful Roman Catholics, and
managed thus to glide unperceived from point to point intent upon their
dangerous business. But they did not always escape observation, and when
caught they were invariably laid by the heels and hardly dealt with. Gerard
Dance, alias Ducket, a seminary priest, was arraigned (1581) at the Old
Bailey before the Queen’s justices, and affirmed that although he was in
England, he was subject to the Pope in ecclesiastical causes, and that the
Pope had now the same authority in England that he had a hundred years
past, and which he had at Rome, “with other traitorous speeches, for the
which he was condemned to be hanged, drawn, and quartered.” The same
year William Dios (a Spaniard?), keeper of Newgate, sends a certificate of
the names of the recusants now in Newgate, “viz. Lawrence Wakeman and
others, ... the two last being of the precise sort.” April 20, 1586, Robert
Rowley, taken upon seas by Captain Burrows going to Scotland, is
committed first to the Marshalsea, and from thence to Newgate. Next year,
August 26, Richard Young reports to Secretary Walsyngham that he has
talked with sundry priests remaining in the prisons about London. “Some,”
he says, “are very evil affected, and unworthy to live in England. Simpson,
alias Heygate, and Flower, priests, have justly deserved death, and in no
wise merit Her Majesty’s mercy. William Wigges, Leonard Hide, and
George Collinson, priests in Newgate, are dangerous fellows, as are also
Morris Williams and Thomas Pounde, the latter committed as a layman, but
in reality a professed Jesuit. Francis Tirrell is an obstinate papist, and is
doubted to be a spy.”
We read as follows in an intercepted letter from Cardinal John Allen,
Rector of the English College at Rheims, to Mr. White, seminary priest in
the Clink,[45] and the rest of the priests in Newgate, the Fleet, and the
Marshalsea. “Pope Sextus sends them his blessing, and will send them over
for their comfort Dr. Reynolds, chief Jesuit of the college at Rheims, who
must be carefully concealed,” ... with others, ... “whose discourses would be
a great joy to all heretics. They will bring some consecrated crucifixes, late
consecrated by his Holiness, and some books to be given to the chiefest

Catholics, their greatest benefactors.” This letter was taken upon a young
man, Robert Weston, travelling to seek service, “who seems to have had
considerable dealings with recusants, and to have made very full
confessions.”
It was easier for all such to get into Newgate just then—than to obtain
release. Henry Ash and Michael Genison, being prisoners in Newgate,
petition Lord Keeper Pickering for a warrant for their enlargement upon
putting in good security for their appearance; “they were long since
committed by Justice Young and the now Bishop of London for recusancy,
where they remain, to their great shame and utter undoing, and are likely to
continue, unless he extend his mercy.” In 1598 George Barkworth petitions
Secretary Cecil “that he was committed to Newgate six months ago on
suspicion of being a seminary priest, which he is not; has been examined
nine times, and brought up at sessions four times; begs the same liberty of
the house at Bridewell which was granted him at Newgate.”
Political prisoners were not wanting in Newgate in the Elizabethan
period. In 1585 instructions are given[46] to the recorder to examine one
Hall, a prisoner in Newgate, charged with a design for conveying away the
Queen of Scots. This was a part of Babington’s conspiracy, for which
Throgmorton also suffered. Other victims, besides the unfortunate Queen
herself, were Babington, Tichbourne, and many more, who after trial at the
Old Bailey, and incarceration in Newgate, were hanged in St. Giles’s Fields.
The execution was carried out with great barbarity; seven of the
conspirators were cut down before they were dead and disembowelled.
Another plot against Elizabeth’s life was discovered in 1587, the actors in
which were “one Moody, an idle, profligate fellow, then prisoner in
Newgate, and one Stafford, brother to Sir Edward Stafford.” The great
Queen Bess in these last days of her reign went in constant terror of her life;
and a third conspiracy to poison her, originating with her own physician and
Lopez, a Jew, led to their execution as traitors. Again, Squires, a disbanded
soldier, was charged with putting poison on the pommel of her saddle, and
although he admitted his guilt upon the rack, he declared when dying that
he was really innocent.
All this time within Newgate there was turbulence, rioting, disorders,
accompanied seemingly by constant oppression. The prisoners were ready
to brave anything to get out. General gaol deliveries were made otherwise
than in due course of law. Those that were fit to serve in the sea or land

forces were frequently pardoned and set free. A petition to the Lord Admiral
(1589) is preserved in which certain prisoners, shut out from pardon
because they are not “by law bailable,” beg that the words maybe struck out
of the order for release, and state that they will gladly enter Her Majesty’s
service. Many made determined efforts to escape. “The 16th December,
1556,” says Hollinshed, “Gregory, Carpenter, Smith, and a Frenchman born
were arraigned for making counterfeit keys wherewith to have opened the
locks of Newgate, to have slain the keeper and let forth the prisoners; at
which time of his arraignment, having conveyed a knife into his sleeve, he
thrust it into the side of William Whiteguts, his fellow-prisoner, who had
given evidence against him, so that he was in great peril of death thereby;
for the which fact he was immediately taken from the bar into the street
before the justice hall, when, his hand being first stricken off, he was
hanged on a gibbet set up for the purpose.
“The keeper of Newgate was arraigned and indicted for that the said
prisoner had a weapon about him and his hands loose, which should have
been bound.”
Yet the keeper of Newgate and other gaolers were by no means
irresponsible agents. Two cases may be quoted in which these officials were
promptly brought to book. In 1555 the keeper of the Bread Street Compter,
by name Richard Husband, pasteler, “being a wilful and headstrong man,”
who, with servants like himself, had dealt hardly with the prisoners in his
charge, was sent to the gaol of Newgate by Sir Rowland Hill, mayor, with
the assent of a court of aldermen. “It was commanded to the keeper to set
those irons on his legs which were called widows’ alms; these he wore from
Thursday till Sunday in the afternoon.” On the Tuesday he was released, but
not before he was bound over in an hundred marks to act in conformity with
the rules for the managing of the Compters. “All which notwithstanding, he
continued as before: ... the prisoners were ill-treated, the prison was made a
common lodging-house at fourpence the night for thieves and night-
walkers, whereby they might be safe from searches that were made abroad.”
He was indicted for these, and other enormities, “but did rub it out, and
could not be reformed, till the prisoners were removed; for the house in
Bread Street was his own by lease or otherwise, and he could not be put
from it.”[47] A searching inquiry was also made into the conduct of
Crowder, the keeper of Newgate in 1580,[48] or thereabouts. The State
Papers contain an information of the disorders practiced by the officers of

Newgate prison, levying fines and taking bribes, by old and young
Crowders, the gaolers. “Crowder and his wife,” says the report, “be most
horrible blasphemers and swearers.” The matter is taken up by the lords of
the council, who write to the Lord Mayor, desiring to be fully informed of
all disorders committed, and by whom. “They are sending gentlemen to
repair to the prison to inquire into the case, and requesting the Lord Mayor
to appoint two persons to assist them.” Sir Christopher Hatton also writes to
the Lord Mayor, drawing attention to the charges against Crowder. The
Lord Mayor replies that certain persons had been appointed to inquire, but
had not yet made their report. The Court of Enquiry are willing to receive
Crowder, but he persists in refusing (to explain). “He would not come to
their meeting, but stood upon his reputation.” The result, so far as can be
guessed, was that Crowder was pensioned off. But he found powerful
friends in his adversity. His cause was espoused by Sir Thomas Bromley,
Lord Chancellor, who informs the Lord Mayor that he thinks Crowder has
been dealt with very hardly, and that his accusers were persons unworthy of
credit. Apparently Crowder had no chance of being reinstated, for his friend
the Lord Chancellor tries next to get his pension raised. The exact amount is
not stated, but Sir Thomas Bromley suggests that it should be made up to
£40, twenty nobles of which should be paid by his successor. There is no
mention of any such increase having been conceded.

CHAPTER III.

NEWGATE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

(DOWN TO THE GREAT FIRE).

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

THE disturbing elements of society continued much the same in the early
part of the seventeenth century as in the years immediately preceding. There
were the same offences against law and order, dealt with in the same
summary fashion. Newgate was perpetually crowded with prisoners
charged with the same sort of crimes. Bigotry and intolerance continued to
breed persecution. All sects which differed from that professed by those in
power were in turn under the ban of the law. The Romish priest still
ventured into the hostile heretic land where his life was not worth a
minute’s purchase; Puritans and Nonconformists were committed to gaol
for refusing to surrender their heterodox opinions: these last coming into
power were ruthlessly strict towards the openly irreligious backslider. Side
by side with these sufferers in the cause of independent thought swarmed
the depredators, the wrong-doers, whose criminal instincts and the actions
they produced were much the same as they had been before and as they are
now.
The devoted courage of the Jesuit emissaries in those days of extreme
peril for all priests who dared to cross the channel claims for them a full
measure of respect. They were for ever in trouble. When caught they met
hard words, scant mercy, often only a short shrift. Repeated references are
made to them. In the State Papers July 1602 is a list of priests and recusants
in prison, viz. “Newgate—Pound (already mentioned), desperate and
obstinate; ... in the Clink, Marshalsea, King’s Bench, are others; among
them Douce, a forward intelligence, Tichborne, Webster, perverter of
youth,” &c. They were ever the victims of treachery and espionage.[49]
“William Richardson, a priest of Seville College (the date is 1603), was

discovered to the Chief Justice by one whom he trusted, and arraigned and
condemned at Newgate for being a priest and coming to England. When
examined he answered stoutly, yet with great modesty and discretion,
moving many to compassionate him and speak against the Chief Justice, on
whom he laid the guilt of his blood.” He was executed at Tyburn, hanged
and quartered, but his head and quarters were buried. “Such spectacles,”
says the writer, Ant. Rivers, to Giacomo Creleto, Venice, “do nothing
increase the gospel....” A further account says that William Richardson,
alias Anderson, was betrayed by a false brother, sent to Newgate, and kept
close prisoner over a week, no one being allowed to see him. The Chief
Justice, interrupting other trials, called for him, and caused him to be
indicted of high treason for being a priest and coming to England. All of
which he confessed, and there being no evidence against him, the Chief
Justice gave his confession in writing to the jury, who found him guilty. “He
thanked God and told the Chief Justice he was a bloody man, and sought
the blood of the Catholics. He denied that he was a Jesuit or knew
Garnet[50]....”
These priests were not very rigorously guarded. On the 27th November
1612 seven escaped from Newgate. They must also have been very
indifferently lodged. When a number of them were transferred for greater
security to Wisbeach Castle, they petitioned that they were unable to
provide themselves with bedding and other necessaries for their removal,
and begged that orders might be taken for their providing. The keeper was
closely watched lest he should be too easy with his prisoners. Questions are
suggested to be put to him, examining him as to his connivance with
recusants, and allowing them to escape or enjoy great liberty. In 1611 Sir
Thomas Lake writes to Lord Salisbury to the effect that the king is resolved
the keeper of Newgate shall be very severely punished for allowing
reverence to priests and masses to be said in the prison.[51] It was evident
they were permitted some license, although contraband, for Secretary
Conway issues instructions on May 13, 1626, to the provost marshal of
Middlesex directing him to search for popish books, massing stuff, and
reliques of popery in Newgate. Even in Elizabeth’s time it appears that mass
was said in Newgate, and one John Harrison, when charged in 1595 with
being in possession of certain popish relics and papers, admitted that he had
been married in Newgate by an old priest then in prison with his (H.’s) wife
and himself.

Somewhat better times dawned for the Roman Catholic ministers after
the accession of Charles I. His queen, Henrietta Maria, was able to help
them. Her favouring of papists was indeed one of the many causes of the
discontent which culminated in civil war. The king himself addresses the
keeper of Newgate to the effect that “at the instance of the queen we have
granted Pulteney Morse, lately indicted upon suspicion of being a priest,
and still prisoner at Newgate, to be enlarged upon security to appear before
the council when he shall be thereunto called. He has given security to that
purpose; we therefore command you to set him at liberty.” The queen
herself at times personally applied for the release of prisoners confined in
Newgate for matters of religion. Often priests committed escaped
incarceration, and were found to be at liberty after arrest. But it was not
always easy to obtain enlargement when once laid by the heels. Here is the
petition to the queen (State Papers, May 1634) of Thomas Reynolds, a
secular priest, who has been more than five years in Newgate, “where by
the unwholesomeness of the air, the strictness of the imprisonment, and his
great age he is fallen into many dangerous infirmities. He now prays the
queen to move the king to release him. His application is backed up by a
medical certificate signed by three doctors that petitioner is affected with
sciatica, colic, defluxion of rheum, and the stone. He is fifty-eight years of
age.” The result of the petition is not given.
It was not only in the case of the religious prisoners that freedom was
difficult to compass. A very hard case is that of Thomas Coo, committed to
Newgate on grounds that are not traceable. He states, October 1618, to Sir
Julius Cæsar and Sir Fulk Greville that his loyal service in preserving the
life of his sovereign by discovering the London insurrection has been
rewarded with famine and a dungeon. He is resolved to live no longer,
leaving his son “to conceal his mystical designs.”[52] Fifteen years later, but
still in Newgate, he makes his “submission from Newgate dungeon
dunghill, almost famished; acknowledging his contrition of heart, and
stating his readiness to do any penance the council may command,
beseeches to know what his punishment may be.” His long imprisonments
in Newgate and elsewhere have “stript petitioner, even of clothes from his
back, and from that of the bearer of the letter, his lame child.” He prays that
he may be forthwith either banished according to their order of the 28th
October of the 5th King Charles (1630), or be allowed close prisoner in
some other place where he may have some allowance to preserve him from

starving. Six years more pass, and again (1639) he petitions the council,
stating that there was neither legal warrant for his commitment to the Fleet
eight years, nor for his six years’ detention in Newgate, whither he was
thence removed. There were sent with him certain transcribed papers,
importing some orders and rules issuing out of the Star Chamber, Chancery,
and King’s Bench, in which courts the prisoner was never defendant,
convented, nor convicted. The only paper against him was a supposed Inner
Star Chamber order of voluntary banishment, to the effect that the petitioner
was to depart the kingdom within twenty days, dated 1629. “Gaolers,” says
the poor prisoner, “are made his judges, and jurors only give their verdict to
whom his carcase belongs to be interred.”
A light matter sufficed to secure committal to Newgate. John Williams in
a petition states that he was committed to Newgate for being one at the
depopulation of the forest of Dean. There he has remained for five years,
and now prays enlargement, not having wherewith to maintain himself in
prison with his wife and poor children, who were seemingly incarcerated
with him. The coachmen of even great people were committed to Newgate
for contravening the Star Chamber order as to the route they should take to
and from the playhouse in Blackfriars. Frequenters were invited to go to
and fro by water, but if they drove they were to be set down by the west end
of St. Paul’s Churchyard or Fleet Conduit. Again Robert Coleman (1631),
having found certain writings of the secretary and other noble personages,
and thinking they belonged to the Earl of Dorset, went to the Old Bailey,
where Lord Dorset was sitting on the bench, to deliver them up. “One
Barnes was to be tried,” states Coleman subsequently in a petition, “and
there was some one there to beg his estate, whereupon the Earl of Dorset
committed the prisoner (Coleman) to Newgate, where he has been ever
since detained, and could not bring the writings to the secretary;” “prays
that he may be allowed to come to him for that purpose.” Christopher
Crowe, a prisoner in Newgate, and another victim to the oppression of a
great noble, about the same date (1632) petitions the council: “I am in great
misery,” he says, “having no friends nor means.” For six weeks he has had
for his allowance but a halfpenny in bread one day and a farthing’s worth
the next. “Is heartily sorry for his words spoken against the Marquis of
Hamilton, and prays enlargement.” Others in Newgate sought noble
protection, and petitioned the great peers to procure release. John Meredith
petitions Henry Earl of Holland, Captain of the Guard, reminding him that

when he (Meredith) and his wife were committed to Newgate, his lordship
on their appeal had sent an order for their discharge, which had been
disregarded, and now, “having lain in prison a fortnight, he prays that he
and his wife may forthwith be enlarged.” This has no effect, so Meredith
and his wife Joan petition the Earl of Manchester, Lord President. “They
had now remained in prison three weeks; pray for an enlargement from
Newgate gratis,[53] and that the sergeants who arrested them may be
committed.”
Prisoners of still greater consequence languished often hopelessly in
Newgate Gaol. Now it is the wardens of divers city companies for not
making up their proportion towards the previous year’s provision of corn;
now a respectable freeman and stationer, William Cooke, who had built a
shed of timber in the open street in High Holborn adjoining Furnival’s Inn.
He was committed to Newgate till he should demolish the same. But, as
Inigo Jones and others represent to the council, “he lies in prison, and the
shed continues,” and they suggest an order to the principals of Furnival’s
Inn, or to the sheriffs of London, to take the shed away. Next comes a
greater personage, John Andrews, the Mayor of Sudbury, who has
unhappily fallen foul of a messenger of the Star Chamber named Potter.
This messenger came to Andrews with a warrant claiming his assistance for
the apprehension of certain unlicensed dealers in tobacco in Sudbury, to
which warrant he “gave due obedience.” Potter was presently himself
brought before the mayor, “accused of many blasphemies and oaths,” and
for compounding for money with the culprit who had unlawfully trafficked
in tobacco. Upon this the mayor told Potter that he thought him worthy to
be committed to prison. Potter then fell to abusing the mayor in scoffs and
threatening speeches, telling him that he would have him set in the stocks,
and that he cared not a pin for the mayor’s authority. The exasperated
Andrews committed Potter to prison. But Potter’s threats were not without
substantial foundation, for Andrews’ action is deemed improper, and he is
himself committed to Newgate. From thence he humbly submits himself,
and prays discharge from that loathsome prison.
Even an alderman was not safe. Thomas Middleton in 1603, having been
duly elected alderman, refused to be sworn, whereupon he was committed
to Newgate by the Lord Mayor and court of aldermen, “according to their
oaths and the custom of the city.” For this they were sharply reproved by

the king, and ordered to release him immediately, “as he was employed in
important state service which privileged him from arrest.”
These were days of widespread oppression, when Strafford, Laud, the
Star Chamber, and ecclesiastical courts gave effect to the king’s eager
longings for arbitrary power. The following is from a half-mad fanatic who
has offended the relentless archbishop. “The petition of Richard Farnham, a
prophet of the most high God, a true subject to my king, and a prisoner of
my saviour Christ, in Newgate, to Archbishop Laud and the rest of the high
commissioners, whom he prays to excuse his plainness, being no scholar....
Desires to know the cause of his being detained so long in prison, where he
has been kept a year next April without coming to his answer. Thinks they
have forgotten him. If he be a false prophet and a blasphemer and a seducer,
as most people report that he is, the high commissioners would do well to
bring him to trial. What he wrote before he came into prison and what he
has written since he will stand to.... If he does not get his answer this
summer he intends to complain to the king, believing that it is not his
pleasure his subjects should suffer false imprisonment to satisfy the
archbishop’s mind.” Of the same year and the same character is this other
petition from William King, a prisoner in Newgate “for a little treatise
delivered to Lord Leppington.” Has remained in thraldom twenty-seven
months; expresses contrition and prays enlargement on bail, or that he may
be called to answer. Forty years more were to elapse before the passing of
the Habeas Corpus Act; but the forgoing will show how grievously this so-
called palladium of an Englishman’s liberties was required.
Pardons free or more or less conditional were, however, vouchsafed at
times. Release from prison was still, as before, and for long after, frequently
accompanied by the penalty of military service. This had long been the
custom. On declaration of war in the earlier reigns, it was usual to issue a
proclamation offering a general pardon to those guilty of homicides and
felonies on condition of service for a year and a day. Even without this
obligation prisoners in durance might sue out a pardon by intercession of
some nobleman serving abroad with the king. But later on the release was
distinctly conditional on personal service. The Lord Mayor certifies to the
king (1619) that certain prisoners in Newgate, whose names and offences
are given, are not committed for murder; so they are reprieved, as being
able-bodied and fit to do service in foreign parts. Another certificate states
that William Dominic, condemned to death for stealing a purse value £4, is

reprieved, “this being his first offence, and he an excellent drummer, fit to
do the king service.” Again, the king requires the keeper of Newgate to
deliver certain reprieved prisoners to Sir Edward Conway, junior, to be
employed in His Majesty’s service in the Low Countries. Recorder Finch
reports that he has furnished “Conway’s son with seven prisoners fit for
service; sends a list of prisoners now in Newgate, but reprieved. Some have
been long in gaol, and were saved from execution by the prince’s return
[with Buckingham from Spain?] on that day. They pester the gaol, which is
already reported crowded, this hot weather, and would do better service as
soldiers if pardoned, ‘for they would not dare to run away.’” A warrant is
made out June 5, 1629, to the sheriffs of London to deliver to such persons
as the Swedish ambassador shall appoint forty-seven persons, of whom one
was Elizabeth Leech—was she to be employed as a sutler or vivandière?—
being prisoners condemned of felonies, and remaining in the gaols of
Newgate and Bridewell, who are released “to the end that they may be
employed in the service of the King of Sweden”—Gustavus Adolphus, at
that time our ally. There are numerous entries of this kind in the State
papers. Sometimes the prisoners volunteer for service. “John Tapps, by the
displeasure of the late Lord Chief Justice and the persecution of James the
clerk and one of the keepers,[54] has been kept from the benefit of the
pardon which has been stayed at the Great Seal. Begs Lord Conway to
perfect his work by moving the Lord Keeper in his behalf, and in the mean
time sending some powerful warrant for his employment as a soldier.”
Certain other convicted prisoners in Newgate, who had been pardoned in
respect of the birth of Prince Charles (Charles II.), petition that they are
altogether impoverished, and unable to sue out their pardons. They pray that
by warrant they may be transported into the State of Venice under the
command of Captain Ludovic Hamilton. This document is endorsed with a
reference to the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas to certify
concerning these delinquents and their crimes. George Gardener, a prisoner
in Newgate, also petitions the king in March 1630, stating that he was
committed by the council on the information of James Ingram, deputy
warden of the Fleet, to prevent petitioner prosecuting the said Ingram for
his notorious extortions. He has remained in Newgate since April previous,
and by Ingram’s procurement was shut up amongst felons in the common
gaol, whereby he might have been murdered. “Prays that he may be allowed
to go abroad on security.” Here is another petition, that of Bridget Gray to

the council. She states (July 19, 1618) that her grandson, John
Throckmorton, is a prisoner in Newgate for felony, and prays that he may
be discharged, this being his first offence, and Sir Thomas Smythe being
ready to convey him beyond seas. Upon this is endorsed an order that if the
mayor or recorder will certify that Throckmorton was not convicted of
murder, burglary, highway robbery, rape, or witchcraft, a warrant may be
made for his banishment. The certificate is forthcoming, and is to the effect
that Throckmorton’s crime was aiding in stealing a hat, value 6s., for which
the principal, Robert Whisson, an old thief, was hanged.
The gaol calendar reflects the vicissitudes of these changing, troublous
times. There were many London citizens who, sharing the patriotic spirit of
Hampden and Pym, found themselves clapped into prison for refusing to
submit to the illegal taxations of Charles I. In a long statement, 16th April,
1639, from Edward Rossingham to Lord Conway he says that the Lord
Mayor labours hard to get in the ship-money. “Some pay and many refuse;
but such as do refuse he requires to enter into a recognizance of so much
money to attend the council. Three citizens stand committed to Newgate,
not because they refuse to pay ship-money, but because they refuse to enter
into bond to attend the Board to answer their not paying the same. Divers
others refused, and were sent to Newgate; but upon better consideration
they paid their money, and were released again.” The temper of the
Government as regards ship-money is further shown by the arrest and trial
of the keeper of Newgate for permitting a prisoner committed for non-
payment of this unlawful tax to go at large. It appears that the offender,
Richard Chambers, had been several times remanded to the same custody,
and had been allowed to escape.
It was highly dangerous to speak lightly of dignities in these ticklish
times. The State trials give an account of the hard measure meted out to one
Edward Floyde for scandalizing the princess palatine, Elizabeth, James I.’s
daughter, and titular Queen of Bohemia. Floyde was charged with having
said, while a prisoner in the Fleet, “I have heard that Prague is taken, and
goodman Palsgrave and goodwife Palsgrave (Elizabeth) have taken to their
heels and run away.” This puerile, gossip seriously occupied both houses of
Parliament, and eventually the Lords awarded and adjudged that Edward
Floyde be deemed an infamous person, incapable of bearing arms as a
gentleman, whose testimony was not to be taken in any court or cause. He
was also sentenced to ride with his head to his horse’s tail from Westminster

to the pillory in Cheapside; after this to be whipped from the Fleet to
Westminster, there again to stand on the pillory. He was to pay a fine of
£5000 to the king, and imprisoned in Newgate during his life.
In 1642, according to a published document,[55] Newgate “hath not been
more replenished with prisoners these many years than now, there being
very nigh three hundred prisoners committed to that infamous castle of
misery.” It was still the mere gatehouse prison, and its accommodation must
have been of the most limited description. Chief among these inmates were
six Jesuit priests who had been condemned to die, but had, no doubt
through the powerful advocacy of Henrietta Maria, obtained a reprieve.
“Whereupon did arise a tumultuous mutiny among the other prisoners, who
refused to die without the Jesuits; but afterwards they (the mutineers) were
mitigated in a kind of pacified tranquillity.” Parliament had also petitioned
that “execution might be imposed upon” these priests; but the king would
not condescend thereunto till his further pleasure, “whereupon they (the
Jesuits) have continued secure in Newgate ever since, one man being solely
excepted, viz. Goodman, who died last Good Friday, and at once deceived
both Gregory[56] and Tyburn.” But the Parliament was at this date too near
its rupture with the king to submit to be thus put off, and re-petitioned,
stating “these Jesuits were an obstacle to their assiduous proceedings;” and
His Majesty replied that if they were “the obstruction and hindrance of
reformation in the Church they might be forthwith executed without further
delay.” Henrietta Maria’s strong attachment to the Roman Catholic faith is
satirized in the old German print, which I have taken from the Crowle
‘Pennant’s London’, and which represents the Queen doing penance at
Tyburn over the grave of some recently executed priests. It is said that “the
pore queen” walked afoot—some say barefoot—from St. James to Tyburn
in the dead of night. A state coach followed with attendants, and her father
confessor. The whole story is probably apocryphal, but the print is
interesting as one of the earliest representations of Tyburn tree. The
pilgrimage took place in 1628, but the print is of a later date.
Other prisoners at this time were certain Irishmen suspected to be rebels
who had apparently been captured on the high seas, and eventually
committed to Newgate. When formally examined before the Parliament, the
servants, seamen, and soldiers were remitted; only the master of the ship,
the captain, lieutenants, and ancients were detained, “and still continue in
prison.” The court was to examine them further; but as this did not come

off, the Parliament would, it was thought, censure them. These, found to be
ten in number, five of them friars, four soldiers, and one a pilgrim, were at
length examined “before a committee in the court of wards, who demanded
of them their intents in coming over to Ireland, and to what effect: four of
which very peremptorily denied, and said they came over with occasions of
merchandize, but one of them betrayed the rest, and affirmed that they were
friars, and came over into England to save souls for heaven.” The other five
were carried down unto

Henrietta Maria doing penance at Tyburn.

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

Neglect of the stringent ordinances passed to protect life during the
constant visitations of that fearful scourge the plague brought down the one
universal penalty, committal to Newgate, upon offenders. Here is a long
story about Stephen Smith, a fishmonger, whose door was by the sufferance
of the warder broken open, and William Fenn, servant to Smith, who had
already been indicted for offences committed during the several infections
of that house, entered the house and brought a quantity of salted fish to the
door for sale. Yet all the time Susan Wheelyer, a maid-servant of Smith’s,
was shut up in the house infected with the plague. Smith had unlawfully
abandoned his house. Fenn was apprehended and shut up with the late
infected servant under a better guard. “I have committed the warder,” says
Sir William Slingsby, who makes the report, “and commanded the fish to be
carried in again, and the doors locked and guarded.... These proceedings I
suspect to be done by the private directions of Smith.” The orders of the
council on the above were prompt and severe. Stephen Smith was at once
committed to Newgate, “there to be kept under strong bolts until further
orders,” while William Fenn was sent to the pest-house, and a weight of
iron placed on his heels to keep him safe and quiet there. It was ordered
further, that the warders for their great neglect be put in the stocks before
Smith’s house.
Newgate, during the last great plague epidemic, received all offenders
against the sanitary rules. These were enforced by the Middlesex justices,
who were directed to be most careful for the relief of the citizens and for the
prevention of the spreading of infection. Diligent circumspection was to be
used to prevent the removal of goods or persons from London or
Westminster to other towns and villages, or up and down the Thames; also
to put pressure upon those belonging to infected families who refused to
shut themselves up. Refusal to obey or neglect of these orders was to be
visited with committal to Newgate and indictment at the next sessions.
Offences against morality and religion were met with the same penalty
of imprisonment. Incontinence and loose living were high misdemeanours.
In an extract from the register of the High Court of Commission we find
that Nicholas Slater of Royden, Essex, a married man, had run off with
Blanche Cowper, another man’s wife. Defendants lived together in various
places. “Slater, like a vagabond, without license had wandered up and down
the kingdom professing physic and surgery, and carried Blanche about with
him from place to place.” Slater was committed close prisoner to Newgate,

there to remain during pleasure, and Blanche to Bridewell. There was added
penance in Ware and Stepney, while Slater was fined £1000 and Blanche
£100 to His Majesty. The last part of the sentence points to Charles’s shifts
to raise money. This was in 1638. Another story of the same kind, but with a
different issue, is of the same date. George Harrison in Newgate petitions
the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lords of the High Commission Court
for enlargement. A certain John Cock had, it appears, discovered the
incontinent life of John Thierry and Ursula Baythorpe. The latter offered
Cock £27 to be silent, which he was willing to accept, and went with the
petitioner Harrison to a tavern, the place appointed for the handing over of
the money. But they fell into a trap, and were arrested at the tavern; thence
they were carried to the Compter and committed to Newgate. Afterwards at
a sessions they were indicted, and, on the testimonies of the merchant and
the said Ursula’s sister and her husband, were whipped three times to the
pillory, where they stood eleven hours. They were not suffered to come
down till they had asked Thierry’s and Ursula’s forgiveness before all the
spectators, and so were three times whipped back again. “By the extremity
of which execution petitioner lost his speech and almost his understanding,
and Cock was carried home dead in the cart. By which cruelty and disgrace
petitioner, who was formerly well respected, is now utterly undone.”
Thierry must have had good friends at court. But the informer seems to
have been right in his denunciation, for both the accused were subsequently
“detected to the court,” and it was proved that the said poor men had only
suffered for “meddling with the truth.” Petitioner now prays that the
merchant (Thierry) may be ordered to give him and his poor children relief
and restitution for their sufferings.
A quaint pamphlet entitled ‘Strange News from Newgate,’ dated 1647,
states that on the 10th January, “being the blessed sabbath, at Botolph’s
Church near Bishopgate, in sermon time, there arose a great disturbance by
one Evan Price, a tailor, who stood up and declared himself to be Christ,
which words much amazed the people, and divers timorous spirits into a
great fear.... Whereupon he was immediately apprehended and carried
before the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor, where he was examined
seriously and at length, although no doubt a religious lunatic.” He was
asked whether he had worked miracles, whether he was married, ... “with
divers other arguments objected against him, which he was not able to
answer, but remained obstinate in his devilish and satanical opinion.” But

after some time spent upon his examination, “as he still remained in his
hell-bred opinion, not hearkening to any advice or counsel whatsoever,” it
was ordered that he should be committed to Newgate, which was
accordingly performed. “Five days later he was arraigned at the Old Bailey,
and coming to the bar, was examined by the judges, but seemed resolute not
to make any confession.” The pamphlet ends abruptly, and does not give the
result of his trial.
It must have been consequent on some conflict with the ecclesiastical
authority that Edward Powell, alias Anderson, was sent from Ely as a
prisoner to Newgate. The story rests on a report from Bishop Wren of Ely to
the council, dated 5th June 1638. Powell had been apprehended upon a riot
committed by an assemblage which went by the name of Anderson’s Camp,
but was not imprisoned for his share therein, but for his misdemeanours and
foul speeches at the time of arrest. He was accused of being an abettor of
the riot, although not present at it. When he had been at Newmarket the
previous Lent, Powell paid the town-crier twopence to proclaim a gathering
of the people to go to the king with a petition about their fens; “for the
losing of the fens would be the losing of their livelihood.” Upon this Powell
was summoned before Mr. Justice Goodrick, but denied the charge. Next
day Mr. Goodrick, going into the market-place, found a crowd there with
cudgels in their hands, and Powell with them. Powell, interrogated, asked
whether the king’s market was not open to all, and rejoined his company. As
the result of these disturbances, Powell was arraigned and sentenced to a
fine of £200, and to be imprisoned, and “now lies in execution for the same.
Since his removal from the prison at Ely to Newgate, the poor people are
very quiet and in good order.” Powell from his captivity addresses his
“loving friends and neighbours in the city of Ely, and others,” in letters
which were seized. In these he expresses a hope of deliverance when the
king comes to London, and that he has refused to give up his friends’
names, whereby they might be fined and imprisoned, although daily urged
to do so by fair offers and large promises, and also by threatening language,
terrible speech, and protestation of perpetual imprisonment. He then asks
these friends to make a collection for him and his family, and gives a dark
picture of his prison—“this loathsome gaol, in which we are accompanied
with noisome stinks, cold, lousy to dying, and almost all other miseries.”
There is nothing especially remarkable in the purely criminal cases of
this period; offences have a strong family likeness to those of our own day.

Culprits are “cast” for “taking a chest of plate out of a house;” for “taking
£100 from a gentleman,” and so forth. Now and again appears a case of
abduction, a common crime in those and later days. Sarah Cox prays the
king’s pardon for Roger Fulwood, who was convicted of felony for forcibly
marrying her against her will. But she begs at the same time her protection
for person and estate from any claims in regard to the pretended marriage.
Knights of the road have already begun to operate; they have already the
brevet rank of captain, and even lads of tender years are beguiled into
adopting the profession of highway robber. Counterfeiting the king’s or
other great seals was an offence not unknown. A Captain Farrar is lodged in
Newgate (1639), accused of counterfeiting His Majesty’s signature and
privy signet. His method of procedure was simple. Having received a
document bearing His Majesty’s privy seal for the payment of a sum of
£190, he removed the seal and affixed it to a paper purporting to be a
license from the king to levy and transport two hundred men beyond seas.
This he published as a royal license. When arraigned he admitted that the
charge was true, but pleaded that he had done the same according to the
king’s commands. He was reprieved until further orders.
The condition of the prisoners within Newgate continued very
deplorable. This is apparent from the occasional references to their
treatment. They were heavily ironed, lodged in loathsome dungeons, and all
but starved to death. Poor Stephen Smith, the fishmonger,[57] who had
contravened the precautionary rules against the plague, petitions the council
that he has been very heavily laden with such intolerable bolts and shackles
that he is lamed, and being a weak and aged man, is like to perish in the
gaol. “Having always lived in good reputation and been a liberal benefactor
where he has long dwelt, he prays enlargement on security.” The prison is
so constantly over-crowded that the prisoners have “an infectious malignant
fever which sends many to their long home. The magistrates who think
them unfit to breathe their native air when living bury them as brethren
when dead.” All kinds of robbery and oppression were practised within the
precincts of the gaol. Inside, apart from personal discomfort, the inmates do
much as they please. “There are seditious preachings by fifth monarchy
men at Newgate,” say the records, “and prayers for all righteous blood.”
Some time previous, when the Puritans were nominally the weakest, they
also held their services in the prison. Samuel Eaton, a prisoner committed to
Newgate as a dangerous schismatic, is charged with having conventicles in

the gaol, some to the number of seventy persons. He was, moreover,
permitted by the keeper to preach openly. The keeper was petitioned by one
of the inmates to remove Eaton and send him to some other part of the
prison, but he replied disdainfully, threatening to remove the petitioner to a
worse place. He, the keeper himself, attended the conventicles, “calling it a
very fair and goodly company, and staying there some season.” Besides
this, he gave license to Eaton to go abroad, to preach, contrary to the charge
of the High Commission (1638). Another complaint made by the petitioner
is that the keeper caused petitioner’s sister to be removed out of the prison
contrary to the opinion of a doctor, and that she died the very next day. Her
chamber after her removal was assigned to Eaton, it being the most
convenient place in the prison for holding his conventicles.
This keeper may be condemned as a fanatical partizan at worst. But he
had predecessors who were active oppressors, eager to squeeze the
uttermost farthing out of their involuntary lodgers. The bar kept within the
prison must have been a cause of continued extortion, although those who
pandered to the cupidity of the bar-keepers occasionally got into trouble. Sir
Francis Mitchell, we read, was sent on foot and bareheaded to the Tower on
account of his patent for ale-houses. “He is a justice of Middlesex, and had
a salary of £40 a year from Newgate prison on condition of sending all his
prisoners there,” ... no doubt to drink the liquor supplied to the prison bar.
But still worse was the conduct of the under-strappers. An instruction to
the Lord Mayor and sheriffs in the State Papers (Dec. 1649) directs them to
examine the miscarriages of the under officers of Newgate who were
favourers of the felons and robbers there committed, and to remove such as
appear faulty. The nefarious practices of the Newgate officers were nothing
new. They are set forth with much quaintness of diction and many curious
details in a pamphlet of the period, entitled the ‘Black Dogge of Newgate.’
There was a tavern entitled the ‘Dogge Tavern in Newgate,’ as appears by
the State Papers, where the place is indicted by an informer for improper
practices. The author of the pamphlet pretends that the dog has got out of
prison and leapt into a sign-board. “‘What the devil’s here?’ quoth a mad
fellow going by, seeing the black cur ringed about the nose with a golden
hoop, having two saucer-like eyes, and an iron chain about his neck. The
public-house must be a well-customed house where such a porter keeps the
door and calls in company.” The writer enters it and describes the scene. He
finds “English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Dutch, and French in several rooms;

some drinking the neat wine of Orleans, some the Gascony, some the
Bordeaux. There wanted neither sherry sack nor charnico, paligo nor Peter
Seeme, amber-coloured canary or liquorish Ipocras, brown beloved Bastard,
fat Alicant, or any quick-spirited liquor that might draw their will into a
circle....” Not desiring to mix with such company, the writer sat himself and
called for his “whole pint” alone. Presently he was joined by a “poor thin-
gut fellow with a face as red as the gilded knobs of an alderman’s horse-
bridle, who as it seemed had newly come out of limbo.” The two treated
each other, and then exchanged opinions as to the sign of the tavern,
wondering how it came first to be called the Black Dog of Newgate; and the
writer maintained that he had read in an old chronicle “that it was a walking
spirit in the likeness of a black dog, gliding up and down the streets a little
before the time of execution, and in the night while the sessions continued.”
From this archæological exercise they pass on to discuss the prison and its
officers. This part of the pamphlet sheds a strong light upon the evil-doings
of the turnkeys, who appear to have been guilty of the grossest extortion,
taking advantage of their position as officers of the law to levy black-mail
alike on criminals and their victims. Of these swindling turnkeys or bailiffs,
whom the writer designates “coney-catchers,” he tells many discreditable
tales, one or two of which may be worth transcribing.
The term coney-catching had long been in use to define a species of
fraud akin to our modern “confidence trick,” or, as the French call it, the vol
à l’Americain. Shakespeare, in the ‘Merry Wives of Windsor,’ makes
Falstaff call Bardolph, Nym, and Pistol “coney-catching rascals.” The fraud
was then of but recent introduction. It is detailed at length by Robert Greene
in his ‘Notable Discovery of Cozenage,’ published in 1591. He
characterizes it as a new art. Three parties were needed to practise it, called
respectively the setter, the verser, and the barnacle; their game, or victim,
was the coney. The first was the decoy, the second was a confederate who
plied the coney with drink, the third came in by accident should the efforts
of the others to beguile the coney into “a deceit at cards have failed.” In the
end the countryman was completely despoiled. Later on there was a new
nomenclature: the setter became the beater, the tavern to which the rogues
adjourned was the “bush,” and the quarry was the bird. The verser was the
retriever, the barnacle was the pot-hunter, and the game was called bat-
fowling. Greene’s exposure was supposed to have deprived the coney-
catchers of a “collop of their living.” But they still prospered at their

nefarious practices, according to the author of the ‘Black Dogge,’ to whom I
will now return.
This was their plan of procedure. Two coney-catchers enter a tavern
together, and there find a gentleman drinking wine. They note his
appearance, his weapons, his good cloak and his neat apparel, and are clear
that he has a good store of money; so they make up to him. The three
become friendly, and the gentleman stands treat. After two or three pottles
of wine are disposed of one of the rogues says to their entertainer, “I pray
you heark in your ear. Thus it is; my fellow hath a warrant to take you,
therefore in kindness I pray you draw your purse and give him an angel to
spend in drink, and I will undertake we will not see you at this time.” The
stranger, however, would not be imposed upon, and said they were coney-
catching knaves, and that they should not wrong him in any respect.
“Whereupon the two sent for a constable, and charged the other with felony.
The constable, recognizing the two as officials, took the stranger into
custody and deprived him of his weapons. Then the two told the constable
they would be answerable for his prisoner, and took charge of him. Now
mark what followed. As these two knaves were bringing the party charged
with felony to Newgate, one of them offered yet xx shillings to set him free,
of which, when the party had considered, knowing though he was clear of
that he was charged, yet if he lay in prison till the Sessions it would be
greater charges. When he was on Newgate stairs ready to go into the gaol,
he was content to leave his cloak, what money he had in his purse, and his
weapons, which were in the constable’s hand, in pawn for the xx shillings,
which the coney-catchers took, and discharged the prisoner without any
more to do.”
A little later the same victim is again encountered, with a companion, in
a tavern without Bishopgate, where he “had spoke for supper.” In came the
swindling turnkeys, whereat the other set on the best face he could, and
bade them welcome. The coney-catchers accepted the invitation, and ate
and drank merrily. Supper being ended, the reckoning was called for, the
shot paid, and, all things discharged, the coneys would fain have been gone.
“But one of the knaves said nay: ... thus it is, such a man was robbed within
this week, and hath got out a warrant for you by name. He hath lost £10;
now, if you will restore the money, and bestow xx shillings on us two to
drink for our pains, we will undertake to satisfy the party and be your
discharge. If not, we have a warrant, and you must answer it at Newgate.

This back reckoning is something sharp, but there is no remedy; either pay
so much money, or else must a constable be sent for, and so to Newgate as
round as a hoop.”
“To be short, this was the conclusion: the coney put down £10, every
penny whereof was to be paid to the man in the moon, for I dare take it
upon my death neither of these coneys did offend any such man in manner
these knaves had charged them.”
A favourite hunting-ground for these swindlers was at Westminster Hall
during term time. Their method was to send confederates in among the
thickest of the crowd, where the cut-purses were likely to be busiest, and
there “listen if any purse were cut that day.” The coney-catchers themselves
were posted, one by the water stairs, the other at the gate, where they could
not fail to intercept the cut-purse who had committed the theft. Presently
they recognize him, accost and stop him. The cut-purse, anxious to curry
favour, offers to stand both wine and a breakfast, but the coney-catcher will
not tarry. He declares with an oath that he is really sorry to have met the
cut-purse that day, “for there is a mischief done, and he fears some one will
smoke for it.” At this time the cut-purse is afraid, but for that time he
scapeth their fingers. After this the swindler makes it his business to seek
out the victim of the robbery, and on discovering him, promises that if he
will only be guided by him he will help him to most of his money again.
The honest fellow, a countryman, delighted, offers “at first word” one half
to get other half back, the whole amount being ten pounds. “Then away
goeth the coney-catcher to a justice,” from whom he obtains a warrant to
take up all suspected persons. The warrant obtained, the coney-catcher is as
“pleasant as a pie,” and with his countryman spend some time drinking a
pottle of wine, after which the turnkey takes leave of his client, who goes to
his lodging, and “the coney-catcher about his faculty.” Now, woe to the cut-
purses we may meet, for they must to Newgate on his warrant; but although
he apprehends twelve or sixteen, the real culprit is certainly not among
them. “The honest company of cut-purses being all in Newgate, H. (the
coney-catcher) goes presently and certifies the justice what a set of notable
thieves he has taken, and desiring the justice to examine them about the
theft, warning him that they will confess nothing, which indeed the justice
findeth true.” They are remanded to Newgate, and en route beg H. to stand
their friend, “assuring him of their innocency; yet rather than be in prison

one offereth ten shillings, some more, some less, as they are of ability, with
promise of more if H.’s good words gain them their release.”
“Now the coney-catcher hath the matter as he would wish it, and taking
their money, first he goeth presently to the justice and certifieth him that
these which he had apprehended did none of them cut the purse, and for that
he hath gotten knowledge who did, he desireth that they may be bailed.”
The justice, glad to hear the culprit is known, yields ready assent, and the
captive cut-purses are set free.
H.’s next business is to hunt up the real thief, and meeting him, “spareth
not to tell him how sore the justice is against him, and how earnestly the
countryman will pursue the law; and further, he sweareth that some of those
that were in Newgate told the justice plainly that he cut the purse. This peal
ringeth nothing well in the cut-purse’s ears, who can find no favour but to
Newgate.” So he entreats the coney-catcher to stand his friend, who
promises at length to do any good he can, at the same time cautioning the
cut-purse to confess nothing, “what proof soever come against him,”
assuring him further, that the man who lost the money, although sore bent
against, “yet he will partly be ruled by him, H.” But the arrest is made; the
thief is conveyed to Newgate, and there, by way of welcome, a good pair of
bolts and shackles are clapped upon his legs. Then H. sends for the
countryman, telling him the good news that the thief is taken and in limbo;
and together they go before the justice, to whom H. “signifieth how the case
standeth, railing mightily against the cut-purse,” whose guilt can easily be
proved, and begging his worship to summon the thief. The cut-purse is sent
for, and “having taken out his lesson,” doggedly refuses to confess, upon
which the justice returneth him to Newgate, there to abide till the next
sessions. The countryman is bound over to give evidence, but he, “dwelling
far from London, and it being long to next Law Day, allegeth he cannot be
in the city at that time, for he is a poor man, and hath great occasion of
business.”
On leaving the justice H. returns to Newgate, and assures the cut-purse
that he has laboured hard “with him who had his purse cut to take his
money again, and not to give evidence against him; that if he may have his
money again he will presently go out of town.” The cut-purse, taking H.’s
hand (as witness) that no man shall give evidence against him at the
sessions, doth presently send abroad to his friends for the money; which as

soon as it cometh he delivereth to H., and withal a large overplus, because
he will be thus sure of H.’s favour.
“This done, H. goes to the countryman and tells him he got no more but
six or seven pounds, of which, if he will accept, and proceed no further
against the party, he hath it to pay him; marry he will not be known to the
countryman, but that he had that money of some friend of the cut-purse’s,
who upon the former condition is willing it should be paid, if not, to have
his money again.
“The countryman, having haste out of the city, is glad to take it, out of
which sum, if it be seven pounds, H. must have half; so that the poor man,
of ten pounds hath but three pounds ten shillings, whereas the coney-
catcher by this account hath got at one hand and another very near forty
marks. The money shared, the countryman takes horse and away he rides.
Again H.’s mouth is stopt, and the next sessions the cut-purse is quit by
proclamation, no man being there to give evidence against him.”
Plain symptoms of the approaching struggle between the king and the
commons are to be met with in the prison records. Immediately after the
meeting of the Long Parliament, orders were issued for the enlargement of
many victims of Star Chamber oppression. Among them was the celebrated
Prynne, author of the ‘Histriomatrix,’[58] who had lost his ears in the
pillory; Burton a clergyman, and Bastwick a physician, who had suffered
the same penalties, all came out of prison triumphant, wearing ivy and
rosemary in their hats. Now Strafford was impeached and presently
beheaded; Laud also was condemned. The active interference of Parliament
in all affairs of State extended to the arrest of persons suspected of
treasonable practices. A curious document issues from Newgate in 1642,
where several supposed rebels and others have been imprisoned. It is a
petition[59] which was presented to Parliament by Colonel Goret, who had
commanded some of them in France. The petition sets forth that Daniel
Dalley, master of a small barque, of “Kinsaile in Ireland,” had been
freighted, about the 10th November, 1641, out by two gentlemen,
merchants of Kingsale, with beef, tallow, and hides for “St. Mallowes in
France.” There these commodities had been “vended,” and the same
merchants laid out their money in wine and fruits to freight the vessel home
again. “All being done, and they ready to set sail, the governor (of St.
Mallowes) sent a command to Daniel Dalley the master, that he should take
nine gentlemen with him, which should pay for their passage.” “By reason

of the troubles,”[60] the master refused; but Dalley was obliged to take them
on board, under threat of committal to gaol, and by the governor’s warrant
and command. He then set sail, and two days after he had gone to sea a
storm rose at south and S. S. W., which drove them into Saltcombe in the
west country, “where the passengers went ashore and took lodging till it
would please God to send fair weather.” However, notice of their landing
came to Captain Foskew, “one that had command of a fort of his majesty’s
there,” who summoned them before him and examined them. Finding they
could not give a good account of their designs, he committed them, with the
merchants and the ship’s company, until he communicated with Parliament.
In reply the Parliament sent for them to London, and lodged them in
Newgate. There they lay from day to day expecting to be called up by
Parliament, but this being so long delayed, they petitioned for enlargement.
On the Parliament side it appeared that information had been given the
House of Commons that certain mariners and commanders were proceeding
from France to Ireland to take part in the rebellion, they having a
commission about them for the purpose. Also that one Captain Foskew had
taken and stayed the said mariners and sea captains. “The honourable
assembly,” therefore, as well out of their pious and grave consideration for
the better satisfaction of the kingdom, as for the prevention of such dangers
as might follow from their landing in Ireland, made an order to bring the
prisoners to London for examination. This was done with all proper
precaution. Each sheriff saw to their safe conduct in his own county, “not
suffering them to go together, but the commanders to be kept away from the
rest.” By virtue of the Speaker’s (Lenthall) warrant, they were delivered by
the sheriff of Devon to the next sheriff, and so from county to county, until
they came to Middlesex, where they were received by the sheriffs of
Middlesex, and committed to Newgate, the county gaol, “where they were
with much care imprisoned and strictly kept, some of them being placed in
the master’s, others in the common side.”
The petition already mentioned set forth that the said captains, “being all
strangers and destitute of acquaintance, except with a few persons of this
town. They declared that they were his majesty’s true and loyal subjects,
most of them born within the king’s realm of Ireland, all strictly obliged and
most ready to defend his rights and privileges to the utmost of their power.
Being ‘necessitated in their native country,’ they repaired three years
previously to France, where they served in martial affairs under Colonel

Goret, till they were disbanded, and resolved to return home. They were,
however, detained at Saltcombe, in the county of Devon, where they were
imprisoned and their goods seized. Since then they had lain in Newgate,
‘where they are liable to remain in great misery, to their loss of time, and
utter destruction and ruin.’ They begged, therefore, that they might be
‘forthwith convented before the honourable assembly to answer their
charge,’ and having proved their loyalty, might be restored to their former
liberty and fortunes.” The answer to this petition is not recorded, except that
the prisoners hoped daily to be sent for, a committee of the House having
been appointed to examine them. Meantime they carried themselves civilly
in the gaol, and with patience looked for the time when they should be
called for their answer. They were conscious of innocence; they denied “all
intentions of assisting the rebels in Ireland, or any act which might tend to
their disloyalty,” the true cause of their return home being a want of
employment in France.
There are other cases of imprisonment more or less arbitrary in these
troubled times. Another petition may be quoted, that of Richard Overton, “a
prisoner in the most contemptible gaol of Newgate,” under an order of the
House of Lords. Overton tells us how he was brought before that House “in
a warlike manner, under pretence of a criminal fact, and called upon to
answer interrogations concerning himself which he conceived to be illegal
and contrary to the national rights, freedoms, and properties of the free
commoners of England, confirmed to them by Magna Charta, the Petition
of Right, and the Act for the Abolishment of the Star Chamber.” Overton
was therefore emboldened to refuse subjection to the said House. He was
adjudged guilty of contempt, and committed to Newgate, where he was
seemingly doomed to lie until their lordships’ pleasure shall be further
signified, which “may be perpetual if they please, and may have their wills,
for your petitioner humbly conceiveth that he is made a prisoner to their
wills, not to the law, except their wills may be a law.” On this account he
appealed to the Commons “as the most sovereign Court of Judicature in the
land,” claiming from them “repossession of his just liberty and freedom, or
else that he may undergo the penalty prescribed by the law if he be found a
transgressor.” Whether Overton was supported by the Commons against the
Lords does not appear, but within three years the Lower House abolished
the House of Peers.

Here is yet another petition from a better known inmate of Newgate, the
obstinately independent Colonel Lilburne, commonly called “Freeborn
John.” Lilburne was always at loggerheads with the government of the city.
In 1637, when following the trade of bookseller, he was convicted by the
Star Chamber for publishing seditious libels, and sentenced to the pillory,
imprisonment, and a fine of £5000. In 1645 he falls foul of the Parliament,
and writes a new treatise, calling in question their power. For this, although
he had already done good service to the Parliamentary cause and had earned
the grade of Lieutenant-Colonel in the field, he is first questioned, then sent
to Newgate. He dates from thence, in 1646, a letter to Mr. Wollaston, the
keeper of Newgate, or his deputy. He states that he has seen a warrant
commanding the keeper to produce him before the House of Lords, but that
the warrant expresses no reason why he should “dance attendance before
them,” nor does he know any reason why he should, or any law that
compels him thereto. The Lords had already endeavoured illegally to try
him, a commoner, before their bar, for which, under hand and seal, he
protested to their faces against them as violent and illegal encroachers upon
his rights and liberties, and appealed to the proper tribunal, the Commons,
for which appeal he was arbitrarily committed to gaol. Lilburne goes on to
say,—
“Sir, I am a freeman of England, and therefore I am not to be used as a
slave or vassal by the Lords, which they have already done, and would
further do; I also am a man of peace and quietness, and desire not to molest
any, if I be not forced thereunto, therefore I desire you, as you tender my
good and your own, take this for an answer, that I cannot, without turning
traitor to my liberty, dance attendance to their lordships’ bar, being bound in
conscience, duty to God, myself, thine, and my country, to oppose their
encroachments to the death, which, by the strength of God, I am resolved to
do. Sir, you may, or cause to be exercised upon me some force or violence
to pull and drag me out of my chamber, which I am resolved to maintain as
long as I can, before I will be compelled to go before them; and therefore I
desire you, in a friendly way, to be wise and considerate before you do that
which, it may be, you can never undo.
“Sir, I am your true and fair-conditioned prisoner, if you will be so to
me,
“John Lilburne.

“From my cock-loft in the press-yard of Newgate, 23rd June, 1646.”
Lilburne was eventually banished by the Rump Parliament; but in 1653
he returned to England, and threw himself upon the tender mercies of the
Protector. Cromwell would do nothing, and left him to the law. Lilburne
was then arrested, and committed to Newgate. At the next sessions he was
arraigned, but refused to plead unless furnished with a copy of his
indictment. He managed to put off his trial by various expedients till the
next sessions, when he was acquitted by the jury. In Thurloe’s State papers
it is stated that “John Lilburne was five times at his trial at the Sessions
House, where he most courageously defended himself from Mr. Stale, the
recorder’s, violent assaults with his old buckler, Magna Charta, so that they
have let him alone.” “Freeborn John” was so popular with malcontents of
all shades of opinion, that the authorities, from Oliver Cromwell downward,
were really afraid of him. Oliver professed to be enraged against him, and
anxious for his punishment, yet he privately paid him a pension equal to the
pay of a Lieutenant-Colonel, and, as Thurloe says, “thought the fellow so
considerable, that during the time of his trial he kept three regiments
continually under arms at St. James’.” The jury which acquitted Lilburne
were summoned to answer for their conduct before the Council of State. Yet
there is little doubt that the court was overawed by the mob. For Thurloe
says there were six or seven hundred men at the trial, with swords, pistols,
bills, daggers, and other instruments, that, in case they had not cleared him,
they would have employed in his defence. The joy and acclamation was so
great after he was acquitted, that the shout was heard an English mile.
The mob had been turbulent enough to give cause for alarm on a
previous occasion. Four or five years previously the puritanical zeal of the
Lords had produced a stringent ordinance against tippling and gaming on
the Lord’s Day. This occasioned a great tumult, which originated in
Moorfields, and agitated the metropolis for a couple of days. It is said that,
but for the vigorous action of Fairfax, the Government would have been
overthrown. The people mastered a part of the trainbands, seized their
drums and colours, beat up for recruits, then forming into something like
military order, they surprised Newgate and Ludgate in the night, and seized
the keys. The rioters divided into two parties: one marched upon Whitehall,
but were discomfited en route; the other ranged the city, possessing
themselves of ordnance, arms, and ammunition. Prompt measures were,
however, taken at a council of war, and Fairfax, entering the city at the head

of two regiments, put several to the sword, took many prisoners, and
dispersed the rest.
The transfer of power to the Commonwealth is significantly recorded in
the annals of Newgate. A whole batch of warrants are to be found in the
State papers about 1649, ordering the committal of persons charged with
being in arms against the Parliament—the offenders are mostly military
officers. Thus the keeper of Newgate, Richard Dicke by name, is
commanded to receive Lieutenant-Colonel Clarke, Major Wright, and
Captain Wescott; also Lieutenant Gage, Robert Wood, pilot, and Robert
Parker, taken in a man of war, all charged with levying war. Again, the
Commonwealth directs W. Roberts to be sent to Newgate for being an agent
of the proclaimed King of Scotland. Later on, Colonel Clarke, already
mentioned, was released on his signing the test, and finding securities for
good behaviour. Captain Matthew Harrison is committed for bearing arms
against the Parliament, and “drinking a health to Charles, the late king’s
son, by name King Charles II.” The recorder is directed to examine Colonel
Jones concerning Captain Harrison, and to see that he be proceeded against
according to law. A declaration is made before the Council of State as to
Charles Pullen, “lately a prisoner in Newgate,” committed there for being
found in the Hart frigate. Pullen had escaped from prison, and was liable to
the penalty of death if recaptured; but the council remit the penalty in order
to exchange Pullen for Ensign Wright, a prisoner at Jersey. In Nov. 1650
John Jolfe is committed to Newgate for carrying the Roebuck out of the
Commonwealth. Royalist sympathizers find but scant comfort. The keeper
of Newgate is ordered to receive and imprison one Pate, and hold him in
safe custody, for aiding Lieutenant-General Middleton to escape from the
Tower; and a similar warrant is made out against Mitchell for being
accessory to the escape of Colonel Edward Massey from the same place.
All this time prisoners of great mark were at times confined in Newgate.
That noted royalist, Judge Jenkins, was among the number. His crime was
publishing seditious books, and sentencing to death people who had assisted
against the Parliament. He was indeed attainted of high treason under an
ordinance which started in the House of Commons, and was ultimately
passed, and sent to the House of Lords. A committee was sent from “the
Commons’ House to Newgate, which was to interview Judge Jenkins, and
make the following offer to him—viz. that if he would own the power of
the Parliament to be lawful, they would not only take off the sequestrations

from his estates, amounting to £500 per annum, but they would also settle a
pension on him of £1000 a year.” His reply was to the following effect: “Far
be it from me to own rebellion, although it was lawful and successful.” As
the judge refused to come to terms with them, he remained in Newgate till
the Restoration.
People of still higher rank found themselves in gaol. The brother of the
Portugal ambassador, Don Pantaleon Sa, is sent, with others, to Newgate for
a murder committed by them near the Exchange. It was a bad case. They
had quarrelled with an English officer, Gerard, who, hearing the Portuguese
discoursing in French upon English affairs, told them they did not represent
certain passages aright. “One of the foreigners gave him the lie, and all
three fell upon him, and stabbed him with a dagger; but Colonel Gerard
being rescued out of their hands by one Mr. Anthuser, they retired home,
and within one hour returned with twenty more, armed with breastplate and
head-pieces; but after two or three turns, not finding Mr. Anthuser, they
returned home that night.”[61] Don Pantaleon made his escape from prison a
few days later, but he was retaken. Strenuous efforts were then made to
obtain his release. His trial was postponed on the petition of “the Portugal
merchants.” The Portugal ambassador himself had an audience of
Cromwell, the Lord Protector. But the law took its course. Don Pantaleon
pleaded his relationship, and that he had a commission to act as ambassador
in his brother’s absence; this was disallowed, and after much argument the
prisoners pleaded guilty, and desired “to be tried by God and the country.”
A jury was called, half-denizens, half-aliens, six of each, who, after a full
hearing, found the ambassador’s brother and four more guilty of murder and
felony. Lord Chief Justice Rolles then sentenced them to be hanged, and
fixed the day of execution; “but by the desire of the prisoners it was
respited two days.” This was the 6th July, 1654. On the 8th, Don Pantaleon
Sa was reprieved, or more exactly, his sentence was commuted to
beheading. On the 10th he tried to escape, without success, and on the same
day he was conveyed from Newgate to Tower Hill in a coach and six horses
in mourning, with divers of his brother’s retinue with him. There he laid his
head on the block, and “it was chopt off at two blows.” The rest although
condemned were all reprieved, except one, an English boy concerned in the
murder, who was hanged at Tyburn.[62]
Other distinguished inmates, a few years later, were Charles Lord
Buckhurst, Edward Sackville, and Sir Henry Bellayse, K.B., who, being

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

CHAPTER IV.

NEWGATE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

(AFTER THE GREAT FIRE).

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

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

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

The Gate

are the figures of Justice, Mercy, and Truth.... Newgate,” he continues,
“considered as a prison is a structure of more cost and beauty than was
necessary, because the sumptuousness of the outside but aggravates the
misery of the wretches within; but as a gate to such a city as London, it
might have received considerable additions both of design and execution,
and abundantly answered the cost in the reputation of the building. The gate
of a city, erected rather for ornament than use, ought to be in the style of the
triumphal arches.... If Newgate be considered as a prison, it is indeed a very
dismal one. It is the county gaol for Middlesex both for debtors and
malefactors, as well as the city prison for criminals. The debtor, rendered
unfortunate by the vicissitudes of trade or unforeseen losses, has the
reproach of being confined in the same prison with the greatest villains, and
too often his being in Newgate is imputed by the ignorant to crimes which
he abhors. On the other hand, those confined as criminals are, even before
they are found guilty by the laws of their country, packed so close together

that the air being corrupted, ... occasions a dismal, contagious disease called
the gaol distemper, which has frequently carried off great numbers, and
even spread its contagion to the Court of Justice, where they take their
trials. But to prevent these dreadful effects the city has introduced a
ventilator on the top of Newgate to expel the foul air, and make room for
the admission of such as is fresh; and during the sessions herbs are also
spread in the Justice Hall and the passages to it to prevent infection.
However, as these precautions, with some others, have often proved
ineffectual, and as the prison in its present state is far from being
commodious, it was lately resolved by the Common Council of the city of
London to petition Parliament for leave to build a new prison in a more
commodious place.”
An accurate and detailed account of the interior of the 1667 prison has
been preserved in a small work published in 1724, and written by “B. L. of
Twickenham.” This book purports to be “an accurate description of
Newgate, with the rights, privileges, allowances, fees, dues, and customs
thereof, together with a parallel between the master debtors’ side and the
several spunging houses in the county of Middlesex, 1724.” The author’s
short historical preface contains no new facts. It is when he proceeds to
describe the inside of the building, such as he evidently knew it from
personal inspection, that his account becomes interesting. He gives no
illustrations, but I have constructed plans of each floor from the
descriptions in the letter-press, which may assist the reader in understanding
the text.
Newgate, as is plain from the woodcut, spanned the roadway, which
passed beneath by the arch, and seemingly, as in Temple Bar in our time,
without gate or obstruction. This roadway outside the gate, or to the
westward, was Holborn; within, or to the eastward, it was Newgate Street.
The prison proper seems to have consisted of all the upper stories of the
gatehouse; but so far as I can deduce from “B. L.,” only the rooms or
apartments to the south of the arch or gateway, upon the ground-floor.
Behind the gate front the prison building extended some way back parallel
with Newgate Street, an increase of accommodation dating from the time of
the Commonwealth, when “our very churches were made prisons, so great
was the demand for room.” This extension was accomplished by taking in
the buildings belonging to the Phœnix Inn in Newgate Street.

Before proceeding to a detailed description of the various chambers and
cellars into which the interior was divided, it will be well to recount briefly
the general divisions to be found within Newgate. These were—
PARTS OR SIDES.
I. The Master Debtors’ Side.
II. The Master Felons’ Side.
III. The Common Side for Debtors.
IV. The Common Side for Felons.
V. The Press-Yard and Castle.
I. The Master Debtors’ Side comprised—
NUMBER IN PLAN.
The Hall ward 1
The King’s Bench ward 2
The Stone ward 3
II. The Master Felons’ Side comprised—
The Drinking-cellar and Hall 4
The Gigger, or Visiting-room 5
First Ward 6
7
Second and Third wards—
8
III. The Common Side for Debtors comprised—
The Stone hall 9
High hall 10
Tangier 11
Debtors’ hall 12
Women’s ward 13
IV. The Common Side for Felons comprised—
The Stone hold 14
Lower ward 15
Middle ward 16

Waterman’s hall (for women) 17
Women’s second ward 18
V. The Press-Yard and Castle comprised several rooms on ground and
three upper floors, as well as an exercising ground.
Besides the foregoing there was a chapel at the topmost story and a
number of independent rooms, such as the Bilbows, Press-room,
Condemned holds, and Jack Ketch’s kitchen.
At the entrance, on the threshold of the prison, was the lodge, “where
prisoners were first received, and where they were generally fettered if the
cause of their imprisonment require it.” Other writers less favourably
disposed than B. L. affirm that almost all prisoners without exception were
in those days ironed upon reception, whatever their condition. This, in
effect, was one of the many acts of extortion practised without let or
hindrance by the gaolers of the past. Debtors and unconvicted persons were
clapped into manacles for a time, and until they were terrified into
purchasing release; the most heinous offenders were also heavily weighted
until they chose to purchase “easement,” and choice of a lighter set of
chains. There was no reception ward in Newgate such as we understand it,
but hard by the lodge was a chamber which served as a first resting-place
for most male prisoners, as well as the last for not a few. The condemned
hold for males, says B. L., is situated “adjacent to the lodge.” Another
writer, the author of ‘The History of the Press-Yard,’ states more precisely
that the men’s condemned hold, “falsely supposed a noisome vault
underground, lies between the top and bottom of the arch under Newgate.”
It was only imperfectly lighted, a “dark opace wild room,” entered by a
hatch, about twenty feet in length and fifteen in breadth. The floor was of
stone, but on it was a wooden barrack bed raised, “whereon you may repose
yourself if your nose suffers you to rest.” Along and above this bed-place
are “divers ring bolts, wherein such prisoners are locked as are disorderly.
There is only one window, which is so very small that very little light
comes thereby, so that the room is very dark. It is customary,” adds B. L.,
“when any felons are brought to the lodge in Newgate, to put them first in
this condemned hold, where they remain till they have paid two-and-
sixpence, after which they are admitted to the masters’ or common felons’
side.” This is a mild way of describing the custom already referred to.

I. From the lodge admission was gained at once to the Master Debtors’
Side. The principal room, in dimensions twenty-five feet by fifteen, was the
Hall Ward (1), which lay to the southern side of the prison, and owned one
window, five feet by six, with two casements for air. In the midst of the
west side of this ward was a fire-place and good chimney, in which burnt
constantly a fire of sea-coal for the general benefit. It had also wooden
benches and a good common table; and in the north-west corner was a
bench and shelf of wood, on which scullery work was performed. Six and a
half feet above the floor, on the north and east sides, was a gallery,
supported by fir-posts, wherein were five partitions for beds, one at the end
of the other. These beds were made of flock, and were “of their kind very
good;” the charge was half-a-crown per week per bed, and for sheets two
shillings per month, “paid at the time of receiving them.” Doors on the
debtors’ side were locked at 9 P.M. and opened at 8 A.M. The last arrival had
to keep all clean, or pay two pence daily to have it done. “Underneath the
gallery in this Hall ward is a very good place for the prisoners therein to
walk at their pleasure, which advantage the other wards are deficient of.”
The King’s Bench Ward (2) lay over the Hall Ward. Its dimensions were
twenty-one feet by fifteen, and it was ten feet high. It had one window six
feet by four, with a southern aspect probably like that of the Hall ward. The
bed partitions were the same, but on the floor, which was of oak plank. The
fees too were similar. The Stone Ward (3), alongside, is described as the
very best, and pleasantly situated over the gateway towards Holborn, and
therefore facing west. But the beds were all on the floor, which was of
stone, with fire-place fees and so forth, as in the other rooms. At the head of
the stairs, between the King’s Bench Ward and the Stone Ward, was a small
apartment called “my Lady’s Hold,” in which were only two beds, for the
accommodation of any female debtors who came to the master’s side. “This
small apartment,” says one author (B. L.), “is the very worst part of the
master’s side.”
II. The lowermost apartment in the Master Felons’ Side was a large
cellar (4), some four feet below the level of the street, comprising a central
drinking-room or hall, with three wards alongside, two of which were
appropriated to men and one to women. Prices ruled as follows in this
underground tavern: wine was sold at 2s. a bottle, strong drink at 4d. per
quart, and brandy at 4d. per quartern. A “cellar-man,” so called, was
selected by the turnkeys from among the prisoners for the regulation and

government of his fellows, who was allowed to make what profit he could
on the sale of candles, as well as a penny upon every quart of beer or bottle
of wine sold, “with other advantages.” Immediately over the drinking vaults
was “a spacious hall,” named the “Gigger” (5), after the small grate or
gigger in the door, at which prisoners in the various wards on this side were
permitted to have interviews with their friends from outside. The privilege
of entrance to this hall, or to the cellar below, was conceded only on
payment of a fee of 1s. 6d. per diem. The same sum was charged to any
felon’s friend who was admitted to the gigger, and desired to see his friends
in the tap-room; besides which they paid the cellar-man for a candle to light
them down, and the price of a quart of beer, or 5d. Above the gigger again
stairs led to the first ward (6), in which was “a good light, a good fire-place,
and convenient lodging-rooms, as also very good flock beds, for the use of
which each felon pays 3s. 6d. per week. Over this ward are the other two (7
and 8), which are both of the same magnitude and light, with the like
appurtenances belonging thereto.” B. L. further tells us that the prisoners
were generally utilized for all prison services. Not only did they perform all
menial offices, and distribute the allowance of food, such as it was, but they
were also employed to rivet on and remove the irons of their fellows.
Discipline even was entrusted to them; and B. L. speaks of certain prisoners
who maintained order “with a flexible weapon, to the great terror and smart
of those who dispute their authority. Every felon at his coming in pays 14s.
10d. for fees and garnish money only, 1s. 6d. for coals, and 1s. to be spent
amongst the prisoners of the ward.”
III. The Common Side for Debtors comprised four apartments, all situate
towards Newgate Street, in other words, facing north. The ground-floor
apartment was named the “Stone Hall” (9); its dimensions are not given, but
it owned a cistern for water, and on the north side a chimney, “in which no
fires are made except at Christmas, when there is a quantity of beef boiled
there to be given to the felons.” This Stone Hall led to some subordinate
chambers; in the north-east angle was the iron hold for fetters, and in the
south-east a chamber for the confinement of refractory prisoners, styled
“the Partner’s room,” where four men could lie at a time. In the south-west
of the room was a large place called the “tap-house,” in which were sold
beer, ale, brandy, wine, tobacco, and pipes, at the customary prices, “which
of their kind are absolutely good.” Of the tap-house itself B. L. speaks in
less complimentary terms. “It is great pity,” he says, “that greater decorum

is not maintained among the prisoners of the common side, especially in the
tap-house, for therein, by connivance, the felons are permitted to converse
and drink with the debtors; by which means such wretchedness abounds
therein, that the place has the exact aspect of hell itself, and by this means
’tis much to be questioned whether one debtor in ten who enters therein an
honest man comes out the same, the wickedness of the place is so great.”
At the west side of the Stone Hall was a staircase, leading to a large
room called “High Hall” (10), wherein felons alone were admitted to walk.
I have placed this High Hall in the plan on that part of the gate-house which
lay to the north side of Holborn. There is no precise evidence that it was
exactly so situated, but as all other rooms on this first floor can be pretty
accurately placed, I think the conclusion is just that High Hall was
approximately where I have put it. High Hall was large, being thirty-three
feet by twenty-eight, and in altitude twelve. In the midst of the place was a
stone anvil, whereon the irons were knocked off the unhappy persons
sentenced to death, when they came down from the chapel (on the third
floor), on their way to the cart which was to carry them to Tyburn.
Opposite the entrance to the tap-house was a passage leading to a second
common-side debtors room. This came to be called “Tangier” (11) in due
course, no doubt from the stifling atmosphere. “The air in this ward is very
bad,” says B. L., “occasioned by the multitude of the prisoners in it, and the
filthiness of their lodging.” The room was large, but “dark and stinking,”
and it only contained “divers barracks for the prisoners to lie on.” Debtors’
Hall (12), a third room for common-side debtors, was on the floor above. It
also faced Newgate Street, and being higher up, enjoyed very good air and
light. It had a very large window, which was, however, unglazed, and
subjected the prisoners not only to the weather, but also to all kinds of rain,
snow, sleet, &c., which the north-eastern winds produce. Unlike those in
Tangier, the prisoners in Debtors’ Hall had no barrack-beds to lie on, and
were obliged therefore to sleep upon the boarded floor. Close by Debtors’
Hall was a kind of kitchen, containing a large fire-place and grate, and
known in B. L.’s time as the Hangman’s, or Jack Ketch’s kitchen, “because
it is the place in which that honest fellow boils the quarters of such men as
have been executed for treason.”[64] Over this kitchen again, on the third
floor, that is to say, was “an indifferent good ward,” called the Women’s
Ward (13), and devoted to common debtors of that sex.

These poor debtors were but ill lodged and provided for. They had no
firing save what they themselves found. They had to provide their own beds
or sleep on the boards supplied by the sheriffs. But every debtor on the
common side was allowed “each day one coarse household wheaten loaf,
almost the bigness of a common penny white loaf; and there is also given a
certain quantity of beef every week, in proportion to the number of debtors.
Every debtor at his entrance paid 11s. 6d. garnish money, which was
expended among the prisoners of the ward, and on discharge or removal a
further fee of 7s. 10d. as on the master’s side. ‘The conversation of these
debtors,’ says B. L., ‘was generally very profligate, being, as before
mentioned, perpetually drinking and conversing with the felons.’”
IV. The Common Felons’ Side, which was adjacent to that for the
common debtors, was evidently a foul disgrace to the prison and to those
charged with the administration of the law. B. L. describes it as “a most
terrible, wicked, and dreadful place.” In this side were five wards. The first,
known as the Stone Hold (14), was an underground dungeon lying beneath
the “middle ward,” which I fix somewhere near the Tangier Ward of the
debtors’ common side. “The Stone Hold,” says the authority already quoted,
“was a terrible, stinking, dark, and dismal place, situate underground, into
which no daylight can come. It was paved with stone; the prisoners had no
beds, and lay on the pavement, whereby they endured great misery and
hardship. The unhappy persons imprisoned therein are such as at their
unfortunate entrance cannot pay the customary fees of the gaol.” Alongside
the Stone Hold was the “Lower Ward” (15), another large dungeon, in
which were confined felons for non-payment of fines. The Middle Ward
(16), on the floor above, was for those who had paid their bare fees, no
more. Here also they had no beds, but the floor on which they lay was of
oak, not stone. There were two wards for common female felons. The first,
on this second floor, was called “Waterman’s Hall” (17), a very dark and
stinking place; the floor is of oaken planks, which is all the bed allotted to
its miserable inhabitants. Water was, however, well supplied to this ward.
Close by it were other rooms applied to ghastly uses. One was the “press-
room,” still used in the writer’s time for the execution of the frightful
sentence of pressing to death culprits arraigned who refused to plead;
another the Bilbows,[65] adjacent to the press room, also very dark, “and
used as a refractory cell for such as occasioned quarrel or disturbance.”
Near this again was the women’s condemned hold, “a small, dark, dismal

dungeon, wherein is a barrack for the prisoners to lie on, but no fire-place,
and it is therefore cold at all times. A second ward (18) for common side
females existed on the third, or floor above all, “the highest part of the
whole gaol in the north part thereof, and is of large extent, in which is one
window only, and that very small.” Barracks were fixed on the walls on
each side, but without any kind of bed whatsoever. “The persons
imprisoned therein were generally those that lie for transportation, and they,
knowing their time to be short here, rather than bestow one minute towards
cleaning the same, suffer themselves to live far worse than swine, and, to
speak the truth, the Augean Stable would bear no comparison to it, for they
are almost poisoned by their own filth, and their conversation is nothing but
one
Newgate (1700).
Ground Floor.

Holborn

A. Press Yard. (Exercising Ground.) 1. Hall Ward. (Master Debtors.)
B. Part of Press Yard. 4. Drinking Cellar, below.
C. Partner’s Room. 5. Gigger.
D. Lodge. 9. Stone Hall. (Common Side
E. Part of Keeper’s House. Debtors.)
11. Tangier. (Common Side

(Under which was the Condemned Debtors.)
Hold.) 14. Stone Hold. (Common Side
Felons.)
15. Lower Ward. (Common Side
Felons.)

continued course of swearing, cursing, and debauchery, insomuch that it
passes all description and belief.... It is with no small concern,” he adds,
“that I am obliged to observe that the women in every ward of this prison
are exceedingly worse than the worst of the men, not only in respect to
nastiness and indecency of living, but more especially as to their
conversation, which, to their great shame, is as profane and wicked as hell
itself can be.”
These remarks, unhappily, are fully borne out by more modern
experience. Female prisoners are, as a rule, far worse than the male.
V. The one division remaining, and commonly called the Press-Yard and
Castle, was quite the best part of the prison. The entrance was at the base of
the stairs between the common debtors’ and the common felons’ sides. It
was composed of “divers large spacious rooms,” on all three floors: those
on the ground and first floor faced towards east and south; those on the
second—the Castle so called—to the west. These rooms were all well
supplied with light and air, free from all ill smells, and possessed all
necessary appurtenances. A yard or place for walking in the open air was
attached to this side, and was situate between the door or postern which
entered from Newgate Street and the fabric itself. This yard, which was
fifty-four feet long by seven feet wide, and was handsomely paved with
Purbeck stone, could have been little better than a narrow passage running
the whole north side of the prison between the building and its boundary
wall. The Press-Yard was for State prisoners, or great and opulent criminals
who could afford to pay such high premium at entrance as they and the
gaoler might agree upon, and also the weekly rent of their wards. This
premium was fixed according to the quality of the individual, and ranged
from £20 to £500. The weekly rent of tenancy of the rooms was 11s. 6d. per
head, 1s. of which was paid to a woman called the laundress, who made the
fires and cleaned the rooms; the remainder went into the gaoler’s pocket.
The prisoners themselves provided their fires and candles, as also all other
necessaries, “save the beds, which were very good of their kind, and which

the gaoler found, sheets being always excepted.” A less aristocratic section
of this very select part of the prison was the Castle, which comprised two
wards above the Stone ward and King’s Bench ward of the master debtors’
sides, and of the same dimensions, with the same air and light, as the wards
immediately beneath. In the Castle wards were divers partitions for beds,
for each of which a prisoner paid 2s. 6d. per week.
The remainder of this top floor, with the exception of the high hall, and
the second ward for common female felons, was taken up by the prison
chapel, which looked towards the south-east. The chapel was partitioned on
the north side into large apartments called pens, which were all strongly
built, as they contained every Sunday the common debtors and the felons of
both kinds. The pulpit stood in the
Newgate (1700).
1st Floor.

F. Part of Press Yard.
2. King’s Bench Ward (Master Debtors).
3. Stone Ward. (Master Debtors).
G. My Lady’s Hold. 6. 1st Ward (Master Felons).
16. Middle Ward (Common Side Felons).

north-west angle of the chapel, against it were the pens of the male common
debtors, next to them those of the male and female felons, but in separate
divisions, and in the pens were gratings through which the occupants could
be observed from the chapel pews. On the south side, opposite the felons’

pens, were two very handsome enclosures for the master debtors; adjoining
the pulpit was another large pew, wherein were placed such prisoners as
were under sentence of death, and here in this same apartment “the blessed
sacrament was administered to them at proper times, more particularly on
the morning before execution.” Besides these were a number of other
handsome open pews, free to all persons who choose to come and sit in
them. They were generally well filled on the Sundays when the condemned
sermon was preached to prisoners about to die.[66]
A few corroborative facts may be quoted from other authorities as to the
horrors of Newgate, the mismanagement, tyranny, and lax discipline which
prevailed. Its insanitary condition was chronic, which at times, but only for
influential inmates, was pleaded as an excuse for release. Lord
Montgomery, a prisoner there in 1697, was brought, Luttrell tells, out of
Newgate to the King’s Bench Court, there to be bailed, upon two affidavits,
which showed that there was an infectious fever in Newgate, of which
several were sick and some dead. He was accordingly admitted to bail,
himself in £10,000, and four sureties—the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of
Yarmouth, Lord Carington, and Lord Jeffereys—in £5000 each. An effort to
secure release was made some years later in regard to Jacobite prisoners of
note, less successfully, although the grounds alleged were the same and
equally valid.
If a prisoner was hopelessly despondent, he could generally compass the
means of committing suicide. A Mr. Norton, natural son of Sir George
Norton, condemned for killing a dancing-master (because the latter would
not suffer him to take his wife away from him in the street), poisoned
himself the night before his reprieve expired. The drug was conveyed to
him by his aunt without difficulty, “who participated in the same dose, but
she is likely to recover.” Nor were prisoners driven to this last desperate
extremity to escape from durance. Pepys tells us in 1667, August 1, that the
gates of the city were shut, “and at Newgate we find them in trouble, some
thieves having this night broken open prison.”
Within the gaol all manner of evil communication went forward
unchecked among the prisoners. That same year Sir Richard Ford, the
recorder, states that it has been made appear to the court of aldermen “that
the keeper of Newgate hath at this day made his house the only nursery of
rogues, prostitutes, pickpockets, and thieves in the world, where they were

held and entertained and the whole society met, and that for the sake of the
sheriffs[67] they durst not this
Newgate (1700).
2nd Floor.

F. Part of Press Yard. 7. 2nd Ward (Master Felons).
F.a. The Castle. 8. 3rd Ward (Master Felons).
H. Jack Ketch’s Kitchen. 12. Debtors’ Ward (Common Side).
J. Press Room. 17. Waterman’s Hall (for Women).
K. Bilbows.

day commit him for fear of making him let out the prisoners, but are fain to
go by artifice to deal with him.” The keeper at this time was one Walter
Cowday, as appears from a State pardon “for seven prisoners ordered to be
transported by their own consent,” which he endorses. Sharper measure was
dealt out to his successor, Mr. Fells, the keeper in 1696, who was
summoned to appear before the Lords Justices for conniving at the escape
of Birkenhead, alias Fish, alias South, East, West, &c., one of the
conspirators in Sir John Fenwick’s business, and who lay in prison “to be
speedily tried.” On examination of Fells, it was stated that Birkenhead’s
escape had been effected by a bribe, whereupon the sheriffs were instructed
to find out the truth in order to displace Fells. Fells was furthermore
charged with showing favour to Sir John Fenwick by suffering him to have
pens, ink, and paper alone; a little later he was convicted on two

indictments before Lord Chief Justice Holt at Guildhall, viz. for the escape
of Birkenhead already mentioned, and of another prisoner imprisoned for
non-payment of fine. Fell’s sentence was postponed till the next term at the
King’s Bench Bar; but he moved the court in arrest of judgment, a motion
which the King’s Bench took time to consider, but which must have been
ultimately decided in his favour, as two years later Fells still held the office
of gaoler of Newgate.
The crimes of the latter half of the seventeenth century are of the same
character as those of previous epochs. Many had, however, developed in
degree, and were more widely practised. The offence of clipping and
coining had greatly increased. The extent to which it was carried seems
almost astounding. The culprits were often of high standing. A clipper, by
name White, under sentence of death, was reprieved by the king upon the
petition of the House of Commons in order that a committee of the House
might examine him in Newgate as to his accomplices and their proceedings.
Accordingly, White made “a large discovery” to the committee, both of
clippers and coiners, and particularly of Esquire Strode, who had been a
witness at the trial of the Earl of Bath (1697). Luttrell says (1696), among
twenty persons convicted of coining was Atkinson, the beau “that made
such a figure in town about eight years before, and spent an estate of £500
per annum in Yorkshire.” In the lodgings of a parson, by name Salisbury,
who was arrested for counterfeiting stamped paper, several instruments for
clipping and coining were found. University men were beguiled into the
crime of clipping; so were seemingly respectable London tradesmen.
Goldsmiths and refiners were repeatedly taken up for these malpractices.
“A goldsmith in Leicester Fields and his servants committed to Newgate for
receiving large quantities of broad money from Exeter to clip it.”[68] “A
refiner’s wife and two servants committed to Newgate for clipping; the
husband escaped.” Bird, a laceman, in custody for coining, escaped; but
Newgate (1700).
3rd Floor.

10. High Hall.
L. The Chapel. 13. Women’s Ward. (Debtors.)
18. Women’s 2nd Ward. (Felons.)

surrendered and impeached others. Certain gilders committed to Newgate
petitioned therefrom, that if released they would merit the same by a
discovery of a hundred persons concerned in the trade. Such are the entries
which appear time after time in contemporary chronicles.
The numbers engaged in these nefarious practices were very great. In
1692 information was given of three hundred coiners and clippers dispersed
in various parts of the city, for several of whom warrants were issued, some
by the Treasury, others by the Lord Chief Justice. The profits were
enormous. Of three clippers executed at Tyburn in 1696, one, John Moore,
the tripeman, was said to have got a good estate by clipping, and to have
offered £6000 for his pardon. Three other clippers arrested in St. James’ St.,
and committed to Newgate, were found to be in possession of £400 in
clippings, with a pair of shears and other implements. The information of
one Gregory, a butcher, who “discovered” near a hundred persons
concerned in the trade, went to prove that they made as much as £6000 a
month in counterfeit money. “All their utensils and moulds were shown in
court, the latter being in very fine clay, which performed with great
dexterity.” The extent of the practice is shown by the ingenuity of the
machinery used. “All sort of material for coining was found in a house in
Kentish town, with stamps for all coins from James I.” The work was
performed “with that exactness no banker could detect the counterfeit.” So

bold were the coiners, that the manufacture went forward even within the
walls of Newgate. Three prisoners were taken in the very act of coining in
that prison. One of the medals or tokens struck in Newgate as a monetary
medium among the prisoners is still to be seen in the Beaufoy Collection at
Guildhall. Upon the obverse of the coin the legend is inscribed: “Belonging
to the cellar on the master’s side, 1669;” on the reverse side is a view of
Newgate and the debtors’ prison.
The heaviest penalties did not check this crime. The offence was high
treason; men sentenced for it were handed, drawn, and quartered, and
women were burnt. In 1683 Elizabeth Hare was burnt alive for coining in
Bunhill Fields. Special legislation could not cope with this crime, and to
hinder it the Lords of the Treasury petitioned the Queen (Mary in the
absence of William III.) to grant no pardon to any sentenced for clipping
unless before their conviction they discovered their accomplices.
Highway robbery had greatly increased. The roads were infested with
banditti. Innkeepers harboured and assisted the highwaymen, sympathizing
with them, and frequently sharing in the plunder. None of the great roads
were safe: the mails, high officials, foreigners of distinction, noblemen,
merchants, all alike were stopped and laid under contribution. The
following are a few of the cases which were of constant occurrence. “His
Majesty’s mails from Holland robbed near Ilford in Essex, and £5000 taken,
belonging to some Jews in London.” The Worcester waggon, wherein was
£4000 of the king’s money, was set upon and robbed at Gerard’s Gross, near
Uxbridge, by sixteen highwaymen. The convoy, being near their inn, went
on ahead, thinking all secure, and leaving only two persons on foot to guard
it, who, having laid their blunderbusses in the waggon, were on a sudden
surprised by the sixteen highwaymen, who took away £2,500. and left the
rest for want of conveniences to carry it.” Two French officers (on their way
to the coast) were robbed by nine highwaymen of one hundred and ten
guineas, and bidden to go home to their own country. Another batch of
French officers was similarly dealt with on the Portsmouth road. Fifteen
butchers going to market were robbed by highwaymen, who carried them
over a hedge and made them drink King James’ health. The Portsmouth
mail was robbed, but only of private letters; and the same men robbed a
captain going to Portsmouth with £5000 to pay his regiment with. Three
highwaymen robbed the Receiver-General of Bucks of a thousand guineas,
which he was sending up by the carrier in a pack; the thieves acted on

excellent information, for although there were seventeen packhorses, they
went directly to that which was laden with the gold. Seven on the St.
Alban’s Road near Pinner robbed the Manchester carrier of £15,000 king’s
money, and killed and wounded eighteen horses to prevent pursuit. The
purser of a ship landed at Plymouth and rode to London on horseback, with
£6000 worth of rough diamonds belonging to some London merchants
which had been saved out of a shipwreck. Crossing Hounslow Heath, the
purser was robbed by highwaymen. “Oath was thereupon made before a
justice of the peace,” says Luttrell, in “order to sue the Hundred for the
same.” The Bath coach was stopped in Maidenhead thicket, and a footman
who had fired at them was shot through the head. The Dover stage coach,
with foreign passengers, was robbed near Shooter’s Hill, but making
resistance, one was killed. The western mail was robbed by the two Arthurs,
who were captured and committed to Newgate. They soon escaped
therefrom, but were again arrested at a tavern by Doctors’ Commons, being
betrayed by a companion. They confessed that they had gone publicly about
the streets disguised in Grecian habits, and that one Ellis, a tobacconist,
assisted them in their escape, for which he was himself committed to
Newgate. John Arthur was soon afterwards condemned and executed.
Henry Arthur was acquitted, but soon after quarrelling about a tavern bill in
Covent Garden, he was killed in the mêlée.
All manner of men took To the road. Some of the Royal guards were
apprehended for robbing on the highway. Lifeguardsmen followed the same
gentlemanly occupation when on duty. “Thompson, a lifeguardsman,
committed on suspicion of robbing Welsh drovers, is refused bail, there
being fresh evidence against him.”[69] Captain Beau, or Bew, formerly of
the Guards, was seized at Knightsbridge as a highwayman, and afterwards
poisoned himself. Seven of his gang were committed to Newgate. Harris,
‘the lifeguardsman’ tried at the Old Bailey for robbing on the black mare
and acquitted, was again tried a month later, and condemned. He was then
reprieved, and Sir William Penn obtained the Queen’s pardon for him, and a
commission as lieutenant in the Pennsylvania Militia, to which colony he
was to transport himself. Persons of good social status engaged in the
perilous trade. One Smith, a parson and a lecturer at Chelsea, when brought
up at Westminster for perjury, was found to be a confederate with two
highwaymen, with whom he had shared a gold watch, and planned to rob
Chelsea Church of its plate. Smith when arraigned appeared in Court in his

gown, but he was “sent to Newgate, and is like to be hanged.” Disguised
highwaymen were often found in reputable citizens and quiet tradesmen,
who upon the surface seemed honest folk. A mercer of Lombard Street was
taken out of his bed and charged by a cheesemonger as being the man that
rubbed him two years previously. Another mercer was taken up near
Ludgate on suspicion of being a highwayman, and committed. Saunders, a
butcher of St. James’ market, was charged with robbing the Hampton coach,
and discovered three confederates, who were captured on Sunday at
Westminster Abbey. “Two highwaymen taken near Highgate, one of whom
was said to be a broken mercer, the other a fishmonger.” Two of Whitney’s
gang were said to be tradesmen in the Strand—one a goldsmith and one a
milliner.
Nothing could exceed the cool impudence with which reputed robbers
showed themselves in public places. They did not always escape capture,
however. “A noted highwayman in a scarlet cloak,” says Luttrell, “and coat
laced with gold taken in Covent Garden.” Another was taken in the Strand
and sent to Newgate. Five more were captured at the Rummer, Charing
Cross; three others, notorious highwaymen, taken at the ‘Cheshire Cheeze.’
At times they fought hard for liberty. “One Wake, a highwayman, pursued
to Red Lion Fields, set his back against the wall and faced the constables
and mob. He shot the former, and wounded others, but was at last taken and
sent to Newgate.” Whitney, the famous highwayman, was taken without
Bishopsgate, being “discovered by one Hill, as he (Whitney) walked the
street. Hill observed where the robber ‘housed’ and calling for assistance,
went to the door.” Whitney defended himself for about an hour, but the
people increasing, and the officers of Newgate being sent for, he
surrendered himself, but not before he had stabbed Hill with a bayonet, “not
mortal.” He was cuffed and shackled with irons, and committed to
Newgate.
Whitney had done business on a large scale. He had been arrested before
by a party of horse despatched by William III., which had come up with
him lurking between St. Alban’s and Barnet. He was attacked, but made a
stout defence, killing some and wounding others before he was secured. He
must have got free again very soon afterwards. His second arrest, which has
just been detailed, was followed by that of many others of his gang. “Three
were seized near Chelsea College by some soldiers; two more were in
company, but escaped.” On Sunday two others were taken; one kept a livery

stable at Moorfield’s. Soon after his committal there was a strong rumour
that he had escaped from Newgate, but “he continues closely confined
there, and has forty pounds weight of irons on his legs. He had his tailor to
make him a rich embroidered suit with peruke and hat, worth £100; but the
keeper refused to let him wear them, because they would disguise him from
being known.”[70] Whitney made many attempts to purchase pardon. He
offered to discover his associates, and those that give notice when and
where the money is conveyed on the roads in coaches and waggons. He
was, however, put upon his trial, and eventually convicted and sentenced to
death. He went in the cart to the place of execution, but was reprieved and
brought back to Newgate with a rope round his neck, followed by a “vast”
crowd. Next night he was carried to Whitehall and examined as to the
persons who hired the highwaymen to rob the mails. But he was again
ordered for execution, and once more sought to gain a reprieve by writing a
letter in which he offered, if he might have his pardon, to betray a
conspiracy to kill the king. His last appeal was refused, and he suffered at
Porter’s Block, near Cow Cross, Smithfield.
Determined efforts were made from time to time to put down these
robberies, which were often so disgracefully prevalent that people hardly
dared to travel along the roads. Parties of horse were quartered in most of
the towns along the great highways. Handsome rewards were offered for the
apprehension of offenders. A proclamation promised £10 for every
highwayman taken, and this was ere long increased to £40, to be given to
any who might supply information leading to an arrest. Horses standing at
livery in and about London, whose ownership was at all doubtful, were
seized on suspicion, and often never claimed. It was customary to parade
before Newgate persons in custody who were thought to be highwaymen.
They were shown in their riding-dresses with their horses, and all
gentlemen who had been robbed were invited to inspect this singular
exhibition.[71] But the practice flourished in spite of all attempts at
repression.
One or two types of the highwaymen of the seventeenth century may
here be fitly introduced. One of the earliest and most celebrated was Jack
Cottington, alias Mulled Sack, who had been a depredator throughout the
Commonwealth epoch, and who enjoyed the credit of having robbed Oliver
Cromwell himself on Hounslow Heath. His confederate in this, Horne,

once a captain in Downe’s foot regiment, was
overtaken, captured, and hanged, but Cottington
escaped. Jack Cottington began as a chimney-sweep,
first as an apprentice, then on his own account, when
he gained his soubriquet from his powers in drinking
mulled sack. From this he graduated, and soon gained
a high reputation as a pickpocket, his chief hunting-
ground being churches and puritan meeting-houses,
which he frequented demurely dressed in black with a
black roquelaire. He succeeded in robbing Lady
Fairfax of a gold watch set with diamonds and a gold
chain as she was on her way to Dr. Jacomb’s lecture at “Mulled Sack.”
Ludgate; and a second time by removing the lynch-pin
from her Ladyship’s carriage when on her way to the same church, he upset
the coach, and giving her his arm, relieved her of another gold watch and
seals. After this he became the captain of a gang of thieves and night
prowlers, whom he organized and led to so much purpose that they alarmed
the whole town. His impudence was so great that he was always ready to
show off his skill as a thief in any public-house if he was paid for it, in a
performance he styled “moving the bung.” He was not content to operate in
the city, but visited the Parliament House and Courts of Law at
Westminster, and was actually caught in the act of picking the Protector’s
pocket. He narrowly escaped hanging for this, and on coming out of gaol
took permanently to the highway, where he soon achieved a still greater
notoriety. With half-a-dozen comrades he robbed a government waggon
conveying money to the army, and dispersed the twenty troopers who
escorted it, by attacking them as they were watering their horses. The
waggon contained £4000, intended to pay the troops quartered at Oxford
and Gloucester. Another account states that near Wheatley, Cottington put a
pistol to the carrier’s head and bade him stand, at which both carter and
guard rode off for their lives, fearing an ambuscade. The town of Reading
he laid under frequent contribution, breaking into a jeweller’s shop in that
town and carrying off the contents, which he sported on his person in
London. Again at Reading, hearing that the Receiver-General was about to
send £6000 to London in an ammunition waggon, he entered the receiver’s
house, bound the family, and decamped with the money. Being by this time
so notorious a character, he was arrested on suspicion, and committed for

trial at Abingdon Assizes. There, however, being flush of cash, he found
means to corrupt the jury and secure acquittal, although Judge Jermyn
exerted all his skill to hang him. His fame was now at its zenith. He became
the burthen of street songs—a criminal hero who laughed the gallows to
scorn. But about this time he was compelled to fly the country for the
murder of Sir John Bridges, with whose wife he had had an intrigue. He
made his way to Cologne, to the Court of Charles II., whom he robbed of
plate worth £1500. Then he returned to England, after making overtures to
Cromwell, to whom he offered certain secret papers if he might be allowed
to go scot free. But he was brought to the gallows, and nobly deserved his
fate.
Claude Duval is another hero whose name is familiar to all readers of
criminal chronology. A certain halo of romance surrounds this notorious and
most successful highwayman. Gallant and chivalrous in his bearing towards
the fair sex, he would spare a victim’s pockets for the pleasure of dancing a
“corranto” with the gentleman’s wife. The money he levied so recklessly he
lavished as freely in intrigue. His success with the sex is said to have been
extraordinary, both in London and in Paris. “Maids, widows, and wives,”
says a contemporary account, “the rich, the poor, the noble, the vulgar, all
submitted to the powerful Duval.” When justice at length overtook him, and
he was cast for death, crowds of ladies visited him in the condemned hold;
many more in masks were present at his execution. After hanging he lay in
state in the Tangier Tavern at St. Giles, in a room draped with black and
covered with escutcheons; eight wax tapers surrounded his bier, and “as
many tall gentlemen in long cloaks.” Duval was a Frenchman by birth—a
native of Domfront in Normandy, once a village of evil reputation. Its curé
was greatly surprised, it is said, at finding that he baptized as many as a
hundred children and yet buried nobody. At first he congratulated himself in
residing in an air producing such longevity; but on closer inquiry he found
that all who were born at Domfront were hanged at Rouen.
Duval did not long honour his native country with his presence. On the
restoration of Charles II. he came to London as footman to a person of
quality; but soon took to the road. Numerous stories are told of his
boldness, his address, and fertility of resource. One of the most amusing is
that in which he got an accomplice to dress up a mastiff in a cow’s-hide, put
horns on his head, and let him down a chimney into a room where a bridal
merry-making was in progress. Duval, who was one of the guests,

dexterously profited by the general dismay to lighten the pockets of an old
farmer whom he had seen secreting a hundred pounds. When the money
was missed it was supposed that the devil had flown away with it. On
another occasion, having revisited France, he ingratiated himself with a
wealthy priest by pretending to possess the secret of the philosopher’s
stone. This he effected by stirring up a potful of molten inferior metal with
a stick, within which were enclosed a number of sprigs of pure gold, as
black lead is in a pencil. When the baser metals were consumed by the fire,
the pure gold remained at the bottom of the pot. Overjoyed at Duval’s skill
as an alchemist, the priest made him his confidant and bosom friend,
revealing him his secret hoards, and how they were bestowed. One day,
when the priest was asleep after dinner, Duval gagged and bound him,
removed his keys, unlocked his strong boxes, and went off with all the
valuables he could carry. Duval was also an adroit card-sharper, and won
considerable sums at play by “slipping a card”; and he was most astute in
laying and winning wagers on matters he had previously fully mastered. His
career was abruptly terminated by his capture when drunk at a tavern in
Chandos St., and he was executed, after ten years of triumph, at the early
age of twenty-seven.
William Nevison, a native-born member of the same fraternity, may be
called, says Raine, “the Claude Duval of the north. The chroniclers of his
deeds have told us of his daring and his charities, for he gave away to the
poor much of the money he took from the rich.” Nevison was born at
Pontefract in 1639, and began as a boy by stealing his father’s spoons.
When chastised by the schoolmaster for this offence, he bolted with his
master’s horse, having first robbed his father’s strong box. After spending
some time in London thieving, he went to Flanders and served, not without
distinction, in a regiment of English volunteers commanded by the Duke of
York. He returned presently to England, and took to the road. Stories are
told of him similar to those which made Duval famous. Nevison was on the
king’s side, and never robbed Royalists. He was especially hard on usurers.
On one occasion he eased a Jew of his ready money, then made him sign a
note of hand for five hundred pounds, which by hard riding he cashed
before the usurer could stop payment. Again, he robbed a bailiff who had
just distrained a poor farmer for rent. The proceeds of the sale, which the
bailiff thus lost, Nevison restored to the farmer. In the midst of his career,
having made one grand coup, he retired from business and spent eight years

virtuously with his father. At the old man’s death he resumed his evil
courses, and was presently arrested and thrown into Leicester Gaol. From
this he escaped by a clever stratagem. A friendly doctor having declared he
had the plague, gave him a sleeping draught, and saw him consigned to a
coffin as dead. His friend demanded the body, and Nevison passed the gates
in the coffin. Once outside, he was speedily restored to life, and resumed his
old ways. He now extended his operations to the capital, and it was soon
after this that he gained the soubriquet, given by Charles II., it is said, of
“Swift Nick.” There seems to be very little doubt that Nevison was actually
the hero of the great ride to York, commonly credited to Turpin. The story
goes that he robbed a gentleman at Gadshill, then riding to Gravesend,
crossed the Thames and galloped across Essex to Chelmsford. After baiting
he rode on to Cambridge, and Godmanchester, thence to Huntingdon, where
he baited his mare and slept for an hour; after that, holding to the north
road, and not galloping his horse all the way, reached York the same
afternoon. Having changed his clothes, he went to the bowling-green, where
he made himself noticeable to the Lord Mayor. By and by, when recognized
and charged with the robbery at Gadshill, Nevison called upon the mayor to
prove that he had seen him at York; whereupon he was acquitted, “on the
bare supposition that it was impossible for a man to be at two places so
remote on one and the same day.”
Nevison appears to have been arrested and in custody in 1676. He was
tried for his life, but reprieved and drafted into a regiment at Tangier. He
soon deserted, and returning to England, again took to the road. He was
next captured at Wakefield, tried, and sentenced to death; but escaped from
prison, to be finally taken up for a trifling robbery, for which he suffered at
York. The depositions preserved by the Surtees’ Society show that he was
the life and centre of a gang of highway robbers who worked in association.
They levied black mail upon the whole country side; attended fairs, race
meetings, and public gatherings, and had spies and accomplices, inn-
keepers and ostlers, who kept them informed of the movements of
travellers, and put them in the way of “likely jobs” to be done. Drovers and
farmers who paid a tax to them escaped spoliation; but all others were very
roughly handled. The gang had its head-quarters at the Talbot Inn, Newark,
where they kept a room by the year, and met at regular intervals to divide
the proceeds of their robberies.

Many instances are recorded of another crime somewhat akin to
highway robbery. The forcible abduction of heiresses was nothing new; but
it was now prosecuted with more impudence and daring than heretofore.
Luttrell tells us, under date 1st June, 1683, that one Mrs. Synderfin, a rich
widow, was taken out of her carriage on Hounslow Heath, by a Captain
Clifford and his comrades. They carried her into France to “Calice” against
her will, and with much barbarous ill-usage made her marry Clifford. Mrs.
Synderfin or Clifford was, however, rescued, and brought back to England.
Clifford escaped, but presently returning to London was seized and
committed to custody. He pleaded in defence his great passion for the lady,
and his “seeing no other way to win her.” It was not mere fortune-hunting,
he declared, as he possessed a better estate than hers. But the Lord Chief
Justice charged the jury that they must find the prisoners guilty, which they
did, and all were sentenced to imprisonment in Newgate for one year.
Captain Clifford was also to pay a fine of £1000, two of his confederates
£500 each, and two more £100. In the same authority is an account how
—“Yesterday a gentleman was committed to Newgate for stealing a young
lady worth £10,000, by the help of bailiffs, who arrested her and her maid
in a false action, and had got them into a coach, but they were rescued.”
Again, a year or two later, “one Swanson, a Dane, who pretends to be a
Deal merchant, is committed to Newgate for stealing one Miss Rawlins, a
young lady of Leicestershire, with a fortune of £4000. Three bailiff’s and a
woman, Swanson’s pretended sister, who assisted, are also committed, they
having forced her to marry him. Swanson and Mrs. Bainton were convicted
of this felony at the King’s Bench Bar; but the bailiffs who arrested her on a
sham action were acquitted, with which the court was not well pleased.
Swanson was sentenced to death, and executed. As also the woman; but she
being found with child, her execution was respited.” A more flagrant case
was the abduction of Miss Mary Wharton in 1690, the daughter and heiress
of Sir George Wharton, by Captain James Campbell, brother to the Earl of
Argyll, assisted by Sir John Johnson. Miss Wharton, who was only thirteen
years of age, had a fortune of £50,000. She was carried away from her
relations in Great Queen Street, on the 14th Nov., 1690, and married against
her will. A royal proclamation was forthwith issued for the apprehension of
Captain Campbell and his abettors. Sir John Johnson was taken, committed
to Newgate, and presently tried and cast for death. “Great application was
made to the king and to the relations of the bride to save his life,” but to no

purpose, “which was thought the harder, as it appeared upon his trial that
Miss Wharton had given evident proof that the violence Captain Campbell
used was not so much against her will as her lawyers endeavoured to make
it.” Luttrell says, “Sir John refused pardon unless requested by the friends
of Mrs. Wharton. On the 23rd December he went in a mourning coach to
Tyburn, and there was hanged.” No mention is made of the arrest of Captain
Campbell, whom we may conclude got off to the continent. But he
benefited little by his violence, for a bill was brought into the House of
Commons within three weeks of the abduction to render the marriage void,
and this, although the Earl of Argyll on behalf of his brother petitioned
against it, speedily passed both Houses.
The affair of Count Konigsmark may be classed with the foregoing, as
another notorious instance of an attempt to bring about marriage with an
heiress by violent means. The lady in this case was the last of the Percies,
the only child and heiress to the vast fortune of Jocelyn, the Earl of
Northumberland. Married when still of tender years to the Earl of Ogle,
eldest son of the Duke of Newcastle, she was a virgin widow at fifteen, and
again married against her consent, it was said, to Thomas Thynne, Esq., of
Longleat;[72] “Tom of Ten Thousand,” as he was called on account of his
income. This second marriage was not consummated; Lady Ogle either
“repented herself of the match and fled into Holland,”[73] or her relatives
wished to postpone her entry into the matrimonial state, and she was sent to
live abroad. Previous to her second marriage, a young Swedish nobleman,
Count Konigsmark, when on a visit to England, had paid his addresses to
her, but he had failed in his suit. After his rejection he had conceived a
violent hatred against Mr. Thynne. The Count was “a fine person of a man,
with the longest hair I ever saw,[74] and very quick of parts. He was also
possessed of great wealth and influence;” “one of the greatest men,” Sir
John Reresby tells us, “in the kingdom of Sweden; his uncle being at that
time governor of Pomerania, and near upon marrying the King’s (of
Sweden) aunt.” Konigsmark could command the devoted service of
reckless men, and among his followers he counted one Captain Vratz, to
whom he seems to have entrusted the task of dealing with Mr. Thynne.
Vratz, although a brave soldier, who had won his promotion at the siege of
Mons, under the Prince of Orange, and to whom the King of Sweden had
given a troop of horse, was willing to act as an assassin. The Count came to
London, living secretly in various lodgings, as he declared to hide a

distemper from which he suffered, but no doubt to direct privately the
operations of his bravoes. Vratz associated with himself one Stern, a
Swedish lieutenant, and Boroski, “a Polander,” who had arrived in England
destitute, and whom, it was subsequently proved, the Count had furnished
with clothes and arms. The murderers, having set a watch for their victim,
attacked him at the corner of Pall Mall, about the spot where Her Majesty’s
Theatre now stands, as he was riding on Sunday night the 21st February,
1681, in his carriage from the Countess of Northumberland’s house. One of
them cried to the coachman, “Stop, you dog!” and a second, Boroski,
immediately fired a blunderbuss charged with bullets into the carriage. Four
bullets entered Mr. Thynne’s body, each of which inflicted a mortal wound.
The murderers then made off.
The unfortunate gentleman was carried dying to his own house, where
he was presently joined by the Duke of Monmouth, his intimate friend,
Lord Mordaunt, and Sir John Reresby, specially sent by King Charles, who
feared that some political construction would be put upon the transaction,
and was anxious that the perpetrators of the crime should be apprehended.
Reresby, who was an active magistrate, granted warrants at once against
several suspected persons, and he himself, accompanied by the Duke of
Monmouth and others, made a close search, which ended in the arrest of
Vratz in the house of a Swedish doctor, in Leicester Fields. His accomplices
were also soon taken, and all three were examined by the King in Council,
when they confessed that they had done the deed at the instigation of Count
Konigsmark, “who was lately in England.”[75] At the same time a Monsieur
Foubert, who kept an “Academy” in London, which a younger brother of
Count Konigsmark attended, was arrested as being privy to the murder,
admitted that the elder brother had “arrived incognito ten days before the
said murder, and lay disguised till it was committed, which gave great cause
to suspect that the Count was at the bottom of the whole bloody affair.”[76]
The King despatched Sir John Reresby to seize Konigsmark, “but the bird
had flown; he went away betimes, on the morning of the day after the deed
was perpetrated.”[77] He went down the river to Deptford, then to
Greenwich, and the day after to Gravesend, where he was taken by two
King’s messengers, accompanied by “Mr. Gibbons, servant to the Duke of
Monmouth, and Mr. Kidd, gentleman to Mr. Thynne.” He was dressed “in a
very mean habit, under which he carried a naked sword.” When seized he
gave a sudden start, so that his wig fell off, and the fact that he wore a wig,

instead of his own hair as usual, was remembered against him at his trial, as
an attempt at disguise. The Count was carried to an inn in Gravesend, where
he expressed very great concern when he heard that his men had confessed;
declaring that it (the murder) was a stain upon his blood, “although one
good action in the wars, or lodging on a counterscarp, would wash all that
away.” His captors received the £200 reward, promised in the Gazette, and
in addition the £500 offered by Sir Thomas Thynne, Mr. Thynne’s heir.
They carried him at once to London, before the King in Council, where
he was examined, but the Council being unwilling to meddle on account of
his quality, as connected with the kingdom of Sweden, he was then taken
before Chief Justice Pemberton, who could, if he thought fit, send him to
gaol. He was examined again till eleven at night, and at last, “much against
the Count’s desire,” committed him to Newgate. He stood upon his
innocency, and confessed nothing, yet “people are well satisfied that he is
taken.”[78] While in Newgate, Count Konigsmark was lodged in the
governor’s house, and was daily visited by persons of quality. Great efforts
were now made to obtain his release. The M. Foubert, already mentioned,
came to Sir John Reresby, and offered him any money to withdraw from the
prosecution, but the overtures were stoutly rejected, and his emissary was
warned to be cautious “how he made any offers to pervert justice.” A more
effectual attempt at bribery was probably made on the jury, of whom the
prisoner challenged eighteen. He had their names on a list, and knew
beforehand whom he could or could not trust. The Judge, Lord Chief Justice
Pemberton, was also clearly in his favour. The defence set up was that Vratz
had taken upon himself to avenge an affront offered by Mr. Thynne to his
master, and Count Konigsmark denied all knowledge of his follower’s
action. The Count tried to explain the privacy in which he lived, and his
sudden flight. But the counsel for the prosecution laid great stress on the
intimacy between him and the murderers; the absence of any object on the
part of the latter, unless instigated by the former. The Chief Justice,
however, summed up for the Count, assuring the jury that a master could
not be held responsible for the acts of his servants, if ignorant of them, and
that if they thought the Count knew nothing of the murder till after it was
done, they must acquit him. Which they did, “to the no small wonder of the
auditory,” as Luttrell says, “as more than probable good store of guineas
went amongst them.” Konigsmark was set at liberty at the end of the trial,
but before his discharge he was bound in heavy securities, in £2000 himself,

and £2000 from two friends, to appear at the King’s Bench bar the first day
of the following term. “Yet notwithstanding, the Count is gone into France,
and it is much doubted whether he will return to save his bail.”[79] After his
departure he was challenged by Lord Cavendish and Lord Mordaunt, but no
duel came off, Konigsmark declaring that he never received the cartel till
too late. His agents or accomplices, or whatever they may be called, were
convicted and executed.[80]
Count Konigsmark did not long survive Mr. Thynne, nor did he succeed
in winning Lady Ogle’s hand. That doubly widowed yet virgin wife
presently married the Duke of Somerset, by whom she had two sons. As for
Konigsmark, according to the ‘Amsterdam Historical Dictionary,’ quoted in
Chambers’ ‘Book of Days,’ he resumed the career of arms, and was
wounded at Cambray in 1683. He afterwards went to Spain with his
regiment, and distinguished himself on several occasions; after that he
accompanied an uncle Otto William to the Morea, where he was present at
the battle of Argas. In this action he so overheated himself that he was
seized with pleurisy, and died at the early age of twenty-seven, within little
more than four years of the murder of Mr. Thynne. It was another Count
Konigsmark, near relative of this, Count Philip, whose guilty intrigue with
Sophia Dorothea, wife of George I., when Elector of Hanover, led to his
assassination in the Electoral palace.
In the foregoing the softer sex were either victims or the innocent
incentives to crime. In the case of that clever and unscrupulous impostor
Mary Moders, otherwise Carelton, commonly called the German Princess,
it was exactly the opposite. The daughter of a chorister in Canterbury
Cathedral, she married first a shoemaker; then, dissatisfied with her lot, ran
off to Dover and committed bigamy with a doctor. She was apprehended for
this, tried, and acquitted for want of evidence. She next passed over into
Holland, and went the round of the German spas, at one of which she
encountered a foolish old gentleman of large estate, who fell in love with
her and offered marriage. She accepted his proposals and presents; but
having cajoled him into intrusting her with a large sum to make
preparations for the wedding, she absconded to Amsterdam and Rotterdam,
where she took ship and came over to London. Alighting at the Exchange
Tavern, kept by a Mr. King, she assumed the state and title of a princess,
giving herself out as the ill-used child of Count Henry Van Wolway, a
sovereign prince of the empire. John Carelton, a brother-in-law of her

landlord’s, at once, “in the most dutiful and submissive manner,” paid his
addresses to her, and she at last condescended to marry him. Carelton was
presently undeceived by an anonymous letter, which proved his wife to be a
cheat and impostor. The princess was arrested, committed to Newgate, and
tried for polygamy at the Old Bailey, but was a second time acquitted. On
her release, deserted by Carelton, she took to the stage, and gained some
reputation, especially in a piece written for her entitled the ‘German
Princess.’ Her fame spread through the town, and she was courted by
numberless admirers, two of whom she played off against each other; and
having fleeced both of several hundred pounds, flouted them for presuming
to make love to a princess. Another victim to her wiles was an elderly man,
“worth about £400 per annum,” who loaded her with gifts; he was
“continually gratifying her with some costly present or another, which she
took care to receive with an appearance of being ashamed he should heap so
many obligations on her, telling him she was not worthy of so many
favours.”[81] One night when her lover came home in liquor, she got him to
bed, and when he was asleep rifled his pockets, securing his keys and a bill
on a goldsmith for a hundred pounds. Opening all his escritoires and
drawers, she stole everything, gold pieces, watches, seals, and several
pieces of plate, and then made off. After this she led a life of vagabondage,
moving her lodgings constantly, and laying her hands on all she could steal.
She was adroit in deceiving tradesmen, and swindled first one and then
another out of goods. At last she was arrested for stealing a silver tankard in
Covent Garden, and committed again to Newgate. This time she was found
guilty and cast for death, but the sentence was commuted to transportation.
She was sent in due course to Jamaica, but within a couple of years escaped
from the plantations, and reappeared in England. By some means she
managed to pass off as a rich heiress, and inveigled a rich apothecary into
marriage, but presently robbed him of above £300 and left him. Her next
trick was to take a lodging in the same house with a watchmaker. One night
she invited the landlady and the watchmaker to go to the play, leaving her
maid, who was a confederate, alone in the house. The maid lost no time in
breaking open the watchmaker’s coffers, and stole therefrom thirty watches,
with about two hundred pounds in cash, which she carried off to a secure
place in another part of the town. Meanwhile the “princess” had invited her
dupes to supper at the Green Dragon Tavern in Fleet Street, where she
managed to give them the slip and joined her maid. This was one of the last

of her robberies. Soon afterwards fate overtook her quite by accident. The
keeper of the Marshalsea, in search of some stolen property, came to the
house where she lodged, in New Spring Gardens, and saw her “walking in
the two-pair-of-stairs room in a night-gown.” He went in, and continuing
his search, came upon three letters, which he proceeded to examine.
“Madam seemed offended with him, and their dispute caused him to look at
her so steadfastly that he knew her, called her by her name, and carried
away both her and her letters.”[82] She was committed and kept a prisoner
till 16th January, 1673, when she was arraigned at the Old Bailey, as the
woman Mary Carelton, for returning from transportation. On the last day of
the sessions she received sentence of death, “which she received with a
great deal of intrepidity.”
She appeared more gay and brisk than ever on the day of her execution.
When the irons were removed from her on her starting for Tyburn, she
pinned the picture of her husband Carelton to her sleeve, and carried it with
her to the gallows. She discovered herself to a gentleman in the crowd as a
Roman Catholic, and having conversed with him for some time in French,
on parting said, Mon ami, le bon Dieu vous benisse. At the gallows she
harangued the crowd at some length, and died as she had lived, a reckless
although undoubtedly gifted and intelligent woman.
Prominent among the criminal names of this epoch is that of the
informer, Titus Oates, no less on account of the infamy of his conduct than
from the severe retribution which overtook him in the reign of James II. The
arraignment of Green, Berry, and Laurence Hill for the trial of Sir
Edmundbury Godfrey, who were brought for the purpose “from Newgate to
the King’s Bench Bar,” is a well-known judicial episode of the year 1678.
Oates was the principal witness against them; but he was followed by
Praunce, an approver, and others. After much evidence for and against, and
much equivocation, the Lord Chief Justice Scroggs summed up the
evidence strongly for conviction. When the jury soon returned a verdict of
guilty, the Lord Chief Justice commended them, and said if it were the last
word he had to speak he would have pronounced them guilty. Sentence was
then given, and within a fortnight they were executed. These victims of the
so-called Popish Plot were, however, amply and ruthlessly avenged.
Macaulay tells the story. Oates had been arrested before Charles II.’s death
for defamatory words, and cast in damages of £100,000. He was then, after
the accession of James II., tried on two indictments of perjury, and it was

proved beyond doubt that he had by false testimony deliberately murdered
several guiltless persons. “His offence, though in a moral light murder of
the most aggravated kind, was in the eye of the law merely a
misdemeanour.” But the tribunal which convicted made its punishment

Oates in the pillory.

proportionate to the real offence. Brutal Judge Jeffries was its mouthpiece,
and he sentenced him to be unfrocked and pilloried in Palace yard, to be led
round Westminster Hall, with an inscription declaring his infamy over his
head; to be pilloried in front of the Royal Exchange, to be whipped from
Aldgate to Newgate, and after an interval of two days to be whipped from
Newgate to Tyburn. He was to be imprisoned for life, and every year to be
brought from his dungeon and exposed in different parts of the capital.
When on the pillory he was mercilessly pelted, and nearly torn to pieces.
His first flogging was executed rigorously in the presence of a vast crowd,
and Oates, a man of strong frame, long stood the lash without a murmur.
“But at last his stubborn fortitude gave way. His bellowings were frightful
to hear. He swooned several times; but the scourge still continued to
descend. When he was unbound it seemed he had borne as much as the
human frame could bear without dissolution.... After an interval of forty-
eight hours Oates was again brought out from his dungeon. He seemed
unable to stand, and it was necessary to drag him to Tyburn on a sledge.”
He was again flogged, although insensible, and a person present counted the
stripes as seventeen hundred. “The doors of the prison closed upon him.

During many months he remained ironed in the darkest hole in Newgate.” A
contemporary account written by one of his own side declares he received
“upwards of two thousand lashes—such a thing was never inflicted by any
Jew, Turk, or heathen but Jeffries.... Had they hanged him they had been
more merciful; had they flayed him alive it is a question whether it would
have been so much torture.”[83]
Dangerfield, another informer of the Oates type, but of lesser guilt, was
also convicted and sentenced to be similarly flogged from Aldgate to
Newgate, and from Newgate to Tyburn. “When he heard his doom he went
into agonies of despair, gave himself up for dead, and chose a text for his
funeral. His forebodings were just. He was not indeed scourged quite so
severely as Oates had been; but he had not Oates’s iron strength of body
and mind.” On his way back to prison he was assaulted by Mr. Francis, a
Tory gentleman of Gray’s Inn, who struck him across the face with a cane
and injured his eye. “Dangerfield was carried dying into Newgate. This
dastardly outrage roused the indignation of the bystanders. They seized
Francis, and were with difficulty restrained from tearing him in pieces. The
appearance of Dangerfield’s body, which had been frightfully lacerated by
the whip, inclined many to believe that his death was chiefly if not wholly
caused by the stripes which he had received.” The Government laid all the
blame on Francis, who was tried and executed for murder.
Religion and politics still continued to supply their quota of inmates. The
law was still cruelly harsh to Roman Catholics, Quakers, and all
Nonconformists.
The Fifth Monarchy men in 1661, when discomfited and captured, were
lodged in Newgate, to the number of twenty or more. Venner, the
ringleader, was amongst them. The State Trials give the trial of one John
James, who was arraigned at the King’s Bench for high treason. He was
found guilty of compassing the death of the king, and suffered the cruel
sentence then in force for the crime. James has left some details of the
usage he received in Newgate, especially in the matter of extortion. Fees to
a large amount were exacted of him, although a poor and needy wretch,
“originally a small coal-man.” In the press-yard he paid 16s. to the keeper
Hicks for the use of his chamber, although he only remained there three or
four days. The hangman also came to demand money, that “he might be
favourable to him at his death,” demanding twenty pounds, then falling to
ten, at last threatening, unless he got five, “to torture him exceedingly. To

which James said he must leave himself to his mercy, for he had nothing to
give him.” Yet at the execution, the report says the sheriff and the hangman
were so civil to him as to suffer him to be dead before he was cut down.
After that he was dismembered; some of them were burnt, the head and
quarters brought back to Newgate in a basket, and exposed upon the gates
of the city. Venner and several others suffered in the same way.
Many Quakers were kept in Newgate, imprisoned during the king’s
pleasure for refusing to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. Thus
John Crook, Isaac Grey, and John Bolton were so confined, and incurred a
præmunire or forfeiture of their estates. But the must notable of the Quakers
were Penn and Mead. In its way this is a most remarkable trial, on account
of the overbearing conduct of the Bench towards the prisoners. In 1670
these two, the first described as gentleman, the second as linen-draper, were
indicted at the Old Bailey for having caused a tumultuous assembly in
Gracechurch Street. The people collected, it was charged, to hear Penn
preach. The demeanour of the prisoners in the court was so bold, that it
drew down on them the anger of the recorder, who called Penn
troublesome, saucy, and so forth. The jury were clearly in their favour, and
brought in a verdict of not guilty, but the court tried to menace them. The
Lord Mayor, Sir Samuel Stirling, was especially furious with Penn, crying,
“Stop his mouth; gaoler, bring fetters and stake him to the ground.” At last
the jury, having refused to reconsider their verdict, were locked up; while
Penn and Mead were remanded to Newgate. Next day the jury came up, and
adhered to their verdict. Whereupon the recorder fined them forty marks
apiece for not following his “good and wholesome advice,” adding, “God
keep my life out of your hands.”[84] The prisoners demanded their liberty,
“being freed by the jury,” but were detained for their fines imposed by the
judge for alleged contempt of court. Penn protested violently, but the
recorder cried, “Take him away!” and the prisoners were once more haled
to Newgate. Edward Bushell, one of the above-mentioned jurors, who was
committed to Newgate in default of payment of fine, subsequently sued out
a Habeas Corpus, and was brought before Lord Chief Justice Vaughan, who
decided in his favour, whereon he and the other jurymen were discharged
from gaol.
There were Roman Catholics too in Newgate, convicted of participation
in the Popish plot. Samuel Smith the ordinary publishes in 1679 an account
of the behaviour of fourteen of them, “late Popish malefactors, whilst in

Newgate.” Among them were Whitehead, provincial, and Fenwick,
procurator, of the Jesuits in England, and William Harcourt, pretended
rector of London. The account contains a description of Mr. Smith’s efforts
at conversion and ghostly comfort, which were better meant than
successful.
After the revolution of 1688 there was an active search after Romish
priests, and many were arrested; among them two bishops, Ellis and
Leyburn, were sent to Newgate. They were visited in gaol by Bishop
Burnet, who found them in a wretched plight, and humanely ordered their
situation to be improved. Other inmates of Newgate at this troublous period
were the Ex-Lord Chief Justice Wright and several judges. It was Wright
who had tried the seven bishops. Jeffries had had him made a judge,
although the Lord Keeper styled him the most unfit person in the kingdom
for that office. Macaulay says very few lawyers of the time surpassed him
in turpitude and effrontery. He died miserably in Newgate about 1690,
where he remained under a charge of attempting to subvert the Government.

CHAPTER V.

IN THE PRESS-YARD.

Press-yard described—Charges for admission—Extortionate fees paid to turnkeys and governor—
The latter’s perquisites—Night carousing in Press-yard—Penalty for excess—Days how spent—
Arrival of Jacobite prisoners—Discussed by lower officials—Preparations for them—Their
appearance and demeanour—High prices charged for gaol lodgings—They live royally—First
executions abate their gaiety—Escapes—Keeper superseded by officials specially appointed by
Lord Mayor—Strictness of new régime—A military guard mounts—Rioting and revels among the
Jacobites once more checked by execution of members of the party—Rumours of an amnesty—Mr.
Freeman, who fired a pistol in theatre when Prince of Wales was present, committed to Press-yard
—Freeman’s violent conduct—Prisoners suffer from overcrowding and heat—Pardons—Rob Roy
in Newgate—Other prisoners in Press-yard—Major Bernardi—His history and long detentions—
Dies in gaol after forty years’ imprisonment.

THE situation of this section of the prison has been already indicated. It was
intended more especially for State prisoners, or those incarcerated on
“commitments of State,” and was deemed to be part and parcel of the
governor’s house, not actually within the precincts of the prison. This was a
pious fiction, put forth as an excuse for exacting fees in excess of the
amounts prescribed by Art of Parliament. A sum of twenty guineas was
charged for admission to this favoured spot; in other words, “for liberty of
having room enough to walk two or three of a breadth.”[85] “The gentlemen
admitted here are moreover under a necessity of paying 11s. each per week,
although two and sometimes three lie in a bed, and some chambers have
three or four beds in them.”[86] The act referred to specially provided that
keepers might not charge more than half-a-crown per week as rent for every
chamber. This rule the governor of Newgate—“for this haughty
commander-in-chief over defenceless men is styled by the same name as
the constable of the Tower”—entirely ignored, and the prisoner committed
to his custody had to decide between submitting to the extortion, “or take
up his abode in the common gaol,” where he had thieves and villains for his
associates, and was “perpetually tormented and eaten up by distempers and
vermin.”
The extortion practised is graphically described by one who endured it.
The author of the ‘History of the Press-yard,’ after having been mulcted on
first arrival at the lodge for drink and “garnish,”[87] was, although
presumably a State prisoner, and entitled to better treatment, at once cast in
the condemned hold. In this gruesome place, which has been already
described, he lay “seized with a panic dread” at the survey of his new
tenement, and willing to change it for another on almost any terms. “As this
was the design of my being brought hither, so was I made apprized of it by
an expected method; for I had not bewailed my condition more than half-

an-hour, before I heard a voice from above crying out from a board taken
out of my ceiling, which was the speaker’s floor, ‘Sir, I understand your
name is ——, and that you are a gentleman too well educated to take up
your abode in a vault set apart only for thieves, parricides, and murderers.
From hence criminals after sentence of death are carried to the place of
execution, and from hence you may be removed to a chamber equal to one
in any private house, where you may be furnished with the best
conversation and entertainment, on a valuable consideration.’” The speaker
went on to protest that he acted solely from good will; that he was himself a
prisoner, and had suffered at first in the same manner, but had paid a sum to
be removed to better quarters, “which he thanked God he enjoyed then to
his heart’s content, wanting for nothing that a gaol could afford him.” The
victim begged to know the terms, and to be put in communication with the
proper officer to make a contract for release. The other promised
accordingly, and a quarter of an hour afterwards “clang went the chain of
my door and bolts, and in comes a gentleman-like man of very smiling
aspect,” who apologized profusely, swearing that those who had ill-used a
gentleman in such an unhandsome manner should be well trounced for it.
“He moreover excused the want of suitable entertainment for persons of
condition in prison-houses, and assured me that I should be immediately
conducted to the governor’s house, who would take all imaginable care of
my reception. After this he very kindly took me by the hand to lead me
down into the lodge, which I rightly apprehended as a motive to feel my
pulse, and therefore made use of the opportunity to clap two pieces, which
he let my hand go to have a fast grip of, in his.”
His deliverer was the head turnkey, by name Bodenham Rouse, whom he
accompanied to the Lodge, and there again stood drink. “We gave our
service to one another in a glass of wine, drawn by Dame Spurling, the fat
hostess who kept the tap in the Lodge.” Over the friendly glass terms were
propounded and accepted, and having paid down his twenty guineas—a
large sum, excused on the grounds that Mr. Pitt the governor had paid
£1000 for his place—the prisoner followed his guide through Phœnix court
into the governor’s house, where he had the honour of saluting and taking a
dram of arrack with the great Mr. Pitt, who “as a mark of his favourable
intentions to me, gave order for furnishing me a bed with clean sheets, after
I had paid the woman that brought them to my barrack of a chamber in the

press-yard, whither I was soon conveyed through a door with a great iron
chain to it, five shillings.”
The new-comer was cordially welcomed and introduced by “George, the
cobbler of Highgate,”[88] apparently a prison official, to a congenial
companion, who explained to him the ways of the place. It was in the first
place incumbent on every arrival to pay his footing. About seven or eight
o’clock the entrance fee was demanded. It had previously been only six
bottles of wine, and tobacco in proportion. This was now raised to ten or
twelve bottles, which, if a prisoner was straitened for money, “could be
scored at the bar of the honest tapster, who, though he lost several hundred
pounds by that method of proceeding, was not discouraged from going on
with it in favour of unhappy gentlemen.” This talk lasted over pipes and a
pot of stout, until notice was brought by “a person in gray hairs, who had
then the keys of the press-yard, that all things were ready for an evening
refreshment, and that honest Tom the butler had carried the bottles, pipes,
and tobacco into our refectory, called the tap-room.” Here the giver of the
entertainment seated himself at the head of the table, and the guests on each
side of him. Among them was a major who had been in the army[89] so long
that he was of the same standing as the Duke of Marlborough, and
“commanded over General Mallow, now a great officer in Spain, when he
was an ensign on the Irish establishment.” Another was “a gentleman, who
being of the late King James’s Horse Guards, had adhered to that exiled
monarch’s fortunes till he was driven out of Ireland.” Both these gentlemen
had married since their confinement, the one, though near seventy,[90] “to a
young woman not much above twenty ... the other, of less advanced years,
to a widow gentlewoman of a like age, who lived very comfortably with
him—” of course in the prison.
They met the new-comer with “all possible civility, and indeed made the
hours pass over more agreeably than he could have expected in that place.”
They drank deep and late. “I continued whipping out sixpences to advance
more bottles, till our cheerfulness was turned into drowsiness, and
merriment became the subject of dispute with some of my fellow-prisoners,
so it was thought high time by the most sober of us to break up and retire to
our chambers, with the ceremony of the turnkeys locking each of the two
staircase-doors after us.” The new prisoner, furnished with a clay
candlestick, “because he had not yet equipped himself with one of
earthenware,” found his way up three pairs of stairs to a large room, which

had its entrance through the chapel. The bars were as thick as his wrist, and
very numerous. The stone walls, which had borne the same hue for above
half a century, were bedaubed with texts of Scripture written in charcoal,
such as “Man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward,” “Before I was
afflicted I went astray, but now I have kept Thy word.” There were
bedsteads made of boards for the bedding, but neither “flocks nor feathers
to make one.” The tables and chairs were of like antiquity and use. “And
Potiphar’s wife’s chambermaid’s hat at the coffee-house in Chelsea had as
fair a claim to any modern fashion as any one thing in the room.” Our
author is disgusted at the accommodation provided for the price, twelve
shillings a week, and another twelve pence for the woman or nurse who
cleaned the place. But he is consoled by being told what he had escaped by
not being locked up on the master’s side, “where, besides a thousand other
inconveniences, I must have paid one and sixpence per diem for leave to
associate myself with pickpockets in a dark and stinking cellar.”
The following morning he was admitted into other mysteries of the
place. All who had exceeded the previous night had to pay the usual forfeit,
a groat in drink for the turnkeys, which the latter collect very punctually,
and at the payment of the forfeit, “as many persons as think fit may be
present.” The names of the offenders having been called over with all
ceremony, all pleaded guilty and promptly paid the fine, which was
forthwith spent in liquor, to be consumed by the cobbler of Highgate and
his fellows. From this time forward the novice was free of the place, and
was looked upon by the other prisoners as one of themselves. The morning
passed with the ordinary diversions. Talk over the persons of distinction
who had gone to Tyburn out of such and such a room, was varied by the
perusal of newspapers hired out by the turnkeys, and the discussion of the
literary merits of the last dying speech composed by a condemned prisoner,
who was on the brink of the gallows. One is given by the author of ‘The
Press-yard’ in extenso, the oration of one J—— B—ggs, an “orange
merchant,” sentenced to die for outwitting the Bank of England, a flowery
piece of rhetoric, hardly worth transcribing, which wound up with these
words,—
“So much by way of oration. Here, Jack (Ketch), do your office decently
and with despatch; these clothes, hat, and wig are yours; you will find
fifteen shillings and some grocery in my pocket. Now, Mr. Ordinary, you

may sing the psalm if you please, and I’ll endeavour as well as it is possible
to bear a bob with you, but let it be none of your penitential ones.”
Thus passed the day. Towards evening visitors began to flock in from
outside to take their bottle and comfort “the distressed inhabitants” of
Newgate press-yard in the only way possible, by inordinate drinking. Of the
visitors some were friends and relatives, others came from sheer
predilection for criminal society. Among them was an alderman’s son,
“who, not having so much prudence as his father, rendered himself
suspected by keeping suspicious company.” Political affinities attracted
more: the eminent merchant, “who would have done much better to relieve
the Militia officer (? Bernardi), he came to carouse with, at a distance, than
to appear so publicly in support of a person obnoxious to the Government;”
or the clergyman, “who had made himself famous at Whitechapel, or in
Saint Laurence’s Church, whom it behoved in a particular manner to take
heed of his ways, since his zeal had already gained him the opposite party’s
displeasure.” All of these came and went as they pleased. Conviviality was
general, liquor was freely called for, potations were deep, and the press-
yard of Newgate at night time was like the tap-room of a common inn.
The moment was one of considerable political excitement. The
Pretender’s first attempt had collapsed in the north, and the press-yard was
about to be crowded with more eminent guests. Our author is aroused one
fine morning by loud joy-bells pealing from the churches, and he learns
from his Jacobite companion that the “king’s (Pretender’s) affairs were
ruined, and that the generals Willis and Carpenter had attacked the Jacobite
forces in Preston, and taken all prisoners at discretion.” Newgate is
convulsed by the news. Its officers are wild with delight, “calling for liquor
after an extravagant manner, and drinking to their good luck, which was to
arise from the ruin and loss of lives and fortunes in many good families.” A
dialogue is overheard between the hangman, the deputy bed-maker, and a
turnkey’s understrapper to the following effect:—
Executioner. Come, Doll, here’s to you. Good days to us once more. If
this news be true I am made a man for ever.
Bed-maker. What news, Mr. Marvell?[91] Has the Parliament lengthened
out the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act?
Deputy Turnkey. No, you fool; something better than that.

Exec. Two or three hundred prisoners for high treason. Drink a bumper
to their sudden arrival. They’ll be your tenants very speedily.
Bedm. How! Two or three hundred! Where shall we stow them?
Dep. T. Never heed that we shall find room for them, provided they have
wherewithal to pay for it.
Exec. Pay for it! Most of them have very great estates, and are topping
gentry, so there is no question we shall all of us make a penny by them.
Dep. T. I for fees to lighten their irons.
Bedm. I for keeping their chambers sweet and clean.
Exec. I for civility money in placing their halters’ knot right under their
left ear, and separating their quarters at the place of execution with all
imaginable decency.
Bedm. But with fine gentlemen such as these are said to be, what is their
crime?
Dep. T. She’s so stupid as not to remember that we are talking of the
defeated rebels.
Bedm. True; now I understand you. And those sort of gentry are to be
brought hither?
Dep. T. Yes, you fool. Tom, t’other quartern of Geneva; we shall call for
our bottle of port in a few days. I’ll e’en think of conning my new lesson
against the prisoners come to town. “May it please your honour, this pair of
derbys is as bright as silver, and weigh two guineas lighter than those such a
gentleman has on.”
Bedm. And I, these sheets are made of the finest holland, and are never
used but when persons of the first rank are to lie in them. Sir, such an one
gave me a guinea the first night he handselled them.
Exec. I shall not be behindhand with this, though it will come last to my
turn to finger any of their money. For you are to remember, that besides £3
per head I shall have from the sheriff for the execution of every peer, their
clothes and the money in their pockets will likewise be my perquisites. And
for every gentleman hanged and quartered I am to have the like sum, with
the respective gratifications they shall make me for a quick and easy
despatch; so that in all likelihood, provided the king does not unseasonably
spoil my market by reprieves and pardons, which I hope he will never
consent to, I shall not only purchase the title of an esquire, but the estate

too, and be in a condition of yet taking an apprentice (? as hangman) under
the same that are usually given to a Turkey merchant, which may make my
wife hold up her head one day or other to the level of an alderman’s wife.
This conversation was presently interrupted by the approach of Mr. Pitt,
the governor, who came, accompanied by other officials, to survey the
rooms, and estimate the number of new tenants that could be
accommodated therein. All due preparations made, a few days more
brought to Newgate the unfortunate noblemen and gentlemen who had
surrendered at discretion, hoping thus, although vainly, to save both life and
estate. On their arrival in London they were led in triumph through the
streets to their respective places of durance—viz. the Tower, the
Marshalsea, Newgate, and the Fleet. The prisoners on arrival at Highgate
were met by Major-General Tarlton with two battalions of Royal Foot
Guards, completely armed. Cords were also brought sufficient to pinion
each prisoner after the manner of condemned criminals, and to lead their
horses with, “for each, from the lord to the footman, was accommodated
with a Grenadier to that end.” Thus under safe conduct they marched from
the Hill of Highgate to their several places of confinement. The Major-
General led the way, being “preceded by several citizens of more loyalty
than compassion, who made repeated huzzas to excite the mob to do the
like.” After the General commanding came a company of the first regiment
of Guards, “who made a very fine appearance.” Then came the division for
the Tower, two and two, the Earl of Derwentwater and Lord Widdrington in
the first rank, the other lords and noblemen following with haltered horses,
bound like common malefactors, and reviled and hooted.
Those for Newgate brought up the rear. They were civilly and humanely
treated on arrival there. The officers received them under the gateway, and
no sooner were the prisoners alighted from their horses and their names
called over, than their cords were immediately cut from their arms and
shoulders, and refreshment of wine brought to them. “Their number was
about seventy,” says our author.[92] “And amongst them in particular I could
not but cast my eye upon one Mr. Archibald Bolair, who in the sixteenth
year of his age was said to have signalized his courage, and have displayed
as much skill and dexterity in feats of arms in the battle of Preston as the
oldest commander of them, Brigadier Macintosh himself, though trained up
in warlike affairs, not excepted. What induced me to distinguish him from

the rest was the fearless way of expression he made use of when the clerk of
the prison cut his cords. ‘By my soul, man,’ said he, ‘you should not have
done that, but kept it whole that I might either have been hanged with it, or
have it to show, if I escaped the gallows, how I had been led like a dog in a
string for twice two miles together.’ Mr. Bolair then enquired feelingly for
his followers, who had been brought so many miles from home out of
observance of his orders, and he was anxious that they should not want.”
Young Mr. Bolair was told off to the same room as our author, into which
two additional beds were placed, for the convenience of the keeper, who by
four beds in one room, filled each with three tenants, got £6 per week,
besides the sums paid as entrance money.
The prisoners included many persons of note. Two of them—Mr. Forster,
who thought himself slighted and ill-used because, in consideration of his
seat in Parliament, he had not been imprisoned in the Tower; and Francis
Anderson, esquire, commonly called Sir Francis, a gentleman of £2000 per
annum—had apartments in the governor’s house at £5 per head per week.
There were also Colonel Oxborough, Brigadier Macintosh, the two Talbots,
the Shaftos, Mr. Wogan, and Captain Menzies, who with their adherents and
servants were thrust into the worst dungeons,—such as “the lion’s den” and
the “middle dark,”—till for better lodgment they had advanced more money
than would have rented one of the best houses in Piccadilly or St. James’s
Square. The fee or premium paid by Mr. Forster and Sir Francis Anderson
for being accommodated in the governor’s house was £60, and it cost the
latter twenty-five guineas more to keep off his irons. Mr. Widdrington, Mr.
Ratcliffe, and others paid twenty guineas apiece for the like favour at their
first coming in; and every one that would not be turned to the common side,
ten guineas, beside two guineas, one guinea and ten shillings per man for
every week’s lodging, although in some rooms the men lay four in a bed. As
the result of these extortions it was computed that Mr. Pitt cleared some
£3000 or £4000 in three or four months, “besides valuable presents given in
private, and among others a stone (entire) horse.”
Money was, however, plentiful among the incarcerated Jacobites, and so
far as was consistent with their situation, they lived right royally.
Sympathetic friends from without plied them with wines and luxurious diet.
They had every day a variety of the choicest eatables in season, “and that
too as early as the greatest and nicest ladies.”[93] Forty shillings for a dish of
peas was nothing to their pockets, nor 13s. for a dish of fish. These, “with

the best French wine, was an ordinary regale.” They “lived in this profuse
manner, and fared so sumptuously through the means of daily visitants and
helps from abroad.” Money circulated plentifully within the prison. While it
was difficult to change a guinea at any house in the street, nothing was
more easy than to have silver for gold in any quantity in Newgate. Nor did
many of them lack female sympathy. Ladies of the first rank and quality,
even tradesmen’s wives and daughters, “made a sacrifice of their husbands’
and parents’ rings and precious movables for the use of those whom the law
had appointed to be so many sacrifices themselves.”[94] “It is not to be
supposed that a champion so noted for the cause as Captain Silk was
neglected; for he had his full share of those treats which soon made his
clothes too little for his corpse.” When not feasting and chambering, the
prisoners found diversion in playing shuttlecock, “at which noble game the
valiant Forster beat all who engaged him, so that he triumphed with his
feather in the prison though he could not do it in the field.”[95]
For long there was nothing among them but “flaunting apparel, venison
pasties, hams, chickens, and other costly meats.” But soon all their jollity
came abruptly to an end. The news of the sad fate of the two peers
Derwentwater and Kenmure, who had been brought to trial and executed
upon Tower Hill, “abated their gaiety.” They were yet more unmistakably
reminded of their perilous position by the notice which now came to them
to provide themselves with counsel and witnesses for their own defence.
Fresh committals too were made to Newgate; prisoners were sent in from
the Tower and the Fleet. Among them were Mr. Howard, brother to the
Duke of Norfolk, the Master of Nairn, Mr. Baird Hamilton, “a gentleman
who behaved with wonderful gallantry at the action of Preston;” Mr.
Charles Radcliffe, Lord Derwentwater’s brother, “a youth of extraordinary
courage;” Mr. Charles and Mr. Peregrine Widdington, “two gentlemen of
diversion and pleasure, both papists;” the two Mr. Cottons, father and son,
“nonjurant protestants, and of great estate in Huntingdonshire;” Mr. Thomas
Errington, “a gentleman that had been in the French service, ... with the
laird of Macintosh, Colonel McIntosh, and Major McIntosh, together with
other Scotch gentlemen.”
Brought thus face to face with their very pressing danger, all more or
less cast about them for some means of escape. Several desperate attempts
were made to break prison. Thus on the 14th March it was discovered that
several had tried to get out by breaking through the press-yard wall, “from

which they were to be let down by a rope, instead of being tucked up by one
at Tyburn.” For this several were placed in irons. Some time later Mr.
Forster got clean away,[96] as did Brigadier Macintosh and eight others. Mr.
George Budden, formerly an upholsterer near Fleet bridge, also effected his
escape; and last, but not least, Mr. Charles Radcliffe, Lord Derwentwater’s
brother. After Mr. Forster’s escape the Government took greater
precautions, and a lieutenant with thirty men of the Foot Guards was
ordered to do constant duty at Newgate. Mr. Pitt, the keeper, was strongly
suspected of collusion, and was attached on a charge of high treason, being
after arrest committed to the custody of one Wilcox, a messenger, “who
used him in a barbarous manner, contrary no doubt to the instruction of the
noble lord that issued the warrant for his confinement.” The city authorities,
no doubt exercised at the insecurity of their gaol, also roused themselves “to
look better after their prison of Newgate,” and instead of leaving Mr. Rouse
chief turnkey in charge of the whole place, specially appointed Mr. Carleton
Smith, an officer of the Lord Mayor’s, and with him Mr. Russell, to take
care of the rebels in the press-yard. These new officials “performed their
part so well,” it is said, “by examining all the visitors, debarring entrance to
all riding hoods, cloaks, and arms, and by sitting up all night in the prison,
each in his turn, that not one man escaped from thence during their time.”
The new keepers appear to have stirred up much animosity from their
punctual discharge of their duties. Mr. Russell, we read, shortly after his
appointment was very much abused and threatened by Captain Silk and
some of the rebels, who surrounded him in the press-yard, but he made his
retreat without any harm. There must have been some in the reigning
monarch’s service with secret sympathies for the Pretender; for it is
recorded, May 14th, that “an officer of the guards with two others
conversed with the rebels all day.” They were, moreover, humoursome and
abusive to the new keepers because of their care in looking after their
prisoners; whereof Messrs. Carleton Smith and Russell complained to the
Lord Mayor, who thereupon ordered that no officer should be permitted to
visit the prisoners without the express permission of the Secretary of State;
and next day it is stated the officer in fault was “submissive and sorry for
his offence.” This was not the first offence of the kind. A few days before
the officer of the guard went in (even then), “contrary to custom,” with his
sword on to see the prisoners. He continued with them for some hours, and
whether heated with wine or otherwise, beat one of the turnkeys as he

brought in a rebel from trial. This officer was placed in arrest, and another
mounted guard in his place, who “prevented the drunkenness and other
irregularities of the soldiers which might have given the prisoners an
opportunity to escape.”
Matters were not too comfortable for the military guard. The men at the
gate were liable to insults as on the 19th May, when they were reviled by a
Tory constable. They were also open to efforts to wean them from their
allegiance. One day Mr. Carleton Smith detected a prisoner, Isaac Dalton,
[97] in durance for libel, endeavouring to corrupt the sentinels by giving
them money to drink the Pretender’s health with. “But he missed his aim.”
The soldiers heartily drank to King George in wine supplied by Mr. Smith,
and declared they would oppose the Pretender to the last drop of their
blood. All the guards were not equally loyal, however. On another occasion
the soldiers of the guard “had the impudence to sing Captain Silk’s dearly
beloved tune, ‘The king shall have his own again,’ for which their officer,
Captain Reeve, a very loyal gentleman, threatened them with
imprisonment.”
The peril of the prisoners bred a certain reckless turbulence among them.
On the 29th May a mob collected in great numbers outside, carrying oaken
boughs on pretence of commemorating the restoration. The guard was
reinforced, lest the mob should attempt to break open the gaol. Inside the
rebels were very noisy, and insulted their keepers; “but they were soon put
out of a capacity of doing much harm, for by way of precaution they were
all locked up before ten o’clock.” This hour of early closing was continued,
and greatly resented by them. A few days later they made a great
disturbance at the sound of a bell set up by order of the Lord Mayor to ring
them to their apartments at the regular hour. They asked for the order. It was
read to them, to their manifest dissatisfaction, for it referred the recent
escapes to the unaccountable liberty of indulgence permitted them, and
insisted that upon the ringing of the bell in question all should betake
themselves to their apartments. Ten was the hour of retiring “at farthest”;
any infringement of the rule would be followed by the deprivation of all
freedom, and double irons for the offenders. Except Captain Silk, however,
all acquiesced in the order. He alone, “with his usual impudence, bullied the
keeper, and made many unbecoming reflections upon the Lord Mayor and
sheriffs.” Nor did insubordination end here. A day or two later the Lord

Mayor’s notice, which had been posted up in the various press-yard rooms,
was torn down by the rebels in contempt of authority.
A fresh and more serious riot soon occurred in the streets, on the
occasion of the thanksgiving on the anniversary of Preston fight. Several
visitors came to the rebels with rue and thyme in their hats and bosoms in
contempt of the day; but the new keepers made bold to strip them of their
badges and strew the floors with them, “as more worthy to be trodden
underfoot than be worn by way of insult on that glorious day.” About
midnight brickbats were thrown from the neighbouring houses upon the
soldiers on guard; and the guard in retaliation fired up at the places whence
came the attack. Mr. Carleton Smith, whose turn it was to sit up, feared
some attempt was being made to break the gaol, and “leaping out to know
the occasion of the firing, searched several of the houses; in doing which he
was like to have been shot by a ball which came up to the room where he
was.” But the loyalty of the rebels to their cause was not to be checked. It
broke out again on the 10th June, the anniversary of the Pretender’s birth.
“Captain Booth, whose window looked into Phœnix Court, was so insolent
as to put out a great bunch of white roses at his window,” and several
visitors of both sexes came wearing the same rebellious badges. But again
the keepers pulled them out and threw them on the floor.
In all these disturbances Captain Silk was a ringleader. He is continually
ready to make a noise. Now he swears revenge upon the keeper for not
allowing supper to be carried in to him and his “conrogues” after 10 P.M.;
now he incites other prisoners to riot. “They are for the most part very
drunk and rude, so that it was with great difficulty that they were got to
their rooms by one o’clock in the morning.” Next day Captain Silk
continues his insolence. He threatens Mr. Smith for refusing to pass in
visitors after regulated hours. Again he and his companions are drunk and
insolent, and cannot be got to their rooms till the same late hour. A night or
two later they crowded about the doors when they were opened, cursing and
assaulting the person who rang the night-bell. Captain Silk, as before,
encouraged them, and to provoke them further, when the bell sounded cried
out, “Get up, ye slaves, and go.”
Sadder moments soon supervened. The trials were proceeding, and
already the law had condemned several. Among the first to suffer were
Colonel Oxborough and Mr. Gascoigne: the latter was offered his pardon on
conditions which he rejected, and both began to make great preparations for

“their great change.” Colonel Oxborough, who lay in the condemned hold,
behaved with an astonishing serenity of mind; and when his friends
expressed their concern in tears, he gravely rebuked them, showing an
easiness very unaccustomed in the bravest minds under such a sentence.
Next an order of the court came down for the execution of twenty-four
more who had been condemned, and “universal sorrow” prevailed in the
gaol. Parson Paul,[98] one of the number, was “so dejected he could not eat;”
most of the other prisoners retired to their apartments to vent their grief, and
a vast number of their friends in tears came to condole with them. After this
all were busy with petitions to the court. Some were immediately
successful. Handsome young Archibald Bolair was discharged, “at which
Lady Faulconbridge, his supposed benefactress, went out with a smiling
countenance.” Next night he returned in his kilt to visit his friends, but was
denied entrance. That same midnight there were great shouts of joy in the
prison: a reprieve had come down for all but Parson Paul and Justice Hall,
[99] both of whom were led next day to Tyburn. Neither would admit the
ministrations of the Ordinary, to whom they “behaved rudely,” and they
were attended at the place of execution by priests of their own stamp in a
lay habit. They (the condemned) were hardened to the highest degree, says
their implacable opponent, and gave free vent to their treason in seditious
speeches at the gallows.
Great consternation prevailed after these executions. It was greatly
increased by the known displeasure of the Government at the demeanour of
some of the condemned at Tyburn. But the king (George I.) was now gone
on a visit to Hanover; and the Prince of Wales, as regent, was pleased to put
an end to the further effusion of blood. Rumours of an Act of Indemnity
were spread abroad, and abundance of visitors came to congratulate the
prisoners on their approaching release. But the happy day being still
postponed, the Jacobites became turbulent once more; Mr. Pitt, the old
governor, who had been tried for neglect in allowing Mr. Forster and others
to escape, had been acquitted, upon which the Lord Mayor and sheriffs
recalled Messrs. Carleton Smith and Russell. The latter delivered up their
charge, “having performed it so well that not one prisoner had escaped.”
But Mr. Pitt was again unfortunate; and suffering another man (Flint) to
escape, the court of aldermen resolved to reinstate Smith and Russell. This
gave great dudgeon to the rebels in the press-yard, who soon proved very
refractory, refusing to be locked up at the proper time. Then they made

bitter reflections on the advice given to the new keepers in the ‘Flying
Post,’ a Whiggish organ, who were, as the author of the ‘Secret History’
observes sarcastically, “so inhuman, that they would let none of the rebels
make their escape, either in the habits of women, footmen, or parsons.” It
was difficult for the keepers not to give cause of offence. Their prisoners
were angry with them because they would not sit down and drink with
them, “as the old ones used to do;” even upon the bribe, offered when the
indemnity loomed large, of swallowing a bumper to King George. Captain
Silk was troublesome as ever. One Sunday he cursed and swore
prodigiously because the doors had been shut during divine service, and his
roaring companions could not have access to him. Another time the
prisoners insulted the keepers, asking them why they carried arms? The
Jacobites declared they could not endure the sight since the battle of
Preston. Just about now the keepers were informed that the rebels intended
to do them a mischief—a threat which did not deter them, however, from
strictly performing their duty.
Another prisoner added greatly to the trials of the keepers about this
period. This was Mr. Freeman, who was committed for firing a pistol in the
playhouse when the prince was there. Freeman was continually intoxicated
when in gaol. He was also very mischievous, and kept a burning candle by
him most part of the night, to the great danger of the prison, especially
when in his mad freaks. “He is a lusty, strong, raw-boned man, has a stern,
dogged look, as of an obstinate temper when vexed, but fawning and
treacherous when pleased.” In a day or two Freeman showed the cloven
foot. He flew into a violent passion, and beat one of the female servants of
the prison, “shutting the door against the keepers, after he had wounded one
of them with a fork which he held in one hand, having a knife and pistol in
the other.” He was overpowered, and carried to the condemned hold, where
he was put in irons. His villainous designs there appeared by his setting his
handkerchief on fire, and concealing it in his hat near his bed, and it was
suspected that he wished to set the gaol on fire, so that the prisoners might
have the opportunity to escape. A day later Mr. Freeman “regretted that he
had not murdered his keeper in the last scuffle;” and the same day Mr.
Menzies and Mr. Nairn did honestly tell the keepers that the prisoners
meant to injure them, Freeman’s disturbance having been raised “chiefly to
that end, and that the female servant he only pretended to assault, so as to
make her cry out murder before she was in the least hurt.”

Royal clemency was still delayed, and the advancing summer was
intensely hot. The close confinement of so many persons in a limited space
began to tell seriously on the prisoners. A spotted fever,[100] which had
before shown itself with evil effects, reappeared. It had proved fatal to Mr.
Pitcairn the previous August, and in the winter Mr. Butler had died of the
same. Now it carried off Mr. Kellet, Sir Francis Anderson’s man. Mr.
Thornton was also attacked, but through the care of his doctors recovered.
Next month (June) Mr. David Drummond died, and Mr. Ratcliffe was
indisposed. It was generally feared that the distemper would become
contagious; whereupon some of the principal inmates, among them Mr.
Ratcliffe, the two Mr. Widdingtons, Mr. Murray, and Mr. Seaton, “who is
styled by them the Earl of Dumferline,” petitioned the Prince Regent and
council for enlargement to more commodious prisons. The king’s
physicians were accordingly despatched to the prison to inquire into its
sanitary condition. Their report was that no contagious distemper existed.
The matter was therefore ordered to stand until his Majesty’s pleasure
should be known at his arrival from Hanover. George I. soon afterwards
returned, and signified his orders for an Act of Grace, which duly passed
both Houses of Parliament.
The news of an amnesty was joyfully received in the press-yard. One of
the first acts of the prisoners so soon to be set free was to get in a poor
fiddler, “whom they set to play tunes adapted to their treasonable ballads;....
but this was so shocking to the keepers that they turned the fiddler out.”
Next the prisoners had a badger brought in, and baited him with dogs. Other
already pardoned rebels came and paid ceremonious visits, such as Mr.
Townley, who appeared with much pomp and splendour after his discharge
from the Marshalsea. Several clergymen also visited; and a noted common
council man, whose friends stood a bowl of punch that night in Captain
Silk’s room. The State prisoners were soon “very busy in getting new
rigging, and sending away their boxes and trunks; so that they looked like
so many people removing from their lodgings and houses on quarter-day.”
On July 4th a member of Parliament came to assure Mr. Grierson that the
Act of Indemnity would surely pass in a few days. This occasioned great
joy. A fortnight later the pardon was promulgated, and all the prisoners
remaining were taken to Westminster to plead the Act, “where many were
so very ungrateful that they refused to kneel or speak out in asking the
king’s pardon till they were forced to it.”[101]

According to this last-quoted writer, the rebels in Newgate were not of
exemplary character. “Their daily practice in prison was profane swearing,
drunkenness, gluttony, gaming, and lasciviousness.” That such was
permitted speaks volumes as to the shameful negligence of prison rule in
those unsettled times.
There were other rebel prisoners, who do not seem to have benefited by
this act of grace, and who remained much longer in prison. It is recorded in
the ‘Weekly Journal’ of January 24th, 1727, that the King (George I.) had
pardoned another batch of Jacobites, who had been capitally convicted in
the first year of his reign for levying war against him. The pardoned traitors
were Robert Stuart, of Appin; Alexander Macdonald, of Glencoe; Grant, of
Glenmorrison; Maclimmin, of that Ilk; Mackenzie, of Fairburn; Mackenzie,
of Dachmalnack; Chisholm, of Shatglass; Mackenzie, of Ballumakie;
MacDougal, of Lorne; and two others, more notable than all the rest,
“James, commonly called Lord, Ogilvie,” and “Robert Campbell, alias
Macgregor, commonly called Rob Roy.” They had been under durance in
London, for it is added that “on Tuesday last they were carried from
Newgate to Gravesend, to be put on ship-board for transportation to
Barbadoes.” Rob Roy marching handcuffed to Lord Ogilvie through the
London streets from Newgate to the prison barge at Blackfriars, and thence
to Gravesend, is an incident that has escaped the notice of Walter Scott, and
all of Rob’s biographers. The barge-load of Highland chiefs, and of some
thieves, seems, however, to have been pardoned, and allowed to return
home.
Before leaving the press-yard some reference must be made to certain
political “suspects” who were lodged therein for terms varying from
nineteen to forty years. Their case is remarkable, as being the last instance
of the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in England, with the full
knowledge and sanction of Parliament, and in spite of repeated strongly-
urged petitions from the prisoners for release. Their names were John
Bernardi, Robert Cassilis, Robert Meldrum, Robert Blackburne, and James
Chambers. Of these, the first-named, Major Bernardi, is the old officer
referred to by the writer of the ‘History of the Press-Yard.’[102] Bernardi has
told his own story in a volume penned in Newgate, and “printed by J.
Newcomb, in the Strand, for the benefit of the author, 1729.” Macaulay is
disposed to discredit the version given by Bernardi, although there is a
certain air of truthfulness in the prisoner’s narrative. Bernardi begins at the

beginning. He was of Italian extraction, he tells us. His ancestors had been
in the diplomatic service. Count Philip de Bernardi, his great-grandfather,
came to England with a Genoese embassy. Francis Bernardi, son of the
former, and father of Major John, was also accredited to Charles II. on the
restoration, but when replaced as resident, being English born, he preferred
to live and die in the land of his birth. According to his son, he was a stern
parent, ready to award him penal treatment, with imprisonment for trifles,
“in a little dark room or dungeon allowing him only bread and small beer
when so confined.” By-and-by John ran away from home, and through the
favour of Lady Fisher was employed as a “listed soldier” in a company at
Portsmouth when barely fifteen years of age. A year or two later his god-
father, Colonel Anselme, took him to the Low Countries, where by gallant
conduct in the wars he gained an ensigncy from the Prince of Orange. At
the siege of Maestrict he lost an eye, and was badly wounded in the arm.
When scarcely twenty he was promoted to a lieutenancy, and eight years
later obtained a company in Colonel Monk’s regiment. He was now, by his
own account, arrived “at a high pitch of fortune.” He was a captain at
twenty-seven in an established service, was personally well known to the
Prince of Orange (afterwards William III.), had married well, and was, with
his wife’s fortune, in the receipt of “a considerable income.”
James II., on coming to the throne, summoned home all English officers
in the service of the States. Among the few who obeyed was Major
Bernardi, and he then gave up, as he says, a certainty for an uncertainty.
Very soon his former chief, the Prince of Orange, replaced James upon the
throne, and Bernardi, unfortunately for himself, thereafter espoused the
wrong side. He refused to sign the “association put about by General Kirk,”
under which all officers bound themselves to stand by William “against all
persons whomsoever,” and proceeded to France to throw in his lot with the
exiled king. When James embarked for Ireland, Bernardi followed in
command of a party of newly-organized adherents. He was at several of the
engagements in that island, and was presently commissioned Major. After
that he went to the Highlands with Seaforth Mackenzie on a special
mission, and on his return had the honour of dining at the same table with
the king. A second mission to Scotland followed, after which Bernardi made
his way south, and escaping great perils by the way, reached London,
meaning, when he had disposed of horses and effect, to cross over to
Flanders. At Colchester, however, from which he hoped to reach easily a

port of embarkation, he was seized and committed on suspicion, first to the
town gaol, then to that of Chelmsford. After being much harassed he at
length obtained his release, only to be soon involved in still greater trouble.
To his great misfortune he now fell in with one Captain Rookwood. It
was about the time of the discovery of the assassination plot, of which
Major Bernardi declares that he was in absolute ignorance till he heard of it
like the rest of the world. He was by chance in the company of Captain
Rookwood at a tavern, and was with him arrested on suspicion of being
“evil-minded men.” While in the Compter Rookwood incautiously revealed
his own identity, and was lost. Rookwood seems at the same time to have
unintentionally betrayed Bernardi, whose name had, it appears, and in spite
of his protestations of perfect innocence, been included in a proclamation.
The inference is that the Government was in the possession of certain
information that Bernardi was mixed up in the plot.[103] Both men were
carried before the Council, and committed close prisoners to Newgate,
“loaded with heavy irons, and put into separate dismal, dark, and stinking
apartments.” Rookwood was speedily condemned and executed at Tyburn.
Bernardi remained in prison without trial, until after Sir John Fenwick had
suffered. Then with his fellow-prisoners he was taken to the Old Bailey to
be bailed out, but at the instance of the Treasury solicitor, who “whispered
the Judges upon the Bench,” they were relegated to Newgate, and a special
Act passed rapidly through the House to keep them for another twelve-
month on the plea of waiting for further evidence against them. A second
Act was passed prolonging the imprisonment for another year; then a third,
to confine them during the king’s pleasure. On the death of the king
(William III.), a fresh Act extended the imprisonment during the reign of
Queen Anne. During this long lapse of time repeated applications were
made to Judges, but the release of the prisoners was always bitterly opposed
by the law officers. Bernardi’s doctors certified that imprisonment was
killing him; he suffered from fits and the constant trouble of an old wound.
Nevertheless he lived on; and when in his sixty-eighth year he married, in
Newgate, a second, virtuous, kind, and loving wife, who proved “a true
help-meet,” supporting him by her good management, and keeping his heart
from breaking in the “English Bastille.” Bernardi had ten children born in
Newgate of this second wife. The imprisonment continued through the
reigns of George I. and II. Frequent petitions were unheeded, and finally

Bernardi died in Newgate in 1736, the last survivor, after forty years’
incarceration, and aged eighty-two.

CHAPTER VI.

EXECUTIONS.

Reasons for legal punishments—Early forms: branding, mutilation, whipping, the pillory, and stocks
—Penalties for females: the ducking-stool, branks, and scourge—Capital punishment universal—
Methods of inflicting death—Awful cruelties—The English custom—Pressing to death—Major
Strangways—Spiggot and Burnworth—Abolition of this punishment—Decapitation and
strangulation—The guillotine and gallows—Places of execution in London: Smithfield, St. Giles,
Tower Hill, Tyburn—Derivation of Tyburn—Site of Tyburn gallows—Tyburn a generic title—An
execution in 1662: that of Colonel Turner—Crowds at executions—Fashionable folk attend—
George Selwyn—Breakfast party at Newgate—Ribald conduct of the mob at executions—That of
Earl Ferrers and of Sheppard—Demeanour of condemned: effrontery, or abject terror—Improper
customs long retained—St. Giles’ Bowl—Saddler of Bawtry—Smoking at Tyburn—Spiritual
attentions of Ordinary not always devoted—Amateur preachers and others assist—Richard Dove’s
bequest—The hangman and his office—Resuscitation—Early cases—Sir William Petty’s operation
—Tyburn procession continues—Supported by Dr. Johnson—Sheriffs suggest discontinuance—
Their reasons—The front of Newgate substituted as the scene of execution.

THE universal instinct of self-preservation underlies the whole theory of
legal punishments. Society, since men congregated together, has claimed
through its rulers to inflict penalties upon those who have broken the laws
framed for the protection of all. These penalties have varied greatly in all
ages and in all times. They have been based on different principles. Many,
especially in ruder and earlier times, have been conceived in a vindictive
spirit; others, notably those of the Mosaic law, were retaliatory, or aimed at
restitution. All, more or less, were intended also to deter from crime. The
criminal had generally to pay in his person or his goods. He was either
subjected to physical pain applied in degrading, often ferociously cruel
ways, and endured mutilation, or was branded, tortured, put to death; he
was mulcted in fines, deprived of liberty, or adjudged as a slave to
indemnify by manual labour those whom he had wronged. Imprisonment as
practised in modern times has followed from the last-named class of
punishments. Although affecting the individual, and in many of its phases
with brutal and reckless disregard for human suffering, it can hardly be
styled a purely personal punishment, upon which I propose now more
particularly to treat, and the present chapter will deal only with penalties
corporeal.

Taking first the punishments which fell short of death, those most
common in this country until comparatively recent times, were branding,
mutilation, dismemberment, whipping, and degrading public exposure.
Branding was often carried out with circumstances of atrocious barbarity.
Vagabonds were marked with the letter V, idlers and masterless men with
the letter S, betokening a condemnation to slavery; any church brawler lost
his ears, and for a second offence might be branded with the letter F, as a
fraymaker and fighter. Sometimes the penalty was to bore a hole of the
compass of an inch through the gristle of the right ear. Branding was the
commutation of a capital sentence on clerk convicts, or persons allowed
benefit of clergy, and it was inflicted upon the brawn of the left thumb, the
letter M being used in murder cases, the letter T in others. In the reign of
William and Mary, when the privilege of benefit of clergy was found to be
greatly abused, an Act was passed, by which the culprit was branded or
“burnt in the most visible part of the left cheek nearest the nose.” Mutilation
was an ancient Saxon punishment, no doubt perpetuating the Mosaic law of
retaliation which claimed an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a limb for a
limb. William the Conqueror adopted it in his penal code. It was long put in
force against those who broke the forestry laws, coiners, thieves, and such
as failed to prove their innocence by ordeal. Although almost abandoned by
the end of the sixteenth century, the penalty of mutilation, extending to the
loss of the right hand, still continued to be punishment for murder and
bloodshed within the limits of a royal residence. The most elaborate
ceremonial was observed. All the hierarchy of court officials attended; there
was the sergeant of the woodyard, the master cook to hand the dressing-
knife, the sergeant of the poultry, the yeoman of the scullery with a fire of
coals, the sergeant farrier who heated and delivered the searing irons, which
were applied by the chief surgeon after the dismemberment had been
effected. Vinegar, basin, and cloths were handed to the operator by the
groom of the salcery, the sergeant of the ewry, and the yeoman of the
chandrey. “After the hand had been struck off and the stump seared, the
sergeant of the pantry offered bread, and the sergeant of the cellar a pot of
red wine, of which the sufferer was to partake with what appetite he
might.”[104] Readers of Sir Walter Scott will remember how Nigel Olifaunt,
in the ‘Fortunes of Nigel,’ was threatened with the loss of his hand for
having committed a breach of privilege in the palace of Greenwich and its
precincts. Pistols are found on his person when he accidentally meets and

accosts James I. For the offence he may be prosecuted; so Sir Mungo
Malagrowther complacently informs him, usque ad mutilationem even to
dismemberation. The occasion serves the garrulous knight to refer to a
recent performance, “a pretty pageant when Stubbs the Puritan was
sentenced to mutilation for writing and publishing a seditious pamphlet
against Elizabeth. With Stubbs, Page the publisher also suffered. They lost
their right hands,” the wrist being divided by a cleaver driven through the
joint by the force of a mallet. “I remember,” says the historian Camden,[105]
“being then present,

Robert Ockam in the Pillory

that Stubbs, when his right hand was cut off, plucked off his hat with his
left, and said with a loud voice, ‘God save the Queen.’ The multitude
standing about was deeply silent, either out of horror of this new and
unwonted kind of punishment, or out of commiseration towards the man....”
The process of mutilation was at times left to the agonized action of the
culprit: as in the brutal case of one Penedo, who in 1570, for counterfeiting
the seal of the Court of Queen’s Bench, was twice put in the pillory on
market-day in Cheapside. The first day one of his ears was to be nailed to
the pillory in such a manner that he should be compelled “by his own
proper motion” to tear it away; and on the second day he was to lose his
other ear in the same cruel fashion. William Prynne, it will be remembered,

also lost his ears on the pillory, but at the hands of the executioner. The Earl
of Dorset, in giving the sentence of the Star Chamber Court, asked his
fellow-judges “whether he should burn him in the forehead, or slit him in
the nose?... I should be loth he should escape with his ears; ... therefore I
would have him branded in the forehead, slit in the nose, and his ears cropt
too.” Having suffered all this on the pillory, he was again punished three
years later, when he lost the remainder of his ears, and was branded with the
letters S. L. (seditious libeller) on each cheek. Dr. Bastwick and others were
similarly treated.[106] Prynne was a voluminous writer, and is said to have
produced some two hundred volumes in all. A contemporary, who saw him
in the pillory at Cheapside, says “they burnt his huge volumes under his
nose, which almost suffocated him.”
Although mutilations and floggings were frequently carried out at the
pillory, that well-known machine was primarily intended as a means of
painful and degrading exposure, and not for the infliction of physical
torture. The pillory is said to have existed in this country before the Norman
Conquest, and it probably dates from times much more remote. The ετηλη
of the Greeks, the pillar on which offenders were publicly exhibited, seems
to have been akin to the pillory, just as the κυφων, or wooden collar, was
the prototype of the French carcan or iron circlet which was riveted around
the culprit’s neck, and attached by a chain to the post or pillory. With us the
pillory or “stretch neck” was at first applied only to fraudulent traders,
perjurers, forgers, and so forth; but as years passed it came to be more
exclusively the punishment of those guilty of infamous crimes, amongst
whom were long included rash writers who dared to express their opinions
too freely before the days of freedom of the press. Besides Prynne,
Leighton, Burton, Warton, and Bastwick, intrepid John Lilburne so
suffered, under the Star Chamber decree, which prohibited the printing of
any book without a license from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop
of London, or the authorities of the two universities. Daniel Defoe again,
who was pilloried in 1703 for his pamphlet. ‘The Shortest Way with the
Dissenters.’ Defoe gave himself up, and was pilloried first in Cheapside,
and afterwards in the Temple. The mob so completely sympathized with
him, that they covered him with flowers, drank his health, and sang his
‘Ode to the Pillory’ in chorus. Dr. Shebbeare was pilloried in 1759, for his
‘Letters to the People of England.’ But he found a friend in the under-
sheriff, Mr. Beardmore, who took him to the place of penitence, in a state-

coach, and allowed a footman in rich livery to hold an umbrella over the
doctor’s head, as he stood in the pillory. Beardmore was afterwards
arraigned for neglect of duty, found guilty, and sentenced to fine and
imprisonment.
In 1765, Williams the publisher, who reprinted Wilkes’ ‘North Briton,’
stood in the pillory in Palace Yard for an hour. For the moment he became
popular. He arrived in a hackney-coach numbered 45,[107] attended by a vast
crowd. He was cheered vociferously as he mounted the pillory with a sprig
of laurel in each hand; and a gentleman present made a collection of two
hundred guineas for him in a purple purse adorned with orange ribbons. In
front of the pillory the mob erected a gallows, and hung on it a boot, with
other emblems, intended to gibbet the unpopular minister Lord Bute.
Williams was conducted from the pillory amid renewed acclamations, and
the excitement lasted for some days. Lampoons and caricatures were widely
circulated. Several street ballads were also composed, one of which began:
“Ye sons of Wilkes and Liberty,
Who hate despotic sway,
The glorious Forty-Five now crowns
This memorable day.
And to New Palace Yard let us go, let us go.”

Lord Dundonald in 1814 was actually sentenced to the pillory, but the
Government shrank from inflicting the punishment upon that much
wronged naval hero. The pillory ceased to be a punishment, except for
perjury, in 1815, but was not finally abolished until 1837, and as late as
1830 one Dr. Bossy suffered on it for perjury.
The earliest form of pillory was simply a post erected in a cross-road by
the lord of the manor, as a mark of his seigneury.[108] It bore his arms, and
on it was a collar, the carcan already mentioned, by which culprits were
secured. This was in course of time developed, and the pillory became a
cross-piece of wood fixed like a sign-board at the top of a pole, and placed
upon an elevated platform. In this cross were three holes, one for the head,
the other two for the wrists. The cross-piece was in two halves, the upper
turning on a hinge to admit the culprit’s head and hands, and closed with a
padlock when the operation of insertion was completed. A more elaborate
affair, capable of accommodating a number of persons, is figured in
mediæval woodcuts, but this sort of pillory does not appear to have been

very generally used. The curious observer may still see specimens in
England of this well-known instrument of penal discipline, one is preserved
in the parish church of Rye, Sussex, another is in the museum at Brighton.
The stocks served like the pillory to hold up offenders to public infamy.
The first authentic mention of them is in a statute of Edward III., by which
they were to be applied to unruly labourers. Soon after this they were
established by law in every village, often near the parish church. They were
the punishment for brawling, drunkenness, vagrancy, and all disorderly
conduct. Wood-stealers or “hedge-tearers” were set in the stocks about the
year 1584 for a couple of days with the stolen wood in front of them. The
story goes that Cardinal Wolsey, when a young parish priest, was put in the
stocks at Lymington by Sir Amyas Poulett, for having exceeded at a village
feast. The old chap’s books contain numerous references to the stocks of
course. Welch Taffy, “the unfortunate traveller,” was put into the stocks for
calling a justice of the peace a “boobie;” and “Simple Simon,” when he
interfered in a butter-woman’s quarrel, was adjudged to be drunk and put
into the stocks between the two viragoes, who scolded him all the time. The
story of Lord Camden when a young barrister having a desire to try the
stocks, and his being left in them by an absent-minded friend for the part of
the day, is probably well known. The stocks were not wholly abolished till a
few years ago.[109] The Stokesley stocks were used within thirty years of the
present time, and as late as 1860 one John Gambles of Stanningly was
sentenced to sit in the stocks for six hours for Sunday gambling, and
actually endured his punishment.[110] Stocks are still to be seen at Heath
near Wakefield, Painswick in Gloucestershire, and other places. In all cases
the physical discomfort of the stocks no less than that of the pillory, was
generally aggravated by the rude horseplay of a jeering and actively
offensive mob. A reference to the inconvenient attentions of the bystanders
at such an exhibition will be found in an old chapbook, entitled ‘The True
Trial of the Understanding,’ in which among other riddles the following is
given:
Promotion lately was bestowed
Upon a person mean and small:
Then many persons to him flowed,
Yet he returned no thanks at all.
But yet their hands were ready still
To help him with their kind good will.

The answer is, a man pelted in the pillory.
Worse sometimes happened, and in several cases death ensued from ill-
usage in the pillory. Thus when John Waller, alias Trevor, was pilloried in
1732, in Seven Dials, for falsely accusing innocent men, so as to obtain the
reward given on the conviction of highwaymen, so great was the
indignation of the populace that they pelted him to death. The coroner’s
inquest returned a verdict of wilful murder, but against persons unknown. In
1763 a man who stood in the pillory at Bow, for an unnatural crime, was
killed by the mob. Ann Marrow, who had been guilty of the strange offence
of disguising herself as a man, and as such marrying three different women,
was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment, and exposure on the pillory,
at Charing Cross. So great was the resentment on the populace, principally
those of the female sex, that they pelted her till they put out both her eyes.
[111]

No account of the minor physical punishments formerly inflicted would
be complete without reference to the methods of coercing ill-conditioned
females. These were mostly of the same character as the pillory and stocks.
Chief among them was the Ducking or Cucking-stool, “a scourge for
scolds,” and once as common in every parish as the stocks. Other varieties
of it were known under the names of Tumbrell, the Gumstole, the Triback,
the Trebucket, and the Reive. It may be described briefly as consisting of a
chair or seat fixed at the end of a long plank, which revolved on a pivot, and
by some simple application of leverage upset the occupant of the chair into
a pond or stream. Mr. Cole, 1782, describes one which was hung to a beam
in the middle of a bridge; the Leominster stool which is still preserved is a
plank upon a low substantial framework, having the seat at one end, and
working like an ordinary see-saw. That at Wooton Basset was of the
tumbrell order, and was a framework on a pair of wheels, with shafts at one
end, the stool being at the other. In this, as in the Leicester “scolding cart,”
and other forms of tumbrels, the culprit was paraded through the town
before immersion. The punishment was primarily intended for scolds,
shrews, and “curst queens,” but it was also applied to female brewers and
bakers who brewed bad ale, and sold bad bread. It was inflicted pursuant to
sentence in open court, but in some parts the bailiffs had the power within
their own jurisdictions, and the right of gallows, tumbrell, and pillory was
often claimed by lords of the Manor. The greatest antiquity is claimed for
this sort of punishment. Bowine declares that it was used by the Saxons, by

whom it was called “Cathedra in qua rixosæ mulieres sedentes aquæ
demergebantur.” No doubt the ducking was often roughly and cruelly
carried out. We have in the frontispiece of an old chapbook, which relates
how “an old woman was drowned in Ratcliffe highway,” a pictorial
representation of the ceremony of ducking, and it is stated that she met her
death by being dipped too often or too long. That the instrument was in
general use through the kingdom is proved by numerous entries in ancient
records. Thus Lysons, in his ‘Environs of London,’ states that at a court of
the Manor of Edgware in 1552 the inhabitants were presented for not
having a tumbril and a ducking-stool as laid down by law. In the
Leominster town records the bailiff and chamberlains are repeatedly
brought up and fined either for not providing “gumstoles” or not properly
repairing them, while in the same and other records are numerous
statements of bills paid to carpenters for making or mending these
instruments. The use of them moreover was continued to very recent times.
A women was ducked under Kingston Bridge for scolding in 1745. At
Manchester, Liverpool, and other Lancashire towns the stool was in use till
the commencement of this century. So it was at Scarborough, where the
offender was dipped into the water from the end of the old pier. But the
latest inflictions seemingly were at Leominster, where in 1809 a woman
named Jenny Pipes was paraded and ducked near Kerwater Bridge, while
another Sarah Leeke was wheeled round the town in 1817, but not ducked,
the water being too low.
The ducking-stool was not always an effectual punishment. It appears
from the records of the King’s Bench that in the year 1681 Mrs. Finch, a
notorious scold, who had been thrice ducked for scolding, was a fourth time
sentenced for the same offence, and sentenced to be fined and imprisoned.
Other measures were occasionally taken which were deemed safer, but
which were hardly less cruel. The “branks,” or bridle, for gossips and
scolds, was often preferred to the ducking-stool, which endangered the
health, and moreover gave the culprit’s tongue free play between each dip.
The branks was a species of iron mask, with a gag so contrived as to enter
the mouth and forcibly hold down the unruly member. “It consisted of a
kind of crown or framework of iron, which was locked upon the head and
was armed in front with a gag,—a plate or a sharp-cutting knife or
point.”[112] Various specimens of this barbarous instrument are still extant in
local museums, that in the Ashmolean at Oxford being especially

noticeable, as well as that preserved in Doddington Park, Lincolnshire. The
branks are said to have been the invention of agents of the Spanish
Inquisition, and to have been imported into this country from the Low
Countries, whither it had travelled from Spain.
The brutality of the stronger and governing to the weaker and subject sex
was not limited to the ducking-stool and branks. It must be remembered
with shame in this more humane age[113] that little more than a hundred
years ago women were publicly whipped at the whipping-post by the
stocks, or at any cart’s tail. The fierce statute against vagrants of Henry
VIII.’s and Elizabeth’s reign made no distinction of sex, and their ferocious
provisions to the effect that offenders “should be stripped naked from the
middle upwards, and whipped till the body should be bloody,” long
continued in force. Men with their wives and children were flogged
publicly, and sometimes by the order of the clergyman of the parish. Girls
of twelve and thirteen, aged women of sixty, all suffered alike; women
“distracted,” in other words out of their minds, were arrested and lashed; so
were those that had the small pox, and all who walked about the country
and begged.[114] The constable’s charge for whipping was fourpence, but
the sum was increased latterly to a shilling. The whipping-post was often
erected in combination with the stocks. A couple of iron clasps were fixed
to the upright which supported the stocks, to take the culprit’s hands and
hold him securely while he was being lashed. A modification of this plan
has long been used at Newgate for the infliction of corporal punishment,
and it may still be seen in the old ward at the back of the middle yard.
Ferocious as were most of the methods I have detailed of dealing with
offenders against the law, they generally, except by accident, fell short of
death. Yet were there innumerable cases in those uncompromising and
unenlightened ages in which death alone would be deemed equal to the
offences. Rulers might be excused perhaps if they were satisfied with
nothing less than a criminal’s blood. As Maine

In The Torture Chamber.

says,[115] “The punishment of death is a necessity of society in certain
stages of the civilizing process. There is a time when an attempt to dispense
with it baulks two of the great instincts which lie at the root of all penal law.
Without it the community neither feels that it is sufficiently revenged on the
criminal, nor thinks that the example of his punishment is adequate to deter
others from imitating him.” Hence all penal legislation in the past included
some form of inflicting the death sentence. These have differed in all ages
and in all climes: about some there was a brutal simplicity; others have been
marked by great inventiveness, great ingenuity, much refinement of cruelty.
Offenders have been stoned, beaten, starved to death; they have been flayed
alive, buried alive, cast headlong from heights, torn to pieces by wild
animals, broken on the wheel, crucified, impaled, burnt, boiled, beheaded,
strangled, drowned. They have been killed outright or by inches, enduring
horrible agonies;[116] after death their bodies have been dismembered and

disembowelled, as a mark of degradation. Irresponsible tyrants went further
than lawgivers in devising pains. The Sultan Mechmed cut men in the
middle, through the diaphragm, thus causing them to die two deaths at once.
It is told of Crœsus that he caused a person who had offended him to be
scratched to death by a friller’s carding-combs. What the Vaivod of
Transylvania did to the Polish leader, George Jechel, may be read in the
pages of Montaigne. The frightful barbarity to which he and his followers
were subjected need not be repeated here.
The tender mercies of continental nations towards criminals may be
realized by a reference to one or two of their contrivances for the infliction
of death. The Iron Coffin of Lissa, for example, wherein the convicted
person lay for days awaiting death from the fell pressure of the heavily-
weighted lid, which slid down slowly, almost imperceptibly, upon his
helpless frame; or the Virgin of Baden Baden, the brazen statue whose kiss
meant death with frightful tortures, the unhappy culprit being commanded
to prostrate himself and kiss the statue, but as he raised his lips a trap door
opened at his feet, and he fell through on to a spiked wheel, which was set
in motion by his fall. There was the chambre à crucer, a short hollow chest
lined with sharp stones, in which the victim was packed and buried alive; or
the “bernicles,” a mattrass which clutched the sufferer tight, while his legs
were broken by heavy logs of wood; or the long lingering death in the iron
cages of Louis XI., the occupant of which could neither sit, stand, or lie
down. Again, the devilish tortures inflicted upon the murderers Ravaillac
and Damiens caused a shudder throughout Europe. Ravaillac was burnt
piecemeal, flesh was torn from him by red-hot pincers, scalding oil and
molten lead were poured upon his bleeding wounds, he was drawn and
dismembered by horses while still alive, and only received his coup de
grace from the sticks and knives of the hellish bystanders, who rushed in to
finish more savagely what the executioner had been unable to complete. As
for Damiens, the process followed was identical, but the details preserved
of an event nearer our own time are more precise and revolting. He was
fastened down upon a platform by iron gyves, one across his breast, the
other just above his thighs; his right hand was then burnt with brimstone, he
was pinched with red-hot pincers, after which boiling oil, molten wax,
rosin, and lead were poured upon his wounds. His limbs were next tightly
tied with cords, a long and protracted operation, during which he must have
suffered renewed and exquisite torture; four stout, young, and vigorous

horses were attached to the cords, and an attempt made to tear his limbs
asunder, but only with the result of “extending his joints to a prodigious
length,” and it was necessary to second the efforts of the horses by cutting
the principal sinews of the sufferer. Soon after this the victim expired. Then
his body was burnt and the ashes scattered to the winds.
In this country the simpler firms of executions have generally obtained.
The stake was no doubt in frequent use at certain periods for particular
offences, but the axe and the rope were long the most common instruments
of despatch. Death was otherwise inflicted, however. Drowning is
mentioned by Stowe as the fate of pirates, and a horrible method of carrying
out capital punishment remained in force until 1772. Pressing to death, or
the peine forte et dure, was a development of the ancient prison forte et
dure the punishment of those who refused “to stand to the law;” in other
words, stood mute, and refused to plead to a charge. Until the reign of
Henry IV. such persons were condemned to penance and perpetual
imprisonment, but the penance meant confinement in a narrow cell and
absolute starvation.[117] Some evaded the dread consequences, and therefore
a more awful form of torture was introduced with the object of compelling
the silent to speak. An accused person who persistently stood mute was
solemnly warned three times of the penalty that waited on his obstinacy,
and given a few hours for consideration. If the prisoner continued
contumacious, the following sentence was passed upon him, or her:
“That you be taken back to the prison whence you came to a low
dungeon, into which no light can enter; that you be laid on your back on the
bare floor with a cloth round your loins, but elsewhere naked; that there be
set upon your body a weight of iron as great as you can bear—and greater;
that you have no sustenance, save on the first day three morsels of the
coarsest bread, on the second day three draughts of stagnant water from the
pool nearest to the prison door, on the third day again three morsels of bread
as before, and such bread and such water alternately from day to day till
you die.”
The press was a form of torture with this difference that, when once
applied, there was seldom any escape from it. The practice of tying the
thumbs with whipcord was another form of torture inflicted to oblige an
accused person to plead, and in force as late as the reign of Queen Anne.

Regarding the peine forte et dure Holinshed says, that when accused
felons stood mute of malice on arraignment they were pressed to death “by
heavy weights laid upon a board that lieth over their breasts and a sharp
stone under their backs, and these commonly hold their peace thereby to
save their goods unto their wives and children, which if they were
condemned should be confiscated to the prince.” There are continual
references to the peine forte et dure in the legal records throughout the
fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries. In 1605 Walter Calverly, Esq., of
Calverly in Yorkshire, who was arraigned for the murder of his wife and
two children, stood mute, and was pressed to death in York Castle. Another
notable instance of the application of this fearful punishment was in the
case of Major Strangways, who was arraigned in February 1657-8 for the
murder of his brother-in-law Mr. Fussell. He refused to plead unless he was
assured that if condemned he might be shot as his brother-in-law had been.
In addition he said that he wished to preserve his estate from confiscation.
Chief Justice Glyn reasoned with him at length, but could not alter his
decision, and he was duly sentenced to the peine forte et dure. The sentence
ran that he was to be put into a mean room where no light could enter, and
where he was to be laid upon his back with his body bare; his legs and arms
were to be stretched out with cords, and then iron and stone were to be laid
upon him “as much as he could bear—and more;” his food the first day was
to be three morsels of barley bread, and on the second day he was “to drink
thrice of water in the channel next to the prison, but no spring or fountain
water—and this shall be his punishment till he dies.”
Strangways suffered in Newgate. He was attended to the last by five
pious divines, and spent much of his time in prayer. On the day of execution
he appeared all in white “waistcoat, stockings, drawers, and cap, over which
was cast a long mourning-cloak,” and so was “guarded down to a dungeon
in the press-yard, the dismal place of execution.” On his giving the
appointed signal, “his mournful attendants performed their dreadful task.
They soon perceived that the weight they laid on was not sufficient to put
him suddenly out of pain, so several of them added their own weight, that
they might sooner release his soul.” He endured great agonies. His groans
were “loud and doleful,” and it was eight or ten minutes before he died.
After death his body was exposed to view, and it was seen that an angle

Wm. Spiggot under pressure in Newgate
for not pleading to his Indictment

of the press had been purposely placed over his heart, so that he might the
sooner be deprived of life, “though he was denied what is usual in these
cases, to have a sharp piece of timber under his back to hasten execution.”
In 1721, Nathaniel Hawes, who had come to be what we should call
now-a-days an habitual criminal, and who had been frequently in Newgate,
took to the road. After various successful adventures, he stopped a
gentleman on Finchley Common, who was more than his match and made
him prisoner. He was conveyed to London and committed to Newgate.
When brought to the bar of the Old Bailey he refused to plead, giving as his
reason that he meant to die as he had lived, like a gentleman. When he was
seized, he said he had on a fine suit of clothes, which he intended to have
gone to the gallows in, but they had been taken from him. “Unless they are
returned, I will not plead,” he went on, “for no one shall say that I was

hanged in a dirty shirt and a ragged coat.” He was warned what would be
the consequences of his contempt of the law, but he obstinately persevered,
and was accordingly sentenced to the press. He bore a weight of 250 lbs. for
about seven minutes, and then gave in, being unable any longer to bear the
pain. On return to Court he pleaded “Not Guilty,” but was convicted and
sentenced to death. Hawes declared to the last that he was one of Jonathan
Wild’s victims.
Two years later, William Spiggot and Thomas Phillips, arraigned for
highway robbery, refused to plead, and were also sentenced to the press.
Phillips, on coming into the press-yard, was affrighted by the apparatus, and
begged that he might be taken back to Court to plead, “a favour that was
granted him; it might have been denied to him.” Spiggot, however,
remained obdurate, and was put under the press, where he continued half an
hour with a weight to the amount of 350 lbs. on his body; “but, on addition
of the 50 lbs. more, he likewise begged to plead.” Both were then convicted
and hanged in the ordinary course of law. Again, Edward Burnworth, the
captain of a gang of murderers and robbers which rose into notoriety on the
downfall of Wild, was sentenced to the press at Kingston in 1726, by Lord
Chief Justice Raymond and Judge Denton. He bore the weight of 1 cwt. 3
qrs. 2 lbs. on his breast for the space of an hour and three minutes, during
which time the High-Sheriff who attended him used every argument to
induce him to plead, but in vain. Burnworth, all the time, was trying to kill
himself by striking his head against the floor. At last he was prevailed on to
promise to plead, was brought back to Court, and duly sentenced to death.
The last instance in which the press was inflicted was at Kilkenny in
Ireland. A man named Matthew Ryan stood mute at his trial for highway
robbery, and was adjudged by the jury to be guilty of “wilful and affected
dumbness and lunacy.” He was given some days’ grace, but still remaining
dumb, he was pressed to death in the public market of Kilkenny. As the
weights were put upon him the wretched man broke silence and implored
that he might be hanged, but the Sheriff could not grant his request.
In 1741 a new press was made and fixed in the press-yard, for the
punishment of a highwayman named Cook, but it was not used. The 12th
Geo. III. (1772) at length altered the law on this head, and judgment was
awarded against mutes as though convicted or they had confessed. In 1778
one so suffered at the Old Bailey. Finally, it was provided by the 7 and 8

Geo. IV., cap. 28, that the Court should enter a plea of “Not Guilty” when
the prisoner will not plead.
The principal forms of capital punishment, however, as the derivation of
the expression implies, have dealt with the head as the most vulnerable part
of the body. Death has been and still is most generally inflicted by
decapitation and strangulation. The former, except in France, where it came
to be universal, was the most aristocratic method; the latter was long
applied only to criminals of the baser sort. Until the invention of the
guillotine, culprits were beheaded by sword or axe, and were often cruelly
mangled by a bungling executioner. It is asserted by the historian that the
executioner pursued the Countess of Salisbury about the scaffold, aiming
repeated blows at her, before he succeeded in striking off her head. This
uncertainty in result was only ended by the ingenious invention of Dr.
Guillotin, the rude germ of which existed long previously in the Scotch
“maiden.” The regent Morton, who introduced this instrument into
Scotland, and who himself suffered by it, is said to have taken it from the
Halifax Gibbet.[118] Guillotin’s machine was not altogether original, but it
owed more to the Italian “Mannaïa” than to the “maiden.” Nor, according to
Sanson the French headsman, was he the actual inventor of the notorious
instrument guillotine, which bears his name. The guillotine was designed by
one Schmidt, a German engineer and artificer of musical instruments.
Guillotin enthusiastically adopted Schmidt’s design, which he strongly
recommended in the assembly, declaring that by it a culprit could not suffer,
but would only feel a slight freshness on the neck. Louis XVI. was
decapitated by the guillotine, as was the doctor, its sponsor and introducer.
Strangulation, whether applied by the bowstring, cord, handkerchief, or
drop, is as old as the hills. It was inflicted by the Greeks as an especially
ignominious punishment. The “sus per coll.” was not unknown in the penal
law of the Romans, who were in the habit also of exposing the dead convict
upon the gibbet, “as a comfortable sight to his friends and relations.”
In London various places have been used for the scene of execution. The
spot where a murder had been committed was often appropriately selected
as the place of retribution. Execution Dock was reserved for pirates and sea-
robbers, Tower Hill for persons of rank who were beheaded. Gallows for
meaner malefactors were sometimes erected on the latter place, the right to
do so being claimed by the city. In the reign of Edward IV., however, there
was a conflict of authority between the king and the corporation on this

point. The king’s officer set up a scaffold and gallows on Tower Hill,
whereupon the Mayor and his brethren complained to the king, who replied,
that he had not acted in derogation of the city liberties, and caused public
proclamation to be made that the city exercised certain rights on Tower Hill.
Executions also took place, according to Pennant, at the Standard in Chepe.
Three men were beheaded there for rescuing a prisoner, and in 1351 two
fishmongers for some unknown crime. Smithfield had long the dismal
honour of witnessing the death-throes of offenders. Between Hozier and
Cow Lanes was anciently a large pool called Smithfield Pond or Horse
Pool, “from the watering of horses there;” to the south-west lay St. John’s
Court, and close to it the public gallows on the Town Green. There was a
clump of trees in the centre of the green, elms, from which the place of
execution was long euphemistically called “The Elms.” It was used as such
early in the thirteenth century, and distinguished persons, William
Fitzosbert, Mortimer, and Sir William Wallace suffered here. About 1413
the gibbet was removed from Smithfield and put up at the north end of a
garden wall belonging to St. Giles’ Leper Hospital, “opposite the Pound
where the Crown Tavern is at present situate, between the end of St. Giles
High Street and Hog Lane.” But Smithfield must have been still used after
the transfer of the gallows to St. Giles. In 1580 another conflict of
jurisdiction, this time between the city and the Lieutenant of the Tower. A
gibbet was erected in that year in East Smithfield, at Hog Lane, for the
execution of one R. Dod, who had murdered a woman in those parts. “But
when the sheriff brought the malefactor there to be hanged Sir Owen
Hopton, the Lieutenant of the Tower, commanded the sheriff’s officers back
again to the west side of a cross that stood there,” and which probably
marked the extent of the liberties of the Tower. Discussion followed. The
sheriffs with their prisoner accompanied the Lieutenant into a house to talk
it over, “whence after a good stay they all departed.” The city gave way—
the gibbet was taken down, and the malefactor carried to Tyburn in the
same afternoon, where he was executed.
The gallows were no doubt all ready for the business, for Tyburn had
been used for executions as long as Smithfield. There were elms also at
Tyburn, hence a not uncommon confusion between the two places of
execution. Tyebourne has been ingeniously derived from the two words
“Tye” and “Bourne,” the last a bourne or resting-place to prisoners who
were taken bound. Pennant gives the derivation “Tye,” the name of a brook

or “bourne” which flowed through it. In Mr. Loftie’s ‘History of
London’[119] he points out that the Tyburn of earliest times was a bleak
heath situated at the end of the Marylebone Lane as we know it, and which,
as it approached the town, had two branches. He suggests that the brook or
“Bourne” also divided into two, hence the name “Teo burne” or two
streams. Mr. Waller[120] gives the same derivation, and in one of the earliest
mention of the Tyburn, an ancient chapter at Westminster, dated 951, it is
called Teoburne. There were many Tyburns, however, and as in London the
gallows were moved further and further westward of the building of houses,
so the name of Tyburn travelled from Marylebone Lane to Edgeware Road.
As time passed on it came to be the generic name for all places of
execution, and was used at York, Liverpool, Dublin, and elsewhere. Tyburn
was a kind of Golgotha, a place of infamy and disgrace. Here certain
zealous Protestant gentlemen from the Temple in 1585 hung in chains an
image, a Popish image, although styled Robin Hood. When Colonel Blood
seized the Duke of Ormond in St. James’ Street it was with the avowed
intention of carrying him to Tyburn, there to be hanged like a common
criminal. The exact position of the Tyburn gallows has been a matter of
some controversy. Mr. Robins[121] places the Elms Lane as the first turning
to the right in the Uxbridge Road after getting into it from the Grand
Junction Road opposite the Serpentine. In Smith’s ‘History of Marylebone,’
he states that the gallows stood on a small eminence at the corner of the
Edgeware Road near the turnpike. Other authorities fix the place in
Connaught Square; because in a lease of one of the houses, No. 49, granted
by the Bishop of London, the fact that the gallows once stood on the site is
expressly mentioned in the parchment. It was commonly reported that many
human bones were exhumed between Nos. 6 and 12, Connaught Place, as
well as in the garden of Arklow House, which stands at the south-west
angle of the Edgeware Road. But Mr. Loftie states as a matter of fact that no
such discovery was ever made. A careful but fruitless search at the time
Connaught Place was built produced a single bone, probably part of a
human jaw-bone, but nothing more. As to Arklow House, the report is
distinctly denied by the owner himself. It is, however, pretty certain that at a
later date the gallows were kept at a house at the corner of Upper Bryanston
Street and the Edgeware Road, in front of which they were erected when
required.

A detailed account has been preserved of the execution of Colonel John
Turner in 1662, which presents a strange picture of the way in which the
extreme penalty of the law was carried out in those days. The scene of the
execution was not Tyburn, however, but a place in Leadenhall Street at
Lime Street end, a spot near where the deed for which Turner suffered was
perpetrated. An immense crowd had gathered, as usual, to witness the
convict’s death. Pepys was there of course—“up,” he tells us; “and after
sending my wife to my Aunt Wright’s, to get a place to see Turner hanged, I
to Change.” On his way he met people flocking to the place of execution,
and mingling with the crowd, “got,” somewhere about St. Mary Axe, “to
stand upon the wheel of a cart for a shilling in great pain above an hour
before the execution was done. He delaying the time by long discourses and
prayers one after another in hopes of a reprieve, but none came.”
κυφωνTurner was drawn in a cart from Newgate at eleven in the morning,
accompanied by the ordinary and another minister, with the sheriffs, keeper
of the gaol, and other officials in attendance. On coming to the gibbet he
called the executioner to him, and presented him with money in lieu of his
clothes, which his friends desired to keep. Then standing in the cart, he
addressed the crowd with great prolixity. He dwelt on the cardinal sins; he
gave a circumstantial account of his birth, parentage, family history; he
detailed his war services as a loyal cavalier, with his promotions and
various military rewards. With much proper feeling he sought to lessen the
blame attached to his accomplices in the murder, and to exonerate the
innocent accused. At intervals in this long discourse he was interrupted now
by the sheriffs with broad hints to despatch, now by the ordinary as to the
irrelevance and impropriety of such remarks from a man about to die. Again
the keeper of Newgate taxed him with other crimes, saying, for example,
“Pray, Colonel Turner, do you know nothing of a glass jewel delivered to
the Countess of Devonshire in room of another?” or “How about the fire in
Lothbury, or the mysterious death of your namesake Turner, who died in
your house?”
The condemned man discoursed at great length upon these various
points, and was again and again reminded that it would be better for him to
prepare for his approaching end. Still he continued his harangue and took a
new departure when he remembered the condition of the condemned hold
of Newgate, into which he had been cast after coming from the sessions.
This hole, as it was called, he characterizes as “a most fearful, sad,

deplorable place. Hell itself in comparison cannot be such a place. There is
neither bench, stool, nor stick for any person there; they lie like swine upon
the ground, one upon another, howling and roaring—it was more terrible to
me than this death. I would humbly beg that hole may be provided with
some kind of boards, like a court of guard, that a man may lie down upon
them in ease; for when they should be best prepared for their ends they are
most tormented; they had better take them and hang them as soon as they
have their sentence.” This aspersion, however, on this part of his gaol the
keeper tried to refute by stating that seventeen out of the nineteen poor
wretches confined in the hole managed to escape from it, bad as it might be.
But the reprieve for which Turner looked in vain still tarried. He was
obliged now to fall to his prayers. These, by the Christian charity of the
officials, he was permitted to spin out as long as he pleased. Then he went
through the ceremony of distributing alms money for the poor, money for
his wife, to be passed on to his young son’s schoolmaster. At last he
directed the executioner to take the halter off his shoulders, and afterwards,
“taking it in his hands, he kissed it, and put it on his neck himself; then after
he had fitted the cap and put it on, he went out of the cart up the ladder.”
The executioner fastened the noose, and “pulling the rope a little, says
Turner, What, dost thou mean to choke me? Pray, fellow, give me more rope
—what a simple fellow is this! How long have you been executioner, that
you know not how to put the knot?” At the very last moment, in the midst
of some private ejaculations, espying a gentlewoman at a window nigh, he
kissed his hand, saying, “Your servant, mistress,” and so he was “turned
off,” as Pepys says of him, “a comely-looking man he was, and kept his
countenance to the last. I was sorry to see him. It was believed there were at
least twelve or fourteen thousand people in the street.”
There was nothing new in this desire to gloat over the dying agonies of
one’s fellow-creatures. The Roman matron cried “habet,” and turned down
her thumb when the gladiator despatched his prostrate foe. Great dignitaries
and high-born dames have witnessed without a shudder the tortures of an
auto da fé; to this day it is the fashion for delicately-nurtured ladies to flock
to the Law Courts, and note the varying emotions, from keenest anguish to
most brutal sangfroid, of notorious murderers on trial.[122] It is not strange,
then, that in uncultivated and comparatively demoralized ages the
concourse about the gallows should be great, or the conduct of the
spectators riotous, brutal, often heartless in the extreme. There was always a

rush to see an execution. The crowd was extraordinary when the sufferers
were persons of note or had been concerned in any much-talked-of case.
Thus at the hanging of Vratz, Borosky, and Stern, convicted of that same
murder of Mr. Thynne of which Count Konigsmark was acquitted,[123] an
execution which took place in 1682, all London turned out to stare. The
gallows had been set up in Pall Mall, the scene of the crime. “Many
hundreds of standings were taken up by persons of quality and others.” The
Duke of Monmouth, one of the most intimate friends of the murdered man,
was among the spectators in a balcony close by the gallows, and was the
cynosure of every eye, fixing the glance of even one of the convicts,
Captain Vratz, who “stared at him fixedly till the drop fell.”
The fashion of gazing at these painful exhibitions grew more and more
popular. Horace Walpole satirizes the vile practice of thus glorifying
criminals. “You cannot conceive,” he says to Sir Horace Mann, “the
ridiculous rage there is of going to Newgate, the prints that are published of
the malefactors, and the memoirs of their lives set forth with as much
parade as Marshal Turrenne’s” (Boswell). George Selwyn, chief among the
wits and beaux of his time, was also conspicuous for his craving for such
horrid sights. He was characterized by Walpole as a friend whose passion it
was to see coffins, corpses, and executions. Judges going on assize wrote to
Selwyn, promising him a good place at all the executions which might take
place on their circuits. Other friends kept him informed of approaching
events, and bespoke a seat for him, or gave full details of the demeanour of
those whose sufferings he had not been privileged to see. Thus Henry St.
John writes to tell him of the execution of Waistcott, Lord Harrington’s
butler, for burglary, which he had attended, with his brother, at the risk of
breaking their necks “by climbing up an old rotten scaffolding, which I
feared would tumble before the cart drove off with the six malefactors.” St.
John goes on to say that he had a full view of Waistcott, “who went to the
gallows with a white cockade in his hat as an emblem of his innocence, and
died with some hardness, as appeared through his trial.” Another
correspondent, Gilly Williams, gives additional particulars. “The dog died
game: went in the cart in a blue and white frock ... and the white cockade.
He ate several oranges on his passage, inquired if his hearse was ready, and
then, as old Rowe would say, was launched into eternity.” Again George
Townshend, writing to Selwyn from Scotland of the Jacobites, promises
him plenty more entertainment on Tower Hill. The joke went round that

Selwyn at the dentist’s gave the signal for drawing a tooth by dropping his
handkerchief, just as people did to the executioner on the scaffold. He
would go anywhere to see men turned off. He was present when Lord Lovat
was decapitated, and justified himself by saying that he had made amends
in going to the undertaker’s to see the head sewn on again. So eager was he
to miss no sight worth seeing, that he went purposely to Paris to witness the
torture of the unhappy Damiens. “On the day of the execution,” Jesse tells
us,[124] “he mingled with the crowd in a plain undress suit and bob wig;
when a French nobleman, observing the deep interest he took in the scene,
and imagining from the plainness of his attire that he must be a person in
the humbler ranks of life, resolved that he must infallibly be a hangman.
‘Eh bien, monsieur,’ he said, ‘Êtes vous arrivé pour voir ce spectacle?’ ‘Oui,
monsieur.’ ‘Vous êtes bourreau?’ ‘Non, monsieur,’ replied Selwyn, ‘je n’ai
pas l’honneur; je ne suis qu’un amateur.’”
It was in these days, or a little later, when Newgate became the scene of
action, that an execution was made the occasion of a small festivity at the
prison. The governor gave a breakfast after the ceremony to some thirteen
or fourteen people of distinction, and his daughter, a very pretty girl, did the
honours of the table. According to her account, few did much justice to the
viands: the first call of the inexperienced was for brandy, and the only
person with a good appetite for her broiled kidneys, a celebrated dish of
hers, was the ordinary. After breakfast was over the whole party adjourned
to see the cutting down.
That which was a morbid curiosity among a certain section of the upper
classes became a fierce hungry passion with the lower. The scenes upon
execution days almost baffle description. Dense crowds thronged the
approaches to Newgate and the streets leading to Tyburn or other places of
execution. It was a ribald, reckless, brutal mob, violently combative,
fighting and struggling for foremost places, fiercely aggressive, distinctly
abusive. Spectators often had their limbs broken, their teeth knocked out,
sometimes they were crushed to death. Barriers could not always restrain
the crowd, and were often borne down and trampled underfoot. All along
the route taken by the procession people vented their feelings upon the
doomed convicts: cheering a popular criminal to the echo, offering him
nosegays or unlimited drink; railing and storming, on the other hand at
those they hated or, worse still, despised. When Earl Ferrers was hanged in
1760 the concourse was so great that the procession took three hours to

travel from Newgate to Tyburn. Lord Ferrers told the sheriffs that passing
through such a multitude was ten times worse than death itself. The same
brutality was carried to the foot of the gallows. The mob surged around the
cart conversing with the condemned: now encouraging, now upbraiding,
anon making him a target for all manner of missiles, and this even at the last
awful moment, when the convict was on his knees wrapped in prayer. A
woman named Barbara Spencer was beaten down by a stone when actually
in supplication upon her knees. When Jack Sheppard, that most popular but
most depraved young criminal, was executed, an incredible number of
persons was present. The crowd was unruly enough even before execution,
but afterwards it grew perfectly frantic. When the body had hung the
appointed time, an undertaker ventured to appear with a hearse to carry it
off, but being taken for a surgeon’s man about to remove Jack Sheppard to
the dissecting-room, he incurred the fierce displeasure of the mob. They
demolished the hearse, then fell upon the undertaker, who with difficulty
escaped with life. After that they seized the body and carried it off,
throwing it from hand to hand, until it was covered with bruises and dirt. It
was taken as far as the Barley Mow in Long Acre, where it lay some hours,
and until it was discovered that the whole thing was a trick devised by a
bailiff in the pay of the surgeons, and that the body had been forcibly taken
from a person who really intended to bury it. The mob was now excited to
frenzy, and a serious riot followed. The police being quite inadequate to
quell it, the military were called in, and with the aid of several detachments
of Guards the ringleaders were secured. The body was given over to a
friend of Sheppard’s to bury, the mob dispersed to attend it to St. Martin’s
Fields, where it was deposited under a guard of soldiers and eventually
buried.
While these wild revels were kept up both before and after the execution
the demeanour of the doomed partook too often of the general recklessness.
The calendars are full of particulars of the manner in which condemned
convicts met their fate. Many awaited the extreme penalty, and endured it
with callous indifference or flippant effrontery. Only now and again did
their courage break down at the eleventh hour, and so prove that it was
assumed. A few notable examples may be cited as exhibiting their various
moods. Paul Lewis, once a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, but an
irreclaimable scoundrel, who took eventually to the road, and was
sentenced to death for highway robbery, was boldly unconcerned after

sentence. In Newgate he was the leader of the revels: they dubbed him
captain, like Macheath; he sat at the head of the table, swore at the parson,
and sang obscene songs. It was not until the warrant of execution arrived at
the prison, when all bravado evaporated, and he became as abject as he had
before appeared hardened. John Rann the highwayman, better known as
Sixteen String Jack, had a farewell dinner-party after he was convicted, and
while awaiting execution: the company included seven girls; “all were
remarkable cheerful, nor was Rann less joyous than his companions.” Dick
Turpin made elaborate preparations for his execution; purchased a new suit
of fustian and a pair of pumps to wear at the gallows, and hired five poor
men at ten shillings per head, to follow his cart as mourners, providing them
with hat-bands and mourning-bands. Nathaniel Parkhurst who, when in the
Fleet for debtors, murdered a fellow-prisoner, demolished a roast fowl at
breakfast on the morning of his execution, and drank a pint of liquor with it.
Jerry Abershaw was persistently callous from first to last. Returning from
court across Kennington Common, he asked his conductors whether that
was the spot on which he was to be twisted? His last days in the condemned
cell he spent in drawing upon the walls with the juice of black cherries
designs of the various robberies he had committed on the road. Abershaw’s
sangfroid did not desert him on the last day. He appeared with his shirt
thrown open, a flower in his mouth, and all the way to the gallows carried
on an incessant conversation with friends who rode by his side, nodding to
others he recognized in the crowd, which was immense.[125] Still more
awful was the conduct of Hannah Dagoe, a herculanean Irish woman, who
plied the trade of porter at Covent Garden. In Newgate while under
sentence she was most defiant. She was the terror of her fellow-prisoners,
and actually stabbed a man who had given evidence against her. When the
cart was drawn in under the gallows she got her arms loose, seized the
executioner, struggled with him, and gave him so violent a blow on the
chest that she nearly knocked him down. She dared him to hang her, and
tearing off her hat, cloak, and other garments, the hangman’s perquisites,
distributed them among the crowd in spite of him. After a long struggle he
got the rope around her neck. This accomplished, she drew her neckerchief
from round her head over her face, and threw herself out of the cart before
the signal was given with such violence that she broke her neck and died
instantly. Many ancient customs long retained tended to make them more
hardened. Chief among these was the offer of strong drink by the way.

When the gallows stood at St. Giles it was the rule to offer malefactors
about to be hanged a great bowl of ale, “as the last refreshment they were to
receive in this life.” This drink was long known as the “St. Giles’ Bowl.”
The practice of giving drink was pretty general for years later and in many
parts of the country. In Yorkshire at Bawtry, so the story runs, a saddler was
on his way to be hanged. The bowl was brought out, but he refused it and
went on to his death. Meanwhile his reprieve was actually on the road, and
had he lingered to drink time sufficient would have been gained to save
him. Hence came the saying that “the saddler of Bawtry was hanged for
leaving his ale.” Other convicts are mentioned in an uncomplimentary
manner because they dared to smoke on their road to the gallows. “Some
mad knaves took tobacco all the way as they went to be hanged at Tyburn.”
This was in 1598, when the use of the weed introduced by Sir Walter
Raleigh was still somewhat rare. A hundred years later the misbehaviour
was in “impudently calling for sack” and drinking King James’ health; after
which the convicts affronted the Ordinary at the gallows, and refused his
assistance.
There were few who behaved with the decency and self-possession of
Lord Ferrers, who went to his shameful death in a suit of white and silver,
that, it was said, in which he had been married. He himself provided the
white cap to be pulled over his face, and the black silk handkerchief with
which his arms were to be bound. His last words were, “Am I right?” and
immediately the drop fell. In his case there had been an unseemly wrangle
upon the gallows between the executioner and his assistant. Lord Ferrers
had given the latter, in mistake for his chief, a fee of five guineas, which the
head executioner claimed, and the assistant would not readily surrender.
Some were in abject terror till the last act commenced. Thus John Ayliffe, a
forger, was in the utmost agonies the night preceding his execution; his
agitation producing an intolerable thirst, which he vainly sought to allay by
copious draughts of water. Yet his composure quite returned on his road to
Tyburn, and he “behaved with decency at the fatal tree.” It was just the
reverse with Mrs. Meteyard, who with her daughter murdered a parish
apprentice. She was in a fit when put into the cart, and she continued
insensible all the way to Tyburn. Great efforts were made to restore her, but
without avail, and she was in an unconscious state when hanged.
It may be questioned whether that close attention was paid to the
spiritual needs of the condemned which is considered indispensable in these

more humane days. No doubt many rejected the offers of the ordinary,
refusing to attend chapel, pretending to belong to out-of-the-way
persuasions, and still declining the ministrations of clergymen of any creed;
others pretended, like Dean Swift’s Tom Clinch, that they went off with a
clear conscience and a calm spirit,
“Without prayer-book or psalm.”

But very probably this indifference to the ordinary and his ghostly counsels
arose from a suspicion that he was not very earnest in what he said. The
Newgate ordinary, although a sound protestant, was a father confessor to all
criminals. Not the least profitable part of his emoluments came from the
sale of his account of the execution of convicts, a species of gaol calendar
which he compiled from information the condemned men themselves
supplied. That the ordinary attached great value to this production is clear
from the petition made by one of them, the Reverend Paul Lorraine, to the
House of Commons, that his pamphlet might be exempted from the tax
levied upon paper. Several of these accounts have been preserved, and I
have referred to them in my chapter, “The gaol calendar.” But it is easy to
understand that the ordinary might have been better employed than in
compiling these accounts, however interesting they may be, as illustrating
the crime of the last century. It is also pretty certain that, although,
doubtless, blameless and exemplary men, Newgate chaplains were not
always over-zealous in the discharge of their sacred office in regard to the
condemned. There were many grim jokes among the prisoners themselves
as to the value of the parson’s preaching. Thus in the Reverend Mr. Cotton’s
time as ordinary, convicts were said to go out of the world with their ears
stuffed full of cotton; and his interpretation of any particular passage in
Scripture was said to go in at one ear and out at the other.[126] Hence the
intrusion, which must have seemed to them unwarrantable, of dissenting
and other amateur preachers, of well-meaning enthusiasts, who devoted
themselves with unremitting vigour to the spiritual consolation of all
prisoners who would listen to them. It is impossible to speak otherwise than
most approvingly of the single-minded, self-sacrificing devotion of such
men as Silas Told, the forerunner of Howard, Mrs. Fry, the Gurneys, and
other estimable philanthropists. Nevertheless unseemly polemical wrangles
appeared to have been the result of this interference, which was better
meant than appreciated by the authorized clerical officer. Dr. Doran,

referring to the execution of James Sheppard (Jacobite Sheppard, not Jack),
gives an account of a conflict of this kind. “Sheppard’s dignity,” he says,
“was not even ruffled by the renewed combat in the cart of the Newgate
chaplain and the nonjuror. Each sought to comfort and confound the culprit
according to his way of thinking. Once more the messengers of peace got to
fisticuffs, but as they neared Tyburn the nonjuror kicked Paul[127] (the
ordinary) out of the cart, and kept by the side of Sheppard till the rope was
adjusted. There he boldly, as those Jacobite nonjurors were wont, gave the
passive lad absolution for the crime for which he was about to pay the
penalty; after which he jumped down to have a better view of the sorry
spectacle from the foremost ranks of spectators.”
It was no doubt on account of the insufficiency of the spiritual
consolations offered to the condemned that led old Richard Dove, or Dow,
to make his endowment for tolling the prisoner’s bell. He bequeathed fifty
pounds a year for ever, so Stowe tells us, with this philanthropic purpose.
When condemned prisoners were being “drawn to their executions at
Tyburn,” a man with a bell stood in the churchyard by St. Sepulchre’s, by
the wall next the street, “and so to put them in mind of their death
approaching.” Later on these verses took the form of exhortation, of which
the following is the substance—
“You prisoners that are within,
Who for wickedness and sin,

after many mercies shown you, you are now appointed to die to-morrow in
the forenoon: give ear and understand that to-morrow morning the greatest
bell of St. Sepulchre’s shall toll for you, in form and manner of a passing
bell, as used to be tolled for those who are at the point of death, to the end
that all godly people hearing that bell, and knowing it is for you going to
your death, may be stirred up heartily to pray to God to bestow His grace
and mercy upon you whilst you live. I beseech you, for Jesus Christ his
sake, to keep this night in watching and prayer for the salvation of your own
souls, whilst there is yet time and place for mercy: as knowing to-morrow
you must appear before the judgment-seat of your Creator, there to give an
account of all things done in this life, and to suffer eternal torments for your
sins, committed against Him, unless upon your hearty and unfeigned
repentance you find mercy, through the merits, death, and passion of your
only Mediator and Advocate, Jesus Christ, who now sits at the right hand of

God, to make intercession for as many of you as penitently return to Him.”
In addition to the foregoing there was an admonition pronounced to the
condemned criminals as they passed St. Sepulchre’s church wall on their
way to execution, which was to the following effect:—
“All good people pray heartily unto God for those poor sinners who are
now going to their death, for whom this great bell doth toll.
“You that are condemned to die, repent with lamentable tears; ask mercy
of the Lord for the salvation of your own souls, through the merits, death,
and passion of Jesus Christ, who now sits at the right hand of God, to make
intercession for as many of you as penitently return unto Him.
“Lord have mercy upon you,
Christ have mercy upon you.
Lord have mercy upon you,
Christ have mercy upon you.”

In times when scaffold and gallows were perpetually crowded, the
executioner was a prominent if not exactly a distinguished personage. The
office might not be honourable, but it was not without its uses, and the man
who filled it was an object of both interest and dread. In some countries the
dismal paraphernalia—axe, gibbet, or rack—have been carried by
aristocratic families on their arms:[128] in France the post of executioner was
long hereditary, regularly transmitted from father to son, for many
generations, and enjoyed eventually something of the credit vouchsafed to
all hereditary offices. With us the law’s finisher has never been held in great
esteem. He was on a par rather with the Roman carnifex, an odious official,
who was not suffered to live within the precincts of the city. The only man
who would condescend to the work was usually a condemned criminal,
pardoned for the very purpose. Derrick, one of the first names mentioned,
was sentenced to death, but pardoned by Lord Essex, whom he afterwards
executed. Next to him I find that one Bull acted as executioner about 1593.
Then came Gregory Brandon, the man who is generally supposed to have
decapitated Charles I., and who was commonly addressed by his Christian
name only. Through an error Brandon was advanced to the dignity of a
squire by Garter, king at arms, and succeeding executioners were generally
honoured with the same title. Brandon was followed by his son; young
Brandon by Squire Dun, who gave place in his turn to John Ketch, the
godfather of all modern hangmen.[129] Jack Ketch did not give entire

satisfaction. It is recorded in Luttrell that Ketch was dispossessed in favour
of Pascha Roose, a butcher, who served only a few months, when Ketch
was restored. After Ketch, John Price was the man, a pardoned malefactor,
who could not resist temptation, and was himself executed for murder by
some one else. Dennis, the hangman at the Lord George Gordon riots, had
also been sentenced to death for complicity, but obtained forgiveness on
condition that he should string up his former associates.
They did their work roughly, these early practitioners. Sometimes the
rope slipped, or the drop was insufficient, and the hangman had to add his
weight, assisted by that of zealous spectators, to the sufferer’s legs to effect
strangulation. Now and again the rope broke, and the convict had to be tied
up a second time. This happened with Captain Kidd, the notorious pirate,
who was perfectly conscious during the time which elapsed before he was
again tied up. The friends of another pirate, John Gow, were anxious to put
him out of his pain, and pulled his legs so hard, that the rope broke before
he was dead, necessitating the repetition of the whole ceremony. Even when
the operation had been successfully performed, the hanged man sometimes
cheated the gallows. There are several well-authenticated cases of
resuscitation after hanging, due doubtless to the rude and clumsy plan of
killing. To slide off a ladder or drop from a cart might and generally did
produce asphyxia, but there was no instantaneous fracture of the vertebral
column as in most executions of modern times. The earliest case on record
is that of Tiretta de Balsham, whom Henry III. pardoned in 1264 because
she had survived hanging. As she is said to have been suspended from one
morning till sunrise the following day, it is difficult to believe the story,
which was probably one of many mediæval impostures. Females, however,
appear to have had more such escapes than males. Dr. Plot[130] gives several
instances, one that of Anne Green, who in 1650 came to when in the hands
of the doctors for dissection; another of Mrs. Cope, hanged at Oxford in
1658, who was suspended for an unusually long period, and afterwards let
fall violently, yet she recovered, only to be more effectually hanged next
day. A third substantiated case was that of half-hanged Maggie Dickson,
who was hanged at Edinburgh in 1728, and whom the jolting of the cart in
which her body was removed from the gallows recovered. The jolting was
considered so infallible a recipe for bringing to, that it was generally
practised by an executed man’s friends in Ireland, where also the friends
were in the habit of holding up the convict by his waistband after he had

dropped, “so that the rope should not press upon his throat,” the sheriff
philanthropically pretending not to see.
Sir William Petty, the eminent surgeon in Queen Anne’s time, owed his
scientific fame to his having resuscitated a woman who had been hanged.
The body had been begged, as was the custom, for the anatomical lecture;
Petty finding symptoms of life, bled her, put her to bed with another
woman, and gave her spirits and other restoratives. She recovered,
whereupon the students subscribed to endow her with a small portion, and
she soon after married and lived for fifteen years. The case of half-hanged
Smith was about the date 1705. He was reprieved, but the reprieve arrived
after he had been strung up; he was taken down, bled, and brought to. Smith
afterwards described his sensations minutely. The weight of his body when
he first dropped caused him great pain; his “spirits” forced their way up to
his head and seemed to go out at his eyes with a great blaze of light, and
then all pain left him. But on his resuscitation the blood and “spirits”
forcing themselves into their proper channels gave him such intolerable
suffering “that he could have wished those hanged who cut him down.”
William Duell, hanged in 1740, was carried to Surgeon’s Hall, to be
anatomized; but as his body was being laid out, one of the servants who was
washing him perceived that he was still alive. A surgeon bled him, and in
two hours he was able to sit up in his chair. Later in the evening he was sent
back to Newgate, and his sentence changed to transportation. In 1767, a
man who had hanged for 28 minutes was operated on by a surgeon, who
made an incision into the wind-pipe. In less than six hours the hanged man
revived. It became a constant practice for a condemned man’s friends to
carry off the body directly it was cut down to the nearest surgeon’s, who at
once operated on it by bleeding, and so forth. The plan was occasionally but
rarely successful. It was tried with Dr. Dodd, who was promptly carried to
an undertaker’s in Tottenham Court Road and placed in a hot bath; but he
had been too well handed for recovery. A report was long current that
Fauntleroy the banker, who was executed for forgery, had been resuscitated,
but it was quite without foundation.
The Tyburn procession survived till towards the end of the eighteenth
century. It had many supporters, Dr. Johnson among the number. “Sir,” he
told Boswell, when Tyburn had been discontinued, “executions are intended
to draw spectators. If they do not draw spectators they do not answer their
purpose. The old method was most satisfactory to all parties: the public was

gratified by a procession, the criminal is supported by it. Why is all this to
be swept away?” The reason is given by the sheriffs for the year 1784, and
is convincing. In a pamphlet published that year it is set forth that the
procession to Tyburn was a hideous mockery on the law; the final scene had
lost its terrors; it taught no lesson of morality to the beholders, but tended to
the encouragement of vice. The day of execution was deemed a public
holiday, to which thousands thronged, many to gratify an unaccountable
curiosity, more to seize an opportunity for committing fresh crimes. “If we
take a view of the supposed solemnity from the time at which the criminal
leaves the prison to the last moment of his existence, it will be found to be a
period full of the most shocking and disgraceful circumstances. If the only
defect were the want of ceremony the minds of the spectators might be
supposed to be left in a state of indifference; but when they view the
meanness of the apparatus, the dirty cart and ragged harness, surrounded by
a sordid

The New Gallows in the Old Bailey.

assemblage of the lowest among the vulgar, their sentiments are inclined
more to ridicule than pity. The whole progress is attended with the same
effect. Numbers soon thicken into a crowd of followers, and then an
indecent levity is heard.” The crowd gathered as it went, the levity
increased, “till on reaching the fatal tree it became a riotous mob, and their
wantonness of speech broke forth in profane jokes, swearing, and

blasphemy.” The officers of the law were powerless to check the tumult; no
attention was paid to the convict’s dying speech—“an exhortation to shun a
vicious life, addressed to thieves actually engaged in picking pockets.” The
culprit’s prayers were interrupted, his demeanour if resigned was sneered at,
and only applauded when he went with brazen effrontery to his death.
“Thus,” says the pamphlet, “are all the ends of public justice defeated; all
the effects of example, the terrors of death, the shame of punishment, are all
lost.”
The evils it was hoped might be obviated “were public executions
conducted with becoming form and solemnity, if order were preserved and
every tendency to disturb it suppressed.” Hence the place of execution was
changed in 1784 from “Tyburn to the great area that has lately been opened
before Newgate.” The sheriffs were doubtful of their power to make
alterations, and consulted the judges, who gave it as their opinion that it was
within the sheriffs competence. “With this sanction, therefore,” the sheriffs
go on to say, “we have proceeded, and instead of carting the criminals
through the streets to Tyburn, the sentence of death is executed in the front
of Newgate, where upwards of five thousand persons may easily assemble;
here a temporary scaffold hung with black is erected, and no other persons
are permitted to ascend it than the necessary officers of justice, the
clergyman, and the criminal, and the crowd is kept at a proper distance.
During the whole time of the execution a funeral bell is tolled in Newgate,
and the prisoners are kept in the strictest order.
“We hope this alteration will produce many good effects to the public, to
the criminal, and to the prisoners in the gaol. The crowd of spectators will
probably be more orderly, because less numerous, and more subject to
control by being more confined; and also it will be free from the accession
of stragglers, whom a Tyburn procession usually gathers on its passage, and
who make the most wanton part of it. Add to this the sentiments which the
sight must naturally raise in the breast of every man when exhibited with
due solemnity; when the mind is allowed to fix its whole attention upon this
scene of awful ceremony, it will feel with becoming dread the pain of
disobedience and the terror of example. Nor will the effect of this change be
lost upon the criminal: his spirits will be composed by the decorum of the
place, and he may prepare his soul for its dissolution by calm meditation,
which he could not have exercised under the former noise and disorder; the
fearful may gather strength and the hardened yield to remorse from the awe

and reverence with which they view their fate. To those in confinement,
who feel the heavy hand of justice so near the walls, it must necessarily
become a useful lesson of duty and obedience, and a strong admonition to
repentance. Example ought from its very nature to be directed principally to
the wicked, that they who have most offended may feel most sensibly the
certain consequence of offending; in the present instance the application of
it is conformable to its original design and to the first principles of justice. It
will be administered so as to amend the lives of those prisoners who may
escape the fate of their lost companion, and to make those fitter for it who
are doomed to suffer.”
I shall return to the subject of executions in the second volume, and shall
have to show that the horrors of executions were but little diminished by the
substitution of the Old Bailey as the scene. Seventy-four years were to
elapse before the wisdom of legislators and the good sense of the public
insisted that the extreme penalty of the law should be carried out in strictest
privacy within the walls of the gaol.

CHAPTER VII.

ESCAPES.

Escapes from Newgate mostly commonplace—Causes of escapes—Mediæval prison breaking—
Scheme of escape in a coffin—Other methods—Changing clothes—Setting fire to prison—
Connivance of keepers—Ordinary devices—Quarrying walls, taking up floors, cutting their fetters,
&c.—Jack Sheppard—His escapes from Newgate—His capture—Special instructions from
Secretary of State for his speedy trial and execution—Burnworth’s attempt—Joshua Dean—Daniel
Malden’s two escapes—His personal narrative and account of his recapture—Stratagem and
disguise—Female clothing—Mr. Barlow the Jacobite detected in a woman’s dress and taken to the
Old Bailey—General Forster’s escape—Mr. Pitt the governor suspended and suspected of
complicity—Brigadier Macintosh and fifteen other Jacobites escape—Some retaken—Mr. Ratcliffe
gets away—Again in trouble in the ’45 and executed.

ESCAPES from Newgate have been numerous enough, but except in a few
cases not particularly remarkable. They miss the extraordinary features of
celebrated evasions, such as those of Casanova Von Trenck and Latude. The
heroes of Newgate, too, were mostly commonplace criminals. There was
but little romance about their misdeeds, and they scarcely excite the
sympathy which we cannot deny to victims of tyrannical immured under the
Piombi or in the Bastille. They lacked aptitude, moreover, or perhaps
opportunity, to weave their stories into thrilling narratives, such as have
been preserved from the pens of more scholarly prisoners. Hence the
chronicle of Newgate is somewhat bald and uninteresting as regards
escapes. It rings the changes upon conventional stratagems and schemes.
All more or less bear testimony to the cunning and adroitness of the
prisoners, but all equally prove the keepers’ carelessness or cupidity. An
escape from prison argues always a want of precaution. This may come of
mere neglectfulness, or it may be bought at a price. Against bribery there
can be no protection, but long experience has established the watchful
supervision, which to-day avails more than bolts and bars and blocks of
stone. A prisoner can sooner win through a massive wall than elude a keen-
eyed warder’s care. Hence in all modern prison construction the old idea of
mere solidity has been abandoned, and reliance is placed rather upon the
upright intelligence of that which we may term the prison police. The
minute inspection of cells and other parts occupied by prisoners, the
examination of the prisoners themselves at uncertain times; above all, the

intimate acquaintance which those in authority should have of the
movements and doings of their charges at all seasons—these are the best
safeguards against escapes.
In early days attempts to break prison were generally rude and imperfect.
Now and again a rescue was accomplished by force, at risk, however, of a
levée of the citizens in vindication of the law. This was the case in 1439,
when Phillip Malpas and Robert Marshall, the sheriffs of London,
recovered a prisoner who had been snatched from their officers’ hands.[131]
Sometimes the escape followed a riotous upheaval of the inmates of
Newgate, as when two of the Percies and Lord Egremond were committed
to Newgate for an affray in the North Country between them and Lord
Salisbury’s sons. Soon after their committal these turbulent aristocrats
“broke out of prison and went to the king; the other prisoners took to the
leads of the gate, and defended it a long while against the sheriffs and all
their officers,” till eventually the aid of the citizens had to be called in. In
1520 a prisoner who was so weak and ill that he had to be let down out of
Newgate in a basket broke through the people in the Sessions Hall, and took
sanctuary in Grey Friars Church. The rest of the story, as told by Holinshed,
states that after staying six or seven days in the church, before the sheriffs
could speak with him, “because he would not abjure (the country) and ask a
crowner, with violence they took him hence, and cast him again into prison,
but the law served not to hang him.”
In the ‘Calendar of State Papers,’ under date 1593, there is a reference to
a more ingenious method of compassing the enlargement of a prisoner. The
scheme was to convey a living body out of Newgate in a coffin, instead of
the dead one for which it had been prepared. The prisoner was a member of
a congregation or secret conventicle, and the coffin had been made by
subscription of the whole society, at a cost of four-and-eightpence. The
State Papers give the examination of one Christopher Bowman, a
goldsmith, on the subject, but unfortunately gives few details as to the
meditated escape. The idea was to write a wrong name on the coffin-lid,
and no doubt to trust to a corrupt officer within the prison for the
substitution of the bodies. I find another curious but brief reference to
escapes in the State Papers about this date. It is the endorsement of “the
examination of Robert Bellamy, of the manner of his escape from Newgate,
from thence to Scotland, and then over to Hamburgh. His arrest in the
Palsgrave’s country, and his conveyance to Duke Casimir.”

As time passed the records become fuller, and there is more variety in
the operations of the prisoners in their efforts towards freedom. In 1663 a
man escaped by his wife changing clothes with him, and got into a hole
between two walls in Thomas Court; “but though he had a rug and food, yet
the night being wet he wanted beer, and peeping out, he was taken, is
brought back prisoner, and will, it is thought, be hanged.” Sometimes the
prisoners rose against their keepers, and tried to set the prison on fire,
hoping to get out during the confusion. This was repeatedly tried. In 1615,
for instance, and again in 1692, when the prison was actually alight; but the
fire was discovered just as certain of the prisoners were in the act of
breaking open the prison gates. Sometimes no violence was used, but the
prisoner walked off with the connivance of his keeper. This was what
occurred with Sir Nicholas Poyntz, who escaped between Newgate and the
King’s Bench, on the road to the latter prison, to which he was being
transferred. The references to this case throw some light upon the interior of
Newgate at the time (1623). Poyntz had been arrested for killing a man in a
street brawl. He had been committed first to the King’s Bench, whence on
pretence of his having excited a mutiny in that prison, he was transferred to
Newgate, and lodged in a dungeon without bed or light, and compelled to
lie in a coffin. All this he sets forth in a petition to the high and mighty
prince, George Duke of Buckingham, for whose use he paid the sum of
£500 to Sir Edward Villiers, and prays that he may have leave to sue out his
Habeas Corpus, or have back his money. No notice having been taken of
this appeal, he made shift for himself in the manner described. He was soon
afterwards retaken, as appears from other petitions from the under-sheriffs,
against whom actions had been commenced for allowing the escape.
Another somewhat similar case is reported in 1635, where the deputy-
keeper of Newgate, Edward James by name, was attached and committed to
the Fleet for allowing Edward Lunsford, a prisoner in his custody, to go at
large. Lunsford was concerned with Lewis and others in a foul attempt to
kill Sir Thomas Pelham on a Sunday going to church, and committed under
an order of the Star Chamber to Newgate, where he lay for a year. His
imprisonment was from time to time relaxed by James: first that he might
prosecute his suit to a gentlewoman worth £10,000; and afterwards on
account of the prosecutions against him in the Star Chamber; ultimately on
account of his lameness and sickness James gave him liberty for the
recovery of his health, and he was allowed to lodge out of prison, his father

being his surety, and promising that he should be produced when required.
But he abused this kindness, and instead of showing himself at regular
periods to the keeper, made off altogether. All this is stated in a petition
from James, who prays for enlargement on bail that he may pursue and
recapture Lunsford. “Lunsford is so lame that he can only go in a coach,
and though it is reported that he has been at Gravelines and Cologne, yet he
has been seen in town within ten days.” This petition, which is in the State
Papers, is underwritten that the Attorney-General be directed to prosecute
the petitioner in the Star Chamber, and upon it are Secretary Windebank’s
notes; to the effect that James had received a bribe of £14 to allow Lunsford
and his companions to go abroad without a warrant, and one of them to
escape. Various sentences were proposed. Lord Cottington suggested that
James should pay a fine of £1000 to the king, imprisonment during
pleasure, to be bound to good behaviour when he comes out, and
acknowledgments. Secretary Windebank added that he should be put from
his place; the Earl Marshall suggested standing with a paper in Westminster
Hall, and prosecution of the principal keeper; Archbishop Laud concluded
with whipping, and that the chief keeper should be sent for to the Council
Board.
The ordinary methods of attempting escape were common enough in
Newgate. Quarrying into the walls, breaking up floors, sawing through bars,
and picking locks were frequent devices to gain release. In 1679 several
prisoners picked out the stones of the prison walls, and seven who had been
committed to Newgate for burglary escaped. No part of the prison was safe
from attack, provided only the prisoners had leisure and were unobserved,
both of which were almost a matter of course. Now it is a hole through the
back of a chimney in a room occupied by the prisoner, now a hole through a
wall into a house adjoining the prison. Extraordinary perseverance is
displayed in dealing with uncompromising material. The meanest and
seemingly most insufficient weapons served. Bars are sawn through like
butter;[132] prisoners rid themselves of their irons as though they were old
rags; one man takes a bar out of the chapel window and gets away over the
house-tops; a gang working in association saw through eight bars, “each as
thick as a man’s wrist, leaving enough iron to keep the bars together, and
fitting up the notches with dirt and iron-rust to prevent discovery;” but they
are detected in time, and for proper security are all chained to the floor.
Another lot are discovered “working with large iron crows,” meaning to get

through the floor. On this occasion “a great lot of saws, files, pins, and other
tools” were found among the prisoners, plainly revealing the almost
inconceivable license and carelessness prevailing. Again, two men under
sentence of death found means to break out of Newgate “through walls six
feet in thickness.” They were brothers, and one of them being ill, he was out
of humanity removed from his cell to an upper room, where the other was
suffered to attend him. As they were both bricklayers by trade, they easily
worked through the wall in a night and so escaped. They were, however,
retaken and hanged. The ease with which irons are slipped is shown
repeatedly. One man having attempted to escape was as usual chained to the
floor, yet he managed to get himself loose from an iron collar in which his
neck was fastened and his hands extended. This man, when he got himself
disengaged from the floor, had the resolution to wring the collar from his
neck by fixing it between two of the bars of the gaol window, and thus by
main strength he broke it in two. Others cut through their handcuffs and
shackles two or three times running with the ease of the Davenport brothers
freeing themselves from bonds.
Jack Sheppard’s escapes from Newgate are historical, although much
embellished by the novelist’s art. Sheppard’s success was really marvellous,
but it may be explained to some extent by his indomitable pluck, his
ingenuity, and his personal activity. As he was still quite a lad when he was
hanged, he could have been barely twenty-two at the time of his escapes.
[133] He is described as of a lithe, spare figure and of great strength. From
his early apprenticeship to a carpenter he had much skill and knowledge in
the handling of tools. He first became celebrated as a prison-breaker by his
escapes from the St. Giles’ Round House and from the New Prison. His first
escape, from the condemned hold of Newgate, where he lay under sentence
of death, was more a proof of ingenuity than of prowess. The usual neglect
of proper precautions allowed two female visitors to have access to him and
to supply him with tools, probably a file and saw. With these he partly
divided a spike on the top of the hatch which led from the condemned hold.
Upon a second visit from his fair friends he broke off the spike, squeezed
his head and shoulders through the opening, the women then pulling him
through. How he got past the lodge where the turnkeys were carousing is
not recorded, but it was probably in female disguise. His second escape
following his recapture, and a second sentence of death, was much more
remarkable. It was, however, only rendered possible by the negligence of

his keepers. They visited him at dinner-time, and after a careful examination
of his irons, having satisfied themselves that he was quite secure, left him
for the day. Released thus from all surveillance, time was all that Sheppard
needed to effect his escape.
He had been chained to the floor by heavy irons, which were rivetted
into a staple fixed in the ground. Various fancy sketches exist of the means
of restraint employed, but none can be relied upon as accurate or authentic.
Some irons still in existence at Newgate may be akin to those by which
Sheppard was secured, but they are hardly the identical fetters. Sheppard
was also handcuffed. These he is said to have rid himself of by holding the
connecting chain firmly between his teeth, squeezing his fingers as small as
possible, and drawing the manacles off. “He next twisted the gyves,[134] the
heavy gyves, round and round, and partly by main strength, partly by a
dexterous, well-applied jerk, snapped asunder the central link by which they
were attached to the padlock.” He was now free to move about, but the
basils still confined his ancles, and he dragged at every step the long
connecting chain. He drew up the basils on his calf, and removing his
stockings used them to tie up the chains to his legs. He first attempted to
climb up the chimney, but his upward progress was impeded by an iron bar
that crossed the aperture. He descended, therefore, and from the outside
with a piece of his broken chain set to work to pick out the stones and
bricks so as to release the bar. This he accomplished and thus obtained an
implement about an inch square and nearly a yard long, which was of the
utmost service to him in his further operations. The room in which he had
been confined was a part of the so-called “castle”; above it was the “Red-
room,” and into this he effected an entrance by climbing the chimney and
making a fresh hole on the level of the floor above. In the “Red-room” he
found a rusty nail, with which he tried to pick the lock, but failing in this, he
wrenched off the plate that covered the bolt and forced the bolt back with
his fingers. This red-room door opened on to a dark passage leading to the
chapel. There was a door in it which he opened by making a hole in the wall
and pushing the bolt back, and so reached the chapel. Thence he got into an
entry between the chapel and the lower leads. “The door of this entry was
very strong,[135] and fastened with a great lock. What was worse, the night
had now overtaken him, and he was forced to work in the dark. However, in
half an hour, by the help of the great nail, the chapel spike, and the iron bar,
he forced off the box of the lock and opened the door, which led him to

another yet more difficult, for it was not only locked, but barred and bolted.
When he had tried in vain to make this lock and box give way he wrenched
the fillet from the main post of the door and the box and staples came off
with it.... There was yet another door betwixt him and the lower leads; but it
being bolted within side he opened it easily, and mounting to the top of it he
got over the wall and so to the upper leads.” All that remained for him to do
was to descend. There was a house adjoining, that of Mr. Bird, a turner, on
to which he might drop, but he deemed the leap too dangerous, and coolly
resolved to retrace his steps to the prison chamber, from whence he had so
laboriously issued, and secure his blanket. Having accomplished this risky
service, he returned to the leads, made fast his blanket, slid down it, entered
the turner’s house by a garret window, and eventually, after some delay and
no little danger of detection, got away down into the street.
Mr. Austin, the Newgate turnkey, who was specially in charge of
Sheppard, and who, on unbolting the castle strong room next morning
found that his prisoner was gone, was amazed beyond measure. The whole
of the prison warders ran up, and at sight of the cartloads of rubbish and
débris “stood like men deprived of their senses.” After their first surprise
they got their keys to open the neighbouring strong rooms, hoping that he
might not have got clean and entirely away. It was not difficult to follow his
track. Six great doors, one of which it was said had not been opened for
seven years, had been forced, and their massive locks, screws, and bolts lay
broken in pieces and scattered about the gaol. Last of all they came to the
blanket hanging pendant from the leads, and it was plain that Sheppard was
already far beyond pursuit.
It may be interesting to mention here that he was recaptured, mainly
through his own negligence and drunkenness, within a fortnight of his
escape. In the interval, after ridding himself of his irons, he had committed
several fresh robberies, the most successful being a burglary at a
pawnbroker’s, where he furnished himself with the fine suit, sword, and
snuff-box he possessed at the time of his arrest. “When he was brought back
to the jail,” says a contemporary account, “he was very drunk, carry’d
himself insolently, defy’d the keepers to hold him with all their irons, art,
and skill.” He was by this time quite a notorious personage. “Nothing
contributes so much to the entertainment of the town at present,” says
another journal of the time, “as the adventures of the house-breaker and
gaol-breaker, John Sheppard. ’Tis thought the keepers of Newgate have got

above £200 already by the crowds who daily flock to see him.” “On
Wednesday several noblemen visited him.” He sat for his portrait to Sir
James Thornhill, the eminent painter,[136] and the likeness was reproduced
in a mezzotint which had a large circulation. Seven different histories or
narratives of his adventures were published and illustrated with numerous
engravings. His importance was further increased by the special instructions
issued to the Attorney-General to bring him to immediate trial. A letter from
the Duke of Newcastle, then Secretary of State, is preserved in the
Hardwicke MSS., wherein that great official condescends to convey the
king’s commands to Sir Philip Yorke that Sheppard, having made two very
extraordinary escapes, and being a very dangerous person, should be
forthwith brought to trial, “to the end that execution may without delay be
awarded against him.” This letter is dated the 6th November; he was
arraigned on the 10th, found guilty, and sentenced the same day. His
execution took place on the 16th November, just one month after his
escape. He exhibited great coolness and effrontery during his trial. He told
the Court that if they would let his handcuffs be put on he by his art would
take them off before their faces. The most numerous crowds ever seen in
London paid testimony to his notoriety as he passed through the streets; and
Westminster Hall had not been so densely thronged in the memory of man
as at the time of his trial. No pains were spared to ensure his safe custody in
Newgate. He was chained to the floor in the condemned hold, and
constantly watched night and day by two guards. But up to the last
Sheppard entertained schemes for eluding justice. He had obtained a pen-
knife by some means or other, and he had intended to cut his cords while
actually in the cart going to Tyburn, throw himself in amongst the crowd at
a place called Little Turnstile, and run for his life through the narrow
passage along which the mounted officers could not follow him. But this
plan was nullified by the discovery of the knife on his person just before he
left Newgate. It is said that he had also hopes of resuscitation, and that
friends had agreed to cut him down promptly, and to apply the usual
restoratives. This scheme, if it had ever existed, was probably rendered
abortive by the proceedings of the mob after the execution.[137]
Sheppard had many imitators, but few equals. Possibly the ease with
which he broke prison led to an increase in precautions, and I can find no
other cases of evasion in Jack Sheppard’s manner. There are several
instances of attempted escapes by the reverse process, not over the walls,

but through them or along the sewers. Burnworth, while in Newgate in
1726,[138] projected a plan of escape. He got an iron crow, and assisted by
certain prisoners, pulled stones out of the walls, while others sung psalms to
put the turnkeys off their guard. Next day the officers came to remove five
convicts awaiting execution, but found the room so full of stones and
rubbish that some hours elapsed before the prisoners could be got out.
Burnworth made another but equally ineffective attempt next day. Joshua
Dean, capitally convicted in 1731 for counterfeiting stamps, formed a
design with seven other prisoners awaiting transportations to the plantations
to break gaol. They found means to get down into the common sewer no
doubt by taking up the floor. Thence four of them reached a vault under a
house in Fleet Lane, and so into the shop through which three got off, but
the fourth was secured and carried back to Newgate. The fate of two at least
of the remaining three was not known till long afterwards. In 1736, a certain
Daniel Malden, who had already escaped once, again got out of Newgate by
sawing his chains near the staple, by which they were fastened to the wall
of the condemned hold, and getting through the brickwork, dropped into the
common sewer. “Several persons were employed to search after him, but to
no purpose, though the chains about him weighed nearly a hundred
pounds.” Malden was not discovered, but the searchers came upon “the
bodies of two persons who had been smothered in trying to escape.” These
were no doubt two of those mentioned above. This method of evasion
continued to be practised till long afterwards. In 1785 two convicts cut a
hole in the floor of their cell, and got into the common sewer to make their
escape. “But wading till they were almost suffocated, they at length reached
the gully-hole, and calling for help, were taken out alive, but too weak to
walk, and carried to their former quarters.”
Daniel Malden, who twice, in 1735 and 1736, escaped from the
condemned hold in Newgate in a manner little less surprising, although less
notorious than Jack Sheppard, had been a man-of-war’s-man, and served in
several of her Majesty’s ships. After his discharge he took to burglary and
street-robberies, for which he was presently arrested and sentenced to suffer
death. While lying in the condemned hold, on the very morning of his
execution he effected his escape. A previous occupant of the same cell in
the condemned hold had told him that a certain plank was loose in the floor,
which he found to be true. Accordingly, between ten and eleven on the night
of October 21st, 1736, before execution, he began to work, and raised up

the plank with the foot of a stool that was in the cell. He soon made a hole
through the arch under the floor big enough for his body to pass through,
and so dropped into a cell below from which another convict had previously
escaped. The window-bar of this cell remained cut just as it had been left
after this last escape, and Malden easily climbed through with all his irons
still on him into the press-yard. When there he waited a bit, till, seeing “all
things quiet,” he pulled off his shoes and went softly up into the chapel,
where he observed a small breach in the wall. He enlarged it and so got into
the penthouse. Making his way through the penthouse he passed on to the
roof. At last, using his own words, “I got upon the top of the cells by the
ordinary’s house, having made my way from the top of the chapel upon the
roofs of the houses, and all round the chimneys of the cells over the
ordinary’s house”; from this he climbed along the roofs to that of an empty
house, and finding one of the garret windows open, entered it and passed
down three pairs of stairs into the kitchen, where he put on his shoes again,
“which I had made shift to carry in my hand all the way I came, and with
rags and pieces of my jacket wrapped my irons close to my legs as if I had
been gouty or lame; then I got out at the kitchen window, up one pair of
stairs into Phœnix Court, and from thence through the streets to my home in
Nightingale Lane.”
Here he lay till six a.m., then sent for a smith who knocked off his irons,
“and took them away with him for his pains.” Then he sent for his wife,
who came to him; but while they were at breakfast, hearing a noise in the
yard he made off, and took refuge at Mrs. Newman’s, “the sign of the
Blackboy, Millbank; there I was kept private and locked up four days alone
and no soul by myself.” Venturing out on the fifth day he heard they were in
pursuit of him, and again took refuge, this time in the house of a Mrs.
Franklin. From thence he despatched a shoemaker with a message to his
wife, and letters to two gentlemen in the city. But the messenger betrayed
him to the Newgate officers, and in about an hour “the house was beset. I
hid myself,” says Malden,[139] “behind the shutters in the yard, and my wife
was drinking tea in the house. The keepers seeing her, cried, ‘Your humble
servant, madam; where is your spouse?’ I heard them, and knowing I was
not safe, endeavoured to get over a wall, when some of them espyed me,
crying, ‘Here he is!’ upon which they immediately laid hold of me, carried
me back to Newgate, put me into the old condemned hold as the strongest
place, and stapled me down to the floor.”

Nothing daunted by this first failure he resolved to attempt a second
escape. A fellow-prisoner conveyed a knife to him, and on the night of June
6th, 1737, he began to saw the staple to which he was fastened in two. His
own story is worth quoting.
“I worked through it with much difficulty, and with one of my irons
wrenched it open and got it loose. Then I took down, with the assistance of
my knife, a stone in front of the seat in the corner of the condemned hold:
when I had got the stone down, I found there was a row of strong iron bars
under the seat through which I could not get, so I was obliged to work
under these bars and open a passage below them. To do this I had no tool
but my old knife, and in doing the work my nails were torn off the ends of
my fingers, and my hands were in a dreadful, miserable condition. At last I
opened a hole just big enough for me to squeeze through, and in I went
head foremost, but one of my legs, my irons being on, stuck very fast in the
hole, and by this leg I hung in the inside of the vault with my head
downward for half an hour or more. I thought I should be stifled in this sad
position, and was just going to call out for help when, turning myself up, I
happened to reach the bars. I took fast hold of them by one hand, and with
the other disengaged my leg to get it out of the hole.”
When clear he had still a drop of some thirty feet, and to break his fall he
fastened a piece of blanket he had about him to one of the bars, hoping to
lower himself down; but it broke, and he fell with much violence into a hole
under the vault, “my fetters causing me to fall very heavy, and here I stuck
for a considerable time.” This hole proved to be a funnel, “very narrow and
straight; I had torn my flesh in a terrible manner by the fall, but was forced
to tear myself much worse in squeezing through.” He stuck fast and could
not stir either backward or forward for more than half an hour. “But at last,
what with squeezing my body, tearing my flesh off my bones, and the
weight of my irons, which helped me a little here, I worked myself
through.”
The funnel communicated with the main sewer, in which, as well as he
could, he cleaned himself. “My shirt and breeches were torn in pieces, but I
washed them in the muddy water, and walked through the sewer as far as I
could, my irons being very heavy on me and incommoding me much.” Now
a new danger overtook him: his escape had been discovered and its
direction. Several of the Newgate runners had therefore been let into the
sewer to look for him. “And here,” he says, “I had been taken again had I

not found a hollow place in the side of the brick-work into which I crowded
myself, and they passed by me twice while I stood in that nook.” He
remained forty-eight hours in the sewer, but eventually got out in a yard
“against the pump in Town Ditch, behind Christ’s Hospital.” Once more he
narrowly escaped detection, for a woman in the yard saw and suspected him
to be after no good. However, he was suffered to go free, and got as far as
Little Britain, where he came across a friend who gave him a pot of beer
and procured a smith to knock off his fetters.
Malden’s adventures after this were very varied. He got first to Enfield,
when some friends subscribed forty-five shillings to buy him a suit of
clothes at Rag Fair. Thence he passed over to Flushing, where he was nearly
persuaded to take foreign service, but he refused and returned to England in
search of his wife. Finding her, the two wandered about the country taking
what work they could find. While at Canterbury, employed in the hop-
fields, he was

nearly discovered by a fellow who beat the drum in a
show, and who spoke of him openly as “a man who had
broken twice out of Newgate.” Next he turned jockey,
and while thus employed was betrayed by a man to
whom he had been kind. Malden was carried before the
Canterbury justices on suspicion of being the man who
had escaped from Newgate, and a communication sent to
the authorities of that prison. Mr. Akerman and two of
his officers came in person to identify the prisoner, and,
if the true Malden, to convey him back to London. But
Malden once more nearly gave his gaolers the slip. He Mr. Akerman.
obtained somehow an old saw, “a spike such as is used
for splicing ropes, a piece of an old sword jagged and
notched, and an old knife.” These he concealed rather imprudently upon his
person, where they were seen and taken from him, otherwise Mr. Akerman,
as Malden told him, “would have been like to have come upon a Canterbury
story” instead of the missing prisoner. However, the Newgate officers
secured Malden effectually, and brought him to London on the 26th
September, 1736, which he reached “guarded by about thirty or forty
horsemen, the roads all the way being lined with spectators.” “Thus was I
got to London,” he says in his last dying confession, “handcuffed, and my
legs chained under the horse’s belly; I got to Newgate that Sunday evening
about five o’clock, and rid quite up into the lodge, where I was taken off my
horse, then was conveyed up to the old condemned hole, handcuffed and
chained to the floor.”
On Friday the 15th October, the last day of sessions, Malden was called
into Court and informed that his former judgment of death must be
executed upon him, and he was accordingly hanged upon the 2nd
November following.
Stratagem and disguise in some shape or other were, however, the most
favourite and generally the most successful forms of escape. Extraordinary
and quite culpable facilities for changing clothes were given by the lax
discipline of the prison. The substitution of persons, devoted wife or friend,
taking the place of the accused, as in the story of Sydney Carton, as told by
Dickens, or the well-known exchange between Lord and Lady Nithsdale,
occurred too at Newgate. George Flint, an imprisoned journalist, who
continued to edit his objectionable periodical from the prison, got away in

the costume of a footman. His wife was suffered to live with him, and
helped him to the disguise. She concealed the escape for two or three days,
pretending that her husband was dangerously ill in bed, “and not fit to be
disturbed;” for which fidelity to her husband, who was now beyond the
seas, having made the most of the time thus gained, Mrs. Flint was cast into
the condemned hold, and “used after a most barbarous manner to extort a
confession.” Another very similar and unsuccessful case was that of
Alexander Scott, a highwayman suspected of robbing the Worcester and
Portsmouth mails. Scott attempted to get out in the “habit” of an oyster-
woman, whom his wife had persuaded to favour their design. The change
was made, and the lodge bell rung to give egress to Scott. Unfortunately for
the prisoner the gate-keeper was dilatory. Meanwhile, an assistant turnkey,
missing Scott, conjectured that he had escaped, and seeing the oyster-
woman standing at the gate began to question her, and insisted upon
looking at her face. Scott being at once detected, he struck the turnkey a
blow in the face, hoping to knock him down. A scuffle ensued, the turnkey
proved the strongest, and Scott was secured.
Female disguise was one of the many methods employed to compass
escape by the imprisoned Jacobites after the ’15, but not always
successfully. Mr. Barlow of Burton Hall tried it among others. In the first
instance a crazy woman, Elizabeth Powell, well known in Westminster
Market, came to Mr. Barlow with a whole suit of female apparel, but “he,
fearing it might be a trick, or that he might fail in the attempt, discovered
her.” A week or two later, as if inspired by the proposal, Mr. Barlow did
make the attempt. Close shaved and neatly dressed in female clothes, he
came to the gate with a crowd of ladies who had been visiting their Jacobite
friends, hoping to pass out unobserved with the others. But the turnkey—
escapes had been very frequent, and all officials were on the alert—caught
hold of him, turned him about, and in the struggle threw him down. The rest
of the women cried out in a lamentable tone, “Don’t hurt the poor lady; she
is with child;” and some of them cried, “Oh, my dear mother!” whereupon
the turnkey, convinced he had to do with a lady, let him go. Mr. Barlow,
says the account, acted the part to the life. He was padded, his face was
painted red and white, and he would certainly have made his escape had not
Mr. Carleton Smith, one of the special commissioners appointed to ensure
the safe custody of the rebels, strictly examined the would-be fugitive and
detected his disguise. Mr. Barlow offered Smith ten guineas to let him go,

but instead of accepting the bribe, Mr. Smith carried his prisoner just as he
was, in female disguise, before the Court then sitting at the Old Bailey. Mr.
Barlow declared that the clothes had been brought him by his wife. “The
Court,” goes on the account, “was very well pleased to see him thus
metamorphosed, but ordered him to be put in heavy irons, and the clothes to
be kept as a testimony against him.”
The circumstances under which Mr. Pitt the governor of Newgate was
superseded in his functions have been described in a previous chapter. Mr.
Pitt was so strongly suspected of Jacobite leanings that he was tried for his
life. No doubt escapes were scandalously frequent during his régime, and it
is just possible that they were due to the governor’s complicity, although
Mr. Pitt was actually acquitted of the charge. More probably they owed
their success to the ingenuity of desperate men easily triumphing over the
prevailing carelessness of their keepers. The first escape which made a
considerable noise was that of Mr. Forster, commonly known as General
Forster, who headed the Northumbrian rising in 1715, and lost the battle of
Preston Pans. Mr. Forster was allowed considerable liberty, and lodged in
apartments in the keeper’s house. One afternoon, when Forster and another
were drinking French wine with Mr. Pitt, Mr. Forster sent his servant to
fetch a bottle of wine from his own stock to “make up the treat.” The
servant on pretence of going to the vault left the room. Being long away,
Mr. Forster pretended to be very angry, and followed him out of the room.
Meanwhile the servant had sent the governor’s black man, a species of
hybrid turnkey, down to the cellar for the wine, and had locked him up
there. The black thus disposed of, Forster’s servant returned and waited for
his master just outside Mr. Pitt’s parlour door. Being an adept at the
locksmith’s art as well as a smart intelligent fellow, the servant had
previously obtained an impression in clay of Mr. Pitt’s front door key, and
had manufactured a counterfeit key. Directly Mr. Forster appeared, the front
door was unlocked, master and servant passed through and went off
together, first taking care to lock the door on the outside and leave the key
in the lock to prevent their being readily pursued. Mr. Forster got to
Prittlewell in Essex by four o’clock next morning with two more horsemen
that had been waiting to attend them. From Prittlewell they hastened on to
Leigh, where a vessel was provided, in which they made a safe voyage to
France. “By this it appears,” says the chronicler, evidently a stout Whig,
“that Mr. Forster was much better skilled in contriving an escape than

leading an army, which shows the weakness of the Pretender and his
council, who put so great a trust in the hands of a person who was
altogether unfit for it, and never made other campaign than to hunt a fox
and drink down his companions.”
The next attempt was on a larger scale. It was planned by Brigadier
Macintosh, with whom were Mr. Wogan, two of the Delmehoys, Mr. James
Talbot, and the brigadier’s son, with several others, to the number of fifteen
in all. The prime mover was the brigadier, who, having “made a shift to get
off his irons, and coming down with them in his hand under his gown,
caused a servant to knock at the gaol door outside, himself sitting close by
it.” As soon as the door was opened he pushed out with great violence,
knocking down the turnkey and two or three of the sentinels. One of the
soldiers made a thrust at him with his bayonet; but the brigadier parried the
charge, seized the piece, unscrewed the bayonet, and “menaced it at the
breast of the soldier, who thereupon gave way and suffered him and
fourteen more to get into the street.” Eight of the fugitives were almost
immediately recaptured, but the other gentlemen got clean off. One of them
was Mr. James Talbot, who, unhappily, fell again into the hands of the
authorities. He was discovered by the chance gossip of a garrulous maid-
servant, who, chattering at an ale-house in Windmill Street, near the
Haymarket, said her master had a cousin come to see him who had the
whitest hands she ever saw in her life. This caused suspicion, and suspicion
brought discovery. A reward of £500 had been offered by proclamation for
the arrest of any fugitives, except the brigadier, who was valued at £1000,
and Talbot was given up.
The escapes did not end here. The next to get away was Mr. George
Budden, an upholsterer, who had a shop near Fleet Bridge, a Jacobite, but
not in the rebellion of ’15. He effected his escape at the time when Mr. Pitt
was himself a prisoner, suspected of collusion in the previous evasions. Mr.
Budden’s plan was simple. He was possessed of money, and had friends
who could help to convey him away could he but get out of Newgate. One
night as he sat drinking with the head turnkey, Mr. Budden purposely
insulted the officer grossly, and even went so far as to strike him. The
turnkey was furious, and carried off his prisoner to the lodge, there to be
heavily ironed, Mr. Budden trusting that either on the way there or back he
might contrive to escape. On reaching the lodge Mr. Budden apologised and
“made atonement to the good-natured keeper, who was a little mellower

than ordinary,” and was led back to his former apartment; on the way he
turned up the keeper’s heels and made off through the gate. Once outside,
Budden ran into Newgate Market, and thence by many windings and
turnings out of London, riding post haste seventy miles to the coast, and so
across to France.
There were other attempts, such as that of Mr. Robertson, who tried to
make off in a clergyman’s habit, but was discovered and stopped before he
had passed one of the doors; and of Mr. Ramsay, who escaped with the
crowd that came to hear the condemned sermon. Now and then there was
the concerted action of a number, as when the prisoners thronged about the
gates in order to make their escape; “and to promote the design the High
Church cobbler fought with one of the servants, which occasioned a great
disturbance and confusion.” Trouble, again, was only prevented by timely
warning that there was a design to convey large iron crows to the rebels, by
which they might beat open the gaol and escape. The most important and
about the last of the rebel escapes was that of Mr. Ratcliffe, brother of the
unfortunate Lord Derwentwater. This was effected so easily, indeed, with so
much cool impudence, that connivance must assuredly have been bought.
Mr. Ratcliffe seized his opportunity one day when he was paying a visit to
Captain Dalziel and others on the master’s side. At the gate he met by
previous agreement a “cane-jobber,” or person who sold walking-sticks, and
who had once been an inmate of Newgate himself. Mr. Ratcliffe paused for
a time and bargained for a cane, after which he passed under the iron chain
at the gate, and upon the cane-seller’s saying that he was no prisoner, the
turnkey and guard suffered Ratcliffe to get off. The author of the ‘History of
the Press-Yard’ says that Mr. Ratcliffe bribed the officer, “which,” as
another writer adds, “must be owned to be the readiest way to turn both
lock and key.”
Mr. Ratcliffe, thirty years later, paid the penalty to the law which he had
escaped on this occasion. A warm adherent of the Pretender, he embarked
from France for Scotland to take part in the Jacobite rising in 1745. The
French ship was captured, and Ratcliffe sent as a prisoner to the Tower. He
was presently arraigned at the Bar of the King’s Bench for having escaped
from Newgate in 1716, when under sentence of death for high treason.
Ratcliffe at first refused to plead, declaring that he was a subject of the
French king, and that the court had no jurisdiction over him. Then he denied
that he was the person named in the record produced in court, whereupon

witnesses were called to prove that he was Charles Ratcliffe. Two
Northumbrian men identified him as the leader of five hundred of the Earl
of Derwentwater’s men, remembering him by the scar on his face. They had
been to see him in the Tower, and could swear to him; but could not swear
that he was the same Charles Ratcliffe who had escaped from Newgate
prison. A barber who had been appointed “close shaver” to Newgate in
1715, and who attended the prison daily to shave all the rebel prisoners,
remembered Charles Ratcliffe, Esq., perfectly as the chum or companion of
Basil Hamilton, a reputed nephew of the Duke of Hamilton; but this barber,
when closely pressed, could not swear that the prisoner at the bar was the
very same Charles Ratcliffe whom he had shaved, and who had afterwards
escaped out of Newgate. No evidence indeed was forthcoming to positively
fix Mr. Ratcliffe’s identity; but “a gentleman” was called who deposed that
the prisoner had in the Tower declared himself to be the same Charles
Ratcliffe who was condemned in the year 1716, and had likewise told him,
the witness, that he had made his escape out of Newgate in mourning, with
a brown tye wig, when under sentence of death in that gaol. Upon this
evidence the judge summed up against the prisoner, the jury found a verdict
of guilty, and Ratcliffe was eventually beheaded on Tower Hill.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE GAOL CALENDAR.

Newgate Calendars—Their editors and publishers—All based on Sessions’ papers—Demand for this
literature fostered by prevalence of crime—Brief summary of state of crime in the first half of the
18th century—State of the Metropolis—Street robberies—Burglaries—Henry Fielding on the
increase of robbers—The Thieves’ Company—The Revolution Club—Firearms in the Law Courts
—Causes of the increase of crime—Drunkenness—The Gin Act—Gaming universal—Faro’s
daughters—Lotteries—Repression of crime limited to hanging—No police—The Charlies or
watchmen—Civil power lethargic—Efforts made by private societies for reformation of manners—
Character of crimes—Murders, duels, and affrays—Richard Savage, the poet, in Newgate for
murder—Major Oneby for murder, commits suicide—Marquis de Paleoti for murdering his man-
servant—Colonel Charteris for rape, sentenced to death, but pardoned—Crime in high place—The
Earl of Macclesfield, Lord Chancellor, convicted of venal practices—Embezzlement by public
officials—Crimes more commonplace, but more atrocious—Murder committed by Catherine
Hayes and her accomplices—She is burnt alive for petty treason—Sarah Malcolm the Temple
murderess—Other prominent and typical murders—Jack Ketch hanged for murder—Wife
murderers, Houssart, Vincent Davis, George Price, Edward Joines, John Williamson—Theodore
Gardelle, the murderer of Mrs. King—Two female murderers—Mrs. Meteyard—Her cruelty to a
parish apprentice—Elizabeth Brownrigg beats Mary Clifford to death.

PRISON calendars obviously reflect the criminal features of the age in which
they appear. Those of Newgate since the beginning of the eighteenth
century are numerous and voluminous enough to form a literature of their
own. To the diligence of lawyers and publishers we owe a more or less
complete collection of the most remarkable cases as they occurred. These
volumes have been published under various titles. The ‘Newgate Calendar,’
compiled by Messrs. Knapp and Baldwin, attorneys-at-law, is one of the
best known. This work, according to its title-page, professes to contain
“interesting memoirs of notorious characters who have been convicted of
outrages on the law of England; with essays on crimes and punishments and
the last exclamations of sufferers.” There are many editions of it. The first I
think was published by Nuttall, Fisher, and Dixon, of Liverpool; a later
edition issues from the Albion Press, Ivy Lane, London, under the auspices
of J. Robins and Co. But another book of similar character had as its
compiler “George Theodore Wilkinson, Esq.,” barrister-at-law. It was
published by Cornish and Co. in 1814, and the work was continued by
“William Jackson, Esq.,” another barrister, with Alexander Hogg, of
Paternoster Row, and by Offor and Sons of Tower Hill as publishers. Early

and perfect editions of these works are somewhat rare and curious, fondly
sought out and carefully treasured by the bibliophile. But all of them were
anticipated by the editors of the ‘Tyburn Calendar,’ or ‘Malefactor’s Bloody
Register,’ which issued soon after 1700 from the printing office of G.
Swindells, at the appropriate address of Hanging Bridge, Manchester. The
compilers of these volumes claimed a high mission. They desired “to fully
display the regular progress from Virtue to Vice, interspersed with striking
reflections on the conduct of those unhappy wretches who have fallen a
sacrifice to the injured laws of their country. The whole tending to guard
young minds from allurements of vice and the paths that lead to
destruction.” Another early work is the ‘Chronicle of Tyburn, or Villainy
displayed in all its branches,’ which gave the authentic lives of notorious
malefactors, and was published at the Shakespeare’s Head in 1720. Yet
another dated 1776, and printed for J. Wenman of 144, Fleet Street, bears
the title of ‘The Annals of Newgate,’ and claims upon the title-page, that by
giving the circumstantial accounts of the lives, transactions, and trial of the
most notorious malefactors it is “calculated to expose the deformity of vice,
the infamy, and punishments naturally attending those who deviate from the
paths of virtue; and is intended as a beacon to warn the rising generation
against the temptations, the allurements, and the dangers of bad company.”
All Newgate calendars have seemingly a common origin. They are all
based primarily upon the Sessions’ Papers, the official publications which
record the proceedings at the Old Bailey. There is a complete early series of
these session papers in the Library of the British Museum, and another in
the Home Office from the year 1730, including the December sessions of
1729. The publisher, who is stated on the title-page to be “T. Payne, at the
corner of Ivy Lane, near Paternoster Row,” refers in his preface to an earlier
series, dating probably from the beginning of the century, and a manuscript
note in the margin of the first volume of the second series also speaks of a
preceding folio volume. These sessions papers did not issue from one
publisher. As the years pass the publication changes hands. Now it is “J.
Wilford, behind the Chapter House, St. Pauls”; now “I. Roberts at the
Oxford Arms in Warwick Lane.” Ere long “T. Applebee in Bolt Court, near
the Leg Tavern,” turns his attention to this interesting class of periodical
literature. He also published another set of semi-official documents, several
numbers of which are bound up with the sessions’ papers already
mentioned, and like them supplying important data for the compilation of

calendars. These were the accounts given by the ordinary of Newgate of the
behaviour, confessions, and dying words of the malefactors “executed at
Tyburn,” a report rendered by command of the Mayor and corporation, but
a private financial venture of the chaplains. As the ordinary had free access
to condemned convicts at all times, and from his peculiar duties generally
established the most confidential relations with them, he was in a position
to obtain much curious and often authentic information from the lips of the
doomed offenders. Hence the ordinary’s account contained many criminal
autobiographies, and probably was much patronized by the public. Its sale
was a part of the Reverend gentleman’s perquisites; and that the chaplains
looked closely after the returns may be gathered from the already
mentioned application made by the Rev. Mr. Loraine, chaplain in 1804, who
petitioned Parliament to exempt his “execution brochure” from the paper
tax.[140]
In the advertisement sheets of these sessions’ papers are notices of other
criminal publications proving how great was the demand for this kind of
literature. Thus in 1731 is announced ‘The History of Executions: being a
complete account of the thirteen malefactors executed at Tyburn for
robberies, price 4d.,’ and this publication is continued from year to year. In
1732 “T. Applebee and others” published at 3s. 6d. the ‘Lives of the most
Remarkable Criminals,’ a volume containing as a frontispiece the escape of
Jack Sheppard from Newgate. In the description of this book the public is
assured that the volume contains a first and faithful narration of each,
“without any additions of feigned or romantic adventures, calculated merely
to entertain the curiosity of the Reader.” Jack Sheppard had many
biographers. Seven accurate and authentic histories were published, all
purporting to give the true story of his surprising adventures, and
bequeathing a valuable legacy to the then unborn historical novelist, Mr.
Harrison Ainsworth. Again, Rich, the Manager of the Lincoln’s Inn Theatre,
brought out ‘Harlequin Jack Sheppard’ in the year of that desperado’s
execution, an operatic pantomime founded upon his exploits. A little before
this another dramatic performance, the ‘Beggars Opera,’ having a criminal
for its hero, had taken the town by storm; and many strongly and with
reason condemned the degradation of national taste which could popularize
the loves of ‘Polly Peachum’ and ‘Captain Macheath.’ Besides these books
and plays there was a constant publication of broad-sheets and chap-books
of a still lower type, intended to pander to the same unwholesome taste,

while a great novelist like Fielding did not hesitate to draw upon his
personal acquaintance with crime, obtained as a police magistrate, and write
the life of Jonathan Wild.
The demand was no doubt fostered by the extraordinary prevalence of
crime. Criminal records would probably be read with avidity at times when
ruffianism was in the ascendant, and offences of the most heinous
description were of daily occurrence. New crimes cropped up daily. The
whole country was a prey to lawlessness and disorder. Outrages of all kinds,
riots, robberies, murders, took place continually. None of the high-roads or
bye-roads were safe by night or day. Horsemen in the open country,
footpads in or near towns, laid wayfarers under contribution. Armed parties
ranged the rural districts attacking country houses in force, driving off cattle
and deer, and striking terror everywhere. The general turbulence often
broke out into open disturbance. The Riot Act, which was a product of these
times, was not passed before it was needed. Riots were frequent in town and
country. The mob was easily roused, as when it broke open the house of the
Provost Marshal Tooley in Holborn, “to whom they owed a grudge for
impressing men to sell as recruits to Flanders.”[141] “They burnt his
furniture in the street; many persons were killed and wounded in the
affray.”[142] Now political parties, inflamed with rancorous spirit, created
uproars in the “mug houses”; now mutinous soldiers violently protested
against the coarse linen of their “Hanover” shirts; again the idle flunkies at
a London theatre rose in revolt against new rules introduced by the
management and produced a serious riot.[143] In the country gangs of
ruffians disguised in female attire, the forerunners of Rebecca and her
daughter, ran a muck against turnpike gates, demolishing all they found.
There were smuggling riots, when armed crowds overpowered the custom’s
officers and broke into warehouses sealed by the Crown; corn riots at
periods of scarcity, when private granaries were forced and pillaged. A still
worse crime prevailed—that of arson. I find in ‘Hardwicke’s Life’ reference
to a proclamation offering a reward for the detection of those who sent
threatening letters “to diverse persons in the citys of London, Westminster,
Bristol, and Exeter, requiring them to deposit certain sums of money in
particular places, and threatening to sett fire to their houses, and to burn and
destroy them and their families in case of refusal, some of which threats
have accordingly been carried into execution.”[144] Other threats were to
murder unless a good sum were at once paid down. Thus Jepthah Big was

tried in 1729 for writing two letters, demanding in one eighty-five guineas,
in the other one hundred guineas from Nathaniel Newnham, “a fearful old
man,” and threatening to murder both him and his wife unless he got the
money. Jepthah Big was found guilty and sentenced to death.
The state of the metropolis was something frightful in the early decades
of the eighteenth century. Such was the reckless daring of evil-doers that
there was but little security for life and property. Wright, in his ‘Caricature
History of the Georges,’ says of this period, “robbery was carried on to an
extraordinary extent in the streets of London even by daylight.
Housebreaking was of frequent occurrence by night, and every road leading
to the metropolis was beset by bands of reckless highwaymen, who carried
their depredations into the very heart of the town. Respectable women
could not venture in the streets alone after nightfall, even in the city,
without risk of being grossly outraged.” In 1720 ladies going to Court were
escorted by servants armed with blunderbusses “to shoot at the rogues.”
Wright gives a detailed account of five-and-twenty robberies perpetrated
within three weeks in January and February of the year above mentioned. A
few of the most daring cases may be quoted. Three highwaymen stopped a
gentleman of the Prince’s household in Poland Street, and made the
watchman throw away his lantern and stand quietly by while they robbed
and ill-used their victim. Other highwaymen the same night fired at Colonel
Montague’s carriage as it passed along Frith Street Soho, because the
coachman refused to stand; and the Duchess of Montrose, coming from
Court in her chair, was stopped by highwaymen near Bond Street. The
mails going out and coming into London were seized and rifled. Post-boys,
stage-coaches, every-body and everything that travelled were attacked. A
great peer, the Duke of Chandos, was twice stopped during the period above
mentioned, but he and his servants were too strong for the villains, some of
whom they captured. People were robbed in Chelsea, in Cheapside, in
White Conduit Fields, in Denmark Street, St. Giles. Wade, in his ‘British
Chronology’, under the head of public calamities in 1729, classes with a
sickly season, perpetual storms, and incessant rains, the dangerous
condition of the cities of London and Westminster and their
neighbourhoods, which “proceeded from the number of footpads and street-
robbers, insomuch that there was no stirring out after dark for fear of
mischief. These ruffians knocked people down and wounded them before
they demanded their money.” Large rewards were offered for the

apprehension of these offenders. Thief-catchers and informers were
continually active, and the law did not hesitate to strike all upon whom it
could lay its hands. Yet crime still nourished and increased year after year.
The Englishman’s house, and proverbially his castle, was no more secure
then than now from burglarious inroads. House-breakers abounded,
working in gangs with consummate skill and patience, hand and glove with
servants past and present, associated with receivers, and especially with the
drivers of night coaches. Half the hackney coachmen about this time were
in league with thieves, being bribed by nocturnal depredators to wait about
when a robbery was imminent, and until it was completed. Then, seizing the
chance of watchmen being off their beat, these useful accomplices drove at
once to the receiver with the “swag.”
Towards the middle of the century, Henry Fielding, the great novelist,
and at that time acting magistrate for Westminster, wrote:[145] “I make no
doubt but that the streets of this town and the roads leading to it will shortly
be impassable without the utmost hazard; nor are we threatened with seeing
less dangerous groups of rogues amongst us than those which the Italians
call banditti....” Again, “If I am to be assaulted and pillaged and plundered,
if I can neither sleep in my own house, nor walk the streets, nor travel in
safety, is not my condition almost equally bad whether a licensed or an
unlicensed rogue, a dragoon or a robber be the person who assaults and
plunders me?” Those who set the law at defiance organized themselves into
gangs, and co-operated in crime. Fielding tells us in the same work that
nearly a hundred rogues were incorporated in one body, “have officers and
a treasury, and have reduced theft and robbery into a regular system.”
Among them were men who appeared in all disguises and mixed in all
companies. The members of the society were not only versed in every art of
cheating and thieving, but they were armed to evade the law, and if a
prisoner could not be rescued, a prosecutor could be bribed, or some “rotten
member of the law” forged a defence supported by false witnesses. This
must have been perpetuated, for I find another reference later to the Thieves
or Housebreaker’s Company which had regular books, kept clerks, opened
accounts with members, and duly divided the profits. According to the
confession of two of the gang who were executed on Kensington Common,
they declared that their profits amounted on an average to £500 a year, and
that one of them had put by £2000 in the stocks, which before his trial he
made over to a friend to preserve it for his family. Another desperate gang,

Wade says, were so audacious that they went to the houses of the peace
officers, and made them beg pardon for endeavouring to do their duty, and
promise not to molest them. They went further, and even attacked and
wounded a “head borough” in St. John’s Street in about forty places, so that
many of the threatened officers had to “lie in Bridewell for safety.”
In Harris’s ‘Life of Lord Hardwicke’ is a letter from the solicitor to the
Treasury to Sir Philip Yorke, referring to “the gang of ruffians who are so
notorious for their robberies, and have lately murdered Thomas Bull in
Southwark, and wounded others. Their numbers daily increase, and now
become so formidable that constables are intimidated by their threats and
desperate behaviour from any endeavour to apprehend them.” One of these
ruffians was described in the proclamation offering rewards for their
apprehension as “above six feet high, black eyebrows, his teeth broke
before;” another had a large scar under his chin.
Still worse was the “Resolution Club,” a numerous gang, regularly
organized under stringent rules. It was one of their articles, that whoever
resisted or attempted to fly when stopped should be instantly cut down and
crippled. Any person who prosecuted, or appeared as evidence against a
member of the club, should be marked down for vengeance. The members
took an “infernal oath” to obey the rules, and if taken and sentenced to “die
mute.” Another instance of the lawlessness of the times is to be seen in the
desperate attack made by some forty ruffians on a watch-house in
Moorfields, where an accomplice was kept a prisoner. They were armed
with pistols, cutlasses, and other offensive weapons. The watchman was
wounded, the prisoner rescued. After this the assailants demolished the
watch-house, robbed the constables, “committed several unparalleled
outrages, and went off in triumph.” The gang was too numerous to be
quickly subdued, but most of the rioters were eventually apprehended, and
it is satisfactory to learn that they were sentenced to imprisonment in
Newgate for three, five, or seven years, according to the part they had
played.
The contempt of the majesty of the law was not limited to the lower and
dangerous classes. A gentleman’s maid-servant, having resisted the parish
officers who had a distress warrant upon the gentleman’s house for unpaid
rates, was committed by the magistrates to Newgate. “The gentleman,” by
name William Frankland, on learning what had happened, armed himself
with a brace of pistols, and went to the office where the justices were then

sitting, and asked which of them had dared to commit his servant to prison?
“Mr. Miller,” so runs the account, “smilingly replied, ‘I did,’ on which the
gentleman fired one of his pistols and shot Mr. Miller in the side, but it is
thought did not wound him mortally. He was instantly secured and
committed to Newgate.” At the following Old Bailey sessions, he was tried
under the Black Act, when he pleaded insanity. This did not avail him, and
although the jury in convicting him strongly recommended him to mercy he
was sentenced to death. Another case of still more flagrant contempt of
court may fitly be introduced here. At the trial of a woman named Housden
for coining at the Old Bailey in 1712, a man named Johnson, an ex-butcher
and highwayman by profession, came into court and desired to speak to her.
Mr. Spurling, the principal turnkey of Newgate, told him no person could be
permitted to speak to the prisoner, whereupon Johnson drew out a pistol and
shot Mr. Spurling dead upon the spot, the woman Housden loudly
applauding his act. The court did not easily recover from its consternation,
but presently the recorder suspended the trial of the woman for coining, and
as soon as an indictment could be prepared, Johnson was arraigned for the
murder, convicted, and then and there sentenced to death, the woman
Housden being also sentenced at the same time as an accessory before and
after the fact.
Various causes are given for this great prevalence of crime. The long and
impoverishing wars of the early years of the century, which saddled us with
the national debt, no doubt produced much distress, and drove thousands
who could not or would not find honest work, into evil ways. Manners
among the highest and the lowest were generally profligate. Innumerable
places of public diversion, ridottos, balls, masquerades, tea-gardens, and
wells, offered crowds a ready means for self-indulgence. Classes aped the
habits of the classes above their own, and the love of luxurious gratification
“reached to the dregs of the people,” says Fielding, “who, not being able by
the fruits of honest labour to support the state which they affect, they
disdain the wages to which their industry would entitle them, and
abandoning themselves to idleness, the more simple and poor-spirited
betake themselves to a state of starving and beggary, while those of more
art and courage become thieves, sharpers, and robbers.”
Drunkenness was another terrible vice, even then more rampant and
wildly excessive than in later years. While the aristocracy drank deep of
Burgundy and port, and every roaring blade disdained all heel-taps, the

masses fuddled and besotted themselves with gin. This last-named
pernicious fluid was as cheap as dirt. A gin-shop actually had on its sign the
notice, “Drunk for 1d.; dead drunk for 2d.; clean straw for nothing,” which
Hogarth introduced into his caricature of Gin Lane. No pencil could paint,
no pen describe the scenes of hideous debauchery hourly enacted in the
dens and purlieus of the town. Legislation was powerless to restrain the
popular craving. The Gin Act, passed in 1736 amidst the execrations of the
mob, which sought to vent its rage upon Sir Joseph Jekyll, the chief
promoter of the Bill, was generally evaded. The much-loved poisonous
spirit was still retailed under fictitious names, such as Sangree, Tow Row,
the Makeshift, and King Theodore of Corsica. It was prescribed as a
medicine for cholic to be taken two or three times a day. Numberless
tumults arose out of the prohibition to retail spirituous liquors, and so
openly was the law defied, that twelve thousand persons were convicted
within two years of having sold them illegally in London. Informers were
promptly bought off or intimidated, magistrates “through fear or
corruption” would not convict, and the Act was repealed in the hope that
more moderate duty and stricter enforcement of the law would benefit the
revenue and yet lessen consumption. The first was undoubtedly affected,
but hardly the latter. Fielding, writing nearly ten years after the repeal of the
Act, says that he has reason to believe that “gin is the principal sustenance
(if it may be so called) of more than a hundred thousand people in the
metropolis,” and he attributed to it most of the crimes committed by the
wretches with whom he had to deal. “The intoxicating draught itself
disqualifies them from any honest means to acquire it, at the same time that
it removes sense of fear and shame, and emboldens them to commit every
wicked and desperate enterprise.”
The passion for gaming, again, “the school in which most highwaymen
of great eminence have been bred,”[146] was a fruitful source of immoral
degeneracy. Every one gambled. In the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ for 1731
there is the following entry: “At night their majesties played for the benefit
of the groom porter, and the king (George II.) and queen each won several
hundreds, and the Duke of Grafton several thousands of pounds.” His
Majesty’s lieges followed his illustrious example, and all manner of games
of chance with cards or dice, such as hazard, Pharoah, basset, roly-poly,
were the universal diversion in clubs, public places, and private gatherings.
The law had thundered, but to no purpose, against “this destructive vice,”

inflicting fines on those who indulged in it, declaring securities won at play
void, with other penalties, yet gaming throve and flourished. It was fostered
and encouraged by innumerable hells, which the law in vain strove to put
down. Nightly raids were made upon them. In the same number of the
‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ as that just quoted it is recorded that “the High
Constable of Holborn searched a notorious gaming-house behind Gray’s Inn
Road; but the gamesters were fled, only the keeper was arrested and bound
over for £200.” Again, I find in Wade’s ‘Chronology’ that “Justice Fielding,
having received information of a rendezvous of gamesters in the Strand,
procured a strong party of the Guards, who seized forty-five of the tables,
which they broke to pieces, and carried the gamesters before the justice....
Under each of the broken tables were observed two iron rollers and two
private springs, which those who were in the secret could touch and stop the
turning whenever they had flats to deal with.” No wonder these
establishments throve. They were systematically organized, and
administered by duly appointed officers. There was the commissioner who
checked the week’s accounts and pocketed the takings; a director to
superintend the room; an operator to deal the cards, and four to five
croupiers, who watched the cards and gathered in the money of the Bank.
Besides these there were “puffs,” who had money given them to decoy
people to play; a clerk and a squib, who were spies upon the straight
dealings of the puffs; a flasher to swear how often the bank was stripped; a
dunner to recover sums lost; a waiter to snuff candles and fill in the wine;
and an attorney or “Newgate solicitor.” A flash captain was kept to fight
gentlemen who were peevish about losing their money at the door was a
porter, “generally a soldier of the foot guards,”[147] who admitted visitors
after satisfying himself that they were of the right sort. The porter had
aides-de-camp and assistants—an “orderly man,” who patrolled the street
and gave notice of the approaching constables; a “runner,” who watched for
the meetings of the justices and brought intelligence of the constables being
out; and a host of linkboys, coachmen, chairmen, drawers to assist, with
common-bail affidavit men, ruffians, bravos, and assassins for any odd job
that might turn up requiring physical strength.
As the years passed the vice grew in magnitude. Large fortunes were
made by the proprietors of gaming-houses, thanks to the methodized
employment of capital, embarked regularly as in any other trading
establishment, the invention of E. O. tables, and the introduction of the

“foreign games of roulet and rouge et noir. Little short of a million must
have been amassed in this way,”[148] individuals having acquired from
£10,000 to £100,000 a-piece. The number of establishments daily
multiplied. They were mounted regardless of expense. Open house

Faro’s Daughters.

was kept, and luxurious dinners laid for all comers. Merchants and bankers’
clerks entrusted with large sums were especially encouraged to attend. The
cost of entertainment in one house alone was £8000 for eight months, while
the total expenditure on all as much as £150,000 a year. The gambling-
house keepers, often prize-fighters originally, or partners admitted for their
skill in card-sharping or cogging dice, possessed such ample funds that they
laughed at legal prosecutions. Witnesses were suborned, officers of justice
bribed, informers intimidated. Armed ruffians and bludgeon men were
employed to barricade the houses and resist the civil power. Private
competed with public hells. Great ladies of fashion, holding their heads
high in the social world, made their drawing-rooms into gambling places,
into which young men of means were enticed and despoiled. This was
called “pidgeoning,” and probably originated the expression. The most
noted female gamesters were Lady Buckinghamshire, Lady Archer, Lady
Mount Edgecombe, a trio who had earned for themselves the soubriquet of
“Faro’s Daughters.” Their conduct came under severe reprehension of Lord
Kenyon, who, in summing up a gambling case, warned them that if they
came before him in connection with gambling transactions, “though they
should be the first ladies of the land,” they should certainly exhibit
themselves in the pillory. This well-merited threat was reproduced in

various caricatures of the day, under such heads as, “Ladies of Elevated
Rank”; “Faro’s Daughters, Beware!” “Discipline à la Kenyon.”
The Government itself was in a measure responsible for the diffusion of
the passion for gambling. The pernicious custom of public lotteries
practically legalized this baneful vice. State lotteries began in the reign of
Elizabeth, and existed down to 1826. They brought in a considerable
revenue, but they did infinite mischief by developing the rage for
speculation, which extended to the whole community. The rich could
purchase whole tickets, or “great goes”; for the more impecunious the
tickets were subdivided into “little goes.” Those who had no tickets at all
could still gamble at the lottery insurance offices by backing any particular
number to win. The demoralizition was widespread. It reached a climax in
the South Sea bubble, when thousands and thousands were first decoyed,
then cruelly deceived and beggared. But lotteries lingered on till the
Government at length awoke to the degradation of obtaining an income
from such a source.
While crime thus stalked rampant through the land, the law was nearly
powerless to grapple and check it. It had practically but one method of
repression—the wholesale removal of convicted offenders to another world.
Of prevention as we understand it our forefathers had but little idea. The
metropolis, with its ill-paved, dimly-lighted streets, was without police
protection beyond that afforded by a few feeble watchmen, the sorely-tried
and often nearly useless “Charlies.” The administration of justice was
defective; the justices had not sufficient powers; they were frequently “as
regardless of the law as ignorant of it,”[149] or else were defied by
pettifoggers and people with money in their pockets. “A mob of chairmen
or servants, or a gang of thieves, are almost too big for the civil authority to
repress;”[150] and the civil power generally, according to Fielding, was in a
lethargic state. Yet private enterprise had sought for some time past to
second the efforts of the State, and various societies for the reformation of
manners laboured hard, but scarcely with marked success, to reduce crime.
The first of these societies originated in the previous century by six private
gentlemen, whose hearts were moved by the dismal and desperate state of
the country “to engage in the difficult and dangerous enterprise;” and it was
soon strengthened by the addition of “persons of eminency in the law,
members of Parliament, justices of the peace, and considerable citizens of
London of known abilities and great integrity.” There was a second society

of about fifty persons, tradesmen, and others; and a third society of
constables, who met to consider how they might best discharge their oaths;
a fourth to give information; while other bodies of householders and
officers assisted in the great work. These in one year, that of 1724, had
prosecuted 2723 persons, and in the thirty-three years preceding 89,393;
while in the same period they had given away 400,000 good books.
However well meant and well directed were these efforts, it is to be feared
that they were of little avail in stemming the torrent of crime which long
continued to deluge the country, and which has far from abated even now.
The character of offences perpetrated will best be understood by passing
from the general to the particular, and briefly indicating the salient points of
a certain number of typical cases, all of which were in some way or other
connected with Newgate. Crime was confined to no one class; while the
lowest robbed with brutal violence, members of the highest stabbed and
murdered each other on flimsy pretences, or found funds for debauchery in
systematic and cleverly contrived frauds. Life was held very cheap in those
days. Every one with any pretensions carried a sword, and appealed to it on
the slightest excuse or

Back Premises of the Keeper's Apartment.

provocation. Murderous duels and affrays were of constant occurrence. So-
called affairs of honour could only be washed out in blood. Sometimes it
was a causeless quarrel in a club or coffee-house ending in a fatal
encounter. Richard Savage the poet was tried for his life for a murder of this
kind. In company with two friends, all three of them being the worse for
drink, he forced his way into a private room in Robinson’s coffee-house,
near Charing Cross, occupied by another party carousing. One of Savage’s
friends kicked down the table without provocation. “What do you mean by
that?” cried one side. “What do you mean?” cried the other. Swords were
drawn, and a fight ensued. Savage, who found himself in front of one
Sinclair, made several thrusts at his opponent, and ran him through the
body. Lights were put out, and Savage tried to escape, but was captured in a
back court. He and his associates were committed first to the gatehouse and
thence to Newgate. Three weeks later they were arraigned at the Old Bailey,
found guilty of murder, and cast for death.[151] The king’s pardon was,
however, obtained for Savage through the intercession of influential friends,
but contrary, it is said, to the expressed wish of his mother. Savage was the
illegitimate child of the Countess of Macclesfield, the fruit of a guilty

intrigue with Captain Richard Savage, afterwards Earl Rivers. Lady
Macclesfield was divorced, and subsequently married Lord Rivers; but she
conceived a violent hatred for the child, and only consented to settle an
annuity of £50 upon him when grown to man’s estate, under threat of
exposure in the first publication of Savage’s poems. Savage, after his
release from Newgate, retired into Wales, but he continued in very
distressed circumstances, and being arrested for debt, lingered out the
remainder of his days in Bristol Gaol.
The case of Major Oneby is still more typical of the times. He was a
military officer who had served in Marlbro’s wars, and not without
distinction, although enjoying an evil reputation as a duellist. When the
army lay in winter quarters at Bruges, he had been “out,” and had killed his
man; again in Jamaica he had wounded an adversary who presently died.
After the peace of Utrecht Major Oneby was placed on half pay, and to eke
out his narrow means he became a professional gambler, being seldom
without cards and dice in his pocket. He was soon known as a swaggerer
and a bully, with whom it was wisest not to quarrel. One night, however, he
was at play in the Castle Tavern in Drury Lane, when a Mr. Gower and he
fell out about a bet. Oneby threw a decanter at Gower, and Gower returned
the fire with a glass. Swords were drawn, but at the interposition of others
put up again. Gower was for making peace, but Oneby sullenly swore he
would have the other’s blood. When the party broke up he called Gower
into another room and shut the door. A clashing of swords was heard within,
the waiter broke open the door, and the company rushed in to find Oneby
holding up Gower with his left hand, having his sword in his right. Blood
was seen streaming through Gower’s waistcoat, and his sword lay upon the
floor. Some one said to Oneby, “You have killed him;” but the Major
replied, “No, I might have done it if I would, but I have only frightened
him,” adding, that if he had killed him in the heat of passion the law would
have been on his side. But his unfortunate adversary did actually die of his
wound the following day, whereupon Major Oneby was apprehended and
locked up in Newgate. He was tried the following month at the Old Bailey,
but the jury could not decide as to the exact measure of the Major’s guilt,
except that it was clear he had given the first provocation, while it was not
denied he had killed the deceased.
A special verdict was agreed to, and the case with its various points
referred to the twelve judges. The prisoner, who had hoped to escape with a

conviction for manslaughter, was remanded to Newgate, and remained there
in the State side without judgment for the space of two years. Becoming
impatient, he prayed the Court of King’s Bench that counsel might be heard
in his case, and he was accordingly brought into Court before the Lord
Chief Justice Raymond, when his counsel and those for the Crown were
fully heard. The Judge reserved his judgment till he had consulted his
eleven brethren; but the Major, elated at the ingenious arguments of his
lawyer, fully counted upon speedy release. On his way back to gaol he
entertained his friends at a handsome dinner given at the Crown and Anchor
Tavern.[152] He continued to carouse and live high in Newgate for several
months more, little doubting the result of the Judges’ conference. They met
after considerable delay in Sergeant’s Inn Hall, counsel was heard on both
sides, and the pleadings lasted a whole day. A friend called in the evening,
and told him when he was making merry over a bowl of punch that eleven
of the Judges had decided against him. This greatly alarmed him; next day
the keeper of Newgate (Mr. Akerman) came to put irons on him, unless he
was prepared to pay for a special keeper to occupy the same room. Oneby
was indignant, but helpless. He felt the ground slipping from under his feet,
and he was almost prepared for the judgment delivered in open court that he
had been guilty of murder, his threat that he would have Gower’s blood
having had great weight in his disfavour.
Oneby spent the days before execution in fruitless efforts to get relations
and friends to use their influence in obtaining him a pardon. But to the first
he was so overbearing that they would not visit him in Newgate, and the
latter, if he had any, would not stir a finger to help him. His last moments
seem to have been spent between laughing at the broad jokes of his personal
gaoler, who now never left him, one John Hooper, afterwards public
executioner,[153] and fits of rage against those who had deserted him in his
extremity. He was further exasperated by a letter from an undertaker in
Drury Lane, who, having heard that the Major was to die on the following
Monday, promised to perform the funeral “as cheap and in as decent a
manner as any man alive.” Another cause of annoyance was the publication
of a broad sheet, entitled ‘The Weight of Blood, or the Case of Major John
Oneby,’ the writer of which had visited the prisoner, ostensibly to offer to
suppress the publication, but really as an “interviewer” to obtain some
additional facts for his catch-penny pamphlet. The Major was so indignant
that he laid a trap for the author by inviting him to revisit Newgate,

promising himself the pleasure of thrashing him when he appeared, but the
man declined to be caught. On the Saturday night before execution Oneby,
learning that a petition had been presented and rejected, prepared to die. He
slept soundly till four in the morning, then calling for a glass of brandy and
writing materials, he wrote his will. It was brief, and to the following effect:
“Cousin Turvill, give Mr. Akerman, for the turnkey below stairs, half a
guinea, and Jack Hooper who waits in my room five shillings. The poor
devils have had a great deal of trouble with me since I have been here.”
After this he begged to be left to sleep; but a friend called about seven, the
Major cried feebly to his servant, “Philip, who is that?” and it was found
that he was bleeding to death from a deep gash in his wrist. He was dead
before a surgeon could be called in.
In these disastrous affrays both antagonists were armed. But reckless
roysterers and swaggering bobadils were easily provoked, and they did not
hesitate, in a moment of mad passion, to use their swords upon defenceless
men. Bailiffs and the lesser officers of justice were especially obnoxious to
these high-tempered bloods. I read in ‘Luttrell,’ under date Feb. 1698,
“Captain Dancy of the Guards killed a bailiff in Exeter Street, and is
committed to Newgate.” Again in 1705, “Captain Carlton, formerly a
Justice of the Peace for Middlesex, is committed to Newgate for running a
Marshal’s man through the body who endeavoured to arrest him on the
parade by the Horse Guards in St. James’ Park, of which wound it is
thought the man will die.” I can find no mention of the fate which overtook
these murderers; but the ‘Calendars’ contain a detailed account of another
murder of much the same kind, that perpetrated by the Marquis de Paleoti
upon his servant, John Niccolo, otherwise John the Italian, in 1718. The
Marquis had come to England to visit his sister, who had married the Duke
of Shrewsbury in Rome, and had launched out into a career of wild
extravagance. The Duchess had paid his debts several times, but at length
declined to assist him further. He was arrested and imprisoned, but his sister
privately procured his discharge. After his enlargement, being without
funds, the Marquis sent Niccolo to borrow what he could. But “the servant,
having met with frequent denials, declined going, at which the Marquis
drew his sword and killed him on the spot.”[154] The Marquis seems to have
hoped to have found sanctuary at the Bishop of Salisbury’s, to whose house
he repaired as soon as Niccolo’s body was found. But he was arrested there
after having behaved so rudely, that his sword, all bloody with gore, had to

be taken from him, and he was conveyed to Newgate. His defence was
weak, his guilt clear, and much to his surprise, he was sentenced to be
hanged. He declared that it was disgraceful “to put a nobleman to death like
a common malefactor for killing a servant;” but his plea availed little, and
he suffered at Tyburn five weeks after the murder. Forty years later an
English nobleman, Earl Ferrers, paid the same extreme penalty for
murdering his steward. His lordship was tried by his peers, and after
sentence until his execution was lodged in the Tower, and not in Newgate.
His case is sufficiently well known, and has already been briefly referred to.
Another aristocratic miscreant, whose crimes only fell short of murder,
was Colonel Francis Charteris. Well born, well educated, well introduced
into life, he joined the army under Marlborough in the Low Countries as a
cornet of horse, and soon became noted as a bold and dexterous gambler.
His greed and rapacity were unbounded; he lent money at usurious rates to
those whom he had already despoiled of large sums by foul play, and
having thus ruined many of his brother officers, he was brought to trial,
found guilty of disgraceful conduct, and sentenced by Court Martial to be
cashiered. On his way back to Scotland, by falsely swearing he had been
robbed at an inn, he swindled the landlord out of a large sum of money as
an indemnity, and does not seem to have been called to account for his
fraud. In spite of his antecedents, Charteris obtained a new commission
through powerful friends, and was soon advanced to the grade of Colonel.
Moving in the best society, he extended his gambling operations, and nearly
robbed the Duchess of Queensbury of £3000 by placing her near a mirror,
so that he could see all her cards. Escaping punishment for this he
continued his depredations till he acquired a considerable fortune and
several landed estates. Fate overtook him at last, and he became the victim
of his own profligacy. Long notorious as an unprincipled and systematic
seducer, by means of stratagems and bribes he effected the ruin of numbers,
but was at length arrested on a charge of criminal assault. He lay in
Newgate on the State side, lightly ironed, and enjoying the best of the
prison until the trial at the Old Bailey in Feb. 1730. He was convicted and
sentenced to die, but through the strenuous exertions of his son-in-law, the
Earl of Wemyss, obtained the king’s pardon. He died two years later,
miserably, in Edinburgh, whither he had retired after his release. He was
long remembered with obloquy. Dr. Arbuthnot, who wrote his epitaph, has
best depicted his detestable character, as a villain, “who with an inflexible

constancy and inimitable impunity of life persisted, in spite of age and
infirmity, in the practice of every human vice except prodigality and
hypocrisy, his insatiable avarice exempting him from the first, and his
matchless impudence from the latter, ... and who, having done every day of
his life something worthy of a gibbet, was once condemned to one for what
he had not done.” Dr. Arbuthnot appears from this to have dissented from
the verdict of the jury by which Charteris was tried.
In times of such general corruption it was not strange that a deplorable
laxity of morals should prevail as regards trusts, whether public or private.
Even a Lord Chancellor was found guilty of venal practices—the sale of
offices, and the misappropriation of funds lodged in the Chancery Court.
This was the twelfth Earl of Macclesfield,[155] who sought thus dishonestly
to mend his fortunes, impaired, it was said, by the South Sea Bubble
speculations. He was tried before his peers, found guilty, and declared for
ever incapable of sitting in Parliament, or of holding any office under the
Crown; and further sentenced to a fine of £30,000 with imprisonment in the
Tower until it was paid. Lord Macclesfield promptly paid his fine, which
was but a small part of the money he had amassed by his speculations, and
was discharged. “To the disgrace of the times in which he lived,” says the
biographer of Lord Hardwicke,[156] “the infamy with which he had been
thus covered debarred him neither from the favour of the great nor even
from that of his sovereign.”
Various cases of embezzlement by public officials previous to this are
mentioned by Luttrell. Frauds upon the Exchequer, and upon persons
holding Government annuities, were not infrequent. The first entry in
Luttrell is dated 1697, May, and is to the effect that “Mr. Marriott, an
underteller in the Exchequer, arrested for altering an Exchequer bill for £10
to £100, pleaded innocency, but is sent to Newgate”; others were
implicated, and a proclamation was issued offering a reward for the
apprehension of Domingo Autumes, a Portuguese, Robert Marriott, and
another for counterfeiting Exchequer bills. A little later another teller, Mr.
Darby, is sent to Newgate on a similar charge, and in that prison Mr.
Marriott “accuses John Knight, Esq., M.P., treasurer of customs, who is
displaced.” Marriott’s confession follows: “He met Mr. Burton and Mr.
Knight at Somerset House, where they arranged to get twenty per cent, by
making Exchequer bills specie bills; they offered Marriott £500 a year to
take all upon himself if discovered. It is thought greater people are in it to

destroy the credit of the nation.” Following this confession, bills were
brought into the House of Commons charging Burton, Knight, and
Duncombe with embezzlement, but “blanks are left for the House to insert
the punishment, which is to be either fine, imprisonment, or loss of estates.”
Knight was found guilty of endorsing Exchequer bills falsely, but not of
getting money thereby. Burton was found guilty; Duncombe’s name is not
mentioned, and Marriott was discharged. But this does not end the business.
In the May following “Mr. Ellers, master of an annuity office in the
Exchequer, was committed to Newgate for forging people’s hands to their
orders, and receiving a considerable sum of money thereon.” Again in
October, “Bellingham, an old offender, was convicted of felony in forging
Exchequer bills; and a Mrs. Butler, also for forging a bond of £20,000,
payable by the executors of Sir Robert Clayton six years after his death.”
Later on (1708) I find an entry in Luttrell that Justice Dyot, who was a
commissioner of the Stamp-office, was committed to Newgate for
counterfeiting stamps, which others whom he informed against distributed.
Of the same character as the foregoing was the offence of Mr. Lemon, a
clerk in the Pell office of the Exchequer, who received £300 in the name of
a gentlewoman deceased, and kept it, for which he was turned out of his
place. Other unfaithful public servants were to be found in other
departments. Robert Lowther, Esq., was taken into custody on the 25th
October, 1721, by order of the Privy Council, for his tyrannical and corrupt
administration when Governor of the Island of Barbadoes. Twenty years
later the House of Commons fly at still higher game, and commit the
Solicitor of the Treasury to Newgate for refusing to answer questions put to
him by the Secret Committee which sat to inquire into Sir Robert Walpole’s
administration. This official had been often charged with the Prime
Minister’s secret disbursements, and he was accused of being recklessly
profuse.
Returning to meaner and more commonplace offenders, I find in the
records full details of all manner of crimes. Murders the most atrocious and
bloodthirsty, robberies executed with great ingenuity and boldness by both
sexes, remarkable instances of swindling and successful frauds, early cases
of forgery, coining carried out with extensive ramifications, piracies upon
the high seas, long practised with strange immunity from reprisals. Perhaps
the most revolting murder ever perpetrated, not excepting those of later
date, was that in which Catherine Hayes assisted. The victim was her

husband, an unoffending, industrious man, whose life she made miserable,
boasting once indeed that she would think it no more sin to murder him
than to kill a dog. After a violent quarrel between them she persuaded a man
who lodged with them, named Billings, and who was either her lover or her
illegitimate son, to join her in an attempt upon Hayes. A new lodger, Wood,
arriving, it was necessary to make him a party to the plot, but he long
resisted Mrs. Hayes’ specious arguments, till she clenched them by
declaring that Hayes was an atheist and a murderer, whom it could be no
crime to kill, moreover that at his death she would become possessed of
£1500, which she would hand over to Wood. Wood at last yielded, and after
some discussion it was decided to do the dreadful deed while Hayes was in
his cups. After a long drinking bout, in which Hayes drank wine, probably
drugged, and the rest beer, the victim dragged himself to bed and fell on it
in a stupor. Billings now went in, and with a hatchet struck Hayes a violent
blow on the head and fractured his skull; then Wood gave the poor wretch,
as he was not quite dead, two other more blows and finished him. The next
job was to dispose of the murdered man’s remains. To evade identification
Catherine Hayes suggested that the head should be cut off, which Wood
effected with his pocket-knife. She then proposed to boil it, but this was
over-ruled, and the head was disposed of by the men, who threw it into the
Thames from a wharf near the Horseferry[157] at Westminster. They hoped
that the damning evidence would be carried off by the next tide, but it
remained floating near shore, and was picked up next day by a watchman,
and handed over to the parish officers, by whom, when washed and the hair
combed, it was placed on the top of a pole in the churchyard of St.
Margaret’s, Westminster. Having got rid of the head, the murderers next
dealt with the body, which they dismembered, and packed the parts into a
box. This was conveyed to Marylebone, where the pieces were taken out,
wrapped in an old blanket, and sunk in a pond.
Meanwhile the exposed head had been viewed by curious crowds, and at
last a Mr. Bennet, an organ-builder, saw a resemblance to the face of Hayes,
with whom he had been acquainted; another person, a journeyman tailor,
also recognized it, and inquiries were made of Catherine as to her husband.
At first she threw people off the scent by confessing that Hayes had killed a
man and absconded, but being questioned by several she told a different
story to each, and presently suspicion fell upon her. As it had come out that
Billings and Wood had been drinking with Hayes the last time he was seen,

they were included in the warrant, which was now issued for the
apprehension of the murderers. The woman was arrested by Mr. Justice
Lambert in person, who had “procured the assistance of two officers of the
Life Guards,” and Billings with her. One was committed to the Bridewell,
Tothill Fields, the other to the Gatehouse. Catherine’s conduct when
brought into the presence of her murdered husband’s head almost passes
belief. Taking the glass in which it had been preserved into her arms, she
cried, “It is my dear husband’s head,” and shed tears as she embraced it.
The surgeon having taken the head out of the case, she kissed it rapturously,
and begged to be indulged with a lock of his hair. Next day the trunk and
remains of the corpse were discovered at Marylebone without the head, and
the justices, nearly satisfied as to the guilt of Catherine Hayes, committed
her to Newgate. Wood was soon after captured, and on hearing that the
body had been found, confessed the whole crime. Billings shortly did the
same; but Mrs. Hayes obstinately refused to admit her guilt. This atrocious
creature was for the moment the centre of interest: numbers visited her in
Newgate, and sought to learn her reasons for committing so dreadful a
crime; but she gave different and evasive answers to all.
At her trial she pleaded hard to be exempted from the penalty of petty
treason,[158] which was at that time burning, alleging that she was not guilty
of striking the fatal blow. She was told the law must take its course. Billings
and Wood hoped they might not be hung in chains, but received no answer.
Wood actually died in prison before execution; Billings suffered at Tyburn,
and was hung in chains near the pond in Marylebone. Mrs. Hayes tried to
destroy herself, but failed, and was literally burnt alive.[159] The fire
reaching the hands of the hangman, he let go the rope by which she was to
have been strangled, and the flames slowly consumed her, as she pushed the
blazing faggots from her, and rent the air with her agonized cries. Hers,
which took place on 9th May, 1726, was not the last execution of its kind.
In November, 1750, Amy Hutchinson was burnt at Ely, after a conviction of
petty treason, having poisoned a husband newly married, whom she had
taken to spite a truant lover. In 1767, again, Ann Sowerly underwent the
same awful sentence at York. She also had poisoned her husband. Last of
all, on the 10th March, 1788, a woman was burnt before the debtors’ door
of Newgate. Having been tied to a stake and seated on a stool, the stool was
withdrawn and she was strangled. After that she was burnt. Her offence was

coining. In the following year an Act was passed (30 Geo. III., cap. 48)
which abolished this cruel custom of burning women for petty treason.
Sarah Malcolm was another female monster, a wholesale murderess,
whose case stands out as one of peculiar atrocity even in those bloodthirsty
times. She was employed as a laundress in the Temple, where she waited on
several gentlemen, and had also access in her capacity of charwoman to the
chambers occupied by an aged lady named Mrs. Duncombe.[160] Sarah’s
cupidity was excited by the chance sight of her mistress’s hoarded wealth,
both in silver plate and broad coins, and she resolved to become possessed
of it, hoping when enriched to gain a young man of her acquaintance named
Alexander as her husband. Mrs. Duncombe had two other servants,
Elizabeth Harrison, also aged, and a young maid named Ann Price, who
resided with her in the Temple. One day (Feb. 2, 1733) a friend coming to
call upon Mrs. Duncombe was unable to gain admittance. After some delay
the rooms were broken into, and their three occupants were found
barbarously murdered, the girl Price in the first room, with her throat cut
from ear to ear, her hair loose, hanging over her eyes, and her hands
clenched; in the next lay Elizabeth Harrison on a press bed, strangled; and
last of all, old Mrs. Duncombe, also lying across her bed, quite dead. The
strong box had been broken open and rifled.
That same night one of the barristers, returning to his chambers late,
found Sarah Malcolm there kindling a fire, and after remarking upon her
appearance at that strange hour, bade her begone, saying, that no person
acquainted with Mrs. Duncombe should be in his chambers till the murderer
was discovered. Before leaving she confessed to having stolen two of his
waistcoats, whereupon he called the watch and gave her into custody. After
her departure, assisted by a friend, the barrister made a thorough search of
his rooms, and in a cupboard came upon a lot of linen stained with blood,
also a silver tankard with blood upon the handle. The watchmen had
suffered Sarah to go at large, but she was forthwith rearrested; on searching
her, a green silk purse containing twenty-one counters was found upon her,
and she was committed to Newgate. There, on arrival, she sought to hire the
best accommodation, offering two or three guineas for a room upon the
Master Debtors’ side. Roger Johnston, a turnkey, upon this searched her,
and discovered “concealed under her hair,” no doubt in a species of a
chignon, “a bag containing twenty moidores, eighteen guineas, and a
number of other broad pieces.” This money she confessed had come from

Mrs. Duncombe; but she stoutly denied all complicity with the murder, or
that she had done more than contrive the robbery. She charged two brothers,
named Alexander, one of whom she desired to marry, and a woman, Mary
Tracy, with the greater crime. Upon her information they were arrested and
confronted with her. She persisted in this line of defence at her trial, but the
circumstantial evidence against her was so strong that the jury at once
found her guilty. She herself had but little hope of escape, and had been
heard to cry out on her first commitment, “I am a dead woman.” She was
duly executed at Tyburn. The Alexanders and Tracy were discharged.
I have specially instanced these foul murders as exhibiting circumstances
of atrocity rarely equalled in the records of crime. Catherine Hayes and
Sarah Malcolm were unsexed desperadoes, whose misdeeds throw into the
shade those of the Mannings and Kate Websters of later times. But women
had no monopoly of assassination, in those days when life was held so
cheap. Male murderers were still more numerous, and also more pitiless and
bloodthirsty. The calendars are replete with homicides, and to refer to them
in anything like detail would both weary and disgust the reader. I shall do
no more therefore than briefly indicate a certain number of the more
prominent cases remarkable either from the position of the criminals, the
ties by which they were bound to their victims, or the horrible character of
the crime.
The hangman figures among the murderers of this epoch. John Price,
who filled the office in 1718, and who rejoiced in the usual official
soubriquet of “Jack Ketch,” was a scoundrel rendered still more callous and
cruel by his dreadful calling. He had begun life well, as an apprentice, but
he absconded, and entering the navy, “served with credit on board different
king’s ships for eighteen years.” On his discharge, seeking employment, he
obtained the situation of public executioner. He might have lived decently
on the hangman’s wages and perquisites, but he was a spendthrift, who soon
became acquainted with the interiors of the debtors’ prisons for Middlesex.
Once he was arrested on his way back from Tyburn after a good day’s work,
having in his possession, besides fees, the complete suits of three men who
had just been executed. He gave up all this to liquidate the debt, but the
value being insufficient, he

Arresting the Hangman on a Charge of Murder on his way to Tyburn.

was lodged in the Marshalsea. When released, in due course he returned to
his old employment, but was soon arrested again, and on a serious charge—
that of a murderous assault upon a poor woman who sold gingerbread
through the streets. He had attempted to outrage her, and maddened by her
resistance, had ill-used her shamefully. “He beat her so cruelly,” the account
says, “that streams of blood issued from her eyes and mouth; he broke one
of her arms, knocked out some of her teeth, bruised her head in a most
shameful manner, and forced one of her eyes from the socket.”[161] One
account says that he was taken red-handed close to the scene of his guilt;
another, the more probable, that he was arrested on his way to Tyburn with
a convict for the gallows. In any case his unfortunate victim had just life left
in her to bear testimony against him. Price was committed to Newgate, and
tried for his life. His defence was, that in crossing Moorfields he found
something lying in his way, which he kicked and found to be the body of a
woman. He lifted her up, but she could not stand on her legs. The evidence
of others was too clear, and the jury did not hesitate to convict. After
sentence he abandoned himself to drink, and obstinately refused to confess.
But on the day before his execution he acknowledged that he had
committed the crime while in a state of intoxication. He was hanged in
Bunhill Fields, and his body afterwards exhibited in chains in Holloway
near the scene of the murder.
Wife-murder was of common occurrence in these reckless times. The
disgraceful state of the marriage laws, and the facility with which the

matrimonial knot could be tied, often tempted unscrupulous people to
commit bigamy.[162] Louis Houssart was of French extraction, settled in
England, who married Ann Rondeau at the French church in Spitalfields.
After about three years “he left his wife with disgust,” and going into the
city, passed himself off as a single man. Becoming acquainted with a Mrs.
Hern, he presently married her. He had not been long married before his
new wife taxed him with having another wife. He swore it was false, and
offered to take the sacrament upon it. She appeared satisfied, and begged
him to clear his reputation. “Do not be uneasy,” he said; “in a little time I
will make you sensible I have no other wife.” He now resolved to make
away with the first Mrs. Louis Houssart, otherwise Ann Rondeau, and
reopened communications with her. Finding her in ill-health, one day he
brought her “a medicine which had the appearance of conserve of roses,
which threw her into such severe convulsive fits that her life was despaired
of for some hours; but at length she recovered.” This attempt having failed,
he tried a simpler plan. Dressed in a white coat, with sword and cane, he
went one evening to the end of Swan Alley, where his wife lived with her
mother, and finding a boy, gave him a penny to go and tell Mrs. Rondeau
that a gentleman wanted to speak to her in a neighbouring public-house.
When she left the house Houssart went in, found his wife alone, and cut her
throat with a razor.
“Thus murdered she was found by her mother on her return, after
inquiring in vain for the gentleman who was said to be waiting for her.”
Suspicion fell on Houssart, who was arrested and tried, but for want of the
boy’s evidence acquitted of the murder. But he was detained in Newgate to
take his trial for bigamy. While waiting sentence the boy, a lad of thirteen,
who knew of the murder and arrest, and who thought he would be hanged if
he confessed that he had carried the message to Mrs. Rondeau, came
forward to give evidence. He was taken to Newgate into a room, and
identified Houssart at once among seven or eight others. The brother of the
deceased, Solomon Rondeau, as heir, now lodged an appeal, in the name of
John Doe and Richard Roe, against Houssart, who was eventually again
brought to trial. Various pleas were put forward by the defence in bar of
further proceedings, among others that there was no such persons as John
Doe and Richard Roe, but this plea, with the rest, was overruled, the fact
being sworn to that there was a John Doe in Middlesex, a weaver, also a
Richard Roe, who was a soldier, and the trial went on. The boy’s evidence

was very plain. He remembered Houssart distinctly, had seen him by the
light of a lantern at a butcher’s shop; he wore a whitish coat. The boy also
recognized Mrs. Rondeau as the woman to whom he gave the message.
Others swore to the white coat which Houssart had on; but the most
damning evidence was that of a friend whom he had summoned to see him
in Newgate, and whom he asked to swear that they had been drinking
together in Newgate Street at the time the murder was committed. The
prisoner, however, owned that he did give the boy a penny to call the old
woman out, and that he then went in and gave his wife “a touch with the
razor, but did not think of killing her.” Houssart offered this witness a new
shirt, a new suit of clothes, and twenty guineas to swear for him. The
prisoner was found guilty and hanged at the end of Swan yard in
Shoreditch, on Dec. 7, 1724.
Vincent Davis was another miscreant who murdered his wife, under
much the same conditions. He had long barbarously ill-used her; he kept a
small walking-cane on purpose to beat her with, and at last so frightened
her by his threats to kill her that she ran away from him. She returned one
night, but finding that he had put an open knife by the bedside, she placed
herself under the protection of the landlady, who advised her to swear the
peace against him and get him imprisoned. Next day the brutal husband
drove her out of the house, declaring she had no right to be in his company,
as he was married to “Little Jenny.” But she implored him to be friends, and
having followed him to an ale-house seeking reconciliation, he so slashed
her fingers with a knife that she came back with bleeding hands. That same
night, when his wife met him on his return home, he ordered her to light
him to his room, then drawing his knife, stabbed her in the breast. The poor
woman bled to death in half-an-hour. Davis after the deed was done was
seized with contrition, and when arrested and on his way to Newgate, he
told the peace officer that he had killed the best wife in the world. “I know I
shall be hanged,” he added; “but for God’s sake don’t let me be
anatomized.” This man is said to have assumed an air of bravado while he
lay under sentence of death, but his courage deserted him as the time for
execution approached. He had such a dread of falling into the hands of the
surgeons that he wrote to several friends begging them to rescue his body if
any attempt should be made at the gallows to remove it. He was hanged at
Tyburn on the 30th April, 1825; but the calendar does not state what
happened to his corpse.