REMARKABLE 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 of fetters—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
and executed in 1745.
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
oppression immured under the Piombi of Venice or in the Bastile. 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. 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
asked a crowner, they took him hence, with violence, 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 the 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 in the year
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 his 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 had
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 £1,000 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 marshal 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 passage 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;[217:1] prisoners rid themselves of
their irons as though they were old rags; one man takes a bar out of
the chapel window, climbs through, 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 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 in succession 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 in 1724, he could have been barely twenty-two
at the time of his escapes. In the proclamation for his apprehension
after his second escape, he is described as about twenty-two years
of age, five feet four inches in height, very slender, of a pale
complexion, having an impediment or hesitation in his speech and
wearing a butcher's blue frock with a greatcoat over it; a carpenter
or house-joiner by trade. Twenty guineas reward was offered to any who
might discover or apprehend him. 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's 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. This escape 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 riveted
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. He is said to have rid himself
of these 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,[220:1] 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 ankles, 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,[221:1] 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 cart-loads 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 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 pendent 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 gaol," 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,[223:1] 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 largest 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 penknife 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.
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, 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, and Burnworth was still in durance. Joshua
Dean, capitally convicted in 1731 for counterfeiting stamps, formed
a design with seven other prisoners awaiting transportation 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 with which they were fastened to the wall of the condemned hold
and getting through the brickwork and dropping 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 successive years 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 on several of his 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 21, 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 o'clock, then sent for a smith, who knocked off
his irons, and took them away with him for his pains. Then he asked 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 Black-boy, 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, "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 6, 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 brickwork
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 was 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 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 of September,
1737, 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 2d
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, which occurred 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 gatekeeper 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 by the imprisoned
Jacobites to compass escape, but it was not always successful. Among
others Mr. Barlow of Burton Hall tried it. 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," says
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.
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 and 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
£1,000, 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 1715. 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 apologized 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. 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 tie 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[217:1] The most ingenious and painstaking attempt of this kind was
that made by some Thugs awaiting sentence in India, who sawed through
the bars of their prison with packthread smeared with oil and coated
with fine stone-dust.
[220:1] Taken from the text of Ainsworth's novel, which gives a clear
and picturesque account. It is also accurate, and based on the best
accounts extant.
[221:1] Quoted from the "Tyburn Calendar," the wording of which is
copied in all other accounts.
[223:1] The following stanzas were written at the time, and appeared in
the _British Journal_ of Nov. 28, 1724:
"Thornhill, 'tis thine to gild with fame
The obscure and raise the humble name;
To make the form elude the grave,
And Sheppard from oblivion save.
Tho' life in vain the wretch implores,
An exile on the farthest shores,
Thy pencil brings a kind reprieve,
And bids the dying robber live.
. . . . . . .
Apelles Alexander drew,
Cæsar is to Aurelius due,
Cromwell in Lilly's works doth shine,
And Sheppard, Thornhill, lives in thine."