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
[Illustration: MR. AKERMAN.]
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 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.