FROM NEWGATE TO TYBURN.
LET us look at Newgate. This stern old pile of stones heaped upon
stones, grey and grim, the burden of whose sighs afflict the weary
skies above.
The strangest kind of a fascination hung over me as I looked at its
Gate, cut in the deep wall like the entrance to a rocky cave. The
spiked sill spoke of gibbets, the bars and locks and bolts of a felon
gang, who dragged their blind life away, day following day, for them
without hope, the outside world vacant, dumb and blank as the Ages, to
their crime begotten souls, whose only music was the clank of fetters
and the hoarse grating of iron hinges.
The building itself, covering half an acre, seemed sealed like a
sepulchre. There was nothing to be gotten out of it, one way or the
other. No one can have even looked at this terrible prison of Newgate
without a shudder of despair for his kind.
Only on certain recurring Black Mondays did it yawn like a grave in
the face of a great swearing mob, to put forth something into the
open in the shadow of St. Sepulchre's, that was half dead; to take
it back after an hour quite dead; and then it relapsed into its old,
inscrutable dumbness.
Now Gate of Ivory, now Gate of Horn--now a porch above which might be
inscribed the despairing legend of the Inferno, now a wicket at which
the charitable might tap gently, fraught with messages of mercy to the
fallen creatures within--the portal of Newgate could assume chameleon
hues, not always hopeless.
Next to the spikes of Newgate, the visitor must always mark for lasting
remembrance, the stones of Newgate doorsteps. They are not perhaps
more than eighty years old, but they look more worn than the jambs of
Temple bar--more decayed than the wheel windows of the Cloisters of
Westminster Abbey. They are ancient through use, and not through time.
The Hall of the Lost Footsteps at Versailles is but an empty name, but
the millions of footsteps that have worn Newgate stones, must make it
an abiding reality. Here have united all the crooked roads. Here have
fallen the last steps on the stones of the ford of the Black River.
Beyond the steps has loomed the City of Dis.
How many footsteps! how many!
Lord George Gordon, after the riots and burnings of 1780, wrecked and
crazy, totters feebly up Newgate steps to die in the prison which his
murderous associates had attempted to burn. Desperate Thistlewood,
fresh from the loft in Cato street, where his fellow conspirators were
dragged--reeking from the murder of Smithers, whose ghost followed him
to the gallows, is brought here heavily chained from the Tower Dungeon,
in which the ministry with frantic fear had at first immured him.
He and his gang will leave Newgate no more save by the Debtor's Door,
where the Man in the Mask--one of the few unsolved mysteries of the
Nineteenth century--will do his horrible office upon them and hold up
to the populace five severed heads, who at first shudder, but growing
hardened by the dripping sight of blood, will cry as the clumsy butcher
lets the last head fall--
"Hallo, butter-fingers!"
Down Newgate steps at dead of night, how many corpses of uncoffined
wretches have been borne in sacks, to be dissected at Old Surgeon's
Hall, over the narrow causeway which skirts the prison.
[Sidenote: EXECUTION OF BARRETT.]
The dread gaol keeps its secret better now. No grapnel hauls forth the
dishonored carcass of the dead criminal for exposition at the Gemonian
steps.
The place is doubly a Golgotha, and murder is buried on the spot where
it has been slain.
Here died brave hearted Michael Barrett, the victim of the last public
execution which will ever take place in Newgate, just three short years
ago. How the huge metropolis seethed and boiled like a world-cauldron
that day of days!
Condemned to die as a Fenian conspirator, he gave his life gallantly
for his native land, and in his last hour frightened England more than
a hundred living Barretts could have done.
I stood before Newgate with a member of the Old Jewry force who had
seen the execution of Barrett. From the fact that the government, after
that day, has prohibited any more public executions, his description of
the scene will be worthy of recounting to my readers. The detective was
a young man, and intelligent beyond his class. We were standing outside
of the prison gate.
The lane or street of the Old Bailey, which begins at Ludgate Hill,
one block below St. Paul's Cathedral, runs toward Newgate street,
parallel with Giltspur street which it enters, and forms before ending
a triangular space of about two acres square measurement. At the angle,
formed by the Holborn Viaduct, which ends here, (Giltspur street and
Newgate street,) is the old Church of St. Sepulchre. To the right and
behind us, we could just trace the ornamented and beautiful facade
of Christ Church Hospital. To our left and below us was the Sessions
Court in the Old Bailey, a place in some respects like the Tombs Court
and the Court of General Sessions in New York, were both courts to be
combined. I am thus particular in order to show my readers where and
how Michael Barrett, the last Newgate victim, died.
"Well, you see, Sir," said my Old Jewry friend to me, "the week as
Barrett wos hung wos a busy week with us. Up all night sometimes and
all day, searching the holes and corners and dark places of the city
for Fenians. We got information that they wos going to blow up St.
Pauls, one day--another day we hears that they had a plot to bust
hup the Bank of Hingland--then they were to burn down the Tower and
the 'Oss Guards, and then somebody told us that they meant to send
Westminster Habbey and Buckingham Palace sky high--and this way and
that way we wos worrited to death with hinformation. One night I
was detailed to St. Paul's to watch the crypts or vaults under the
Cathedral, where the Fenians intended to put a lot of gunpowder to blow
it hup. I staid there all night with some more of the men detailed,
and a precious cold job it wos, we hiding among the vaults snapping
our fingers and shivering like geese in a pond, and not a Fenian
within three miles of us. That wos a lark, and the newspapers laughed
at us, and had comic picters of us standing in the cold, for their
hedification."
"Another night we hexpected them to set fire to the 'Ouses of
Parlyment, and a blessed shame it would have been to have destroyed
sich a fine hedifice, and there I wos night after night, a-playing hide
and seek among the galleries and Towers of the 'Ouse, watching for
Fenians and hexpecting to get a stab in the back, and all the time I
wos wishing as how I could get relief, so as to get a pot o' beer in
the King's Arms in Parlyment street."
[Sidenote: DYING FOR AN IDEA.]
"Well, Sir, at last came the busting and blowing up of Clerkenwell
Prison, and a nice row that made all through England--and while the
fellows as did it walked off quite cooly--Barrett and a few more who
wos suspected, and who wos as I believe really hinnocent--of the
Clerkenwell affair--wos taken and tried right over here in the Sessions
Court (pointing with his hand over the wall of the Old Bailey Court),
and he stood up in the dock that day as he wos found guilty, and I must
say he was as brave a man as I ever saw--and defied the big wigs and
all on them, and said he was not afraid to die, and then he told them
that if it was twenty lives he would give it for "dear Ireland,"--thems
just the words he said, and although I don't like Fenians or Fenianism,
I must say for him that he was no more afraid than I was, that is if
you can judge from a man's face at such a hawful minute.
"The night afore his execution I was in his cell; I was let in by a
friend of mine the turnkey, and I spoke to him kindly, cos you see I
didn't feel exactly like as if he wos a man who had committed a common
murder or robbed for a living, cos why, you see, a lawyer told me as
how he was dying for an idea, like Russell or Hampden or some others of
them Big Guns.
"I sez to him:
"How do you feel Mr. Barrett?"
"I feel well, thank you said he;" one of the turnkeys wos watching him,
sitting up with him, and he had a light in his cell--he was ironed.
"They are putting up the scaffold," said he to me without a bit of fear.
"Yes, and I'm sorry for it," said I, "Mr. Barrett--is there anything I
can do for you."
"Nothing," says he, standing up and turning down the book which he was
reading, his chains clanking around his legs--"Nothing--but you see
me the night before I die--tell those who employed you that Michael
Barrett has made his peace with God--and is not afraid to die. Tell
them," and he commenced reciting poetry like, with his eyes on the
ceiling of his cell:
"Whither on the scaffold high
Or in the battle's van;
The fittest place for man to die
Is where he dies for man."
"Them's the lines as near as I can remember, for I saw them in a book
after, and that made me recollect them.
"During the night they were busy in putting up the scaffold, and three
or four thousand special constables were sworn in by the magistrates,
cos why, they were afraid that the Fenians would rescue Barrett, and I,
as well as every other man, wos armed with a six-barrelled revolver.
When the morning came there must have been a hundred thousand people
in the streets and all around here. Hundreds staid up all night to
get a chance for a good place to look at him, and there was more than
three thousand women, and as many children in the crowd around the
scaffold. The top of the scaffold, I mean the frame, was about twelve
feet above the street, and the platform was about six feet high, so
that hevery one was able to see him. Fifteen hundred police in uniform
were drawn hup around Newgate, and to prevent the crowds from pushing
or rescuing the prisoner, a barricade of trees was built at a distance
of two hundred feet from the scaffold hevery way. Five hundred police
in plain clothes were among the crowds armed with revolvers, and troops
were stationed at all the barracks in the city so as to be ready for
any attempt to save his life. The crowd Sir, was for all the world
like a surging sea, and people were buying and selling of histers, and
liquors, ginger beer, whelks, fruit and cigars, just the same as if
they were at a fair, and men and boys were crying ballads and singing,
and some of them were peddling Barrett's printed confession. Now you
see, Sir, that was a humbug, becos Barrett never made no confession,
but they sold just as well as if he had made one, at a penny a piece.
"Well, when St. Sepulchre's bell struck eight, which is always the
signal, they brought him ought, and although the air was cold and some
of us were shivering from standing up so long without anything to eat
or drink, he never trembled at all, but looked at every man and woman
of all that wos there with a smile, and a steady look.
"'He's a game un,' I heard many a man say, and our fellows who had
such hard work watching the Fenians by night and by day, had no hard
feelings agin the brave fellow then. The women around the scaffold
waved their handkerchiefs to him, you see, Sir, the women, bless them,
are always up to such blessed games, and there was some man in the
crowd when the rope was put around his neck, who wore a fur coat, and
seemed like an American, who cried out as loud as he could--
"Good heart--Michael Barrett--this day. All is not lost while one drop
of Irish blood remains."
[Sidenote: THE PESTIFEROUS PRISON.]
"I saw the man, and I made a jump for him with two of my pals, but the
crowd opened and let him pass through,--it seemed a purpose like, and
just then I heard a roar and a great convulsive sob, and the crowd
pushed this way and crushed that way, almost smothering me, and I
nearly fainted from the awful squeezing I got, and I picked up a little
girl from atween my feet, and when I looked up Barrett's body was a
swinging to and fro from a rope, and all was over, and believe me, Sir,
I was glad of it when it was over."
[Illustration: THE LAST EXECUTION AT NEWGATE.]
It was high noon when I arrived at Newgate, and my visit was paid
chiefly to that part of the prison devoted to the subsistence of the
prisoners. I passed through the corridors and passages, and door after
door, and hinge after hinge grated as I advanced with a companion. All
around the prison are the high walls of the neighboring buildings,
and attached to them are precipitous sheds with spikes to prevent the
escape of prisoners who may succeed in getting as far as the yard.
On top of the prison is a huge circular fan which revolves and gives
ventilation to the interior of the jail. This improvement was the
result of the labors of the great philanthropist John Howard.
In the old days Newgate was a hell upon earth. During the Eighteenth
century prisoners endured the tortures of the damned here. Jail birds
were shackled to the floor to prevent their escape, and mouldy bread
and stinking water was given them to drink until their stomachs loathed
the appearance of food. Their beds were of stinking straw, the rain
from the heavens dripped through the roof upon them, the frost and cold
eat into their bones; they festered in dirt, disease, and destitution,
till their limbs broke out in horrible blains, and ulcers and all kinds
of agues and dysenteries swept down upon them. Then in this terrible
state, after rotting for months awaiting a trial, they came into the
dock at the Old Bailey with the jail fevers upon them to slay with the
pestiferous miasma which exhaled from their bodies, judge, jury, and
pettifogging attorneys.
The prisoners were so crowded together in dark dungeons, that the air
becoming corrupted by the stench, occasioned a disease called the
"goal distemper," of which they died by dozens every day. Cartloads
of dead bodies were carried out of the prison and thrown in a pit in
the burying-ground of Christ's Church without ceremony. The effluvia
in the year 1750 was so horrible that it made a pestilence in the
whole district. Four judges who sat in the Session, a Lord Mayor,
several aldermen, and other civic dignitaries were carried off by the
distemper, together with a number of lawyers and jurors present at the
trials of Newgate criminals.
[Sidenote: GETTING WEAK IN THE BACK.]
Then at last the prison was cleansed, and a system of ventilation
introduced, which made some improvement in the condition of the
prisoners. Still, Newgate was a disgrace to Christendom, and
just one hundred years ago Parliament made a grant of £50,000 to
construct a prison. Beckford, author of Vathek, and then Lord Mayor
of London, laid the first stone. In 1780, Lord George Gordon, with
his No-Popery rioters, burned down that part of the prison which had
been constructed, and set at liberty three hundred of the prisoners
confined there. £40,000 in addition had to be granted before the
building was completed.
On an average there are between two and three hundred prisoners held in
durance in Newgate, and twelve sessions are held during the year at the
adjoining Old Bailey Court for their trial. This is called the Central
Criminal Court, and it is here, in this very court, that Jack Sheppard,
Dick Turpin, Claude Duval, Sixteen String Jack, Tom King, and all the
other heroes of the yellow covered literature, were tried, condemned,
taken in fetters to Newgate, and from thence to Tyburn Tree to hang by
the neck until they were dead.
The Judges of the Old Bailey Court are the Lord Mayor, Aldermen,
Recorder, and Common Sergeant of London, and the Judges of the Courts
at Westminster Hall, who sit here by rotation to assist, by their
superior legal knowledge, the inferior local magistrates.
The prison is divided into a male and female side, but beyond this
there is little classification; the pickpocket, the swindler, the
embezzler, the murderer, are all associated together; while the
hardened offender and the one who is merely suspected of crime, but too
often share the same cell, and feed at the same board.
There are separate cells, so that every one averse to society may dwell
alone if he or she chooses, but in conversation with the turnkeys, I
learned that the privilege was rarely claimed.
"Why, Lord bless your heart, Sir," said a turnkey to me, "there isn't
one of the birds in this ere cage that wouldn't go down on his blessed
knees and beg hoff if he was to be locked up alone for forty-eight
hours. Ye see, sir, it sickens them, it does, to be alone and hear
no one's voice but their own. There's a few of the high 'uns at
first, when they come here, are werry hoffish and have a sort of a
"how-dare-you-look-or-speak-to-me-air," but before three days they gets
weak in the back and then they'll give a guinea a minute to look at a
face if it only wor a monkey's dirty mug."
When prisoners become refractory, solitary confinement, for a
few days, is the punishment, and it never fails to tame the most
intractable. The beds of the prisoners are in tiers one above the
other, like the berths on an emigrant ship, only that they are clean
almost to painfulness. The beds consist of a hard mattress and coarse
coverings, sufficient in all seasons to keep them comfortably warm.
A plain deal table and bench constitute the only furniture of the
place, and these, with the floor, are daily scrubbed into a state of
scrupulous cleanliness by the inmates of the cells. There are paved
court yards in which the prisoners may walk and breathe the small
quantity of pure air that can circulate between those high and gloomy
walls, surmounted by formidable spikes to impede the climber.
I went into the kitchen of Newgate and found it to be a commodious and
well-fitted apartment, very like the kitchen of the Reform Club, only
not so luxurious, from its want of French dishes, and I found here
boilers, stoves, ranges, saucepans, kettles, and all that a chef could
need for his cuisine. This was not the kitchen of the Old Newgate of
which Ainsworth delights to tell, where the hangman used to seethe in a
cauldron of molten pitch the heads and quarters of victims executed for
treason, whose several members were afterwards affixed to the spikes of
Temple Bar or London Bridge.
I saw the rations of each prisoner served out in tin panikins and
platters, and the bread served was as white as any I ever ate. There
were three large and beautiful potatoes allotted to each one, and three
ounces of boiled beef, good and tender and free from bone, just of the
same quality which I had seen served a few days before in the barracks
of the Grenadier Guards down in Westminster. The meat might not have
all the accessories and sauces which a Delmonico or a Blanchard could
provide, but it was palatable and tender to the taste.
On "off" days they have soup and thick gruel for breakfast, and sixteen
ounces of bread per day. They never get beer, butter, milk, cheese,
cabbage, tea, coffee, or eggs.
[Sidenote: HOTEL REGULATIONS.]
So, after I had seen all this "bee bread," the hunks of meat duly
weighed out, the potatoes and lumps of bread packed in their panniers
and delivered out from door to door--the chief warder and I began to
ascend a very Mont Blanc of iron staircases, and visited, one after the
other, the cells of the wicked hive; in which, God knows, there was
no honey making, but only wax, bitter as the book which the Apostle
swallowed.
The original "comb," many stories high, had been built in one of the
former yards of the gaol. The space between the different tiers of
cells was quite sufficient for ventilation; but the architects had of
necessity trusted more to height than to breadth, and this increased
the hive-like appearance of the place. But when I came down again, the
remembrance of what I had seen fresh upon me, all these iron staircases
and galleries, all these shining locks, bars, numbers, plates, and
"inspection holes," all these recrossing and crossing pillars, trusses,
and girders, made me think that I had just left some great, bad
exhibition of products of the devil's industry. One cell was, in all
save its occupant, twin brother to its neighbor on either side; and so
on, tier above tier, until the whole nest had been explored. I forgot
to ask how many feet broad, by how many feet long, was each dungeon.
But here is one--the type of all the rest. It is as large say, as a
_cabinet particulier_, to hold four, at Vachett's or the Moulin Rouge;
but it is given up to the occupancy of one man. It is a hundred times
cleaner than ever was _cabinet_ in Paris restaurant; and here the
lodger eats, reads, and sleeps. His bedding lies on a shelf on the
right corner as you enter the cell. It is a pile of rugs, matting,
mattress, or some other kind of bedding, packed and folded up with
mathematical accuracy, with an assortment of straps and hooks disposed
in corresponding order. These hooks will, by and bye, at eight o'clock,
be inserted in rings in the whitewashed cell, when the prisoner will
make his bed and sleep athwart his cell.
There are his gas-pipe, his basin, and mug; there is a little
desk-formed table, which he can prop up with a wooden support, to eat
his meals upon; there are his tin panikin and wooden spoon, his Bible,
prayer-book, and hymn-book, his comb, his salt-cellar, with a neat
cover of blue paper. Everything shines, glistens, sparkles, almost
as bravely as the gew-gaws in Mr. Benson's shop outside. The floor
is of shining asphalte. The covered ceiling is without a flaw. The
walls are unsmirched. A neat copy of the regulations enforced in this
"hotel"--the code of discipline framed by the Sheriffs--are hung up
for the prisoner's guidance. He has a ventilator, by means of which he
can regulate the temperature of his cell; and I noticed that the chief
warder had to tell almost every prisoner that he was keeping his cell
too warm.
Among the many afflicting scenes that have taken place in the vicinity
of Newgate, was that of February 23, 1807, when two men, named Haggerty
and Holloway, were hanged for the murder of Mr. Steele, on Hounslow
Heath. The greatest interest had been excited by the trial of these two
men, and an immense crowd assembled to witness their execution.
By five o'clock in the morning every avenue was blocked up; every
window that communicated a view of the place was crammed, and wagons,
arranged in rows, groaned under the weight of the eager multitude. The
pressure of the assemblage was tremendous; and when the criminals had
been turned off--when they had given their last death struggle--the
mass of the people began to move. But there was no room for them to
move in.
Immediately rose the shrieks of affrighted women in the crowd, which
but increased the alarm, and made each individual struggle to get out
of the multitude. Hundreds were trodden under foot, and the furious and
frightened crowd passed over them.
At last the confusion ceased a little, and the ground became
comparatively clear.
[Sidenote: DRINKING FROM ST. GILES' BOWL.]
Some who had been thrown down arose but with little damage, and went
home, but forty-two were found insensible, of this number twenty-seven
were quite dead, of whom three were women. Of the other fifteen many
had their legs or arms broken, and some of them afterward died. Since
that occurrence barriers have been erected and executions have taken
place without loss of life. The system of hanging in chains has also
been abolished, and Newgate may one day hope, like its brother of the
Bastille, for the light of freedom to break in upon its hell-holes,
and show to humanity how like devils are men clad with a little brief
authority.
Eighty-three years ago, the last victim, taken from Newgate to Tyburn
Tree, was hung there upon the gallows in chains. The name of the
criminal was John Austin. Tyburn was anciently a manor and village
some miles west of London, and on this fated spot, in 1330, Roger de
Mortimer was hanged, drawn, disemboweled, and quartered, for high
treason. The gallows was a triangle upon three legs. Long years ago,
when Dan Chaucer wrote his lays, criminals were taken to Tyburn, and
hung from a lofty elm tree, which overshadowed a brook or "burn," hence
the term of "Tyburn Tree." The gallows, in after years, stood on a
small eminence at the corner of the Edgeware Road, where a tool-house
was subsequently erected.
Beneath this spot, where the gallows formerly stood, the bones of
Bradshaw, Ireton, and others, who had voted for the death of Charles
I, repose, their remains, having been taken from their graves, after
the Restoration, and thrown here. Around the gibbet were erected
open galleries, like those at a modern race-course, from whence many
thousand people, of both sexes, were wont to feast their eyes on the
dying struggles of the condemned. "Mamma Douglas," an old toothless
woman, held the keys of these seats, and she was, facetiously, called
the Tyburn "pew opener." Prices of seats to witness the sport, varied
from one and sixpence to three shillings, and in one instance, a
reprieve having arrived for the prisoner in time to save his life, the
mob became enraged at their disappointment, and tore up the benches.
The criminal was conveyed in a cart to Tyburn, the parson chanting
prayer and hymn on the route, and in passing through the quarter of St.
Giles, a bowl of ale was always offered to the condemned to drink, the
procession of Sheriffs, Stavesmen, and Constables, halting on the way
for the purpose. Among the famous criminals executed here were Perkin
Warbeck, for plotting his escape from the Tower, 1534; the Holy Maid of
Kent, and her associates, 1535; the last Prior of the Charter House,
same year; Southwell, the poet, 1615; Mrs. Turner, hanged in a yellow
starched ruff, for the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury, 1628; John
Felton, assassin of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, 1600; and in 1662
five persons who had signed the death warrant of Charles I; 1684, Sir
Thomas Armstrong (Rye House Plot); 1705, John Smith, a burglar, having
been hung for fifteen minutes, a reprieve arrived, and he was cut and
bled, which saved his life. Jack Sheppard was hung in 1724; Jonathan
Wild, the thief taker, in 1725, and Catharine Hayes was burnt alive
here in 1726, for the murder of her husband, as the indignant mob would
not suffer the hangman to strangle her, as was usual, before the fire
was kindled. In 1760, Earl Ferrars, who had murdered his steward, rode
from the Tower to Tyburn, in his open landau, drawn by six horses, and
was hanged with a silken rope, the hangman and the mob fighting for
the rope, while the latter tore the black cloth on the scaffold to
pieces. Oliver Cromwell's body was taken up and here, long years after
he had died, hung from the tree, while his head was set on a spike of
Westminster Hall. The other famous hangings were as follows: 1767,
Mrs. Browning, for murder; 1774, John Rann (Sixteen-Stringed Jack),
highwayman; 1775, the two Perraus, for forgery; 1777, Rev. Dr. Dodd,
forgery; 1779, Rev. James Hackman, assassination of Miss Reay: he was
taken from Newgate in a mourning coach. 1783, Ryland, the engraver, for
forgery. 1783, John Austin, the last person executed at Tyburn.
[Illustration]