Produced by David Edwards and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Print project.)
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
The Contents are placed after the Introductory. A list of changes to the
original publication is given at the end.
In Jail with Charles Dickens.
IN JAIL WITH
CHARLES DICKENS
BY
ALFRED TRUMBLE
EDITOR OF "THE COLLECTOR"
Illustrated
London
SUCKLING & GALLOWAY
1896
COPYRIGHT, 1896,
BY
FRANCIS P. HARPER.
Printed in America.
INTRODUCTORY.
Readers of Charles Dickens must all have remarked the deep and abiding
interest he took in that grim accessory to civilization, the prison. He
not only went jail hunting whenever opportunity offered, but made a
profound study of the rules, practices and abuses of these institutions.
Penology was, in fact, one of his hobbies, and some of the most powerful
passages in his books are those which have their scene of action laid
within the shadow of the gaol. It was this fact which led to the
compilation of the papers comprised in the present volume.
The writer had been a student of Dickens from the days when the
publication of his novels in serial form was a periodical event. When he
first visited England, many of the landmarks which the novelist had, in
a manner, made historical, were still in existence, but of the principal
prisons which figure in his works Newgate was the only one which existed
in any approximation to its integrity. The Fleet and the King's Bench
were entirely swept away; of the Marshalsea only a few buildings
remained, converted to ordinary uses. In this country, however, the two
jails which interested him, still remain, with certain changes that do
not impair their general conformance to his descriptions.
These papers, therefore, consist of personal knowledge, as a voluntary
visitor, be it understood, of Newgate. The Tombs in New York, and the
Eastern District Penitentiary in Philadelphia, supplemented by
references to the records. For the Fleet, Marshalsea, and Kings Bench,
the writer is indebted to the chronicles and descriptions of Peter
Cunningham, John Timbs, Leigh Hunt, and other ingenious and interesting
historians of the London of the early Victorian era. In connection with
the paper relating to the Eastern District Penitentiary of Philadelphia,
his thanks are due for the assistance and information rendered by Mr.
Michael J. Cassidy, the Warden.
ALFRED TRUMBLE.
New York, March 1896.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
NEWGATE WITHOUT, 1
CHAPTER II.
NEWGATE WITHIN, 40
CHAPTER III.
THE FLEET PRISON, 73
CHAPTER IV.
THE MARSHALSEA, 106
CHAPTER V.
THE KING'S BENCH, 134
CHAPTER VI.
THE NEW YORK TOMBS, 161
CHAPTER VII.
PHILADELPHIA'S BASTILE, 177
In Jail with Charles Dickens.
CHAPTER I.
NEWGATE WITHOUT.
Newgate was the first prison to which Charles Dickens gave any literary
attention. An account of a visit to it appears among the early "Sketches
by Boz." It is also the only one of the London jails of which he has
left us graphic descriptions, or briefer, spirited sketches, which
preserves to-day so much of its original character as to be identifiable
in detail by the student of his works. The Fleet and the King's Bench
have disappeared. The Marshalsea may only be recognized by slight
surviving landmarks. But the sombre and sullen bulk of Newgate rears
itself in the heart of London, a sinister monument to the horrors bred
by a civilization rotten of its own over-ripeness, in the forcing-bed of
the most magnificent, wonderful and monstrously terrible city of the
world.
If external gloom could exercise an influence to deter anyone from the
commission of crime of which it is a part of the penalty, Newgate would
never have any inmates. Surrounded at the time of my introductory visit
to it, as an accidental but not legally involuntary visitor, by low
public-houses, poor shops and a tumble-down market, all bearing the
grime of age and the marks of decay, as if the frown of the great jail
had blighted them; with the foul, miry lane of Newgate street, and the
scarcely-cleaner Old Bailey, alive with muddy carts and shabby people,
skulking roughs, draggled women and squalling children, no man who had
no business there would care, once having seen it, to seek it out again.
Being then new in London, I had been begriming myself among the old
books of St. Paul's Churchyard until I was tired and thirsty, and
strolling along Ludgate Hill in quest of refreshment, turned into the
second street I came to. A few steps more and I found myself stopping at
another street corner to look at an immense and grim mass of gray stone
towering loftily in the fog, with little windows here and there along
its frowning wall. They were so small that they might have been mere
spaces where the builders had forgotten to put in a block of granite, if
it had not been for the strong, rusty bars that crossed them. I asked a
man who came out of a public-house wiping his mouth on the back of his
hand what place that was. He stared at me in evident amazement for a
minute, and then said, shortly, in an aggravated tone of voice, poking a
finger, still moist from his libation, at it, like a dagger:
"Newgate, that is."
He went along, shaking his head in a dubious way and looking back
several times at me, clearly either suspicious of the genuineness of my
stupendous ignorance, or unable to comprehend how anyone could be
ignorant of the identity of the famous jail. I have no doubt that it was
vastly stupid of me. In fact, I experienced a certain feeling of
contempt for myself, now that I knew what the place was, and that it was
the place of which I had read so much that I almost had its history by
heart; but after all, London is a "very considerable-sized town," as I
once had a Chicago acquaintance generously admit, and one could scarcely
be expected to know it like a guide-book, within forty-eight hours after
making first acquaintance with its bitter beer, its bloody beef, and its
beds into whose coverlids the essence of the fog seemed to have
penetrated, if, indeed, the sheets were not woven out of the fog itself.
Newgate, in its external appearance, at least, is an ideal prison. Its
aspect, whether purposely or through the adaptation of its construction
to its uses, is thoroughly jail-like. The few openings in the walls, the
empty blind niches, which might have been left there for statues of
great felons never set up in them; the entrance, with its festooned
fetters carved in stone as an ornament to the gloomy and forbidding
portal, all are appropriate to and a significant part of it. Within a
few feet of where I stood when I viewed it first was the spot where the
scaffold used to be put up. Here, on the occasion of an execution, as
one may read in Chapter 52 of "Oliver Twist," the space before the
prison was cleared, and a few strong barriers painted black thrown
across the road to break the pressure of the crowd, while the more
favored portion of the audience occupied every post of vantage, at
windows and housetops, that commanded a view of the ghastly show. Here,
as Oliver noted when he came away from his last interview with Fagin at
the dawn of day: "A great multitude had already assembled; the windows
were filled with people smoking and playing cards to beguile the time;
the crowd was pushing, quarreling and joking. Everything told of life
and animation, but one dark cluster of objects in the very centre of
all--the black stage, the crossbeam, the rope, and all the hideous
apparatus of death."
Prisoners of old were executed on Tyburn Hill in public, or on some
occasions, when it was especially desired to enforce an example, as
close as possible to the scene of guilt. Those who were punished for
participation in the Gordon Riots of 1780 were swung off in the various
parts of the city where their crimes were committed. In 1793 the common
places of execution were changed to the Old Bailey, in front of Newgate.
There the first culprit was executed on December 9 of that year. Hanging
was brisk when George III was king. Between February and December, 1785,
ninety-six persons suffered by the trap arrangement now in common use
the world over, which was then known as the "new drop." Previous to that
time it had been the custom to perch the candidates for the halter on a
cart, which was driven from under them at the fatal signal, while
someone hung on to their legs to choke them more speedily and surely--an
expeditious practice quite frequently resorted to by Judge Lynch in
America in after years, and still not entirely out of use for
extemporaneous executions. In "Barnaby Rudge" (volume 2, chapter 19)
Dickens gives the most detailed description of a Newgate execution which
occurs in his works. The passage is well worth quoting at length:
"The time wore on. The noises in the streets became less frequent by
degrees until the silence was scarcely broken, save by the bells in
the church towers marking the progress, softer and more stealthily
while the city slumbered, of that Great Watcher with the hoary head,
who never sleeps or rests. In the brief interval of darkness and
repose which feverish towns enjoy, all busy sounds were hushed; and
those who awoke from dreams lay listening in their beds, and longed
for dawn, and wished the dead of the night were passed.
"Into the street, outside the gaol's main wall, workmen came
straggling, at this solemn hour, in groups of two or three, and,
meeting in the centre, cast their tools upon the ground and spoke in
whispers. Others soon issued from the gaol itself, bearing on their
shoulders planks and beams: these materials being all brought forth,
the rest bestirred themselves, and the dull sound of hammers began to
echo through the stillness.
"Here and there among this knot of laborers, one with a lantern or a
smoky link stood by to light his fellows at their work; and by its
doubtful aid some might be seen dimly, taking up the pavement of the
road, while others held upright great posts, or fixed them in holes
thus made for their reception. Some dragged slowly on toward the rest
an empty cart, which they brought rumbling from the prison yard, while
others erected strong barriers across the street. All were busily
engaged. Their dusky figures moving to and fro at that unusual hour,
so active and so silent, might have been taken for those of shadowy
creatures toiling at midnight on some ghostly, unsubstantial work,
which, like themselves, would vanish with the first gleam of day, and
leave but morning mist and vapor.
"While it was yet dark a few lookers-on collected, who had plainly
come there for that purpose and intended to remain; even those who had
to pass the spot on their way to some other place, lingered, and
lingered yet, as though the attraction of that were irresistible.
Meanwhile the noise of the saw and mallet went on briskly, mingled
with the clattering of boards on the stone pavement of the road, and
sometimes with the workmen's voices as they called to one another.
Whenever the chimes of the neighboring church were heard--and that was
every quarter of an hour--a strong sensation, instantaneous and
indescribable, but perfectly obvious, seemed to pervade them all.
"Gradually a faint brightness appeared in the East, and the air, which
had been very warm through the night, felt cool and chilly. Though
there was no daylight yet, the darkness was diminished, and the stars
looked pale. The prison, which had been a mere black mass, with little
shape or form, put on its usual aspect; and ever and anon a solitary
watchman could be seen upon its roof, stopping to look down upon the
preparations in the street. This man, from forming, as it were, a part
of the gaol, and knowing, or being supposed to know, all that was
passing within, became an object of much interest, and was eagerly
looked for, and as awfully pointed out as if he had been a spirit.
"By and by the feeble light grew stronger, and the houses, with their
signboards and inscriptions, stood plainly out in the dull gray of the
morning. Heavy stage-wagons crawled from the inn yard opposite, and
travelers peeped out, and, as they rolled sluggishly away, cast many a
backward look toward the gaol. And now the sun's first beams came
glancing into the street, and the night's work, which in its various
stages and in the varied fancies of the lookers-on had taken a hundred
shapes, wore its own proper form--a scaffold and gibbet.
"As the warmth of the cheerful day began to shed itself upon the
scanty crowd the murmur of tongues was heard, shutters were thrown
open, the blinds drawn up, and those who had slept in rooms over
against the prison, where places to see the execution were let at high
prices, rose hastily from their beds. In some of the houses people
were busy taking out the window-sashes for the better accommodation of
the spectators; in others, the spectators were already seated, and
beguiling the time with cards, or drink, or jokes among themselves.
Some had purchased seats upon the housetops, and were already crawling
to their stations from parapet and garret window. Some were yet
bargaining for good places, and stood in them in a state of
indecision, gazing at the slowly-swelling crowd, and at the workmen as
they rested listlessly against the scaffold--affecting to listen with
indifference to the proprietor's eulogy of the commanding view his
house afforded, and the surpassing cheapness of his terms.
"A fairer morning never shone. From the roofs and the upper stories of
the buildings the spires of the city churches and the great cathedral
dome were visible, rising up beyond the prison into the blue sky, and
clad in the color of light summer clouds, and showing in the clear
atmosphere their every scrap of tracery and fretwork, and every niche
and loophole. All was lightness, brightness and promise, excepting in
the street below, into which (for it lay yet in the shadow) the eye
looked down into a dark trench, where, in the midst of so much life
and hope and renewal of existence, stood the terrible instrument of
death. It seemed as if the very sun forbore to look upon it.
"But it was better, grim and sombre in the shade, than when, the day
being more advanced, it stood confessed in full glare and glory of the
sun, with its black paint blistering and its nooses dangling in the
light like loathsome garlands. It was better in the solitude and gloom
of midnight, with a few forms clustering about it, than in the
freshness and the stir of the morning, the centre of an eager crowd.
It was better haunting the street like a spectre, when men were in
their beds, and influencing, perchance, the city's dreams, than
braving the broad day, and thrusting its obscene presence upon the
waking senses.
"Five o'clock had struck--six, seven and eight. Along the two main
streets, at either end of the crossway, a living stream had now set
in, rolling to the marts of gain and business. Carts, coaches, wagons,
trucks and barrows, forced a passage through the outskirts of the
throng and clattered onward in the same direction. Some of these,
which were public conveyances, and had come from a short distance in
the country, stopped, and the driver pointed to the gibbet with his
whip, though he might have spared himself the pains, for the heads of
all the passengers were turned that way without his help, and the
coach windows were stuck full of staring eyes. In some of the carts
and wagons women might be seen, glancing fearfully at the same
unsightly thing; and even little children were held up above the
peoples' heads to see what kind of a toy a gallows was and to learn
how men were hanged.
"Two rioters were to die before the prison, who had been concerned in
the attack upon it; and one directly after in Bloomsbury Square. At
nine o'clock a strong body of military marched into the street, and
formed and lined a narrow passage into Holborn, which had been
indifferently kept all night by constables. Through this another cart
was brought (the one already mentioned had been employed in the
construction of the scaffold), and wheeled up to the prison gate.
These preparations made, the soldiers stood at ease; the officers
lounged to and fro in the alley they had made, or talked together at
the scaffold's foot; and the concourse which had been rapidly
augmenting for some hours, and still received additions every minute,
waited with an impatience which increased with every chime of St.
Sepulchre's clock for twelve at noon.
"Up to this time they had been very quiet, comparatively silent, save
when the arrival of some new party at a window, hitherto unoccupied,
gave them something to look at or to talk of. But, as the hour
approached, a buzz and a hum arose, which, deepening every moment,
soon swelled into a roar, and seemed to fill the air. No words, or
even voices, could be distinguished in this clamor, nor did they speak
much to each other; though such as were better informed on the topic
than the rest would tell their neighbors, perhaps, that they might
know the hangman when he came out, by his being the shorter one; and
that the man that was to suffer with him was named Hugh; and that it
was Barnaby Rudge who would be hanged in Bloomsbury Square.
"The hum grew, as the time drew near, so loud that those who were at
the windows could not hear the church clock strike, though it was
close at hand. Nor had they any need to hear it either, for they could
see it in the peoples' faces. So surely as another quarter chimed
there was a movement in the crowd--as if something had passed over
it--as if the light upon them had been changed--in which the fact was
readable as on a brazen dial, figured by a giant's hand.
Three-quarters past eleven. The murmur now was deafening, yet every
man seemed mute. Look where you would among the crowd, you saw
strained eyes and lips compressed; it would have been difficult for
the most vigilant observer to point this way or that, and say that
yonder man had cried out. It were as easy to detect the motion of the
lips in a sea-shell.
"Three-quarters past eleven. Many spectators who had retired from the
windows came back refreshed, as though their watch had just begun.
Those who had fallen asleep aroused themselves; and every person in
the crowd made one last effort to better his position, which caused a
press against the sturdy barriers that made them bend and yield like
twigs. The officers, who until now had kept together, fell into their
several positions, and gave the words of command. Swords were drawn,
muskets shouldered, and the bright steel, winding its way among the
crowd, gleamed and glittered in the sun like a river. Along this
shining path two men were hurrying on, leading a horse, which was
speedily harnessed to the cart at the prison door. Then a profound
silence replaced the tumult that had so long been gathering, and a
breathless pause ensued. Every window was now choked up with heads;
the housetops teemed with people clinging to chimneys, peering over
gable-ends, and holding on where the sudden loosening of any brick or
stone would dash them down into the street. The church-tower, the
church-roof, the churchyard, the prison-leads, the very waterspouts
and lampposts, every inch of room swarmed with human life.
"At the first stroke of twelve the prison bell began to toll. Then the
roar, mingled now with cries of 'Hats off!' and 'Poor fellows!'--and,
from some specks in the great concourse, with a shriek or groan--burst
forth again. It was terrible to see--if anyone in that distraction of
excitement could have seen--the world of eager eyes all strained upon
the scaffold and the beam."
The Newgate gallows in "Barnaby Rudge" was set up for the ruffian Hugh,
the bastard of Sir John Chester and his gypsy light-o-love, and for
Dennis the hangman, who had been concerned as leaders in the attack on
the prison by the Gordon Rioters. "Two cripples--both were boys--one
with a leg of wood, one who dragged his twisted body along with the help
of a crutch, were hanged in Bloomsbury Square, where they had helped to
sack Lord Mansfield's house, and other rioters in other parts of the
town, in despoiling which they had been conspicuous." It may be recalled
that the mother of Hugh herself had died on the scaffold, at Tyburn, for
the crime of passing forged notes. To descend from the realm of romance
to that of reality, the most memorable executions in the Old Bailey were
those of Mrs. Phipoe, the murderess, in 1797; of Governor Wall of
Trinidad, for murder, on Jan. 28, 1802; of Halloway and Haggerty, the
murderers, on Feb. 22, 1807, when thirty spectators were trampled to
death; of Bellingham, the assassin of a member of Parliament, Percival,
on May 18, 1812; of the Cato Street Conspirators, who were cut down and
decapitated on the scaffold in the presence of the multitude, on May 1,
1820; of Fauntleroy, the banker, hanged for forging in 1824; of the
assassin Greenacre, in 1837; of Courvoiser, who murdered Lord William
Russell, in 1840; and of Franz Mueller, the railway murderer, who was
extradited from this country, as will doubtless be remembered by many,
and sent to his doom in 1864. That same year seven pirates were also
suspended in the Old Bailey. Since then executions have been carried out
privately within the walls of the prison.
A contemporary of Dickens, in the "Ingoldsby Legends," has given us a
picture, in a different vein, of the same period and subject. He has
told us, in his own rattling verse, how my Lord Tomnoddy, having nothing
to do, and being deucedly bored, learned from his faithful Tiger Tim
that Greenacre was to be hanged at Newgate; here was indeed a sensation
for His Lordship: "To see a man swing, at the end of a string, with his
neck in a noose, will be quite a new thing." So he hires the whole first
floor of the Magpie and Stump, opposite the jail, and invites his
friends to come and help him see a man die in his shoes. They help him
so effectually during the night, what with "cold fowl and cigars,
pickled onions in jars, Welsh rabbits and kidney, rare work for jaws,
and very large lobsters with fine claws," and the like, not to mention
gin-toddy and cold and hot punch, that they fall asleep and lose the
show after all, when, as they cannot have the man hung over again, they
go home to bed in hackney coaches and a state of deep disgust. Another
contemporary, of more ample renown, Thackeray to wit, gave some
attention to the matter. In July, 1840, he published, in Frazer's
Magazine, a paper called "Going to see a man hanged." The man was
Courvoiser; and Thackeray, unlike Lord Tomnoddy, did not fall asleep
over the feast, and so did see him mount the scaffold.
Surgeons' Hall used to stand close to Newgate and the Old Bailey, and
the victims of the halter were handed over to the doctors for
dissection. The corpse of wicked Lord Ferrers, who was executed in 1760
at Tyburn for murdering his steward, was taken in his own landau and six
to the Burgeons' Theatre to be cut up. After having been disemboweled,
in conformance with the sentence, the body of the bad lord was put on
show in the first floor window, to be hissed and hooted at by the mob.
The account of the Ferrers execution, by the way, provides a curious
picture of the time. Ferrers dressed himself in his wedding suit to be
hanged. He had the harness of his horses decorated with ribbons. On the
way to Tyburn from the Tower, my Lord intimated a desire for some wine,
being thirsty. The Sheriff, who was in the coach with him, declined to
allow him to refresh himself. "Then," said the Earl, taking a bite of
pigtail tobacco from a plug which he had in his pocket, "I must be
content with this." He harbored no malice against the Sheriff, however,
for he presented him with his watch as they neared Tyburn. To the
Chaplain he gave five guineas, and to the executioner the same sum. The
executioner had to pull him by the legs to effectually strangle him, and
while the body swung for an hour on the gallows, the sheriffs and their
friends had luncheon on the platform within reach of it. "The
executioners fought for the rope," says the chronicler, "and the one who
lost it, cried."
But we have wandered far from Newgate in this wicked company. Old
Newgate, upon a portion of whose site the present jail stands, was built
in the reign of King John. It derived its name from the fact that London
was then a walled city, and the jail was erected close to the newest
gate in the fortification. It was, in fact, at first a mere tower or
appendage of the gate. Newgate was used as a State prison long before
the Tower. One of the many captives of this sort which it held was
William Penn. The founder of Pennsylvania spent six months there for the
atrocious offense of street preaching. Defoe spent some time here on
account of a political tract, and wrote several others while in
confinement. Dr. Dodd wrote his successful comedy, "Sir Roger de
Coverly," in Newgate. One of the last persons confined here for
political offense was Mr. Hobhouse, afterward Lord Broughton. The street
used to be filled with people when he took his exercise on the roof, who
watched and cheered at his hat, which was all they could see of him
above the wall. An odd circumstance about Mr. Hobhouse's imprisonment is
that Byron had prophesied it in the remark that "having foamed himself
into a reformer, he would subside in Newgate." Among the famous
prisoners here we find Savage, the poet, for murder; Jack Sheppard,
whose remarkable escape, very much exaggerated upon fact, you may have
read of from Mr. Ainsworth's pen; and Jonathan Wild, who, by the by,
once lived nearly opposite the court-house, in the Old Bailey; Catherine
Hayes, the abandoned heroine of Thackeray's novel; Mrs. Brownrigg, the
fiend who tortured her serving-maids; Astlett, the Bank of England
clerk, who committed forgeries for over $1,500,000, and many more. Lord
George Gordon, familiar to all who have read "Barnaby Rudge," died in
1793, of gaol-fever, in one of the cells of Newgate, after several years
of confinement, for libelling the Queen of France. The poor, mad lord,
whose rioters had turned the jail into a ruin once, found it strong
enough to hold him and his fantastic visions securely in the end. Here
is Dickens's description of the attack upon the prison, caused by him,
commencing in the second volume of "Barnaby Rudge," Chapter Fifth.
"It was about six o'clock in the evening when a vast mob poured into
Lincoln's Inn Fields by every avenue, and divided, evidently in
pursuance of a previous design, into several parties. It must not be
understood that this arrangement was known to the whole crowd, but
that it was the work of a few leaders, who, mingling with these men as
they came upon the ground, and calling to them to fall into this or
that party, effected it as rapidly as if it had been determined on by
a council of the whole number, and every man had known his place.
"It was perfectly notorious to the assemblage that the largest body,
which comprehended about two-thirds of the whole, was designed for the
attack on Newgate. It comprehended all the rioters who had been
conspicuous in any of their former proceedings; all those whom they
recommended as daring hands and fit for the work; all those whose
companions had been taken in the riots; and a great number of people
who were relatives or friends of the felons in the gaol. This last
class included not only the most desperate and utterly abandoned
villains in London, but some who were comparatively innocent. There
was more than one woman there, disguised in man's attire, and bent on
the rescue of a child or a brother. There were the two sons of a man
who lay under the sentence of death, and who was to be executed, along
with three others, the next day but one. There was a great party of
boys, whose fellow pickpockets were in the prison; and, at the skirts
of all, a score of miserable women, outcasts from the world, seeking
to release some other fellow creature as miserable as themselves, or
moved by general sympathy, perhaps, God knows, with all who were
without hope and wretched.
"Old swords, and pistols without ball or powder; sledge-hammers,
knives, axes, saws, and weapons pillaged from the butcher shops; a
forest of iron bars and wooden clubs; long ladders for scaling the
walls, each carried on the shoulders of a dozen men; lighted torches,
tow smeared with pitch, and tar, and brimstone; staves roughly plucked
from a fence and paling; and even crutches taken from crippled beggars
on the streets composed their arms. When all was ready, Hugh and
Dennis, with Simon Tappertit between them, led the way. Roaring and
chafing like an angry sea, the crowd pressed after them."
They halt upon the way to drag Gabriel Varden from his shop, in order to
compel him to pick the lock of the prison gate. They march him at the
head of the mob to the jail. They find that their visit was not wholly
unexpected, "for the governor's house, which fronted the street, was
strongly barricaded, the wicket of the prison gate was closed up, and at
no loophole or grating was any person to be seen." The governor,
inspecting the mob from the roof of his house, is summoned to surrender
his charge. He refuses. The rabble call on the locksmith to pick the
locks. He defies them, and is dragged away barely in time to save his
life by Joe Willets and Edward Chester, who are in the mob in disguise.
Then the assault on the jail begins.
"Hammers began to rattle on the walls, and every man strove to reach
the prison and be among the foremost rank. Fighting their way through
the press and struggle as desperately as if they were in the midst of
the enemies rather than their own friends, the two men retreated with
the blacksmith between them, and dragged him through the very heart of
the concourse.
"And now the strokes begin to fall like hail upon the gate and on the
strong building; for those who could not reach the door spent their
fierce rage on any thing, even on the great blocks of stone, which
shivered their weapons into fragments, and made their hands and arms
tingle as if the walls were active in their resistance and dealt them
back their blows. The clash of the iron ringing upon iron mingled with
the deafening tumult, and sounded high above it, as the great
sledge-hammers rattled on the nailed and plated door; the sparks flew
off in showers; men worked in gangs, and at short intervals relieved
each other, that all their strength might be devoted to the work; but
there stood the portal still, as grim and dark and as strong as ever,
and, saving for the dints on its shattered surface, quite unchanged.
"While some brought all their energies to bear upon this toilsome
task, and some, rearing ladders against the prison, tried to clamber
to the summit of the walls they were too short to scale; and some,
again, engaged a body of police, and beat them back and trod them
under foot by force of numbers; others besieged the house on which the
gaoler had appeared, and, driving in the door, brought out his
furniture and piled it up against the prison gate to make a low fire
which should burn it down. As soon as this device was understood, all
those who had labored hitherto cast down their tools and helped to
swell the heap, which reached half way across the street, and was so
high that those who threw more fuel on the top got up by ladders. When
all the keeper's goods were flung upon this costly pile to the last
fragment, they smeared it with pitch and tar and rosin they had
brought, and sprinkled it with turpentine. To all the woodwork round
the prison doors they did the like, leaving not a joist or a beam
untouched. This infernal christening performed, they fired the pile
with lighted matches and with blazing tow, and then stood by and
waited the result.
"The furniture being very dry, and rendered more combustible by wax
and oil, besides the arts they had used, took fire at once. The flames
roared high and fiercely, blackening the prison wall and twining up
its lofty front like burning serpents. At first they crowded around
the blaze, and vented their exultation only in their looks; but when
it grew hotter and fiercer; when it crackled and leaped, and roared
like a great furnace; when it shone upon the opposite houses, and
lighted up not only the pale and wondering faces at the windows, but
the inmost corners of each habitation; when through the deep red heat
and glow the fire was seen sporting and toying with the door, now
clinging to its obdurate surface, now gliding off with fierce
inconstancy and roaring high into the sky, anon returning to fold it
in its burning grasp and lure it to its ruin; when it shone and
gleamed so brightly that the church clock of St. Sepulchre's, so often
pointing to the hour of death, was legible as in broad day, and the
vane upon its steeple-top glittered in the unwonted light like some
thing richly jeweled; when blackened stone and sombre brick grew ruddy
in the deep reflection, and windows shone like burnished gold, dotting
the longest distance in the fiery vista with their specks of
brightness; when wall and tower and roof and chimney-stack seemed
drunk, and in the flickering glare appeared to reel and stagger; when
scores of objects, never seen before, burst out upon the view, and
things the most familiar put on some new aspect, then the mob began to
join the whirl, and with loud yells and shouts and clamor, such as is
happily seldom heard, bestirred themselves to feed the fire and keep
it at its height.
"Although the heat was so intense that the paint on the houses over
against the prison parched and crackled up, and swelling into boils,
as it were, from an excess of torture, broke and crumbled away;
although the glass fell from the window sashes, and the lead and iron
on the roofs blistered the incautious hand that touched them, and the
sparrows in the eaves took wing, and, rendered giddy by the smoke,
fell fluttering down upon the blazing pile, still the fire was tended
increasingly by busy hands, and round it men were going always. They
never slackened in their zeal or kept aloof, but pressed upon the
flames so hard that those in front had much ado to save themselves
from being thrust in; if one man swooned or dropped, a dozen struggled
for his place, and that, although they knew the pain and thirst and
pressure to be unendurable. Those who fell down in fainting fits and
were crushed or hurt were carried to an inn yard close at hand and
dashed with water from a pump, of which buckets full were passed from
man to man among the crowd; but such was the strong desire of all to
drink, and such the fighting to be first, that, for the most part, the
whole contents were spilled upon the ground, without the lips of a man
being moistened.
"Meanwhile, and in the midst of all the roar and outcry, those who
were nearest to the pile heaped up again the burning fragments that
came toppling down, and racked the fire about the door, which,
although a sheet of flame, was still a door, fast locked and barred,
and kept them out. Great pieces of burning wood were passed, besides,
above the people's heads to such as stood above the ladders, and some
of these, climbing up to the topmost stave, and holding on with one
hand by the prison wall, exerted all their skill and force to cast
these firebrands on the roof or down into the yards within. In many
instances their efforts were successful, which occasioned a new and
appalling addition to the horrors of the scene, for the prisoners
within, seeing from between their bars that the fire caught in many
places and thrived fiercely, and being all locked up in strong cells
for the night, began to know that they were in danger of being burnt
alive. This terrible fear, spreading from cell to cell and from yard
to yard, vented itself in such dismal cries and wailings, and in such
dreadful shrieks for help, that the whole gaol resounded with the
noise, which was loudly heard even above the shouting of the mob and
roaring of the flames, and was so full of agony and despair that it
made the boldest tremble.
"It was remarkable that these cries began in that quarter of the gaol
which fronted Newgate street, where it was well known that the men who
were to suffer death on Thursday were confined. And not only were
these four, who had a short time to live, the first to whom the dread
of being burnt occurred, but they were, throughout, the most
importunate of all; for they could be plainly heard, notwithstanding
the great thickness of the walls, crying that the wind set that way,
and that the flames would shortly reach them; and calling to officers
of the gaol to come and quench the fire from a cistern which was in
their yard, and full of water. Judging from what the crowds from
without the walls could hear from time to time, these four doomed
wretches never ceased to call for help; and that with as much
distraction, and in as great a frenzy of attachment to existence, as
though each had an honored, happy life before him, instead of
eight-and-forty hours of miserable imprisonment, and then a violent
and shameful death.
"But the anguish and suffering of the two sons of one of these men,
when they heard, or fancied they heard, their father's voice, is past
description. After wringing their hands, and rushing to and fro as if
they were stark mad, one mounted on the shoulders of his brother, and
tried to clamber up the face of the high wall, guarded at the top with
spikes and points of iron. And when he fell among the crowd he was not
deterred by his bruises, but mounted up again, and fell again, and
when he found the feat impossible began to beat the stones and tear
them with his hands, as if he could in that way make a breach in the
strong building and force a passage in. At last they cleft their way
among the mob about the door, though many men, a dozen times their
match, had tried in vain to do so, and were seen in, yes in, the fire,
striving to pry it down with crowbars.
"Nor were they alone affected by the outcry from within the prison.
The women who were looking on shrieked loudly, beat their hands
together, stopped their ears and many fainted; the men who were not
near the walls and active in the siege, rather than do nothing, tore
up the pavement of the street, and did so with a haste and fury that
could not have been surpassed if that had been their gaol and they
were near their object. Not one living creature in the throng was for
an instant still. The whole great mass were mad.
"A shout! Another! Another yet, though few knew why or what it meant.
But those around the gate had seen it slowly yield and drop from its
topmost hinge. It hung on that side but by one, but it was upright
still, because of the bar and its having sunk of its own weight into
the heap of ashes at its foot. There was now a gap at the top of the
doorway through which could be descried a gloomy passage, cavernous
and dark. Pile up the fire!
"It burnt fiercely. The door was red hot and the gap wider. They
vainly tried to shield their faces with their hands, and standing, as
if in readiness for a spring, watched the place. Dark figures, some
crawling on their hands and knees, some carried in the arms of others,
were seen to pass along the roof. It was plain that the gaol could
hold out no longer. The keeper and his officers and their wives and
children were escaping. Pile up the fire!
"The door sank down again; it settled deeper in the cinders, tottered,
yielded, was down.
"As they shouted again they fell back for a moment and left a clear
space about the fire that lay between them and the gaol entry. Hugh
leaped upon the blazing heap, and scattering a train of sparks into
the air, and making the dark lobby glitter with those that hung upon
his dress, dashed into the gaol.
"The hangman followed. And then so many rushed upon their track that
the fire got trodden down and thinly strewed about the street; but
there was no need of it now, for, inside and out, the prison was in
flames."
The rioters celebrated the capture of Newgate in roaring style. They
commanded and compelled the citizens all around the place to illuminate
their houses from bottom to top, as if for a glorious national event,
and at a time of public gayety and joy. "When this last task had been
achieved the shouts and cries grew fainter; the clank of the fetters,
which had resounded on all sides as the prisoners escaped, was heard no
more; all the noises of the crowd subsided into a hoarse and sullen
murmur as it passed into the distance; and when the human tide had
rolled away, a melancholy heap of smoking ruins marked the spot where it
had lately chafed and roared." Among the spectators of the capture of
Newgate was the poet Crabbe, then a young man seeking his fortune in
London, and he has left a description of it in his journal. Dr. Johnson
records the fact that "on Wednesday I walked with Dr. Scott (Lord
Stowell) to look at Newgate and found it in ruins, with the fire yet
glowing. As I went by, the Protestants were plundering the Sessions
House in the Old Bailey. There were not, I believe, a hundred; but they
did their work at leisure, in full security, without sentinels, without
trepidation, as men lawfully employed, in full day."
At the period of the Gordon Riots, Newgate was in the course of
reconstruction. The present prison was designed by George Dance, R. A.,
the architect of the Mansion House and other public buildings. The
famous Lord Mayor Beckford, father of the author of "Vathek," laid the
foundation stone on May 23, 1770, this being his last public act. Work
seems to have progressed slowly on it, for the newer portion was only in
part completed when the Gordon mob stormed the older sections. This
event served as a warning, however. Within two years Newgate was in
stronger shape than ever; and substantially in the shape which, after
the passage of more than a century, it still presents to the world.
Newgate serves to London the purpose of a reception prison for offenders
awaiting trial and for those condemned to death, and the executions of
the great city are performed within its walls. The Old Bailey Court,
which is an adjunct to it, is practically a part of the mountain of
masonry which sends its bleak shadow over Newgate street and the Old
Bailey. It is separated from it only by a yard, across which prisoners
are led to be tried. The court-house, known colloquially, in London, as
the Old Bailey, and politely as the Central Criminal Court, was built in
1773, was destroyed with Newgate in the Gordon Riots, but rebuilt and
enlarged in 1809 by the taking in of Surgeons' Hall. The Court is a
square hall, with a gallery for visitors. At one side is the chief seat
for the judge, with a canopy overhead surmounted by the royal arms, and
a gilded sheathed sword on the crimson wall. Opposite is the prisoners'
dock, with the stairs descending into the covered passageway, which
gives access by the way of the Press Yard to Newgate. To the left of the
dock is the witness-stand, and further to the left the jury box. The
counsel occupy the body of the court below. The Old Bailey Court
formerly sat at seven in the morning, but now sittings do not commence
until ten. It tries crimes of every kind, from treason to petty larceny
and offenses on the high seas, but only the heaviest ones are brought to
judgment before this branch of the Sessions. What is called the New
Court, adjoining the old one, sits upon the lighter misdemeanors. The
Judges at the Old Bailey are nominally the Lord Mayor, who is, in fact,
only a gorgeous dummy to open the court with true dignity, the Sheriff,
the Lord Chancellor, and a long list of Judges, Aldermen, Recorders and
so on. Of these the real Judges are the Recorder and Common Sergeant,
and the Judge of the Sheriff's Court. The law Judges take part when
knotty legal questions come in dispute, or when the trial is for a
capital offense which may cost the prisoner his life. A curious old
custom at the Bailey is that one Alderman must be present at every
sitting of the Court.
Above the Old Court is a stately dining-room where, during the Old
Bailey sittings, the Sheriffs used to give Judges and Court officials,
and a few privileged visitors, dinners of rump steak and marrow
puddings, according to a bill of fare provided by custom. The custom, I
believe, is kept up still. There are two dinners, at 3 and 5 o'clock
respectively, and a historic court chaplain is told of who for ten years
ate both of these meals each day.
There is a reverse to this pleasant picture of the Old Bailey. For many
years it was a most unhealthy place to hold court in. The jail fevers
which decimated Newgate's population always found their way into the
court room. In 1750 the fever caused the death of several judges and
Lord Mayor Pennant himself, and whenever there was an epidemic there are
records of its effect among the potentates of the Old Bailey. In Chapter
7 of "A Tale of Two Cities," in connection with the trial of Charles
Darnay, Dickens writes of the Old Bailey Court: "They hanged at Tyburn
in those days, so the street outside of Newgate had not obtained the
infamous notoriety that has since attached to it. But the gaol was a
vile place, in which most kinds of debauchery and villainy were
practiced, and where dire diseases were bred, that came into the Court
with the prisoners, and sometimes rushed straight from the dock at my
Lord Chief Justice himself, and pulled him off the bench. It had more
than once happened that the judge in the black cap pronounced his own
doom as certainly as the prisoner's, and even died before him." In the
course of the same chapter he describes the accused as standing quiet
and attentive, with his hands resting on the slab of wood forming the
shelf of the prisoner's dock, "so composedly that they had not displaced
a leaf of the herbs with which it was strewn. The Court was all bestrewn
with herbs, and sprinkled with vinegar, as a precaution against gaol air
and gaol fever." In 1770, Mr. Ackerman, one of the keepers, testified
before the House of Commons, which had the question of rebuilding the
prison before it, that in the spring of 1750, the jail distemper had
spread to the Sessions House, now the Old Bailey, and had caused the
death, in addition to two Judges, and the Lord Mayor already alluded to,
of several of the jury and others to the number of over sixty persons.
The surroundings of Newgate are full of historical memories. Just off
Giltspur street, but a step away, is Cock lane, where the ghost walked.
Along Newgate street, going from the Old Bailey to Cheapside, was the
noble old charity of Christ's Hospital, otherwise famous as the
Blue-Coat School, rich in works of art and richer in the recollections
of such scholars within its cloisters as Coleridge, Charles Lamb, Leigh
Hunt, Richardson, who wrote "Clarissa Harlowe," and many more. Along the
same street opens Queen's Head Passage, in which Dolly's chop-house,
which is a part of the commercial history of England, stands, and Ivy
Lane, where Dr. Johnson established his club of that name. Newgate
Market, between Newgate street and Paternoster Row, is the great meat
market of London. It is what is known as the carcass market, and for
many years was the chief source of slaughtered meat supply to the retail
butchers of London. At a certain hour of the morning Newgate street was
a veritable butchers' exchange. Newgate market was originally a meat
market, but its convenient proximity to Smithfield, which lies on the
other side of Newgate, only a few streets off, led to its conversion to
its later uses. Smithfield was the historic cattle market of London.
Here in the past were slaughtered beasts for food, and men and women for
their opinions. The beasts had the better part of the bargain. They were
killed before they were cooked. The human victims of Smithfield Shambles
were roasted and boiled alive. In chapter 21 of "Oliver Twist" we find a
description of Smithfield when Sykes is carrying Oliver off to assist in
the burglary at Chertsey.
"It was market morning. The ground was covered nearly ankle deep with
filth and mire, and a thick steam perpetually rising from the reeking
bodies of the cattle, and mingling with the fog, which seemed to rest
upon the chimney tops, hung heavily above. All the pens in the centre
of the large area, and as many temporary ones as could be crowded into
the vacant space, were filled with sheep; tied up to posts by the
gutter side were long lines of beasts and oxen three or four deep.
Countrymen, butchers, drovers, hawkers, boys, thieves, idlers,
vagabonds of every low grade, were mingled together in a dense mass;
the whistling of the drovers, the barking of the dogs, the bellowing
and the plunging of the oxen, the bleating of the sheep, the grunting
and the squeaking of the pigs, the cries of the hawkers, the shouts,
oaths, and quarreling on all sides, the ringing of bells and roar of
voices that issued from every public house, the crowding, pushing,
driving, beating, whooping, yelling, the hideous and discordant din
that resounded from every corner of the market, and the unwashed,
unshaven, squalid and dirty figures constantly running to and fro, and
bursting in and out of the throng, rendered it a stunning and
bewildering scene which quite confounded the senses."
It may be remembered too, vide "Great Expectations," chapter 20, that
when Pip came up to London to find his guardian, Mr. Jaggers, he
beguiled that time while awaiting his return to his office by wandering
about the neighborhood, and so "came into Smithfield, and the shameful
place being all asmear with filth and fat and blood and foam, seemed to
stick to me. So I rubbed it off with all possible speed by turning into
a street where I saw the great black dome of St. Paul's bulging at me
from behind a grim stone building which a bystander said was Newgate
prison." Whenever he writes of the jail, he does so in the same spirit.
His earliest impressions of it struck the keynote for his whole life's
view of it. What those early impressions were one may discover in that
paper of the "Sketches by Boz" which, in their collected shape, bears
the number 24, and has for title, "Criminal Courts."
"We shall never forget the mingled feelings of awe and respect with
which we used to gaze on the exterior of Newgate in our schoolboy
days. How dreadful its rough, heavy walls, and how massive the doors
appeared to us--the latter looking as if they were made for the
express purpose of letting people in and never letting them out again.
Then the fetters over the debtor's door, which we used to think were a
bona fide set of irons just hung up there for convenience sake, ready
to be taken down at a moment's notice and rivetted on the limbs of
some refractory felon. We were never tired wondering how the hackney
coachman on the opposite stand could cut jokes in the presence of such
horrors, and drink pots of half-and-half so near the last drop.
"Often have we strayed here in session's time to catch a glimpse of
the whipping place or that dark building on one side of the yard in
which is kept the gibbet with all of its dreadful apparatus, and on
the door of which we half expected to see a brass plate with the
inscription, 'Mr. Ketch,' for we never imagined that the distinguished
functionary could by possibility live anywhere else. The days of those
childish dreams have passed away, and with them many other boyish
ideas of gayer nature. But we shall retain so much of our original
feeling that to this hour we never pass the building without something
like a shudder."