The Chronicles of Newgate, vol. 2/2
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Title: The Chronicles of Newgate, vol. 2/2
Author: Arthur Griffiths
Release date: September 1, 2014 [eBook #46746]
Most recently updated: November 28, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHRONICLES OF NEWGATE, VOL. 2/2 ***
Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
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produced from images available at The Internet Archive)
[Illustration: _An Inner Gate._]
THE
CHRONICLES OF NEWGATE
BY
ARTHUR GRIFFITHS
MAJOR LATE 63RD REGIMENT; ONE OF H. M. INSPECTORS OF PRISONS
AUTHOR OF "THE MEMORIALS OF MILLBANK," ETC., ETC.
[Illustration]
_IN TWO VOLUMES.--VOL. II._
LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL
(LIMITED)
1884
[_All rights reserved._]
Bungay:
CLAY AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.
CONTENTS OF VOL II.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
CRIMES AND CRIMINALS 1
CHAPTER II.
NEWGATE DOWN TO 1818 66
CHAPTER III.
PHILANTHROPY IN NEWGATE 114
CHAPTER IV.
THE BEGINNINGS OF PRISON REFORM 147
CHAPTER V.
THE FIRST REPORT OF THE INSPECTORS OF PRISONS 187
CHAPTER VI.
EXECUTIONS (_continued_) 231
CHAPTER VII.
NEWGATE NOTORIETIES 274
CHAPTER VIII.
NEWGATE NOTORIETIES (_continued_) 337
CHAPTER IX.
LATER RECORDS 399
CHAPTER X.
NEWGATE NOTORIETIES 430
CHAPTER XI.
NEWGATE REFORMED 475
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
VOL. II.
AN INNER GATE _Frontispiece_
CHARLES PRICE, _alias_ OLD PATCH 18
JUSTICE HALL IN THE OLD BAILEY _To face_ p. 36
WHIPPING AT THE OLD BAILEY " 50
REV. MR. WHITFIELD PREACHING ON KENNINGTON COMMON _To face_ p. 118
ENTRANCE TO MRS. FRY'S WARD " 143
BELLINGHAM 244
PREPARING FOR AN EXECUTION _To face_ p. 246
EXHIBITION OF BODY OF WILLIAMS " 267
CONSPIRATORS' STABLE IN CATO STREET " 281
FAUNTLEROY IN THE DOCK 297
COURVOISIER 349
EXECUTION SHED (1883) _To face_ p. 427
INTERIOR OF CHAPEL (1880) " 498
CHRONICLES OF NEWGATE.
CHAPTER I.
CRIMES AND CRIMINALS.
State of crime on opening new gaol--Newgate full--Executions very
numerous--Ruthless penal code--Forgery punished with death--Its
frequency--How fostered--Some notable forgers--The first forgery of
Bank of England notes--Gibson--Bolland--The two Perreaus--Dr.
Dodd--Charles Price, _alias_ Old Patch--Clipping still largely
practised--John Clarke hanged for it--Also William Guest, a clerk
in Bank of England--His elaborate apparatus for filing
guineas--Coining--Forty or fifty private mints for making
counterfeits--Always at work--Town and country orders regularly
executed--650 prosecutions for coining in seven years--Offences
against life and property--Streets unsafe--High roads infested by
robbers--No regular police--Inefficiency of watchmen--Assaults on
the weaker sex--Renwick Williams "the monster"--Daring Robberies at
lévees--The Duke of Beaufort robbed by gentleman Harry--George
Barrington, the gentleman thief, frequents Ranelagh, the Palace,
the Opera House--His depredations--He aids authorities to suppress
a mutiny, turns police officer and becomes chief constable of New
South Wales before he dies--Gentlemen of the road ubiquitous and
always busy--Highwaymen put down by the horse patrol--Horse patrol
described--Executions still numerous, but transportation now
adopted as a secondary punishment for lesser offenders--Some of
these described--"Long firm" swindlers--Alexander Day, _alias_
Marmaduke Davenport, Esq.--Female Sharpers--Elizabeth Grieve
pretends to sell places under the Crown--So does David James
Dignam--Traffic in places flourished in this corrupt age--Mrs.
Clarke and the Duke of York--Other forms of swindling--Jacques
defrauds Warden of the Fleet--Juvenile depravity--Increased by
committing the young to Newgate--Various youthful crimes--A girl
for sale--Prize-fighting--Writers in gaol--The North
Briton--Wilkes--The Press oppressed--Mr. Walter of the 'Times' in
Newgate--Sir Francis Burdett and Mr. John Gale Jones--William
Cobbett in Newgate--Also the Marquis of Sligo.
In the years immediately following the erection of the new gaol, crime
was once more greatly in the ascendant. After the peace which gave
independence to the United States, the country was overrun with
discharged soldiers and sailors. They were mostly in dire poverty, and
took to depredation almost as a matter of course. The calendars were
particularly heavy. At the September Sessions of the Old Bailey in 1783,
fifty-eight were convicted for capital offences. The Deputy Recorder, in
passing sentence, remarked that it gave him inexpressible pain, and that
it was truly alarming "to behold a bar so crowded with persons whose
wickedness and imprudence had induced them to commit such enormous
crimes as the laws of their country justly and necessarily punish with
death. Those laws," he added, being thoroughly imbued with the ferocious
spirit of the times, "while they are founded in equity, and executed
with lenity, (!) impartiality, and rectitude, are written in blood." The
exemplary punishment of so many failed to have a very deterrent effect.
In the December Sessions following the number of trials was greater,
although there were not so many capital convictions. Twenty-four
received sentence of death, and ninety were convicted of single
felonies. "Two such sessions," says a contemporary writer, "were never
known before in London." The same depravity, dealt with in the same
ruthless manner, prevailed throughout England. In the Lent Assizes of
1785 the judges on every circuit dealt out death with a liberal hand. At
Kingston there were twenty-one capital sentences, and nine executions.
At Lincoln twelve of the former, and at Gloucester sixteen, with, in
both cases, nine executions; seven executions at Warwick, six at Exeter,
Winchester, and Salisbury, five at Shrewsbury, and so on. The total
number of capital sentences in England alone was two hundred and
forty-two, of whom one hundred and three suffered, and only at Stafford,
Oakham, and Ludlow was there a "maiden assize," or no capital
conviction. At this date there were forty-nine persons lying in Newgate
under sentence of death, one hundred and eighty under sentence of
transportation, and prisoners of other categories, making the total
prison population up to nearly six hundred souls.
Speaking of those times, Mr. Townshend, a veteran Bow Street runner, in
his evidence before a Parliamentary Committee in 1816,[1] declared that
in the years 1781-7 as many as twelve, sixteen, or twenty were hanged
at one execution; twice he saw forty hanged at one time. In 1783 there
were twenty at two consecutive executions. He had known, he said, as
many as two hundred and twenty tried at one sessions. He had himself
obtained convictions of from thirteen to twenty-five for returning from
transportation. Upon the same authority we are told that in 1783 the
Secretary of State advised the King to punish with all severity. The
enormity of the offences was so great, says Mr. Townshend, and "plunder
had got to such an alarming pitch," that a letter was circulated among
judges and recorders then sitting, to the effect that His Majesty would
dispense with the recorders' reports, and that the worst criminals
should be picked out and at once ordered for execution.
The penal code was at this period still ruthlessly severe. There were
some two hundred capital felonies upon the statute book. Almost any
member of parliament eager to do his share in legislation could "create
a capital felony." A story is told of Edmund Burke, that he was leaving
his house one day in a hurry, when a messenger called him back on a
matter which would not detain him a minute: "Only a felony without
benefit of clergy." Burke also told Sir James Mackintosh, that although
scarcely entitled to ask a favour of the ministry, he thought he had
influence enough to create a capital felony.[2] It is true that of the
two hundred, not more than five-and-twenty sorts of felonies actually
entailed execution. It is true too that some of the most outrageous and
ridiculous reasons for its infliction had disappeared. It was no longer
death to take a falcon's egg from the nest, nor was it a hanging matter
to be thrice guilty of exporting live sheep. But a man's life was still
appraised at five shillings. Stealing from the person, or in a dwelling,
or in a shop, or on a navigable river, to that amount, was punished with
death. "I think it not right nor justice," wrote Sir Thomas More in
1516, "that the loss of money should cause the loss of man's life; for
mine opinion is that all the goods in the world are not able to
countervail man's life." Three hundred years was still to pass before
the strenuous efforts of Sir Samuel Romilly bore fruit in the
amelioration of the penal code. In 1810 he carried a bill through the
House of Commons, which was, however, rejected by the Lords, to abolish
capital punishment for stealing to the amount of five shillings in a
shop. His most bitter opponents were the great lawyers of the times,
Lords Ellenborough, Eldon, and others, Lords Chancellors and Lords Chief
Justice, who opposed dangerous innovations, and viewed with dismay any
attempt "to alter laws which a century had proved to be necessary." Lord
Eldon on this occasion said that he was firmly convinced of the wisdom
of the principles and practice of our criminal code. Romilly did not
live to see the triumph of his philanthropic endeavours. He failed to
procure the repeal of the cruel laws against which he raised his voice,
but he stopped the hateful legislation which multiplied capital felonies
year by year, and his illustrious example found many imitators. Within a
few years milder and more humane ideas very generally prevailed. In 1837
the number of offences to which the extreme penalty could be applied was
only seven, and in that year only eight persons were executed, all of
them for murders of an atrocious character.[3]
Forgery, at the period of which I am now treating, was an offence
especially repugnant to the law. No one guilty of it could hope to
escape the gallows. The punishment was so certain, that as milder
principles gained ground, many benevolent persons gladly withdrew from
prosecution where they could. Instances were known in which bankers and
other opulent people compromised with the delinquent rather than be
responsible for taking away a fellow-creature's life.[4] The prosecutor
would sometimes pretend his pockets had been picked of the forged
instrument, or he destroyed it, or refused to produce it. An important
witness sometimes kept out of the way. Persons have gone so far as to
meet forged bills of exchange, and to a large amount. In one case it was
pretty certain they would not have advanced the money had the punishment
been short of death, because the culprit had already behaved
disgracefully, and they had no desire he should escape a lesser
retribution. Prosecutors have forfeited their recognizances sooner than
appear, and have even, when duly sworn, withheld a portion of their
testimony.
But at the time of which I am now writing the law generally took its
course. In the years between 1805 and 1818 there had been two hundred
and seven executions for forgery; more than for either murder, burglary,
or robbery from the person. It may be remarked here that the Bank of
England was by far the most bitter and implacable as regards
prosecutions for forgery. Of the above-mentioned two hundred and seven
executions for this crime, no less than seventy-two were the victims of
proceedings instituted by the Bank. Forgeries upon this great monetary
corporation had been much more frequent since the stoppage of specie
payments, which had been decreed by Parliament in 1797 to save the Bank
from collapse. Alarms of invasion had produced such a run upon it, that
on one particular day little more than a million in cash or bullion
remained in the cellars, which had already been drained of specie for
foreign subsidies and subventions. Following the cessation of cash
payments to redeem its paper in circulation, the Bank had commenced the
issue of notes to the value of less than five pounds, and it was soon
found that these, especially the one-pound notes, were repeatedly
forged. In the eight years preceding 1797 but few prosecutions had been
instituted by the Bank; but in the eight immediately following there
were one hundred and forty-six convictions for the offence. At last,
about 1818, a strong and general feeling of dissatisfaction grew rife
against these prosecutions. The crime had continued steadily to
increase, in spite of the awful penalties conviction entailed. It was
proved, moreover, that note forgery was easily accomplished. Detection,
too, was most difficult. The public were unable to distinguish between
the good and bad notes. Bank officials were themselves often deceived,
and cases were known where the clerks had refused payment of the genuine
article. Juries began to decline to convict on the evidence of
inspectors and clerks, unless substantiated by the revelation of the
private mark, a highly inconvenient practice, which the Bank itself
naturally discountenanced. Efforts were made to improve the quality of
the note, so as to defy imitation; but this could not well be done at
the price, and, as the only effective remedy, specie payments were
resumed, and the one-pound note withdrawn from circulation.[5] But
execution for forgery continued to be the law for many more years.
Fauntleroy suffered for it in 1824;[6] Joseph Hunton, the Quaker
linen-draper, in 1828; and Maynard, the last, in the following year.
I am, however, anticipating somewhat, and must retrace my steps, and
indicate briefly one or two of the early forgers who passed through
Newgate and suffered for the crime. The first case I find recorded is
that of Richard Vaughan, a linen-draper of Stafford, who was committed
to Newgate in March, 1758, for counterfeiting Bank of England notes. He
employed several artists to engrave the notes in various parts, one of
whom informed against him. The value of the note he himself added.
Twenty which he had thus filled up he had deposited in the hands of a
young lady to whom he was paying his addresses, as a guarantee of his
wealth. Vaughan no doubt suffered, although I see no record of the fact
in the Newgate Calendar.
Mr. Gibson's was a curious case. He was a prisoner in Newgate for
eighteen months between conviction and execution, the jury having found
a special verdict, subject to the determination of the twelve judges. As
Gibson remained so long in gaol, it was the general opinion that no
further notice would be taken of the case. The prisoner himself must
have been buoyed up with this hope, as he petitioned repeatedly for
judgment. He had been sentenced in Sept. 1766, and in 1768, at Hilary
Term, the judges decided that his crime came within the meaning of the
law. Gibson had been a solicitor's clerk, who gave so much satisfaction
that he was taken into partnership. The firm was doing a large business,
and among other large affairs was intrusted with a Chancery case,
respecting an estate for which an _ad interim_ receiver had been
appointed. Gibson's way of life was immoral and extravagant. He had
urgent need of funds, and in an evil hour he forged the signature of the
Accountant-General to the Court of Chancery, and so obtained possession
of some of the rents of the above-mentioned estate. The fraud was
presently discovered; Gibson was arrested, and eventually, as already
stated, condemned. "After sentence," says the Calendar, "his behaviour
was in every way becoming his awful situation; ... he appeared rational,
serious, and devout. His behaviour was so pious, so resigned, and in all
respects so admirably adapted to his unhappy situation, that the tears
of the commiserating multitude accompanied his last ejaculation. He was
carried to execution in a mourning coach," an especial honour reserved
for malefactors of aristocratic antecedents and gentle birth.
James Bolland, who was executed in 1772, deserved and certainly obtained
less sympathy. Bolland long filled the post of a sheriff's officer, and
as such became the lessee of a spunging-house, where he practised
boundless extortion. He was a man of profligate life, whose means never
equalled his extravagant self-indulgence, and he was put to all manner
of shifts to get money. More than once he arrested debtors, was paid all
claims in full, and appropriated the money to his own use, yet escaped
due retribution for his fraud. He employed bullies, spies, and indigent
attorneys to second his efforts, some of whom were arrested and
convicted of other crimes with the clothes Bolland provided them still
on their backs. His character was so infamous, that when he purchased
the situation of upper city marshal for £2400, the court of aldermen
would not approve of the appointment. He tried also to succeed to a
vacancy as Sergeant-at-mace, and met with the same objection. The
deposit-money paid over in both these affairs was attached by his
sureties, and he was driven to great necessities for funds. When called
upon to redeem a note of hand he had given, he pleaded that he was short
of cash, and offered another man's bill, which, however, was refused
unless endorsed. Bolland then proceeded to endorse it with his own name,
but it was declared unnegotiable, owing to the villanous character it
bore. Whereupon Bolland erased all the letters after the capital, and
substituted the letters "anks," the name of Banks being that of a
respectable victualler of Rathbone Place, in a large way of trade. When
the bill became due, Banks repudiated his signature, and Bolland, who
sought too late to meet it and hush up the affair, was arrested for the
forgery. He was tried and executed in due course.
The case of the twin brothers Perreau in 1776 was long the talk of the
town. It evoked much public sympathy, as they were deemed to be the
dupes of a certain Mrs. Rudd, who lived with Daniel Perreau, and passed
as his wife. Daniel was a man of reputed good means, with a house in
Harley Street, which he kept up well. His brother, Robert Perreau, was a
surgeon enjoying a large practice, and residing in Golden Square. The
forged deed was a bond for £7500, purporting to be signed by William
Adair, a well-known agent. Daniel Perreau handed this to Robert Drummond
Perreau, who carried it to the Bank, where its validity was questioned,
and the brothers, with Mrs. Rudd, were arrested on suspicion of forgery.
Daniel on his trial solemnly declared that he had received the
instrument from Mrs. Rudd; Robert's defence was that he had no notion
the document was forged. Both were, however, convicted of knowingly
uttering the counterfeit bond. It was, however, found impossible to
prove Mrs. Rudd's complicity in the transaction, and she was acquitted.
The general feeling was, however, so strong that she was the guilty
person, that the unfortunate Perreaus became a centre of interest.
Strenuous efforts were made to obtain a reprieve for them. Robert
Perreau's wife went in deep mourning, accompanied by her three children,
to sue for pardon on their knees from the Queen. Seventy-two leading
bankers and merchants signed a petition in his favour, which was
presented to the King two days before the execution. But all to no
purpose. Both brothers suffered the extreme penalty at Tyburn on the
17th January, 1776, before an enormous multitude estimated at 30,000.
They asserted their innocence to the last.
In the following year a clergyman, who had at one time achieved some
eminence, also fell a victim to the vindictive laws regarding forgery.
Dr. Dodd was the son of a clergyman. He had been a wrangler at
Cambridge, and was early known as a litterateur of some repute. While
still on his promotion, and leading a gay life in London, he made a
foolish marriage, and united himself to the daughter of one of Sir John
Dolben's servants, a young lady largely endowed with personal
attractions, but certainly deficient in birth and fortune. This sobered
him, and he took orders in the year that his 'Beauties of Shakespeare'
was published. He became a zealous curate at West Ham; thence he went to
St. James', Garlick Hill, and took an active part in London church and
charitable work. He was one of the promoters of the Magdalen Hospital,
also of the Humane Society, and in 1763, twelve years after ordination,
he was appointed chaplain in ordinary to the King. About the same time
he was presented to a prebend's stall in Brecon Cathedral, and was
recommended to Lord Chesterfield as tutor to his son. He hoped to
succeed to the rectory of West Ham, but being disappointed he now came
to London, and launched out into extravagance. He had a town house, and
a country house at Ealing, and he exchanged his chariot for a coach.
Having won a prize of £1000 in a lottery, he became interested in two
proprietary chapels, but could not make them pay. But just then he was
presented with a living, that of Hockliffe, in Bedfordshire, which he
held with the vicarage of Chalgrove, and his means were still ample.
They were not sufficient, however, for his expenditure, and in an evil
moment he attempted to obtain the valuable cure of St. George's,
Hanover Square, by back-stair influence. The living was in the gift of
the Crown, and Dodd was so ill advised as to write to a great lady at
Court, offering her £3000 if he were presented. The letter was forthwith
passed on to the Lord Chancellor, and the King, George III., hearing
what had happened, ordered Dr. Dodd's name to be struck off the list of
his chaplains. The story was made public, and Dodd was satirized in the
press and on the stage.
Dodd was now greatly encumbered by debts, from which the presentation to
a third living, that of Winge, in Buckinghamshire, could not relieve
him. He was in such straits that, according to his biographer, "he
descended so low as to become the editor of a newspaper," and he tried
to obtain relief in bankruptcy, but failed. At length, so sorely pressed
was he by creditors that he resolved to do a dishonest deed. He forged
the name of his old pupil, now Lord Chesterfield, who had since become
his patron, to a bond for £4200. He applied to certain usurers, in the
name of a young nobleman who was seeking an advance. The business was
refused by many, because Dr. Dodd declared that they could not be
present at the execution of the bond. A Mr. Robertson proved more
obliging, and to him Dr. Dodd, in due course, handed a bond for £4200
executed by Lord Chesterfield, and witnessed by himself. A second
witness being necessary, Mr. Robertson signed his name beneath Dr.
Dodd's. The bond was no sooner presented for payment, and referred to
Lord Chesterfield, than it was repudiated. Robertson was forthwith
arrested, and soon afterwards Dr. Dodd. The latter at once, in the hope
of saving himself, returned £3000; he gave a cheque upon his bankers for
£700, a bill of sale on his furniture worth £400 more, and the whole sum
was made up by another hundred from the brokers. Nevertheless Dr. Dodd
was taken before the Lord Mayor and charged with the forgery. Lord
Chesterfield would not stir a finger to help his old tutor, although the
poor wretch had made full restitution. Dr. Dodd, when arraigned,
declared that he had no intention to defraud, that he had only executed
the bond as a temporary resource to meet some pressing claims. The jury
after consulting only five minutes found him guilty, and he was
regularly sentenced to death. Still greater exertions were made to
obtain a reprieve for Dr. Dodd than in the case of the Perreaus. The
newspapers were filled with letters pleading for him. All classes of
people strove to help him; the parish officers went in mourning from
house to house, asking subscriptions to get up a petition to the King,
and this petition, when eventually drafted, filled twenty-three skins of
parchment. Petitions from Dodd and his wife, both drawn up by Dr.
Johnson, were laid before the King and Queen. Even the Lord Mayor and
Common Council went in a body to St. James's Palace to beg mercy from
the King. As, however, clemency had been denied to the Perreaus, it was
deemed unadvisable to extend it to Dr. Dodd.[7] The concourse at his
execution, which took place at Tyburn, was immense. It has been stated
erroneously that Dr. Dodd preached his own funeral sermon. He only
delivered an address to his fellow-prisoners in the prison chapel by the
permission of Mr. Villette, the ordinary. The text he chose was Psalm
li. 3, "I acknowledge my faults; and my sin is ever before me." It was
delivered some three weeks before the Doctor's execution, and
subsequently printed. It is a curious fact that among other published
works of Dr. Dodd, is a sermon on the injustice of capital punishments.
He was, however, himself the chief witness against a highwayman, who was
hanged for stopping him. Among other spectators at the execution of Dr.
Dodd was the Rev. James Hackman, who afterwards murdered Miss Reay.[8]
It is said that a scheme was devised to procure Dodd's escape from
Newgate. He was treated with much consideration by Mr. Akerman, allowed
to have books, papers, and a reading-desk. Food and other necessaries
were brought him from outside by a female servant daily. This woman was
found to bear a striking resemblance to the Doctor, which was the more
marked when she was dressed up in a wig and gown. She was asked if she
would co-operate in a scheme for taking the Doctor's place in gaol, and
consented. It was arranged that on a certain day, Dr. Dodd's irons
having been previously filed, he was to change clothes with the woman.
She was to seat herself at the reading-desk while Dr. Dodd, carrying a
bundle under his arm, coolly walked out of the prison. The plan would
probably have succeeded, but Dodd would not be a party to it. He was so
buoyed up with the hope of reprieve that he would not risk the
misconstruction which would have been placed upon the attempt to escape
had it failed. In his own profession Dr. Dodd was not very highly
esteemed. Dr. Newton, Bishop of Bristol, is said to have observed that
Dodd deserved pity, because he was hanged for the least crime he had
committed.
One of the most notorious depredators in this line, whose operations
long eluded detection, was Charles Price, commonly called Old Patch. He
forged bank-notes wholesale. His plans were laid with the utmost
astuteness, and he took extraordinary precautions to avoid discovery. He
did everything for himself; made his own paper, with the proper
water-mark, engraved his own plates, and manufactured his own ink. His
method of negotiating the forged notes was most artful. He had three
homes; at one he was Price, properly married, at a second he lived
under
[Illustration: CHARLES PRICE, _alias_ OLD PATCH.]
another name with a woman who helped him in his schemes, at a third he
did the actual business of passing his notes. This business was always
effected in disguise; none of his agents or instruments saw him except
in disguise, and when his work was over he put it off to return home.
One favourite personation of his was that of an infirm old man, wearing
a long black camlet cloak, with a broad cape fastened up close to his
chin. With this he wore a big, broad-brimmed slouch hat, and often green
spectacles or a green shade. Sometimes his mouth was covered up with red
flannel, or his corpulent legs and gouty feet were swathed in flannel.
His natural appearance as Price was a compact middle-aged man, inclined
to stoutness, erect, active, and not bad-looking, with a beaky nose,
keen grey eyes, and a nutcracker chin. His schemes were very ingenious.
On one occasion he pretended, in one disguise, to expose a swindler
(himself in another disguise), whom a respectable city merchant
inveigled into his house in order to give him up to the police. The
swindler proposed to buy himself off for £500; the offer was accepted,
the money paid by a thousand-pound note, for which the swindler got
change. The note, of course, was forged. He victimized numbers of
tradesmen. Disguised as an old man, he passed six forged fifty-pound
notes on a grocer, and then as Price backed up his victim in an action
brought against the bank which refused payment of the counterfeits. But
his cleverest coup was that organized against the lottery offices.
Having in one of his disguises engaged a boy to serve him, he sent the
lad, dressed in livery, round the town to buy lottery tickets, paying
for them in large (forged) notes, for which change was always required.
By these means hundreds and hundreds of pounds were obtained upon the
counterfeits. The boy was presently arrested, and a clever plot was laid
to nab the old man his master, but Price by his vigilance outwitted the
police. Another dodge was to hire boys to take forged notes to the Bank,
receive the tickets from the teller, and carry them back to him (Price).
He forthwith altered the figures, passed them on by the same messenger
to the Bank cashier, and obtained payment for the larger amount.
These wholesale forgeries produced something like consternation at the
Bank. It was supposed that they were executed by a large gang, well
organized and with numerous ramifications, although Price, as I have
said, really worked single-handed. The notes poured in day after day,
and still no clue was obtained as to the culprits. The Bow Street
officials were hopelessly at fault. "Old Patch" was advertised for,
described in his various garbs. It was now discovered that he had a
female accomplice. This was a Mrs. Poultney, alias Hickeringill, his
wife's aunt, a tall, rather genteel woman of thirty, with a downcast
look, thin face and person, light hair, and pitted with the small-pox.
Fate at last unexpectedly overtook Old Patch. One of many endorsements
upon a forged note was traced to a pawnbroker, who remembered to have
had the note from one Powel. The runners suspected that Powel was Price,
and that he was a member of Old Patch's gang. A watch was set at the
pawnbroker's, and the next time Powel called he was arrested, identified
as Price, searched, and found to have upon his person a large number of
notes, with a quantity of white tissue-paper, which he declared he had
bought to make into air-balloons for his children. Price was committed
to prison, and a close inquiry made into his antecedents. He was found
to be the man who had decoyed Foote the actor into a partnership in a
brewery, and decamped with the profits, leaving Foote to pay liabilities
to the extent of £500. Then, he had started an illicit still, and had
been arrested and sent to Newgate till he had paid a fine of £1600. He
was released through the intercession of Lord Littleton and Foote, and
forgiven the fine. He next set up as a fraudulent lottery office keeper,
and bolted with a big prize. After this he elaborated his system of
forgery, which ended in the way I have said. Price was alert and cunning
to the last. One of his first acts was to pass out a clandestine letter
to Mrs. Poultney, briefly telling her to "destroy everything." This she
effected by burning the whole of his disguises in the kitchen fire, on
the pretence that the clothes were infected by the plague. The engraving
press was disposed of; the copper plates heated red hot, then smashed
into pieces and thrown with the water-mark wires on to a neighbouring
dust-heap, where they were subsequently discovered. Price attempted to
deny his identity, but to no purpose, and when he saw the grip of the
law tightening upon him, he committed suicide to avoid the extreme
penalty. He was found hanging behind the door of his cell, suspended
from two hat-screws, strengthened by gimlets. Price's depredations, it
was said, amounted to £200,000; but how he disposed of his ill-gotten
gains, seeing that he always lived obscurely, and neither gambled nor
drank, remained an inscrutable secret to the last.
Two deliberate cases of forging Bank of England notes about this time
may be mentioned, although neither of the criminals passed through
Newgate. One was James Elliot, who suffered at Maidstone in 1777, the
other Joshua Crompton, who was executed at Gangley Green, near
Guildford, in 1778.
The circulation of counterfeit paper was not the only kind of monetary
fraud in vogue. The coinage of the realm still suffered. Clipping could
not be quite put down by act of Parliament. The punishment was still
capital, and generally inflicted without hope of reprieve. It was a
crime affected more particularly by workers in the precious metals. Thus
John Clarke, in 1767, was a London watch-case maker of good repute, who
was in the habit of working alone in a private closet. His apprentice,
jealously suspecting him to be engaged in some secret branch of his
trade, bored a hole through the wainscot, and caught his master filing
guineas. The apprentice immediately informed; Clarke was arrested,
convicted, and soon afterwards hanged.
Persons in a higher station, however, succumbed to special temptations.
William Guest was the son of a clergyman living at Worcester, who had
sufficient interest to get him a clerkship in the Bank of England. The
constant handling of piles of gold was too much for Guest's integrity,
and he presently resolved to turn his opportunities to account. Taking a
house in Broad Street Buildings, he devoted the upper part of it to his
nefarious trade. He abstracted guineas from his drawer in the Bank,
carried them home, filed them, then remilled them in a machine he had
designed for the purpose, and returned them--now light weight--to the
Bank. The filings he converted into ingots and disposed of to the
trade. No suspicion of his malpractices transpiring, he was in due
course advanced to the post of teller. But a fellow-teller having
observed him one day picking out new guineas from a bag, watched him,
and found that he did this constantly. On another occasion he was seen
to pay away guineas some of which, on examination, proved to have been
recently filed. They were weighed, and found short weight. To test Mr.
Guest still further, his money-bags were opened one night after hours,
and the contents counted and examined. The number was short, and several
guineas found which appeared to have been recently filed, and which on
weighing proved to be light.
A descent was forthwith made upon Guest's house, and in the upper rooms
the whole apparatus for filing was laid bare. In a nest of drawers were
found vice, files, the milling machine, two bags of gold filings, and a
hundred guineas. A flap in front of the nest of drawers could be let
down, and inside was a skin fastened to the back of the flap, with a
hole in it to button on to the waistcoat, and equip the workman after
the method of jewellers. More evidence was soon forthcoming against
Guest. His fellow-teller had seen him in possession of a substantial bar
of gold; jewellers and others swore to having bought ingots from him,
and an assayer at Guest's trial deposed to their being of the same
standard as the guinea coinage. His guilt was clearly made out to the
jury, and he was sentenced to death. A petition signed by a number of
influential persons was forwarded to the Crown, praying for mercy, but
it was decided that the law ought to take its course. As his crime
amounted to high treason, he went to Tyburn on a sledge, but he suffered
no other penalty than hanging.
The flagitious trade of coining was in a most flourishing condition
during the last decades of the eighteenth and the early part of the
nineteenth centuries. The condition of the national coinage was at this
time far from creditable to the Mint. A great part of both the silver
and copper money in circulation was much worn and defaced. Imitation
thus became much easier than with coins comparatively fresh and new.
Hence the nefarious practice multiplied exceedingly. There were as many
as forty or fifty private mints constantly at work, either in London or
in the principal country towns. The process was rapid, not too
laborious, and extremely profitable. A couple of hands could turn out in
a week base silver coins worth nominally two or three hundred pounds.
The wages of a good workman were as much as a couple of guineas a day.
Much capital was invested by large dealers in the trade, who must have
made enormous sums. One admitted that his transactions in seven years
amounted to the production of £200,000 in counterfeit half-crowns and
other silver coins. So systematic was the traffic, that orders for town
and country were regularly executed by the various manufacturers. Boxes
and parcels of base coin were despatched every morning by coach and
waggon to all parts of the kingdom, like any other goods. The trade
extended to foreign countries.[9] The law, until it was rectified by the
37 Geo. III. cap. 126, did not punish the counterfeiting of foreign
money, and French louis-d'or, Spanish dollars, German florins, and
Turkish sequins were shipped abroad in great quantities. Our Indian
possessions even did not escape, and a manufactory of spurious gold or
silver pagodas was at one time most active in London, whence they were
exported to the East. The number of persons employed in London as
capitalists and agents for distribution alone amounted to one hundred
and twenty at one time; and besides there was a strong force of skilful
handicraftsmen, backed up by a whole army of "utterers" or "smashers,"
constantly busy in passing the base money into the currency. The latter
comprised hawkers, peddlers, market-women, hackney-coach drivers, all of
whom attended the markets held by the dealers in the manufactured
article, and bought wholesale to distribute retail by various devices,
more particularly in giving change. They obtained the goods at an
advantage of about one hundred per cent. When the base money lost its
veneer, the dealers were ready to repurchase it in gross, and after a
repetition of the treatment, issue it afresh at the old rates.
Gold coins were not so much counterfeited as silver and copper, but
there were bad guineas in circulation. The most dexterous method of
coining them was by mixing a certain amount of alloy with the pure
metal. They were the proper weight, and had some semblance of the true
ring, but their intrinsic value was not more than thirteen or fourteen
shillings, perhaps only eight or nine. The fabrication was, however,
limited by the expense and the nicety required in the process. To
counterfeit silver was a simpler operation. Of base silver money there
were five kinds; viz. flats, plated goods, plain goods, castings, and
fig things. The _flats_ were cut out of prepared flattened plates
composed of silver and blanched copper. When cut out the coins were
turned in a lathe, stamped in a press with the proper die, and subjected
to rubbing with various materials, including aquafortis to bring the
silver to the surface, sand-paper, cork, cream of tartar, and last of
all blacking to give the appearance of age. _Plated goods_ were prepared
from copper; the coins cut the proper size and plated, the stamping
being done afterwards. As these coins were most like silver, they
generally evaded detection. _Plain goods_ consisted of copper blanks the
size of a shilling, turned out from a lathe, then given the colour and
lustre of metal buttons, after which they were rubbed with cream of
tartar and blacking. _Castings_, as the word implies, were coins made of
blanched copper, cast in moulds of the proper die; they were then
silvered and treated like the rest. It was very common to give this
class of base money a crooked appearance, by which means they seemed
genuine, and got into circulation without suspicion. The _figs_, or
_fig things_, were the lowest and meanest class, and was confined
chiefly to sixpences. Copper counterfeit money was principally of two
kinds, stamped and plain, made out of base metal; the profit on them
being about a hundred per cent. They were mostly halfpennies; but
farthings were also largely manufactured, the material being real
copper, but the fraud was in their being of light weight, and very thin.
The prosecutions for coining were very numerous. The register of the
solicitor to the Mint recorded as many as 650 in a period of seven
years. The offence of making or uttering, till a very recent date,
constituted petty treason, and met with the usual penalties. These, in
the case of female offenders, included hanging and burning at a stake.
The last woman who suffered in this way was burnt before the debtors'
door, in front of Newgate, in 1788, having been previously strangled. In
the following year, as I have already said, the 30 Geo. III. cap. 48 was
passed, which abolished the practice of burning women convicted of petty
treason.[10] Persons guilty of only selling or dealing in base money
were more leniently dealt with. The offence was long only a
misdemeanour, carrying with it a sentence of imprisonment for a year and
a day, which the culprit passed not unpleasantly in Newgate, while his
friends or relations kept the business going outside, and supplied him
regularly with ample funds.
There was as yet little security for life and property in town or
country. The streets of London were still unsafe; high roads and bye
roads leading to it were still infested by highway robbers. The
protection afforded to the public by the police continued very
inefficient. It was still limited to parochial effort; the watchmen were
appointed by the vestries, and received a bare pittance,--twelve and
sixpence a week in summer, seventeen and sixpence in winter,--which they
often eked out by taking bribes from the women of the town, or by a
share in a burglar's "swag," to whose doings they were conveniently
blind. These watchmen were generally middle-aged, often old and feeble
men, who were appointed either from charitable motives, to give them
employment, or save them from being inmates of the workhouse and a
burthen to the parish. Their hours of duty were long, from night-fall to
sunrise, during which, when so disposed, they patrolled the streets,
calling the hour, the only check on their vigilance being the occasional
rounds of the parish beadle, who visited the watchmen on their various
beats. In spite of this the watchmen were often invisible; not to be
found when most wanted, and even when present, powerless to arrest or
make head against disorderly or evilly-disposed persons.
Besides the watchmen there were the parish constables, nominated by the
court of burgesses, or court leet. The obligation of serving in the
office of constable might fall upon any householder in turn, but he was
at liberty to escape it by buying a substitute or purchasing a "Tyburn
ticket," of which more directly. The parish constables were concerned
with pursuit rather than prevention, with crime after rather than before
the fact. In this duty they were assisted by the police constables,
although there was no love lost between the two classes of officer. The
police constables are most familiar to us under the name of "Bow Street
runners," but they were attached to all the police offices, and not to
Bow Street alone. They were nominated from Whitehall by the Secretary of
State, the minister now best known as the Home Secretary. The duties of
the "runners" were mainly those of detection and pursuit, in which they
were engaged in London and in the country, at home and abroad.
Individuals or public bodies applied to Bow Street, or some other
office, for the services of a runner. These officers took charge of
poaching cases, of murders, burglaries, or highway robberies. Some were
constantly on duty at the Court, as depredations were frequently
committed in the royal palaces, or the royal family were "teased by
lunatics." The runners were remunerated by a regular salary of a guinea
a week; but special services might be recognized by a share in the
private reward offered, or, in case of conviction, by a portion of the
public parliamentary reward of £40, which might be granted by the
bench.[11]
The policy of making these grants was considered questionable. It tended
to tempt officers of justice "to forswear themselves for the lucre of
the reward," and the thirst for "blood-money," as it was called, was
aggravated till it led many to sell the lives of their fellow-creatures
for gain. There were numerous cases of this. Jonathan Wild was one of
the most notorious of the dishonest thief-takers. In 1755 several
scoundrels of the same kidney were convicted of having obtained the
conviction of innocent people, simply to pocket the reward. Their
offence did not give under penal statute, so they were merely exposed in
the pillory, where, however, the mob pelted one to death and nearly
killed another. Again, in 1816, a police officer named Vaughan was
guilty of inciting to crime, in order to betray his victims and receive
the blood-money. On the other hand, when conviction was doubtful the
offender enjoyed long immunity from arrest. Officers would not arrest
him until he "weighed his weight," as the saying was, or until they were
certain of securing the £40 reward. Another form of remuneration was the
bestowal on conviction of a "Tyburn ticket"; in other words, of an
exemption from service in parish offices. This the officer sold for what
it would fetch, the price varying in different parishes from £12 or £14
to £30 or £40.
It was not to be wondered at that a weak and inadequate police force,
backed up by such uncertain and injudicious incentives to activity,
should generally come off second-best in its struggles with the
hydra-headed criminality of the day. Robberies and burglaries were
committed almost under the eyes of the police. It was calculated that
the value of the property stolen in the city in one month (_circa_ 1808)
amounted to £15,000, and none of the parties were even known or
apprehended, although sought after night and day.[12] Such cases as the
following were of frequent occurrence. "Seven ruffians, about eight
o'clock at night, knocked at the door of Mrs. Abercrombie in Charlotte
Street, Rathbone Place, calling out 'Post!' and on its being opened,
rushed in and took from Mrs. A. her jewels and fifty or sixty guineas in
money, with all the clothes and linen they could get. The neighbourhood
was alarmed, and a great crowd assembled, but the robbers sallied forth,
and with swords drawn and pistols presented, threatened destruction to
any who opposed them. The mob tamely suffered them to escape with their
booty without making any resistance." The officers of justice were
openly defied. There were streets, such as Duck Lane, Gravel Lane, or
Cock Lane, in which it was unsafe for any one to venture without an
escort of five or six of his fellows. "They (the ruffians) would have
cut him to pieces if he was alone."
Still more dastardly were the wanton outrages perpetrated upon
unprotected females, often in broad daylight, and in the public streets.
These at one time increased to an alarming extent. Ladies were attacked
and wounded without warning, and apparently without cause. The injuries
were often most serious. On one occasion a young lady was stabbed in the
face by means of an instrument concealed in a bouquet of flowers which a
ruffian had begged her to smell. When consternation was greatest,
however, it was reported that the cowardly assailant was in custody. He
proved to be one Renwick Williams, now generally remembered as "the
monster." The assault for which he was arrested was made in St. James's
Street, about midnight, upon a young lady, Miss Porter, who was
returning from a ball to her father's house. Renwick struck at her with
a knife, and wounded her badly through her clothes, accompanying the
blow with the grossest language. The villain at the time escaped, but
Miss Porter recognized him six months later in St. James's Park. He was
followed by a Mr. Coleman to his quarters at No. 52, Jermyn Street, and
brought to Miss Porter's house. The young lady, crying "That is the
wretch!" fainted away at the sight of him. The prisoner indignantly
repudiated that he was "the monster" who was advertised for, but he was
indicted at the Old Bailey, and the jury found him guilty without
hesitation. His sentence was two years' imprisonment in Newgate, and he
was bound over in £400 to be of good behaviour.
Gentlemen, some of the highest station, going or returning from court,
were often the victims of the depredations committed in the royal
precincts. In 1792 a gang of thieves dressed in court suits smuggled
themselves into a drawing-room of St. James's Palace, and tried to
hustle and rob the Prince of Wales. The Duke of Beaufort, returning from
a levee, had his "George," pendant to his ribbon of the Garter, stolen
from him in the yard of St. James's Palace. The order was set with
brilliants, worth a very large sum of money. The duke called out to his
servants, who came up and seized a gentlemanly man dressed in black
standing near. The "George" was found in this gentleman's pocket. He
proved to be one Henry Sterne, commonly called Gentleman Harry,[13] who,
being of good address and genteel appearance, easily got admission to
the best company, upon whom he levied his contributions.
George Barrington, the notorious pickpocket, also found it to his
advantage to attend levees and drawing-rooms. Barrington, or Waldron,
which was his real name, began crime early. When one of a strolling
company in Ireland, he recruited the empty theatrical treasury and
supplemented meagre receipts by stealing watches and purses, the
proceeds being divided among the rest of the actors. He found thieving
so much more profitable than acting that he abandoned the latter in
favour of the former profession, and set up as a gentleman pickpocket.
Having worked Dublin well, his native land became too hot to hold him,
and came to London. At Ranelagh one night he relieved both the Duke of
Leinster and Sir William Draper of considerable sums. He visited also
the principal watering places, including Bath, but London was his
favourite hunting-ground. Disguised as a clergyman, he went to court on
drawing-room days, and picked pockets or removed stars and decorations
from the breasts of their wearers. At Covent Garden Theatre one night he
stole a gold snuff-box set with brilliants, and worth £30,000, belonging
to Prince Orloff, of which there had been much talk, and which, with
other celebrated jewels, Barrington had long coveted. The Russian prince
felt the thief's hand in his pocket, and immediately seized Barrington
by the throat, on which the latter slipped back the snuff-box. But
Barrington was arrested and committed for trial, escaping this time
because Prince Orloff would not prosecute. He was, however, again
arrested for picking a pocket in Drury Lane Theatre, and sentenced to
three years' hard labour on board the hulks in the Thames.
From this he was released prematurely through the good offices of a
gentleman who pitied him, only to be reimprisoned, but in Newgate, not
the hulks, for fresh robberies at the Opera House, Pantheon, and other
places of public resort. Once more released, he betook himself to his
old evil courses, and having narrowly escaped capture in London,
wandered through the northern counties in various disguises, till he was
at length taken at Newcastle-on-Tyne. Another narrow escape followed,
through the absence of a material witness; but he was finally arrested
for picking a pocket on Epsom Downs, and sentenced to seven years'
transportation. He made an affecting speech at his trial, urging, in
extenuation of his offence, that he had never had a fair chance of
earning an honest livelihood. He may have been sincere, and he certainly
took the first opportunity of trying to do well. On the voyage out to
New South Wales there was a mutiny on board the convict ship, which
would have been successful but for Barrington's aid on the side of
authority. He kept the passage to the quarter-deck single-handed, and
the mob of convicts at bay with a marline-spike, till the captain and
crew were able to get arms and make head against the revolt. As a reward
for his conduct, Barrington was appointed to a position of trust, in
charge of other prisoners at Paramatta. Within a year or two he was
advanced to the more onerous and responsible post of chief constable,
and was complimented by the governor of the colony for his faithful
performance of the duty. He fell away in health, however, and retiring
eventually upon a small pension, died before he was fifty years of age.
The gentlemen of the highway continued to harass and rob all travellers.
All the roads were infested. Two or three would be heard of every
morning; some on Hounslow Heath, some on Finchley Common, some on
Wimbledon Common, some on the Romford Road. Townshend, the Bow Street
runner, declared that on arriving at the office of a morning people came
in one after the other to give information of such robberies. "Messrs.
Mellish, Bosanquet, and Pole, merchants of the city," says a
contemporary chronicle, "were stopped by three highwaymen on Hounslow
Heath. After robbing them, without resistance, of their money and their
watches, one of the robbers wantonly fired into the chaise and mortally
wounded Mr. Mellish." The first successful effort made to put down this
levying of blackmail upon the king's highway was the establishment of
the police horse patrol in 1805. It was organized by the direction of
the chief magistrate at Bow Street, then Sir Nathaniel Conant, and under
the immediate orders of a conductor, Mr. Day. This force consisted of
mounted constables, who every night regularly patrolled all the roads
leading into the metropolis. They worked singly between two stations,
each starting at a fixed time from each end, halting midway to
communicate, then returning. The patrol acted on any information
received _en route_, making themselves known as they rode along to all
persons riding horses or in carriages, by calling out in a loud tone
"Bow Street Patrol." They arrested all known offenders whom they met
with,
[Illustration]
and were fully armed for their own and the public protection. The
members of this excellent force were paid eight-and-twenty shillings a
week, with turnpike tolls and forage for their horses, which, however,
they were obliged to groom and take care of. Marked and immediate
results obtained from the establishment of this patrol. Highway robbery
ceased almost entirely, and in the rare cases which occurred before it
quite died out, the guilty parties were invariably apprehended.
There was as yet no very marked diminution in the number of executions,
but other forms of punishment were growing into favour. Already
transportation beyond the seas had grown into a system. Since the
settlement of New South Wales as a penal colony in 1780, convicts were
sent out regularly, and in increasingly large batches. The period
between conviction and embarkation was spent in Newgate, thus adding
largely to its criminal population, with disastrous consequences to the
health and convenience of the place. Besides these, the most heinous
criminals, there were other lesser offenders, for whom various terms of
imprisonment was deemed a proper and sufficient penalty. Hence gaols
were growing much more crowded, Newgate more especially, as I shall
presently show. For the present I propose to give the reader some of the
types of persons who became lodgers in Newgate, not temporarily, as in
the case of all who passed quickly from the condemned cells to the
gallows, but who remained there for longer periods, whether awaiting
removal as transports, or working out a sentence of imprisonment in the
course of law.
As London, increased in size and life, became more complex, chances
multiplied for rogues and sharpers, who tried with chicane and stratagem
to prey upon society. Swindling was carried out more systematically and
upon a wider scale than in the days of Jenny Diver or the sham German
Princess.[14] A woman named Robinson was arrested in 1801, who, under
the pretence of being a rich heiress, had obtained goods fraudulently
from tradesmen to the value of £20,000. Again, some years later, a gang
resembling somewhat the "long firms" of modern days carried on a
fictitious trade, and obtained goods from city merchants worth £50,000.
There were many varieties of the professional swindler in those days.
Some did business under the guise of licensed and outwardly respectable
pawnbrokers, who _sub rosâ_ were traffickers in stolen goods. Others
roamed the country as hawkers, general dealers, and peddlers,
distributing exciseable articles which had been smuggled into the
country, carrying on fraudulent raffles, purchasing stolen horses in one
county and disposing of them in another. The "duffer" went from door to
door in the town, offering for sale smuggled tobacco, muslins, or other
stuffs, and, if occasion served, passing forged notes or bad money as
small change.
Where the swindler possessed such qualifications as a pleasing manner
and a gentlemanly address, with a small capital to start with, he flew
at higher game. Alexander Day, alias Marmaduke Davenport, Esq., was one
of the first of a long line of impostors who made a great show, in a
fine house in a fashionable neighbourhood, with sham footmen in smart
liveries, and a grand carriage and pair. The latter he got in on
approval, taking care while he used them to be driven to the Duke of
Montague's and other aristocratic mansions. In the carriage too he
called on numbers of tradesmen and gave large orders for goods: yards of
Spanish point-lace, a gold "equipage" or dinner-service, silks in long
pieces, table and other linen enough to furnish several houses. By
clever excuses he postponed payment, or made off with the property by a
second door. Among other things ordered was a gold chain for his
squirrel, which already wore a silver one. The goldsmith recognized the
silver chain as one he had recently sold to a lady, and his suspicions
were aroused. On reference to her she denounced Day as a swindler, who
had cheated her out of a large sum of money. Day was forthwith arrested
and sent to Newgate. At his trial he declared that he meant to pay for
everything he had ordered, that he owned an estate in Durham worth £1200
a year, but that it was heavily mortgaged. The case occupied some time,
but in the end Day was sentenced to two years' imprisonment in Newgate,
to stand twice in the pillory, find security for his good behaviour, and
pay a fine of £200.
The cleverest swindles were often effected by the softer sex. Female
sharpers infested all places of public resort. They dressed in the best
clothes, and personating ladies of the highest fashion, attended
entertainments and masquerades; they even succeeded in gaining admission
to St. James's Palace, where they got into the general circle and
pilfered right and left. One woman, the wife of a notorious Chevalier
d'Industrie, was known to have been at court at the King's birthday
(George III.). Her costume was in irreproachable good taste; her husband
attended her in the garb of a dignitary of the Church. Between them they
managed to levy contributions to the extent of £1700, and made off
before these thefts were discovered or suspected. A notable female
sharper was Elizabeth Harriet Grieve, whose line of business was to
pretend that she possessed great influence at court, and promise
preferment. She gave out that she was highly connected: Lord North was
her first cousin, the Duke of Grafton her second; she was nearly related
to Lady Fitz-Roy, and most intimate with Lord Guildford and other peers.
In those days places were shamelessly bought and sold, and tradesmen
retiring from business, or others who had amassed a little property,
invested their savings in a situation under the Crown. When the law at
length laid hands on the Hon. Elizabeth Harriet, as she styled herself,
a great number of cases were brought against her. A coach-carver, whose
trade was declining, had paid her £36 to obtain him a place as clerk in
the Victualling Office. Another man gave her £30 down, with a
conditional bond for £250, to get the place of a "coast" or
"tide"-waiter. Both were defrauded. There were many more proved against
her, and she was eventually sentenced to transportation.
She was only one of many who followed the same trade. David James Dignum
was convicted in 1777 of pretending to sell places under Government, and
sentenced to hard labour on the Thames. Dignum's was a barefaced kind of
imposition. He went the length of handing his victims, in exchange for
the fees, which were never less than a hundred guineas, a stamped
parchment duly signed by the head of the public department, with seals
properly attached. In one case he got £1000 for pretending to secure a
person the office of "writer of the 'London Gazette.'" Of course the
signatures to these instruments were forged, and the seals had been
removed from some legal warrant. When the time came for Dignum's
departure for the hulks, he resolved to go to Woolwich in state, and
travelled down in a post-chaise, accompanied by his negro servant. But
on reaching the ballast lighter on which Dignum was to work, his valet
was refused admittance, and the convict was at once "put to the duty of
the wheelbarrow." He made a desperate effort to get off by forging a
cheque on Drummonds, which he got others to cash. They were arrested,
but their innocence was clearly shown. Dignum had hoped to be brought up
to London for examination. He had thought to change his lot, to exchange
the hulks for Newgate, even at the risk of winding up at Tyburn. But in
this he was foiled, as the authorities thought it best to institute no
prosecution, but leave him to work out his time at the hulks.
That the dishonest and evilly-disposed should thus try to turn the
malversation of public patronage to their own advantage was not strange.
The traffic in places long flourished unchecked in a corrupt age, and
almost under the very eyes of careless, not to say culpable,
administrators. The evil practice culminated in the now nearly forgotten
case of Mrs. Mary Ann Clarke, who undoubtedly profited liberally by her
pernicious influence over the Duke of York when commander-in-chief of
the army. The scandal was brought prominently before the public by
Colonel Wardle, M.P., who charged her with carrying on a traffic in
military commissions, not only with the knowledge, but the
participation, of the Duke of York. A long inquiry followed, at which
extraordinary disclosures were made. Mrs. Clarke was proved to have
disposed of both military and ecclesiastical patronage. She gave her own
footman a pair of colours, and procured for an Irish clergyman the
honour of preaching before the King. Her brokership extended to any
department of state, and her lists of applicants included numbers of
persons in the best classes of society. The Duke of York was exonerated
from the charge of deriving any pecuniary benefit from this disgraceful
traffic; but it was clear that he was cognizant of Mrs. Clarke's
proceedings, and that he knowingly permitted her to barter his patronage
for filthy lucre. Mrs. Clarke was examined in person at the bar of the
house. In the end a vote acquitted the duke of personal corruption, and
the matter was allowed to drop. But a little later Colonel Wardle was
sued by an upholsterer for furniture supplied at his order to Mrs.
Clarke, and the disinterestedness of the colonel's exposure began to be
questioned. In 1814 Mrs. Clarke was sentenced to nine months'
imprisonment for a libel on the Irish Chancellor of the Exchequer.
A clever scheme of deception which went very near success was that
perpetrated by Robert Jaques. Jaques filled the post of "clerk of the
papers" to the warden of the Fleet, a place which he had himself
solicited, on the plea that he was a man of experience, able to guard
the warden against the tricks incident to his trust. Jaques admitted
that his own antecedents were none of the best, that he had been
frequently in gaol, but he pleaded that "men like himself, who had been
guilty of the worst offences, had afterwards become the best officers."
No sooner was Jaques appointed than he began to mature a plot against
his employer. The warden of the Fleet by his office became responsible
for the debt of any prisoner in his custody who might escape. Jaques at
once cast about for some one whom he might through a third party cause
to be arrested, brought to the Fleet on a sham action, and whom he
would assist to escape. The third party's business would then be to sue
the warden for the amount of the evaded debt. Jaques applied to a
friend, Mr. Tronson, who had been a servant, an apothecary, a perfumer,
and a quack doctor. Tronson found him one Shanley, a needy Irishman,
short of stature and of fair complexion, altogether a person who might
well be disguised as a woman. Jaques next arranged that a friend should
get a warrant against Shanley for £450. Upon this, Shanley, who was
easily found, being a "dressy young gentleman, fond of blue and gold,"
was arrested and carried to a spunging-house. While there a second writ
was served upon Shanley for £850, at the suit of another friend of
Jaques. Shanley was next transferred to the Fleet on a Habeas, applied
for by a fictitious attorney. The very next Sunday, Jaques gave a
dinner-party, at which his wife, a brother, Mr. John Jaques, and his
wife, with some of the parties to the suits, and of course Shanley, were
present. Later in the day Shanley exchanged clothes with Mrs. John
Jaques, and, personating her, walked out of the prison. It was at a time
when an under turnkey was on duty at the gate, and he let the disguised
prisoner pass without question. By-and-by Mrs. Jaques got back her
clothes, and also left. Shanley had meanwhile proceeded post haste to
Dover, and so reached the continent.
As soon as the escape was discovered, suspicion fell on Jaques's
friends, who were openly taxed with connivance. The matter looked worse
for them when they laid claim to the money considered forfeited by the
disappearance of the debtor, and the law stepped in to prosecute
inquiry. The head turnkey, tracking Shanley to Calais, went in pursuit.
At the same time a correspondence which was in progress between the
conspirators on either side of the Channel was intercepted by order of
the Secretary of State, and the letters handed over to the warden's
solicitors. From these the whole plot was discovered, and the guilt of
the parties rendered the more sure by the confession of Shanley. Jaques
was arrested, tried, and convicted at the Old Bailey, receiving the
sentence of three years' imprisonment, with one public exposure on the
pillory at the Royal Exchange. A curious accident, however, helped to
obtain the premature release of Jaques from Newgate. A Sir James
Saunderson having been robbed of a large sum in cash and notes, portion
of the stolen property was brought into Newgate by some of the thieves,
who were arrested on another charge. The notes were intrusted to Jaques,
who pretended he could raise money on them. Instead of this, he gave
immediate notice to their rightful owner that he had them in his
possession. Jaques afterwards petitioned Sir James Saunderson to
interest himself in his behalf, and through this gentleman's good
offices he escaped the exposure upon the pillory, and was eventually
pardoned.
A peculiar feature in the criminal records of the early part of the
present century was the general increase in juvenile depravity. This was
remarked and commented upon by all concerned in the administration of
justice: magistrates of all categories, police officers, gaolers, and
philanthropists. It was borne out, moreover, by the statistics of the
times. There were in the various London prisons, in the year 1816, three
thousand inmates under twenty years of age. Nearly half of this number
were under seventeen, and a thousand of these alone were convicted of
felony. Many of those sent to prison were indeed of tender years. Some
were barely nine or ten. Children began to steal when they could
scarcely crawl. Cases were known of infants of barely six charged in the
courts with crimes. This deplorable depravity was attributable to
various causes: to the profligacy prevailing in the parish schools; the
cruel and culpable neglect of parents who deserted their offspring,
leaving them in a state of utter destitution, or were guilty of the no
less disgraceful wickedness of using them as instruments for their
nefarious designs; the artfulness of astute villains--prototypes of old
Fagin--who trained the youthful idea in their own devious ways. The
last-named was a fruitful source of juvenile crime. Children were long
permitted to commit small thefts with impunity. The offence would have
been death to those who used them as catspaws; for them capital
punishment was humanely nearly impossible; moreover, the police officers
ignored them till they "weighed their weight," or had been guilty of a
forty-pound crime.[15] The education in iniquity continued steadily.
They went from bad to worse, and ere long became regular inmates of
"flash houses," where both sexes mixed freely with vicious companions of
their own age, and the most daring enjoyed the hero-worship of their
fellows. When thus assembled, they formed themselves into distinct
parties or gangs, each choosing one of their number as captain, and
dividing themselves into reliefs to work certain districts, one by day
and by night. When they had "collared their swag," they returned to
divide their plunder, having gained sometimes as much as three or four
hundred pounds. A list of these horrible dens prepared about this date
showed that there were two hundred of them, frequented by six thousand
boys and girls, who lived solely by this way, or were the associates of
thieves. These haunts were situated in St. Giles, Drury Lane, Chick
Lane, Saffron Hill, the Borough, and Ratcliffe Highway. Others that were
out of luck crowded the booths of Covent Garden, where all slept
promiscuously amongst the rotting garbage of the stalls. During the
daytime all were either actively engaged in thieving, or were revelling
in low amusements. Gambling was a passion with them, indulged in without
let or hindrance in the open streets; and from tossing buttons there
they passed on to playing in the low publics at such games as "put," or
"the rocks of Scylla," "bumble puppy," "tumble tumble," or "nine holes."
Still more demoralizing than the foregoing was the pernicious habit,
commonly, but happily not invariably followed, of committing these
young thieves to Newgate. Here these tyros were at once associated with
the veterans and great leaders in crime. Old house-breakers expatiated
upon their own deeds, and found eager and willing pupils among their
youthful listeners. The elder and more evilly experienced boys soon
debased and corrupted their juniors. One with twenty previous
convictions against him, who had been in Newgate as often, would have
alongside him an infant of seven or eight, sent to gaol for the first
time for stealing a hearth-broom. It was as bad or worse for the
females. Girls of twelve or thirteen were mixed up with the full-grown
felons; one of the latter, as in a known case, who was what we should
style in these days an habitual criminal, and who had been committed
thirty times to Newgate, residing there generally nine months out of
every twelve, was the wardswoman or prisoner-officer, with nearly
unlimited power.
The crying evils of the system had moved private philanthropy to do
something in remedy. Charitable schools, the forerunners of our modern
reformatories, or the germ and nucleus of time-honoured institutions
still flourishing, and worthy all praise, were started. I shall refer to
these more particularly in a later chapter.[16] Other well-meaning
people, each with their own pet scheme, began to theorize and propose
the construction of juvenile penitentiaries, economical imitations
mostly of the great penitentiary which was nearly completed at
Millbank. But juvenile crime still grew and flourished, the offences
were as numerous as ever, and their character was mostly the same. The
most favourite pastime was that of picking pockets. Boys then as now
were especially skilful at this in a crowd; short, active little chaps,
they slipped through quickly with their booty, and passed it on to the
master who was directing the operations. Shop-lifting, again, was much
practised, the dodge being to creep along on hands and feet to the shop
fronts of haberdashers and linen-drapers, and snatch what they could.
Again, there were clever young thieves who could "starr" a pane in a
window, and so get their hands through the glass. But there were boys
convicted of highway robbery, like Joseph Wood and Thomas Underwood, one
fourteen and the other twelve, both of whom were hanged. Another boy,
barely sixteen, was executed for setting his master's house on fire. The
young incendiary was pot-boy at a public-house, and having been
reprimanded for neglect, vowed revenge. Another boy was condemned for
forming one of a gang of boys and girls in a street robbery, who fell
upon a man in liquor. The girls attacked him, and the boys stripped him
of all he had.
Perhaps the most astounding precocity in crime was that displayed by a
boy named Leary, who was tried and sentenced to death at thirteen years
of age for stealing a watch and chain from some chambers in the Temple.
He began at the early age of eight, and progressed regularly from
stealing apples to burglary and household robbery. He learnt the trade
first from a companion at school. After exacting toll from the
tart-shops, he took to stealing bakers' loaves, then money from shop
counters and tills, or breaking shop windows and drawing their contents
through. He often appeared at school with several pounds in his pocket,
the proceeds of his depredations. He soon became captain of a gang known
as Leary's gang, who drove about, armed with pistols, in a cart,
watching for carriages with the trunks fastened outside, which they
could cut away. In these excursions the gang was often out for a week or
more, Leary's share of the profits amounting sometimes to £100. Once,
the result of several robberies in and about London, he amassed some
£350, but the money was partly stolen from him by older thieves, or he
squandered it in gambling, or in the flash houses. After committing
innumerable depredations, he was captured in a gentleman's dining-room
in the act of abstracting a quantity of plate. He was found guilty, but
out of compassion committed to the Philanthropic School. He was
recaptured, however, and eventually sentenced to transportation for
life.
The prevailing tastes of the populace were in these times low and
depraved. Their amusements were brutal, their manners and customs
disreputable, their morality at the lowest ebb. It is actually on record
that little more than a hundred years ago a man and his wife were
convicted of offering their niece, "a fine young girl, apparently
fourteen years of age," for sale
[Illustration: WHIPPING AT THE OLD BAILEY.]
at the Royal Exchange. Mr. and Mrs. Crouch were residents of Bodmin,
Cornwall, to which remote spot came a report that "maidens were very
scarce in London, and that they sold there for a good price." They
accordingly travelled up to town by road, two hundred and thirty-two
miles, and on arrival hawked the poor girl about the streets. At length
they "accosted an honest captain of a ship, who instantly made known the
base proposal they had made to him." The Crouches were arrested and
tried; the man was sentenced to six months' imprisonment in Newgate, but
his wife, as having acted under his influence, was acquitted.
Traffic in dead bodies was more actively prosecuted. The wretches who
gained the name of Resurrection men despoiled graveyards to purvey
subjects for the dissecting knife. There were dealers who traded openly
in these terrible goods, and, as has been seen in the chapter on
executions, their agents haggled for corpses at the foot of the gallows.
Sometimes the culprits were themselves the guardians of the sacred
precincts. I find that the grave-digger of St. George's, Bloomsbury, was
convicted, with a female accomplice, of stealing a dead body, and
sentenced to imprisonment. They were also "whipped twice on their bare
backs from the end of King's Gate Street, Holborn, to Dyot Street, St.
Giles, being half a mile." To this crime, and its development in the
persons of Burke and Hare, I shall recur on a later page.
Disorderly gatherings for the prosecution of the popular sports were of
constant occurrence. The vice of gambling was openly practised in the
streets. It was also greatly fostered by the metropolitan fairs, of
which there were eighty annually, lasting from Easter to September, when
Bartholomew Fair was held. These fairs were the resort of the idle and
the profligate, and most of the desperate characters in London were
included in the crowd. Another favourite amusement was bull-baiting or
bullock-hunting. Sunday morning was generally chosen for this pastime. A
subscription was made to pay the hire of an animal from some drover or
butcher, which was forthwith driven through the most populous parts of
the town; often across church-yards when divine service was in progress,
pursued by a yelling mob, who goaded the poor brute to madness with
sharp pointed sticks, or thrust peas into its ears. When nearly dead the
poor beast rejoined its herd, and was driven on to Smithfield market. A
system of bull-baits was introduced at Westminster by two notorious
characters known as Caleb Baldwin and Hubbersfield, otherwise Slender
Billy, which attracted great crowds, and led to drunkenness and scenes
of great disorder.
Towards the close of the eighteenth century a still lower and more
debasing amusement sprang suddenly into widespread popularity. The
patronage of pugilism or prize-fighting was no doubt supposed by many to
be the glorification of the national virtues of courage and endurance.
It was also greatly due to the gradual disuse of the practice of
carrying side-arms, when it was thought that quarrels would be fought
out with fists instead of swords. Hence the "noble art of self-defence,"
as it was styled magniloquently, found supporters in every class of
society. Prize-fights first became fashionable about 1788, following a
great encounter between two noted pugilists, named Richard Humphreys and
Daniel Mendoza, a Jew. Sporting papers were filled with accounts of the
various fights, which peer and pickpocket attended side by side, and
which even a Royal Prince did not disdain to honour. These professional
bruisers owned many noble patrons. Besides, the Prince of Wales, the
Dukes of Clarence and York, the Duke of Hamilton, Lords Barrymore and
others, attended prize-fights and sparring matches at theatres and
public places. A well-known pugilist, who was summoned for an assault at
Covent Garden Theatre, brought forward in his defence the terms of
intimacy he was on with noted people; the very day on which he was
charged, that he had dined at the Piazza Coffee House with General
Gwynne, Colonel McDouel, Captains Barkley and Hanbury, after which they
had all gone to the theatre. These aristocratic friends were, moreover,
ready to be useful at a pinch, and would bail out a pugilist in trouble,
or give him their countenance and support. At the trial of one William
Ward, who had killed a man in a fight, the pugilist was attended by his
patrons in court. The case was a bad one. Ward, on his way to see a
fight in the country, had been challenged by a drunken blacksmith, and
proved to him after a few rounds that he was no match for the trained
bruiser. The blacksmith did not like his "punishment," and tried to
escape into the bar, when his antagonist followed him, and actually beat
him to death. At the trial Ward was found guilty of manslaughter, fined
one shilling, and only sentenced to be imprisoned three months in
Newgate. Yet the judge who inflicted this light punishment condemned
boxing as an inhuman and disgraceful practice, a disgrace to any
civilized nation.
To the foregoing categories of undoubted criminals must be added another
pretty numerous class of offenders, who were at least so deemed by
contemporary codes, and who now frequently found themselves relegated to
Newgate. These were days when the press had far from achieved its
present independence; when writers, chafing under restraints and
reckless of consequence, were tempted into licence from sheer bravado
and opposition; when others far more innocent were brought under the
same ban of the law, and suffered imprisonment and fine for a hardly
unwarrantable freedom of speech. It is to be feared that the frequent
prosecutions instituted had often their origin in political antipathy.
While ministerial prints might libel and revile the opponents of the
governments, journals which did not spare the party in power were
humiliated and brow-beaten, difficulties were thrown in the way of their
obtaining intelligence, and if they dared to express their opinions
freely, "an information _ex officio_," as it was styled, was issued by
the Attorney-General. Prosecution followed, protracted to the bitter
end. Even what seems to us the harmless practice of parliamentary
reporting was deemed a breach of privilege; it was tolerated, but never
expressly permitted. Offending journalists were often reprimanded at the
bar of the House, and any member who felt aggrieved at the language
attributed to him was at liberty to claim the protection of the House.
When legislators and executive were so sensitive, it was hardly likely
that the great ones, the supposed salt of the earth, should be less
thin-skinned. Any kind of criticism upon princes of the blood was looked
upon as rank blasphemy; the morals of a not blameless or too reputable
aristocracy were guaranteed immunity from attack, while the
ecclesiastical hierarchy was apparently not strong enough to vindicate
its tenets or position without having recourse to the secular arm.
As time passed, the early martyrs to freedom of speech, such men as
Prynne Bastwick and Daniel Defoe, were followed by many victims to
similar oppression. One of the first to suffer after Defoe was the
nonjuring clergyman Lawrence Howell, who died in Newgate. He was
prosecuted about 1720 for writing a pamphlet in which he denounced
George I. as a usurper. He was tried at the Old Bailey, convicted, and
sentenced to pay a fine of £500 to the king, to find sureties for an
additional sum, to be imprisoned in Newgate for three years, and during
that term to be twice whipped. He was also to be degraded and stripped
of his gown by the common executioner. Howell asked indignantly of his
judges, "Who will whip a clergyman?" "We pay no deference to your
cloth," replied the court, "because you are a disgrace to it, and have
no right to wear it." The validity of his ordination was also denied by
the court, and as Howell continued to protest, the hangman was ordered
to tear off his gown as he stood there at the bar. The public whipping
was not inflicted, but Howell died soon afterwards in Newgate.
Next came Nathaniel Mist, who was sentenced in 1721 to stand in the
pillory, to pay a fine, and suffer imprisonment for reflecting upon the
action of George I. as regards the Protestants in the Palatinate. His
paper, the 'Weekly Journal' or 'Saturday's Post,' was notoriously
Jacobite in its views. Soon afterwards he came under the displeasure of
the House of Commons for instituting comparisons between the times of
the '15 rebellion and those which followed, and was committed to Newgate
for uttering a "false, malicious, and scandalous libel." This
interference by the House with Mist's publications in a matter which did
not concern its privileges is characterized by Hallam as an
extraordinary assumption of parliamentary power. Tom Paine, whose
rationalist writings gained him much obloquy later on, was one of the
next in point of time to feel the arm of the law. In 1724 he was
convicted of three libels on the Government, fined £100, and imprisoned
for a year. A clergyman, William Rowland, was put in the pillory in
1729 for commenting too freely in print on two magistrates who had
failed to convict and punish prisoners charged with unnatural crimes.
Mr. Rowland was pilloried in his canonical habit, and preached all the
time to the multitude, complaining of the injustice of his sentence,
"whereupon the people, and amongst them were several women, made a
collection for him."
About 1730, newspapers were especially established for purposes of
political party warfare, and each side libelled or prosecuted the other
in turn. The 'Craftsman' about this date sprang into the first rank for
wit and invective. Its editors were constantly in trouble; the statesmen
who supported it had to defend their bantling with their swords. In 1738
the printer, Henry Haines, was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for
producing the paper. In 1759 Dr. Shebbeare was fined, put in the
pillory, and imprisoned for three years, his offence being the
publication of what was deemed a scandalous libel in his 'Sixth Letter
to the English People.' Four years later, John Wilkes, M.P., started the
'North Briton,' a Liberal print, in opposition to Smollet's 'Briton,' a
Tory paper, which was subsidized and supported by Lord Bute, then in
power. John Wilkes was no doubt assisted by Lord Temple and John
Churchill the satirist. The 'North Briton' had been intended to assail
Lord Bute's government, but it was not until its forty-fifth number that
the dash and boldness of its contributors attracted general attention.
In this number a writer rashly accused the king of falsehood.[17] The
matter was at once taken up; proceedings were instituted against printer
and publisher, who were arrested, as was also Wilkes. These arrests
subsequently formed the subject of lengthy lawsuits; they were in the
end declared illegal, and all three got heavy damages. Wilkes was,
however, expelled from the House, by whose order the offending numbers
of the 'North Briton' were burnt by the common hangman. But these
measures did not extinguish the 'North Briton,' which was continued as
far as the two hundred and seventeenth number, when Mr. William Bingley,
a bookseller, who at that time owned it, was committed to Newgate, and
kept there a couple of years for refusing to reply to interrogatories
connected with an earlier number of the paper. Wilkes, who had fled to
France to escape imprisonment, next fell under the displeasure of the
House of Lords. The 'London Evening Post,' a paper which had already
come into collision with the Commons for presuming to publish reports of
debates, committed the seemingly venial offence of inserting a letter
from Wilkes, in which he commented rather freely upon a peer of the
realm at that time British Ambassador in Paris. The House of Lords could
not touch Wilkes, but they took proceedings against the printer for
breach of privilege in presuming to mention the name of one of its
members,[18] and fined him £100. The precedent soon became popular, and
in succeeding sessions printers were constantly fined whenever they
mentioned, even by accident, the name of a peer.
Journalism was in these days an ill-used profession. The reign of George
III. must always be remembered as a time when newspapers and those who
wrote them were at the mercy of the people in power. Grant[19] declares
that the despotic and tyrannical treatment of the press during the
several administrations under George III. had no parallel in English
history. The executive was capriciously sensitive to criticism, and
readily roused to extreme measures. No newspaper indeed was safe; the
editors of Liberal prints, or their contributors, who touched on
political subjects were at the mercy of the Attorney-General. Any
morning's issue might be made the subject of a prosecution, and every
independent writer on the wrong side went in daily dread of fine, the
pillory, or committal to Newgate.[20] Among the early records of the
great organ which custom has long honoured with the title of the
"leading journal," are several instances of the dangers journalists ran.
The 'Daily Universal Register,' started by the first Mr. John Walter in
1785, became the 'Times' in 1788. On the 11th July, 1789, the
publisher--at that time Mr. Walter himself--of the paper was tried and
convicted of alleged libels on three royal dukes, York, Gloucester, and
Cumberland, whose joy at the recovery of the king the 'Times' dared to
characterize as "insincere." The sentence decreed and inflicted was a
fine of £50, imprisonment in Newgate for one year, and exposure on the
pillory at Charing Cross. A second prosecution followed, intended to
protect, and if possible rehabilitate, the Prince of Wales, and Mr.
Walter, having been brought from Newgate for the trial, was sentenced to
a further fine of £100, and a like sum for a libel on the Duke of
Clarence. Mr. Walter remained in Newgate for eighteen months, and was
released in March 1791, having been pardoned at the instance of the
Prince of Wales.
Nor was the law invoked in favour of our own princes alone. A few years
later a foreign monarch obtained equal protection, and the editor,
printer, and publisher of the 'Courier' were fined and imprisoned for
stigmatizing the Czar of Russia as a tyrant among his own subjects, and
ridiculous to the rest of Europe. The House of Peers, including the
Bench of Bishops, continued very sensitive. In 1799 the printer of the
'Cambridge Intelligence' was brought to the bar of the House, charged
for reflecting on the speech of the Bishop of Llandaff concerning the
union with Ireland. Lord Grenville moved that the printer should be
fined £100 and committed to Newgate; Lord Holland protested, but it was
justified by Lord Kenyon, and the motion was carried. Lord Kenyon did
not spare the unfortunates arraigned before him for libel. One Thomas
Spence, who published a pamphlet called 'Spence's Restorer of Society,'
in which the abolition of private ownership of land was advocated, and
its investment in parishes for the good of the public at large, was
brought before Lord Kenyon, and sentenced by him to twelve months'
imprisonment and a fine of £50. Another peer, Lord Ellenborough, who
prosecuted Messrs. White and Hart for a libel in 1808, obtained a
conviction against them, and a sentence of three years' imprisonment.
In 1810 the House of Commons distinguished itself by a prosecution which
led to rather serious consequences. At a debate on the Walcheren
expedition, a member, Mr. Yorke, had insisted from day to day upon the
exclusion of strangers, and another, Mr. Windham, had inveighed
violently against press reporting. Upon this a question was discussed at
a debating society known as the "British Forum," as to whether Mr.
Yorke's or Mr. Windham's conduct was the greater outrage on the public
feeling. The decision was given against Mr. Yorke, and the result
announced in a placard outside. This placard was constituted a breach of
privilege, "comment upon the proceedings of the House being deemed a
contravention of the Bill of Rights." A Mr. John Gale Jones confessing
himself the author of the placard, he was forthwith committed to
Newgate. Sir Francis Burdett took Jones' part, and published his
protest, signed, in Cobbett's 'Weekly Register.' The House on this
ordered the Sergeant-at-arms to arrest Sir Francis and take him to the
Tower. Sir Francis resisted, and was carried off by force.[21] A riot
occurred _en route_, the crowd attacked the escort, and the troops
fired, with fatal consequences, upon the crowd. Sir Francis appealed to
the law courts, which in the end refused to take cognizance of the
questions at issue, and he was released, returning home in triumph. Mr.
John Gale Jones claimed to be tried, and refused to leave Newgate
without it; but he was got out by a stratagem, loudly complaining that
he had been illegally imprisoned, and illegally thrust out. Jones was
sentenced in the autumn of the same year to twelve months' imprisonment
in Coldbath Fields Gaol. Another and a better known writer found himself
in Newgate about this time. In 1810 William Cobbett was tried for
animadverting too openly upon the indignity of subjecting English
soldiers to corporal punishment, for which he was sentenced to two
years' imprisonment in Newgate, and a fine of £1000. This was not his
first prosecution, but it was by far the most serious. Shorter sentences
of imprisonment were imposed on his printers and publishers, Messrs.
Hansard, Budd, and Bagshaw.
Some other notable criminals found themselves in Newgate about this
date. In 1809 it became the place of punishment for two Government
officials who were convicted of embezzlement on a large scale. The
first, Mr. Alexander Davison, was employed to purchase barrack-stores
for the Government on commission. He was intrusted with this duty by the
barrack-master general, as a person of extensive mercantile experience,
to avoid the uncertainty of trusting to contractors. Mr. Davison was to
receive a commission of 2-1/2 per cent. Instead of buying in the best
and cheapest markets, he himself became the seller, thus making a profit
on the goods and receiving the commission as well; or, in the words of
Mr. Justice Grose, Davison, when "receiving a stipend to check the
frauds of others, and insure the best commodities at the cheapest rate,
became the tradesman and seller of the article, and had thereby an
interest to increase his own profit, and to commit that fraud it was his
duty to prevent." Davison disgorged some £18,000 of his ill-won profits,
and this was taken into consideration in his sentence, which was limited
to imprisonment in Newgate for twenty-one months. The other delinquent
was Mr. Valentine Jones, who had been appointed commissary-general and
superintendent of forage and provisions in the West Indies in 1795. A
large British force was at that time stationed in the West Indian
Islands, which entailed vast disbursements from the public exchequer.
The whole of this money passed through the hands of Mr. Jones. His
career of fraud began directly he took over his duties. Mr. Higgins, a
local merchant, came to him proposing to renew contracts for the supply
of the troops, but Mr. Jones would only consent to their renewal on
condition that he shared Mr. Higgins' profits. Higgins protested, but
at length yielded. Within three years the enormous sum of £87,000
sterling was paid over to Jones as his share in this nefarious
transaction. Mr. Jones was tried at the King's Bench and sentenced to
three years' imprisonment in Newgate.
Soon afterwards a person of very high rank was committed to Newgate.
This was the Marquis of Sligo, who was convicted of enticing British
men-of-war's men to desert, and sentenced to imprisonment, with a fine
of £5000. Lord Sligo went to Malta soon after leaving College, and there
hired a brig, the 'Pylades,' intending to make a yachting tour in the
Grecian Archipelago. The admiral at Malta and other naval officers
helped Lord Sligo to fit out the 'Pylades,' and he was welcomed on board
the various king's ships. From one of these several trusty seamen were
shortly afterwards missing. Their captain trusted to Lord Sligo's honour
that he had not decoyed these men, and that he would not receive them;
but at that moment the deserters were actually on board the 'Pylades,'
having been enticed from the service by Lord Sligo's servants. The
'Pylades' then went on her cruise along the Mediterranean. Suspicion
seems to have still rested on Lord Sligo, and after leaving Palermo the
'Pylades' was chased and brought to by H.M.S. 'Active.' A boat boarded
the 'Pylades,' her crew was mustered and examined, but the deserters had
been securely hidden in the after hold, and were not discovered. A
little later Lord Sligo sailed for Patmos, where some of the crew
landed and were left behind; among them were the men-of-war's-men,
through whom the whole affair was brought to light. Lord Sligo was
arrested on his return to England, and tried at the Old Bailey. The
evidence was conclusive. In the course of the trial a letter was put in
from Lord Sligo, to the effect that if the business was brought into
court he should do his best to defend himself; if he did not succeed, he
had an ample fortune, and could pay the fines. No money, however, could
save him from incarceration, and in accordance with the sentence of Sir
William Scott, who was supported on the bench by Lord Ellenborough and
Mr. Baron Thompson, the Marquis of Sligo was sent to Newgate for four
months.
CHAPTER II.
NEWGATE DOWN TO 1818.
Newgate still overcrowded--Some statistics--Description of
interior--The various "sides" and wards--Their dimensions and
uses--Debtors in Middlesex, generally paltry debts and colossal
costs--Various debtors' prisons in London described--The King's
Bench--The Fleet--The Marshalsea--The Compters, Ludgate, Giltspur
Street, and Borough--Debtors in Newgate--Fees
extorted--Garnish--Scanty food--Little bedding--Squalor and
wretchedness prevail throughout--Constant quarrels and
fighting--Discipline maintained only by prisoner wardsmen--Their
tyranny and extortion--A new debtors' prison
indispensable--Building of Whitecross Street--The criminal
side--Indiscriminate association of all classes--The middle yard
greatly crowded with transports awaiting deportation, and with whom
mere children were constantly mixed--Deterioration rapid--Mock
courts for trials of new-comers who would not adopt the ways of the
gaol--Case of a decent man completely ruined--Greater ease in the
master felons' side--Fees--The best accommodation was in the state
side, and open to all who could pay--High fees charged--Cobbett in
state side, and the Marquis of Sligo--The press yard--Recklessness
of the condemned--Cashman--The condemned cells--Summary of glaring
defects in Newgate--Scanty diet--Irons--Visitors admitted in
crowds, including low females--Crimes constantly being hatched in
Newgate--The Corporation roused to reform Newgate--Appoint
committee to examine other gaols--Its report, and many useful
recommendations--Few are carried out.
Under the conditions referred to in the previous chapter, with criminals
and misdemeanants of all shades crowding perpetually into its narrow
limits, the latter state of Newgate was worse than the first. The new
gaol fell as far short of the demands made on it as did the old. The
prison population fluctuated a great deal, but it was almost always in
excess of the accommodation available, and there were times when the
place was full to overflowing. Neild[22] gives some figures which well
illustrate this. On the 14th June, 1800, there were 199 debtors and 289
felons in the prison. On the 27th April, in the following year, these
numbers had risen to 275 and 375 respectively, or 650 in all. For two
more years these high figures were steadily maintained, and in 1803 the
total rose to 710. After that they fell as steadily, till, 1808, the
lowest point was touched of 197 debtors and 182 felons, or 379 in all.
The numbers soon increased, however, and by 1811 had again risen to 629;
and Mr. Neild was told that there had been at one time 300 debtors and
900 criminals in Newgate, or 1200 prisoners in all. Previous to that
date there had been 700 or 800 frequently, and once, in Mr. Akerman's
time, 1000. Trustworthy evidence is forthcoming to the effect that these
high figures were constantly maintained for many months at a time. The
inadequacy of the gaol was noticed and reported upon again and again by
the grand juries of the city of London, who seldom let a session go by
without visiting Newgate. In 1813 the grand jury made a special
presentment to the Court of Common Council, pointing out that on the
debtors' side, which was intended for only 100, no less than 340 were
crowded, to the great inconvenience and danger of the inmates. On the
female side matters were much worse; "the apartments set apart for them,
being built to accommodate 60 persons, now contain about 120." Returns
laid before the House of Commons showed that 6439 persons had been
committed to Newgate in the three years between 1813 and 1816, and this
number did not include the debtors, a numerous class, who were still
committed to Newgate pending the completion of the White Cross Street
prison.
In order to realize the evils entailed by incarceration in Newgate in
these days, it is necessary to give some account of its interior as it
was occupied and appropriated in 1810. Full details of the arrangements
are to be found in Mr. Neild's 'State of Prisons in England, Scotland,
and Wales,' published in 1812. The gaol at that date was divided into
eight separate and more or less distinct departments, each of which had
its own wards and yard. These were--
i. The male debtors' side.
ii. The female debtors' side.
iii. The chapel yard.
iv. The middle yard.
v. The master felons' side.
vi. The female felons' side.
vii. The state side.
viii. The press yard.
i. The male debtors' side consisted of a yard forty-nine feet by
thirty-one, leading to thirteen wards on various floors, and a day room.
Of these wards, three were appropriated to the "cabin side," so called
because they each contained four small rooms or "cabins" seven feet
square, intended to accommodate a couple of prisoners apiece, but often
much more crowded.[23] Two other wards were appropriated to the master's
side debtors; they were each twenty-three feet by fourteen and a half,
and supposed to accommodate twenty persons. The eight remaining wards
were for the common side debtors, long narrow rooms--one thirty-six
feet, six twenty-three feet, and the eighth eighteen, the whole about
fifteen feet wide. The various wards were all about eleven feet in
height, and were occupied as a rule by ten to fifteen people when the
prison was not crowded, but double the number was occasionally placed in
them. The day room was fitted with benches and settles after the manner
of the tap in a public-house.
ii. The female debtors' side consisted of a court-yard forty-nine by
sixteen feet, leading to two wards, one of which was thirty-six feet by
fifteen, and the other eighteen by fifteen; and they nominally held
twenty-two persons. A high wall fifteen feet in height divided the
females' court-yard from the men's.
iii. The chapel yard was about forty-three feet by twenty-five. It had
been for some time devoted principally to felons of the worst types,
those who were the oldest offenders, sentenced to transportation, and
who had narrowly escaped the penalty of death. This arrangement was,
however, modified after 1811, and the chapel yard was allotted to
misdemeanants and prisoners awaiting trial. The wards in this part were
five in number, all in dimensions twenty feet by fifteen, with a sixth
ward fifteen feet square. These wards were all fitted with barrack-beds,
but no bedding was supplied. The chapel yard led to the chapel, and on
the staircase were two rooms frequently set apart for the king's
witnesses, those who had turned king's evidence, whose safety might have
been imperilled had they been lodged with the men against whom they had
informed. But these king's witnesses were also put at times into the
press yard among the capital convicts, seemingly a very dangerous
proceeding, or they lodged with the gatesmen, the prisoner officers who
had charge of the inner gates.
iv. The middle yard was at first given up to the least heinous
offenders. After 1812 it changed functions with the chapel yard. It was
fifty feet by twenty-five, and had five wards each thirty-eight by
fifteen. At one end of the yard was an arcade, directly under the
chapel, in which there were three cells, used either for the confinement
of disorderly and refractory prisoners, or female convicts ordered for
execution.
v. The master felons' side consisted of a yard the same size as the
preceding, appropriated nominally to the most decent and better-behaved
prisoners, but really kept for the few who had funds sufficient to gain
them admission to these more comfortable quarters. Here were also lodged
the gatesmen, the prisoners who had charge of the inner gates, and who
were intrusted with the duty of escorting visitors from the gates to the
various wards their friends occupied.
vi. The state side was the part stolen from the female felons' side. It
was large and comparatively commodious, being maintained on a better
footing than any other part of the prison. The inmates were privileged,
either by antecedents or the fortunate possession of sufficient funds to
pay the charges of the place. Neild takes it for granted that the former
rather than the latter prevailed in the selection, and tells us that in
the state side "such prisoners were safely associated whose manners and
conduct evince a more liberal style of education, and who are therefore
lodged apart from all other districts of the gaol." The state side
contained twelve good-sized rooms, from twenty-one by eighteen feet to
fifteen feet square, which were furnished with bedsteads and bedding.
vii. The press yard was that part set aside for the condemned. Its name
and its situation were the same as those of the old place of carrying
out the terrible sentence inflicted on accused persons who stood
mute.[24] The long narrow yard still remained as we saw it in Jacobite
times, and beyond it was now a day room for the capital convicts or
those awaiting execution. Beyond the press yard were three stories,
condemned cells, fifteen in all, with vaulted ceilings nine feet high to
the crown of the arch. The ground floor cells were nine feet by six;
those on the first floor were rather larger on account of a set-off in
the wall; and the uppermost were the largest, for the same reason.
Security was provided for in these condemned cells by lining the
substantial stone walls with planks studded with broad-headed nails;
they were lighted by a double-grated window two feet nine inches by
fourteen inches; and in the doors, which were four inches thick, a
circular aperture had been let in to give ventilation and secure a free
current of air. In each cell there was a barrack bedstead on the floor
without bedding.
viii. The female felons were deprived of part of the space which the
architect had intended for them. More than half their quadrangle had
been partitioned off for another purpose, and what remained was divided
into a master's and a common side for female felons. The two yards were
adjoining, that for the common side much the largest. There were nine
wards in all on the female side, one of them in the attic, with four
casements and two fireplaces, being allotted for a female infirmary, and
the rest being provided with barrack beds, and in dimensions varying
from thirty feet by fifteen to fifteen feet by ten.
The eight courts above enumerated were well supplied with water; they
had dust-bins, sewers, and so forth, "properly disposed,"[25] and the
city scavenger paid periodical visits to the prison. The prisoners had
few comforts, beyond the occasional use of a bath at some distance,
situated in the press yard, to which access was granted rarely and as a
great favour. But they were allowed the luxury of drink--if they could
pay for it. A recent reform had closed the tap kept by the gaoler within
the precincts, but there was still a "convenient room" which served, and
"near it a grating through which the debtors receive their beer from the
neighbouring public-houses. The felons' side has a similar
accommodation, and this mode of introducing the beverage is adopted
because no publican as such can be permitted to enter the interior of
this prison."[26] The tap-room and bar were just behind the felons'
entrance lodge, and beyond it was a room called the "wine room," because
formerly used for the sale of wine, but in which latterly a copper had
been fixed for the cooking of provisions sent in by charitable persons.
"On the top of the gaol," continues Neild, "are a watch-house and a
sentry-box, where two or more guards, with dogs and firearms, watch all
night. Adjoining the felons' side lodge is the keeper's office, where
the prison books are kept, and his clerk, called the clerk of the
papers, attends daily."[27]
Having thus briefly described the plan and appropriation of the prison,
I propose to deal now with the general condition of the inmates, and the
manner of their life. Of these the debtors, male and female, formed a
large proportion. The frequency and extent of processes against debtors
seventy or eighty years ago will appear almost incredible in an age when
insolvent acts and bankruptcy courts do so much to relieve the
impecunious, and imprisonment for debt has almost entirely
disappeared.[28] But at the time of which I am writing the laws were
relentless against all who failed to meet their engagements. The number
of processes against debtors annually was extraordinary. Neild gives, on
the authority of Mr. Burchell, the under sheriff of Middlesex, a table
showing the figures for the year ending Michaelmas 1802. In that period
upwards of 200,000 writs had been issued for the arrests of debtors in
the kingdom, for sums varying from fourpence to £500 and upwards.
Fifteen thousand of these were issued in Middlesex alone, which at that
time was reckoned as only a fifteenth of Great Britain. The number of
arrests actually made was 114,300 for the kingdom, and 7020 for
Middlesex. Barely half of these gave bail bonds on arrests, and the
remainder went to prison. Quite half of the foregoing writs and arrests
applied to sums under £30. Neild also says that in 1793, 5719 writs and
executions for debts between £10 and £20 were issued in Middlesex, and
the aggregate amount of debts sued for was £81,791. He also makes the
curious calculation that the costs of these actions if undefended would
have amounted to £68,728, and if defended, £285,950; in other words,
that to recover eighty odd thousand pounds, three times the amount would
be expended.
An elaborate machinery planned for the protection of the trader, and
altogether on his side, had long existed for the recovery of debts.
Alfred the Great established the Court Baron, the Hundred Court, and the
County Court, which among other matters entertained pleas for debt. The
County Court was the sheriff's, who sat there surrounded by the bishop
and the magnates of the county; but as time passed, difficulties and
delays in obtaining judgment led to the removal of causes to the great
Court of King's Bench, and the disuse of the inferior courts. So much
inconvenience ensued, that in 1518 the Corporation obtained from
Parliament an act empowering two aldermen and four common councilmen to
hold Courts of Requests, or Courts of Conscience, to hear and determine
all causes of debt under 40_s._ arising within the city. These courts
were extended two centuries later to several large provincial towns, and
all were in full activity when Neild wrote, and indeed supplied the bulk
of the poor debtors committed to prison. These courts were open to many
and grave objections. The commissioners who presided were "little
otherwise than self-elected,[29] and when once appointed continued to
serve _sine die_;"[30] they were generally near in rank to the parties
whose causes they decided. Often a commissioner had to leave the bench
because he was himself a party to the suit that was _sub judice_. The
activity as well as the futility of these courts may be estimated from
the statement given by Neild, that 1312 debtors were committed by them
to Newgate between 1797 and 1808, and that no more than 197 creditors
recovered debts and costs. The latter indeed hung like millstones round
the neck of the unhappy insolvent wretches who found themselves in
limbo. Costs were the gallons of sack to the pennyworth of debt. Neild
found at his visit to Newgate in 1810, fourteen men and women who had
lain there ten, eleven, and thirteen years for debts of a few shillings,
weighted by treble the amount of costs. Thus, amongst others, Thomas
Blackburn had been committed on October 15th for a debt of 1_s._ 5_d._,
for which the costs were 6_s._ 10_d._ Thomas Dobson, on 22nd August,
1799, for 1_s._, with costs of 8_s._ 10_d._; and Susannah Evans, in
October the same year, for 2_s._, with costs of 6_s._ 8_d._ Other cases
are recorded elsewhere, as at the Giltspur Street Compter, where in 1805
Mr. Neild found a man named William Grant detained for 1_s._ 9_d._, with
costs of 5_s._, and John Lancaster for 1_s._ 8_d._, with costs of 7_s._
6_d._ "These surely, I thought," says Mr. Neild, "were bad enough! But
it was not so." He recites another most outrageous and extraordinary
case, in which one John Bird, a market porter, was arrested and
committed at the suit of a publican for the paltry sum of 4_d._, with
costs of 7_s._ 6_d._ Bird was, however, discharged within three days by
a subscription raised among his fellow-prisoners.
Mr. Buxton, in his 'Inquiry into the System of Prison Discipline,'
quotes a case which came within his own knowledge of a boy sent to
prison for non-payment of one penny. The lad in question was found in
Coldbath Fields prison, to which he had been sent for a month in default
of paying a fine of forty shillings. He had been in the employ of a
corn-chandler at Islington, and went into London with his master's cart
and horse. There was in the City Road a temporary bar, with a collector
of tolls who was sometimes on the spot and sometimes not. The boy
declared he saw no one, and accordingly passed through without paying
the toll of a penny. For this he was summoned before a magistrate, and
sentenced as already stated. The lad was proved to be of good character
and the son of respectable parents. Mr. Buxton's friends at once paid
the forty shillings, and the boy was released.
The costs in heavier debts always doubled the sum; if the arrest was
made in the country it trebled it. Neild gives a list of the various
items charged upon a debt of £10, which included instructions to sue,
affidavit of debt, drawing præcipe (£1 5_s._), capias, fee to officer on
arrest, affidavit of service, and many more, amounting in all to
twenty-seven, and costing £11 15_s._ 8_d._, within ten days.[31]
Before dealing with the debtors in Newgate, I may refer incidentally to
those in other London prisons, for Newgate was not the only place of
durance for these unfortunate people. There were also the King's Bench,
the Fleet, and the Marshalsea prisons especially devoted to them, whilst
Ludgate, the Giltspur Street, and Borough Compters also received
them--the latter two being also a prison for felons and vagrants
arrested within certain limits.
The King's Bench was a national prison, in which were confined all
debtors arrested for debt or for contempt of the court of the King's
Bench. The population generally amounted to from five hundred to seven
hundred, the accommodation being calculated for two hundred. Every
new-comer was entitled to a "chummage" ticket, but did not always get
it, being often obliged to pay a high rent for a bed at the coffee-house
or in some room which was vacated by its regular occupant. No fixed
rates or rules governed the hiring out of rooms or parts of a room, and
all sorts of imposition was practised. The best, or at least the most
influential prisoners, got lodging in the State House, which contained
"eight large handsome rooms." Besides those actually resident within the
walls, another two hundred more or less took advantage of "the rules,"
and lived outside within a circumference of two miles and a half. In
these cases security was given for the amount of the debt, and a heavy
fee at the rate of £8 per £100, with £4 for every additional hundred.
Besides these, a number had the privilege of a "run on the key," which
allowed a prisoner to go into the rules for the day. The foregoing
rentals and payments for privileges, together with fees exacted on
commitment and discharge, went to the marshal or keeper of the prison,
whose net annual income thus entirely derived from the impecunious
amounted to between three and four thousand pounds. The office of
marshal had been hereditary, but in the 27th Geo. II. the right of
presentation was bought by the Crown for £10,500. The marshal was
supposed to be resident either within the prison or the rules. He seems
to have felt no responsibility as to the welfare or comfort of those in
charge, and out of whom he made all his money. The prison was always in
"the most filthy state imaginable."[32] The half or wholly starved
prisoners fished for alms or food at the gratings. When they were sick
no more notice was taken of them than of a dog. A man dying of liver
complaint lay on the cold stones without a bed or food to eat.
Dissolute habits prevailed on all sides; drunkenness was universal,
gambling perpetual. The yards were taken up with rackets and five
courts, and here and there were "bumble puppy grounds," a game in which
the players rolled iron balls into holes marked with numbers. How to
make most profit out of the wretched denizens of the gaol was the
marshal's only care. He got a rent for the coffee-house and the
bake-house; the keeper of the large tap-room called the Brace, because
it was once kept by two brothers named Partridge, also paid him toll.
The sale of spirits was forbidden, but gin could always be had at the
whistling shops, where it was known as Moonshine, Sky Blue, Mexico, and
was consumed at the rate of a hogshead per week.
The Fleet, which stood in Farringdon Street, was a prison for debtors
and persons committed for contempt by the courts of Chancery, Exchequer,
and Common Pleas. It was so used for the date of the abolition of the
Star Chamber in the 16th Charles I. The shameful malpractices of
Bambridge, the warden of the Fleet at the commencement of the eighteenth
century, are too well known to need more than a passing reference. A
committee of the House of Commons investigated the charges against
Bambridge, who was proved to have connived at the escape of some
debtors, and to have been guilty of extortion to others. One Sir William
Rich, Bart., he had loaded with heavy irons. In consequence of these
disclosures, both Bambridge and Huggin, his predecessor in the office,
were committed to Newgate, and many reforms instituted. But the
condition of the prison and its inmates remained unsatisfactory to the
last. It contained generally from six to seven hundred inmates,[33]
while another hundred more or less resided in the rules outside. The
principle of "chummage" prevailed as in the King's Bench, but a number
of rooms, fifteen more or less, were reserved for poor debtors under the
name of Bartholomew Fair. The rentals of rooms and fees went to the
warden, whose income was £2372. The same evils of overcrowding,
uncleanliness, want of medical attendance, absence or neglect of divine
service, were present as in the King's Bench, but in an exaggerated
form. The Committee on Gaols[34] reported that "although the house of
the warden looked into the court, and the turnkeys slept in the prison,
yet scenes of riot, drunkenness, and disorder were most prevalent." The
state of morals was disgraceful. Any woman obtained admission if sober,
and if she got drunk she was not turned out. There was no distinct place
for the female debtors, who lived in the same galleries as the men.
Disturbances were frequent, owing to the riotous conduct of intoxicated
women. Twice a week there was a wine and beer club held at night, which
lasted till two or three in the morning. In the yard behind the prison
were places set apart for skittles, fives, and tennis, which strangers
frequented as any other place of public amusement.
Matters were rather better at the Marshalsea. This very ancient prison,
which stood in the High Street, Southwark, was used for debtors arrested
for the lowest sums within twelve miles of the palace of Whitehall; also
for prisoners committed by the Admiralty Court. At one time the
Marshalsea was the receptacle of pirates, but none were committed to it
after 1789. The court of the Marshalsea was instituted by Charles I. in
the sixth year of his reign, to be held before the steward of the royal
household, the knight marshal, and the steward of the court, with
jurisdiction to hold pleas in all actions within the prescribed limits.
The court was chiefly used for the recovery of small debts under £10,
but its business was much reduced by the extension of the Courts of
Conscience. The prison was a nest of abuses, like its neighbour the
King's Bench, and came under the strong animadversion of the Gaol
Committee of 1729. As the business of the Marshalsea Court declined, the
numbers in its prison diminished. The population, as reported by the
committee in 1814, averaged about sixty, and the prison, although wives
and children resided within the walls, was not overcrowded. Their
conduct too was orderly on the whole. Drunkenness was not common,
chiefly because liquor was not to be had freely, although the tapster
paid a rent of two guineas a week for permission to sell it. The
inmates, who euphemistically styled themselves "collegians," were
governed by rules which they themselves had framed, and under which
subscriptions were levied and fines imposed for conduct disapproved of
by the "college." A court of the collegians was held every Monday to
manage its affairs, at which all prisoners were required to attend. A
committee of collegians was elected to act as the executive, also a
secretary or accountant to receive monies and keep books, and a master
of the ale-room, who kept this the scene of their revels clean, and saw
that boiling water was provided for grog. Bad language, quarrelling,
throwing water over one another was forbidden on pain of fine and being
sent to Coventry; but the prevailing moral tone may be guessed from the
penalty inflicted upon persons singing obscene songs _before_ nine p.m.
Yet the public opinion of the whole body seems to have checked
dissipation. The poorer prisoners were not in abject want, as in other
prisons, owing to many charitable gifts and bequests, which included
annual donations from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Steward of
the Household, the steward and officers of the Marshalsea Court, and
others. Legacies had also been left to free a certain number of debtors,
notably that of £100 per annum left by a Mr. Henry Allnutt, who was long
a prisoner in the Marshalsea, and came into a fortune while there. His
bequest, which was charged upon his manor at Goring, Oxon, and hence
called the Oxford Charity, was applied only to the release of poor
debtors whom £4 each could free. The supreme control of the Marshalsea
was vested in the marshal of the royal household; but although he drew a
salary of £500 a year, he did nothing beyond visiting the prison
occasionally, and left the administration to the deputy marshal. The
latter's salary, with fees, the rent of the tap and of the chandler's
shop, amounted to about £600 a year.
The compters of Ludgate, Giltspur Street, and the Borough were
discontinued as debtors' prisons (as was Newgate also) on the opening of
Whitecross prison for debtors in 1815. Ludgate to the last was the
debtors' prison for freemen of the city of London, clergymen, proctors,
attorneys, and persons specially selected by the Corporation. At one
time the Ludgate debtors, accompanied by the keeper, went outside and
beyond the prison to call on their creditors, and try to arrange their
debts, but this practice was discontinued. There were fifteen rooms of
various sizes, and as the numbers imprisoned rarely exceeded
five-and-twenty, the place was never overcrowded, while the funds of
several bequests and charities were applied in adding to the material
comfort of the prisoners. The Giltspur Street Compter received sheriffs'
debtors, also felons, vagrants, and night charges. It was generally
crowded, as debtors who would have gone to the Poultry Compter were sent
to Giltspur Street when the former was condemned as unfit to receive
prisoners.[35] The demands for fees were excessive in Giltspur Street.
Those who could not pay were thrown into the wards with the night
charges, and denied admission to the "charity wards," which partook of
all the benefits of bequests and donations to poor debtors. The Borough
Compter was in a disgraceful state to the last. The men's ward had an
earth, or rather a mud, floor, and was so unfit to sleep on that it had
not been used for many years, so that the men and women associated
together indiscriminately. The rooms had no fireplaces, so it mattered
little that no coals were allowed. There were no beds or bedding, no
straw even. In one room Mr. Neild found a woman ill of a flux shut up
with three men; the latter raised eighteenpence among them to pay for a
truss of straw for the poor woman to lie on. Neild found the prisoners
in the Borough Compter ragged, starving, and dirty.
I come now to the debtors in Newgate. The quarters they occupied were
divided, as I have said,[36] into three principal divisions--the
master's side, the cabin side, and the common side. Payment of a fee of
3_s._ gained the debtor admission to the two first named; those who
could pay nothing went, as a matter of course, to the common side; a
further fee was, however, demanded from the new-comer before he was made
free of either the master's or the cabin side. This was the
reprehensible claim for "garnish," which had already been abolished in
all well-conducted prisons, but which still was demanded in Newgate.
Garnish on the cabin side was a guinea at entrance for coals, candles,
brooms, &c., and a gallon of beer on discharge; on the master's side it
was thirteen and fourpence, and a gallon of beer on entrance, although
Mr. Newman, in his evidence in 1814, said it was more, and gave the
garnish for the common side at that sum, which is five shillings more
than Mr. Neild says was extorted on the common side. Numerous tyrannies
were practised on all who would not and could not pay the garnish. They
were made to wash and swab the ward, or they were shut out from the ward
fireplace, and forbidden to pass a chalked line drawn on the floor, and
so were unable either to warm themselves or to cook their food. Besides
these fees, legitimate and illegitimate, there were others which must be
paid before release. The sheriff demanded 4_s._ 6_d._ for his liberate,
the gaoler 6_s._ 10_d._ more, and the turnkey 2_s._; and thus when the
debtor's debt had been actually paid, or when he had abandoned his
property to the creditors, and, almost destitute, looked forward to his
liberty, he was still delayed until he had paid a new debt arising "only
out of a satisfaction of all his former debts." The fees were not always
extorted, it is true; nor was non-payment made a pretext for further
imprisonment, thanks to the humanity of the gaoler, or the funds
provided by various charities.
There was this much honest forbearance in Newgate in these days, that
debtors who could afford the cabin and master's side were not permitted
to share in the prison charities. These were lumped together into a
general fund, and a calculation made as to the amount that might be
expended per week from the whole sum, so that the latter might last out
the year. It generally ran to about six pounds per week. The money,
which at one time had been distributed quarterly, and all went in drink,
was after 1807, through the exertions of the keeper[37] of the gaol,
spent in the purchase of necessaries. But this weekly pittance did not
go far when the debtors' side was crowded, as it often was; notably as
when numbers filled Newgate in anticipation of Lord Redesdale's bill for
insolvent debtors, and there were as many as three hundred and fifty
prisoners in at one time. The city also allowed the poor debtors
fourteen ounces of bread daily, and their share of eight stone of meat,
an allowance which never varied, issued once a week, and divided as far
as it would go--a very precarious and uncertain ration. The bread was
issued every alternate day; and while some prisoners often ate their
whole allowance at once, others who arrived just after the time of
distribution were often forty-eight hours without food. The latter might
also be six days without meat. Share in the weekly allowance of meat
might also be denied to debtors who had not paid "garnish," as well as
in the weekly grant from the charitable fund. Hence starvation stared
many in the face,[38] unless friends from outside came to their
assistance, or the keeper made them a special grant of 6_d._ per diem
out of the common stock; or the sixpenny allowance was claimed for the
creditors, which seldom happened, owing to the expense the process
entailed. The poor debtors were not supplied with beds. Those who could
pay the price might hire them from each other, or from persons who made
a trade of it, or they might bring their beds with them into the prison.
Failing any of these methods, seeing that straw was forbidden for fear
of fire, they had to be satisfied with a couple of the rugs provided by
the city, the supply of which was, however, limited, and there were not
always enough to give bedding to all. The stock was diminished by theft;
female visitors carried them out of the prisons, or the debtors
destroyed them when the weather was warm, and they were not in great
demand, in order to convert them into mop-heads or cleaning-rags.
Sometimes rugs were urgently required and not forthcoming; a severe
winter set in, the new stock had not been supplied by the contractors,
and the poor debtors perished of cold. Again, there was no regular
allowance of fuel. Coals were purchased out of the garnish money and the
charitable fund; so were candles, salt, pepper, mops and brooms. But the
latter could have been of little service. Dirt prevailed everywhere;
indeed the place, with its oak floors caulked with pitch, and smoked
ceilings, could not be made even to look clean while there was no
obligation of personal cleanliness on individuals, who often came into
the prison in filthy rags. Only now and again, in extreme cases, an
unusually nasty companion was stripped, haled to the pump, and left
under it in a state of nature until he was washed clean.
The squalor and uncleanness of the debtors' side was intensified by
constant overcrowding. Prisoners were committed to it quite without
reference to its capacity. No remonstrance was attended to, no steps
taken to reduce the number of committals, and the governor was obliged
to utilize the chapel as a day and night room. Besides this, although
the families of debtors were no longer permitted to live with them
inside the gaol, hundreds of women and children came in every morning to
spend the day there, and there was no limitation whatever to the numbers
of visitors admitted to the debtors' side. Friends arrived about nine
a.m., and went out at nine p.m., when as many as two hundred visitors
have been observed leaving the debtors' yards at one time. The day
passed in revelry and drunkenness. Although spirituous liquors were
forbidden, wine and beer might be had in any quantity, the only
limitation being that not more than one bottle of wine or one quart of
beer could be issued at one time. No account was taken of the amount of
liquors admitted in one day, and debtors might practically have as much
as they liked, if they could only pay for it. No attempt was made to
check drunkenness, beyond the penalty of shutting out friends from any
ward in which a prisoner exceeded. Quarrelling among the debtors was not
unfrequent. Blows were struck, and fights often ensued. For this and
other acts of misconduct there was the discipline of the refractory
ward, or "strong room" on the debtors' side. Bad cases were removed to a
cell on the felons' side, and here they were locked in solitary
confinement for three days at a time.
Order throughout the debtors' side was preserved and discipline
maintained by a system open to grave abuses, and which had the
prescription of long usage, and which was never wholly rooted out for
many years to come. This was the pernicious plan of governing by
prisoners, or of setting a favoured few in authority over the many. The
head of the debtors' prison was a prisoner called the steward, who was
chosen by the whole body from six whom the keeper nominated. This
steward was practically supreme. All the allowances of food passed
through his hands; he had the control of the poor-box for chance
charities, he collected the garnish money, and distributed the weekly
grant from the prison charitable fund. In the latter duties he was,
however, supervised by three auditors, freely chosen by the prisoners
among themselves. The auditors were paid a shilling each for their
services each time the poor-box was opened. The steward was also
remunerated for his trouble. He had a double allowance of bread,
deducted, of course, from the already too limited portion of the rest,
and no doubt made the meat also pay toll. Under the steward there were
captains of wards, chosen in the same way, and performing analogous
duties. These subordinate chiefs were also rewarded out of the scanty
prison rations. The same system was extended to the criminal side, and
cases were on record of the place of wardsman being sold for
considerable sums. So valuable were they deemed, that as much as fifty
guineas was offered to the keeper for the post.
Enough has been said, probably, to prove that there was room for
improvement in the condition and treatment of debtors in the prisons of
the city of London. This gradually was forced upon the consciousness of
the Corporation, and about 1812 application was made to Parliament for
funds to build a new debtors' prison. Authority was given to raise money
on the Orphans' Fund to the extent of £90,000. A site was purchased
between Red Lion and White Cross streets, and a new prison planned,
which would accommodate the inmates of Newgate and of the three
compters, Ludgate, Giltspur Street, and the Poultry, or about four
hundred and seventy-six in all. The evils of association for these
debtors were perpetuated, although the plan provided for the separation
of the various contingents committed to it. There was no lack of air and
light for the new gaol, and several exercising yards. The completion of
this very necessary building was, however, much delayed for want of
funds, and it was not ready to relieve Newgate till late in 1815. The
reforms which were to be attempted in that prison, more particularly as
regarded the classification of prisoners, and which were dependent on
the space to be gained by the removal of the debtors, could not be
carried out till then. It is to be feared that long after the opening of
White Cross Street prison, Newgate continued to be a reproach to those
responsible for its management.
I pass now to the criminal side of Newgate, which consisted of the six
quarters or yards already enumerated and described.[39] The inmates of
this part, as distinguished from the debtors, were comprised in four
classes:--(1) those awaiting trial; (2) persons under sentence of
imprisonment for a fixed period, or until they shall have paid certain
fines; (3) transports awaiting removal to the colonies, and (4) capital
convicts, condemned to death and awaiting execution. At one time the
whole of these different categories were thrown together pell-mell,
young and old, the untried with the convicted. An imperfect attempt at
classification was, however, made in 1812, and a yard was as far as
possible set apart for the untried, or class (1), with whom, under the
imperious demand for accommodation, were also associated the
misdemeanants, or class (2). This was the chapel yard, with its five
wards, which were calculated to hold seventy prisoners, but often held
many more. A further sub-classification was attempted by separating at
night those charged with misdemeanours from those charged with felony,
but all mingled freely during the day in the yard. The sleeping
accommodation in the chapel-yard wards, and indeed throughout the
prison, consisted of a barrack bed, which was a wooden flooring on a
slightly inclined plane, with a beam running across the top to serve as
a pillow. No beds were issued, only two rugs per prisoner. When each
sleeper had the full lateral space allotted to him, it amounted to one
foot and a half on the barrack bed; but when the ward was obliged to
accommodate double the ordinary number, as was frequently the case, the
sleepers covered the entire floor, with the exception of a passage in
the middle. All the misdemeanants, whatever their offence, were lodged
in this chapel ward. As many various and, according to our ideas,
heinous crimes came under this head, in the then existing state of the
law, the man guilty of a common assault found himself side by side with
the fraudulent, or others who had attempted abominable crimes. In this
heterogeneous society were also thrown the unfortunate journalists to
whom I have already referred,[40] and on whom imprisonment in Newgate
was frequently adjudged for so-called libels, or too out-spoken comments
in print. It was particularly recommended by the Committee on Gaols in
1814 that some other and less mixed prison should be used for the
confinement of persons convicted of libels. But this suggestion was
ignored. Indeed the partial classification attempted seems to have been
abandoned within a year or two. The Hon. H. G. Bennet, who visited
Newgate in 1817, saw in one yard, in a total of seventy-two prisoners,
thirty-five tried and thirty-seven untried. Of the former, three were
transports for life, four for fourteen years, and three of them persons
sentenced to fines or short imprisonment--one for little more than a
month. Two of the untried were for murder, and several for
house-breaking and highway robbery. Nor were the misdemeanants and bail
prisoners any longer separated from those whose crimes were of a more
serious character. Mr. Bennet refers to a gentleman confined for want of
bail, who occupied a room with five others--two committed by the
Bankruptcy Commissioner, one for perjury, and two transports. Persons
convicted of publishing libels were still immured in the same rooms with
transports and felons.
The middle yard, as far as its limits would permit, was appropriated to
felons and transports. The wards here were generally very crowded. Each
ward was calculated to hold twenty-four, allowing each individual one
foot and a half; "a common-sized man," says the keeper, Mr. Newman, "can
turn in nineteen inches."[41] These twenty-four could just sleep on the
barrack bed; when the number was higher, and it often rose to forty, the
surplus had to sleep on the floor. The crowding was in consequence of
the delay in removing transports. These often remained in Newgate for
six months, sometimes a year, in some cases longer; in one, for seven
years--that of a man sentenced to death, for whom great interest had
been made, but whom it was not thought right to pardon. Occasionally the
transports made themselves so useful in the gaol that they were passed
over. Mr. Newman admitted that he had petitioned that certain "trusty
men" might be left in the gaol. Constantly associated with these
convicted felons were numbers of juveniles, infants of tender years.
There were frequently in the middle yard seven or eight children, the
youngest barely nine, the oldest only twelve or thirteen, exposed to all
the contaminating influences of the place. Mr. Bennet mentions also the
case of young men of better stamp, clerks in city offices, and youths of
good parentage, "in this dreadful situation," who had been rescued from
the hulks through the kindness and attention of the Secretary of State.
"Yet they had been long enough," he goes on to say, "in the prison
associated with the lowest and vilest criminals, with convicts of all
ages and characters, to render it next to impossible but that, with the
obliteration of all sense of self-respect, the inevitable consequence of
such a situation, their morals must have been destroyed; and though
distress or the seduction of others might have led to the commission of
this their first offence, yet the society they were driven to live in,
the language they daily heard, and the lessons they were taught in this
academy, must have had a tendency to turn them into the world hardened
and accomplished in the ways of vice and crime."
Mr. Buxton, in the work already quoted, instances another grievous case
of the horrors of indiscriminate association in Newgate. It was that of
a person "who practised in the law, and who was connected by marriage
with some very respectable families. Having been committed to
Clerkenwell, he was sent on to Newgate in a coach, handcuffed to a noted
house-breaker, who was afterwards cast for death. The first night in
Newgate, and for the subsequent fortnight, he slept in the same bed with
a highwayman on one side, and a man charged with murder on the other.
Spirits were freely introduced, and although he at first abstained, he
found he must adopt the manners of his companions, or that his life
would be in danger. They viewed him with some suspicion, as one of whom
they knew nothing. He was in consequence put out of the protection of
their internal law." Their code was a subject of some curiosity. When
any prisoner committed an offence against the community or against an
individual, he was tried by a court in the gaol. A prisoner, generally
the oldest and most dexterous thief, was appointed judge, and a towel
tied in knots was hung on each side in imitation of a wig. The judge sat
in proper form; he was punctiliously styled "my lord." A jury having
been selected and duly sworn, the culprit was then arraigned. Justice,
however, was not administered with absolute integrity. A bribe to the
judge was certain to secure acquittal, and the neglect of the formality
was as certainly followed by condemnation. Various punishments were
inflicted, the heaviest of which was standing in the pillory. This was
carried out by putting the criminal's head through the legs of a chair,
and stretching out his arms and tying them to the legs. The culprit was
then compelled to carry the chair about with him. But all punishments
might readily be commuted into a fine to be spent in gin for judge and
jury.
The prisoner mentioned above was continually persecuted by trials of
this kind. The most trifling acts were magnified into offences. He was
charged with moving something which should not be touched, with leaving
a door open, or coughing maliciously to the disturbance of his
companions. The evidence was invariably sufficient to convict, and the
judge never hesitated to inflict the heaviest penalties. The unfortunate
man was compelled at length to adopt the habits of his associates; "by
insensible degrees he began to lose his repugnance to their society,
caught their flash terms and sung their songs, was admitted to their
revels, and acquired, in place of habits of perfect sobriety, a taste
for spirits." His wife visited him in Newgate, and wrote a pitiable
account of the state in which she found her husband. He was an inmate of
the same ward with others of the most dreadful sort, "whose language and
manners, whose female associates of the most abandoned description, and
the scenes consequent with such lost wretches, prevented me from going
inside but seldom, and I used to communicate with him through the bars
from the passage." One day he was too ill to come down and meet her. She
went up to the ward and found him lying down, "pale as death, very ill,
and in a dreadfully dirty state, the wretches making game of him, and
enjoying my distress; and I learned he had been up with the others the
whole night. Though they could not force him to gamble, he was compelled
to drink, and I was obliged afterwards to let him have five shillings to
pay his share, otherwise he would have been stripped of his clothes."
Felons who could pay the price were permitted, irrespective of their
character or offences, to purchase the greater ease and comfort of the
master's side. The entrance fee was at least 13_s._ 6_d._ a head, with
half-a-crown a week more for bed and bedding, the wards being furnished
with barrack bedsteads, upon which each prisoner had the regulation
allowance of sleeping room, or about a foot and a half laterally. These
fees were in reality a substantial contribution towards the expenses of
the gaol; without them the keeper declared that he could not pay the
salaries of turnkeys and servants, nor keep the prison going at all.
Besides the gaol fees, there was garnish of half-a-guinea, collected by
the steward, and spent in providing coals, candles, plates, knives, and
forks; while all the occupants of this part of the prison supported
themselves; they had the ration of prison bread only, but they had no
share in the prison meat or other charities, and they or their friends
found them in food. All who could scrape together the cash seem to have
gladly availed themselves of the privilege of entering the master's
side. It was the only way to escape the horrors, the distress, penury,
and rags of the common yards. Idleness was not so universally the rule
in this part of the gaol. Artizans and others were at liberty to work at
their trades, provided they were not dangerous. Tailoring and shoemaking
was permitted, but it was deemed unsafe to allow a carpenter or
blacksmith to have his tools. All the money earned by prisoners was at
their own disposal, and was spent almost habitually in drink,
chambering, and wantonness.
The best accommodation the gaol could offer was reserved for the
prisoners on the state side, from whom still higher fees were exacted,
with the same discreditable idea of swelling the revenues of the prison.
To constitute this the aristocratic quarter, unwarrantable demands were
made upon the space properly allotted to the female felons,[42] and no
lodger was rejected, whatever his status, who offered himself and could
bring grist to the mill. The luxury of the state side was for a long
time open to all who could pay--the convicted felon, the transport
awaiting removal, the lunatic whose case was still undecided,[43] the
misdemeanant tried or untried, the debtor who wished to avoid the
discomfort of the crowded debtors' side, the outspoken newspaper editor,
or the daring reporter of parliamentary debates. The better class of
inmate complained bitterly of this enforced companionship with the vile,
association at one time forbidden by custom, but which greed and
rapacity long made the rule. The fee for admission to the state side, as
fixed by the table of fees, was three guineas, but Mr. Newman declared
that he never took more than two. Ten and sixpence a week more was
charged as rent for a single bed; where two or more slept in a bed the
rent was seven shillings a week each. Prisoners who could afford it
sometimes paid for four beds, at the rate of twenty-eight shillings, and
so secured the luxury of a private room. A Mr. Lundy, charged with
forgery, was thus accommodated on the state side for upwards of five
years. But the keeper protested that no single prisoner could thus
monopolize space if the state side was crowded. The keeper went still
further in his efforts to make money. He continued the ancient practice
of letting out a portion of his own house, and by a poetical fiction
treated it as an annexe of the state side. Mr. Davison, sent to Newgate
for embezzlement, and whose case is given in the preceding chapter, was
accommodated with a room in Mr. Newman's house at the extravagant rental
of thirty guineas per week; Mr. Cobbett was also a lodger of Mr.
Newman's; and so were any members of the aristocracy, if they happened
to be in funds--among whom was the Marquis of Sligo in 1811.
The female felons' wards I shall describe at length in the next chapter,
which will deal with Mrs. Fry's philanthropic exertions at this period
in this particular part of the prison. These wards were always full to
overflowing; sometimes double the number the rooms could accommodate
were crowded into them. There was a master's side for females who could
pay the usual fees, but they associated with the rest in the one narrow
yard common to all. The tried and the untried, young and old, were
herded together; sometimes girls of thirteen, twelve, even ten or nine
years of age, were exposed to "all the contagion and profligacy which
prevailed in this part of the prison." There was no separation even for
the women under sentence of death, who lived in a common and perpetually
crowded ward. Only when the order of execution came down were those
about to suffer placed apart in one of the rooms in the arcade of the
middle ward.
I have kept till the last that part of the prison which was usually the
last resting-place of so many. The old press yard has been fully
described in a previous chapter.[44] The name still survived in the new
press yard, which was the receptacle of the male condemned prisoners. It
was generally crowded, like the rest of the prison. Except in murder
cases, where the execution was generally very promptly performed,
strange and inconceivable delay occurred in carrying out the extreme
sentence. Hence there was a terrible accumulation of prisoners in the
condemned cells. Once, during the long illness of George III., as many
as one hundred were there waiting the "Report," as it was called. At
another time there were fifty, one of whom had been under sentence a
couple of years. Mr. Bennet speaks of thirty-eight capital convicts he
found in the press yard in February 1817, five of whom had been
condemned the previous July, four in September, and twenty-nine in
October. This procrastination bred certain callousness. Few realizing
that the dreadful fate would overtake them, dismissed the prospect of
death, and until the day was actually fixed, spent the time in
roystering, swearing, gambling, or playing at ball. Visitors were
permitted access to them without stint; unlimited drink was not denied
them provided it was obtained in regulated quantities at one time. These
capital convicts, says Mr. Bennet, "lessened the ennui and despair of
their situation by unbecoming merriment, or sought relief in the
constant application of intoxicating stimulants. I saw Cashman[45] a few
hours before his execution, smoking and drinking with the utmost
unconcern and indifference." Those who were thus reckless reacted upon
the penitent who knew their days were numbered, and their gibes and
jollity counteracted the ordinary's counsels or the independent
preacher's earnest prayers. For while Roman Catholics and Dissenters
were encouraged to see ministers of their own persuasion, a number of
amateurs were ever ready to give their gratuitous ministrations to the
condemned.
The prisoners in the press yard had free access during the day to the
yard and large day room; at night they were placed in the fifteen cells,
two, three, or more together, according to the total number to be
accommodated. They were never left quite alone for fear of suicide, and
for the same reason they were searched for weapons or poisons. But they
nevertheless frequently managed to secrete the means of making away with
themselves, and accomplished their purpose. Convicted murderers were
kept continuously in the cells on bread and water, in couples, from the
time of sentence to that of execution, which was about three or four
days generally, from Friday to Monday, so as to include one Sunday, on
which day there was a special service for the condemned in the prison
chapel. This latter was an ordeal which all dreaded, and many avoided by
denying their faith. The condemned occupied an open pew in the centre
of the chapel, hung with black; in front of them, upon a table, was a
black coffin in full view. The chapel was filled with a curious but
callous congregation, who came to stare at the miserable people thus
publicly exposed. Well might Mr. Bennet write that the condition of the
condemned side was the most prominent of the manifold evils in the
present system of Newgate, "so discreditable to the metropolis."
Yet it must have been abundantly plain to the reader that the other
evils existing were great and glaring. A brief summary of them will best
prove this. The gaol was neither suitable nor sufficiently large. It was
not even kept weather-tight. The roof of the female prison, says the
grand jury in their presentment in 1813, let in the rain. Supplies of
common necessaries, such as have now been part of the furniture of every
British gaol for many years, were meagre or altogether absent. The
rations of food were notoriously inadequate, and so carelessly
distributed, that many were left to starve. So unjust and unequal was
the system, that the allowance to convicted criminals was better than
that of the innocent debtor, and the general insufficiency was such that
it multiplied beyond all reason the number of visitors, many of whom
came merely as the purveyors of food to their friends.
The prison allowances were eked out by the broken victuals generously
given by several eating-house keepers in the city, such as Messrs. Birch
of Cornhill and Messrs. Leach and Dollimore of Ludgate Hill. These were
fetched away in a large tub on a truck by a turnkey. Amongst the heap
was often the meat that had made turtle soup, which, when heated and
stirred together in a saucepan, was said to be very good eating. The
bedding was scanty; fuel and light had to be purchased out of prisoners'
private means; clothing was issued but rarely, even to prisoners almost
in nakedness, and as a special charitable gift. Extortion was practised
right and left. Garnish continued to be demanded long after it had
disappeared in other and better-regulated prisons. The fees on reception
and discharge must be deemed exorbitant, when it is remembered the
impoverished class who usually crowded the gaol; and they were exacted
to relieve a rich corporation from paying for the maintenance of their
own prison. This imposition of fees left prisoners destitute on their
discharge, without funds to support them in their first struggle to
recommence life, with ruined character, bad habits, and often bad health
contracted in the gaol. A further and a more iniquitous method of
extorting money was still practised, that of loading newly-arrived
prisoners until they paid certain fees. Ironing was still the rule, not
only for the convicted, but for those charged with felonies; only the
misdemeanants escaped. At the commencement of every sessions, such of
the untried as had purchased "easement" of irons were called up and
re-fettered, preparatory to their appearance in the Old Bailey. Irons
were seldom removed from the convicted until discharge; sometimes the
wearer was declared medically unfit, or he obtained release by long
good conduct, or the faithful discharge of some petty office, such as
gatesman or captain of a ward. The irons weighed from three to four
pounds, but heavier irons, seven or eight pounds' weight, were imposed
in case of misconduct; and when there had been an attempt at escape, the
culprit was chained down to the floor by running a chain through his
irons which prevented him from climbing to the window of his cell. Among
other excuses offered for thus manacling all almost without exception,
was that it was the best and safest method of distinguishing a prisoner
from a stranger and temporary visitor. Clothes or prison uniform would
not have served the purpose, for a disguise can be rapidly and secretly
put on, whereas irons cannot well be exchanged without loss of time and
attracting much attention.[46]
The unchecked admission of crowds of visitors to the felons' as well as
the debtors' side was another unmixed evil. By this means spirits,
otherwise unattainable and strictly prohibited, were smuggled into the
gaol. Searches[47] were made certainly, but they were too often
superficial, or they might be evaded by a trifling bribe. Hence the
frequent cases of drunkenness, of which no notice was taken, unless
people grew riotous in their cups, and attracted attention by their
disorderly behaviour. Another frightful consequence of this
indiscriminate admission was the influx of numbers of abandoned women,
only a few of whom had the commendable prudery to pass themselves off as
the wives of prisoners. Any reputed, and indeed any real, wife might
spend the night in Newgate if she would pay the shilling fee, commonly
known as the "bad money," a base payment which might have done something
towards increasing the prison receipts, had it not been appropriated by
the turnkey who winked at this evasion of the rules. Among the daily
visitors were members of the criminal classes still at large, the
thieves and burglars who carried on the active business of their
profession, from which their confederates were temporarily debarred. One
notorious character, while a prisoner awaiting transfer to the hulks,
kept open house, so to speak, and entertained daily within the walls a
select party of the most noted thieves in London. This delectable
society enticed into their set a clerk who had been imprisoned for
fraud, and offered him half the booty if he would give full information
as to the transactions and correspondence of his late employers. Owing
to the facility of intercourse between inside and outside, many crimes
were doubtless hatched in Newgate. Some of the worst and most extensive
burglaries were planned there. Forged notes had been fabricated, false
money coined, and both passed out in quantities to be circulated through
the country. "I believe," says Mr. Bennet in the letter already largely
quoted, "that there is no place in the metropolis where more crimes are
projected or where stolen property is more secreted than in Newgate."
These malpractices were fostered by the absence of all supervision and
the generally unbroken idleness. Although attempted partially at
Bridewell, and more systematically at the new Millbank penitentiary, but
just open (1816), the regular employment of prisoners had never yet been
accepted as a principle in the metropolitan prisons. Insuperable
difficulties were still supposed to stand in the way of any general
employment of prisoners at their trades. There was fear as to the
unrestricted use of tools, limits of space, the interference of the
ill-disposed, who would neither work nor let others do so, and the
danger of losing material, raw or manufactured. Many years were to
elapse before these objections should be fairly met and universally
overcome. It was not strange, therefore, that the inmates of Newgate
should turn their unoccupied brains and idle hands to all manner of
mischief; that when they were not carousing, plotting, or scheming, they
should gamble with dice or cards, and play at bumble puppy or some other
disreputable game of chance.
The report of the Committee of the House of Commons painted so black a
picture of Newgate as then conducted, that the Corporation were roused
in very shame to undertake some kind of reform. The above-mentioned
report was ordered to be printed upon the 9th May. Upon the 29th July
the same year, the court of aldermen appointed a committee of its own
body, assisted by the town clerk, Mr. Dance, city surveyor, son to the
architect of Newgate, and Mr. Addison, keeper of Newgate, to make a
visitation of the gaols supposed to be the best managed, including those
of Petworth and Gloucester.[48] This committee was to compare
allowances, examine rules, and certify as to the condition of prisoners;
also to make such proposals as might appear salutary, and calculated to
improve Newgate and the rest of the city gaols.
This committee made its report in September the following year, and an
excellent report it is, so far as its recommendations are concerned. The
committee seems to have fully realized, even at this early date (1815),
many of the indispensable conditions of a model prison according to
modern ideas. It admitted the paramount necessity for giving every
prisoner a sleeping cell to himself, an amount of enlightenment which is
hardly general among European nations at this the latter end of the
nineteenth century,[49] several of which still fall far short of our
English ideal, that all prisoners should always be in separate cells by
night, and those of short sentences by day. It recommended day cells or
rooms for regular labour, which should be compulsory upon all transports
and prisoners sentenced to hard labour, the work being constant and
suitable, with certain hours of relaxation and for food and exercise.
The personal cleanliness of all prisoners was to be insisted upon; they
should be made to wash at least once a day, with the penalty of
forfeiting the day's allowance of food, an increase of which the
committee had recommended. The provision of more baths was also
suggested, and the daily sweeping out of the prison. The clothes of
prisoners arriving dirty, or in rags, should be fumigated before worn in
the gaol, but as yet no suggestion was made to provide prison uniform. A
laundry should be established, and a matron appointed on the female
side, where all the prisoners' washing could be performed. Proper hours
for locking and unlocking prisoners should be insisted upon; a bell
should give notice thereof, and of meal-hours, working-hours, or of
escapes.
The committee took upon itself to lay down stringent rules for the
discipline of the prison. The gaoler should be required to visit every
part and see every prisoner daily; the chaplain should perform service,
visit the sick, instruct the prisoners, "give spiritual advice and
administer religious consolation" to all who might need them;[50] the
surgeon should see all prisoners, whether ill or well, once a week, and
take general charge of the infirmaries. All three, governor, chaplain,
and surgeon, should keep journals, which should be inspected
periodically by the visiting magistrates. It should be peremptorily
forbidden to the keeper or any officer to make a pecuniary profit out of
the supplies of food, fuel, or other necessaries. No prisoner should be
allowed to obtain superior accommodation on the payment of any fees.
Fees indeed should be generally abolished, garnish also. No prisoners
should in future be ironed, except in cases of misconduct, provided only
that their security was not jeopardized, and dependent upon the
enforcement of another new rule, which recommended restrictions upon the
number of visitors admitted. No wine or beer should be in future
admitted into or sold in the gaol, except for the use of the debtors, or
as medical comforts for the infirmary. Drunkenness, if it ever occurred,
should be visited with severe punishment; gaming of all sorts should be
peremptorily forbidden under heavy pains and penalties. The feelings of
the condemned prisoners should no longer be outraged by their exposure
in the chapel, and the chapel should be rearranged, so that the various
classes might be seated separately, and so as not to see each other.
It will hardly be denied that these proposals went to the root of the
matter. Had they been accepted in their entirety, little fault could in
future have been found with the managers of Newgate. In common justice
to them, it must be admitted that immediate effect was given to all
that could be easily carried out. The state side ceased to exist, and
the female prisoners thus regained the space of which their quadrangle
had been robbed. The privileges of the master's side also disappeared;
fees were nominally abolished, and garnish was scotched, although not
yet killed outright. A certain number of bedsteads were provided, and
there was a slight increase in the ration of bread. But here the
recommendations touched at once upon the delicate subject of expense,
and it is clear that the committee hesitated on this score. It made this
too the excuse for begging the most important issue of the whole
question. The committee did not deny the superior advantages offered by
such prisons as Gloucester and Petworth, but it at once deprecated the
idea that the city could follow the laudable example thus set in the
provinces. "Were a metropolitan prison erected on the same lines, with
all the space not only for air and exercise, but for day rooms and
sleeping cells," it would cover some thirty acres, and cost a great deal
more than the city, with the example of Whitecross Street prison before
it, could possibly afford. The committee does not seem to have yet
understood that Newgate could be only and properly replaced by a new
gaol built on the outskirts, as Holloway eventually was,[51] and
permitted itself to be altogether countered and checked in its efforts
towards reform by the prohibitory costliness of the land about Newgate.
With the seeming impossibility of extending the limits of the prison as
it then stood, all chances of classification and separation vanished,
and the greatest evils remained untouched. All the committee could do in
this respect was to throw the responsibility on others. It pointed out
that the Government was to blame for the overcrowding, and might
diminish it if it chose. It was very desirable that there should be a
more speedy removal of transports from Newgate to the ships. Again,
there was the new Millbank penitentiary now ready for occupation. Why
not relieve Newgate by drawing more largely upon the superior
accommodation which Millbank offered?
CHAPTER III.
PHILANTHROPY IN NEWGATE.
Absence of religious and moral instruction in Newgate a hundred
years ago--Chaplains not always zealous--Unprofessional amateur
enthusiasts minister to the prisoners--Christian Knowledge
Society--Silas Told, his life and work--Wesley leads him to prison
visitation--Goes to Newgate regularly--Chaplain opposes his
visits--Attends the condemned to the gallows--Attends Mary
Edmondson--The gentlemen Highwaymen--Mrs. Brownrigg--Alexander
Cruden of the 'Concordance' also visits Newgate--More precise
account of a neglectful Chaplain--Dr. Forde--His hatred of amateur
preachers--In his element in the chair of a
'free-and-easy'--Private philanthropy active--Various societies
formed--Prison schools--The female side the most disgraceful part
of the prison--Mrs. Fry's first visit--Her second visit--Awful
description of interior of gaol--Ill-treatment of female
prisoners--Their irons--Where Mrs. Fry commenced--The School--The
Matron--Work obtained--Rules framed--Rapid improvement of
Newgate--Female prison reformed--Publicity follows--Newgate becomes
a show.
Among the many drawbacks from which the inmates of Newgate suffered
through the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth century, was
the absence of proper religious and moral instruction. The value of the
ministrations of the ordinary, who was the official ghostly adviser,
entirely depended upon his personal qualities. Now and again he was an
earnest and devoted man, to whom the prisoners might fully open their
hearts. More often he was careless and indifferent, satisfied to earn
his salary by the slightest and most perfunctory discharge of his sacred
duties. There were ordinaries whose fame rested rather upon their powers
of digestion than in polemics or pulpit oratory. The Newgate chaplain
had to say grace at city banquets, and was sometimes called upon to eat
three consecutive dinners without rising from the table. One in
particular was noted for his skill in compounding a salad, another for
his jovial companionship. But the ordinary took life easy, and beyond
conducting the services, did little work. Only when executions were
imminent was he especially busy. It behoved then to collect matter for
his account of the previous life and the misdeeds of the condemned, with
their demeanour at Tyburn, and this, according to contemporary records,
led him to get all the information he could from the malefactors who
passed through his hands. In the history of the press yard there is an
account of the proceedings of the chaplain, Mr. Smith, which may be
somewhat over-coloured, but which has the appearance of truth. It was
the ordinary's custom to give interviews in his private closet to those
condemned to death, and cross-examine them closely. One day a young
fellow was brought before him, to whom he said at once, "Well, boy, now
is the time to unbosom thyself to me. Thou hast been a great
sabbath-breaker in thy time I warrant thee? The neglect of going to
church regularly has brought thee under these unhappy circumstances."
"Not I, good sir," was the reply; "I never neglected going to some
church, if I was in health, morning and evening every Lord's day." The
lad told truth, for his business took him to such places of resort for
the better carrying on his trade, which was that of a pickpocket. Mr.
Smith was not to be done out of his confession. "No sabbath-breaker?
then thou hast been an abominable drunkard?" This the criminal denied,
declaring that he had always had a mortal aversion to strong drinks. The
chaplain continued to press the criminal, but could find that he had
been guilty of nothing more than thieving, and as this was a topic he
could not enlarge upon in his pamphlet, he dismissed the lad, to be
entered in his account as an obstinate, case-hardened rogue.
But while the official lacked zeal or religious fervour, there were not
wanting others more earnest and enthusiastic to add their unprofessional
but devoted efforts to the half-hearted ministrations of the ordinary of
Newgate. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, when the Society
for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge was first formed, Dr. Bray and
other members visited Newgate, and made its inmates their especial care
for a time. A prominent figure in the philanthropic annals of Newgate a
little later is that of Silas Told, who devoted many years of his life
to the spiritual needs of the prisoners. Told's career is full of
peculiar interest. He was a pious child; both father and mother were
religious folk, and brought him up carefully. According to his own
memoirs, when quite an infant he and his sister Dulcibella were wont to
wander into the woods and fields to converse about "God and happiness."
Told passed through many trials and vicissitudes in his early years. At
thirteen he went to sea as an apprentice, and suffered much ill-usage.
He made many voyages to the West Indies and to the Guinea coast, being a
horrified and unwilling witness of some of the worst phases of the slave
trade. He fell into the hands of piratical Spaniards, was cast away on a
reef, saved almost by a miracle, last of all was pressed on board a
man-of-war. Here, on board H.M.S. 'Phoenix,' his religious tendencies
were strengthened by a pious captain, and presently he married and left
the sea for ever. After this he became a schoolmaster in Essex, then a
clerk and book-keeper in London. Here he came under the influence of
John Wesley, and although predisposed against the Methodists, he was
profoundly impressed by their leader's preaching. While listening to a
sermon by John Wesley on the suddenness of conversion, Told heard
another voice say to him, "This is the truth," and from that time forth
he became a zealous Methodist.
It was Wesley who led him to prison visitation. He was at that time
schoolmaster of the Foundry school, and his call to his long and
devoted labours in Newgate were brought about in this wise. "In the year
1744," to quote his own words, "I attended the children one morning at
the five o'clock preaching, when Mr. Wesley took his text out of the
twenty-fifth chapter of St. Matthew. When he read 'I was sick and in
prison, and ye visited me not,' I was sensible of my negligence in never
visiting the prisoners during the course of my life, and was filled with
horror of mind beyond expression. This threw me well-nigh into a state
of despondency, as I was totally unacquainted with the measures
requisite to be pursued for that purpose. However, the gracious God, two
or three days after, sent a messenger to me in the school, who informed
me of the malefactors that were under sentence of death, and would be
glad of any of our friends who could go and pray with them. The
messenger, whose name was Sarah Peters, gave me to understand that they
were all much awakened, and that one of them, John Lancaster, was
converted, and full of the grace of God. In consequence of this reviving
information, I committed my school without an hour's delay to my trusty
usher, and went with Sarah Peters to Newgate, where we had admittance to
the cell wherein they were confined."
Silas Told found Lancaster in a state of religious exaltation, thanking
God that he had been sent to Newgate, and praying while they knocked his
irons off, till even the attendant sheriff shed tears.
[Illustration: _Rev. Mr. Whitfield Preaching on Kennington Common_]
Silas accompanied the condemned men to Tyburn, and saw the gallows for
the first time. He tells us that he went not without much shame and
fear, because he clearly perceived the greater part of the spectators
considered him as one of the sufferers. Lancaster, on arriving at the
fatal tree, lifted up his eyes thereto, and said, "Blessed be God," then
prayed extemporary in a very excellent manner, and the others behaved
with great discretion. Lancaster was friendless, and no one came forward
to give the body interment; so the "surgeon's mob" secured it, and
carried it over to Paddington for dissection. Scarcely had it
disappeared before a party of sailors came on the scene and demanded
what had become of it. They followed the "surgeon's mob," recovered the
body, and carried it in state through Islington and Hounsditch till they
were tired. Then they dropped it upon the first doorstep. The story ends
most dramatically, and Told declares that an old woman, disturbed by the
uproar, came down and recognized in John Lancaster's corpse the body of
her own son.
After this first visit Told went regularly to Newgate. He describes the
place, twenty-one years later, but still remembered vividly, as "such an
emblem of the infernal pit as he never saw before." However, he
struggled bravely on, having a constant pressure upon his mind "to stand
up for God in the midst of them," and praying much "for wisdom and
fortitude." He preached as often as he was permitted to both felons and
debtors. But for the first few years, when attending the malefactors, he
met with so many repulses from the keeper and ordinary, as well as from
the prisoners themselves, that he was often greatly discouraged. "But
notwithstanding I more vehemently pressed through all," becoming the
more resolute and "taking no denial." His most bitter opponent, as was
not unnatural, was the ordinary, Mr. Taylor, who would constantly
station himself on Sunday mornings a few doors from Newgate, and wait
there patiently for a couple of hours or more to obstruct his entrance,
at the same time forbidding the turnkeys to give him admittance. Told's
persistence generally got him through, so that most Sunday mornings he
had an opportunity of preaching on the debtors' side to a congregation
of forty or more. His influence among the debtors was so great that they
readily formed themselves, at his request, into a society or
organization, bound by rules and regulations to strict religious
observances. In this he was ably seconded by the "circumspection" of two
or three prisoners who highly approved of his proposals, and exercised a
close watch on the others, whom they would not "suffer to live in any
outward sin." For a considerable time the debtors paid regular attention
to his preachings and the meetings of the society. After some time,
however, the ordinary "raised a great tumult," and managed ever after to
shut Silas Told out from that side of the prison.
Told was not to be repressed entirely. In spite of all opposition, he
still visited the felons, among whom there was a blessed work,
especially among the condemned malefactors. He frequently preached
during the space which intervened between sentence and execution; he
constantly visited the sick in all parts of the prison, which he tells
us he had "reason to believe was made a blessing to many of their
souls." His zeal was so great that he spared no pains to do all the good
in his power, "embracing every opportunity, both in hearing and
speaking, so that in process of time he preached in every prison, as
well as in every workhouse, in and about London, and frequently
travelled to almost every town within twelve miles of the metropolis."
Silas Told has left us several of his personal experiences in attending
upon the condemned. One of the most interesting cases is that of Mary
Edmonson, who was convicted of murdering her aunt, on slight evidence,
and whose guilt seems doubtful. When the time of her departure for
Tyburn approached, Silas begged the sheriff to let him visit her as soon
as possible. The sheriff asked him if he was a clergyman. "No, sir,"
replied Told. "Are you a Dissenting minister?" "I answered him 'No.'"
"What are you then?" he went on. Silas replied that he was one who
preached the gospel, and who wished to be the means of bringing the
prisoner to confession. The sheriff then bade Told seize hold of his
bridle-rein, and go by his side to the place of execution; although he
cautioned him against the attempt, there being a riotous mob all along
the streets, who were fiercely incensed against the poor condemned
woman. "As we were proceeding on the road,"--let Silas tell his own
story,--"the sheriff's horse being close to the cart, I looked at her
from under the horse's bridle, and said, 'My dear, look to Jesus.' This
salutary advice quickened her spirit, insomuch that although she did not
look about her before, yet she turned herself round to me and joyfully
answered, 'Sir, I bless God I can look to Jesus for my comfort!' This
produced a pleasant smile on her countenance, which when the sons of
violence perceived, they d--d her in a shameful manner; this was
accompanied with a vengeful shout, 'See how bold she is! See how the
---- laughs!'
"At length we came to the gallows, where many officers were stationed on
horseback, besides numbers more on foot, furnished with constables'
staves. When the cart was backed under the gallows, a very corpulent man
trod on my foot with such weight that I really thought he had taken it
quite off; however, the sheriff soon cleared the way, and formed an
arrangement of constables round the cart, then directed some of them to
put me into it, in order that I might be of all the service to the
malefactor which lay in my power; the sheriff himself standing behind
the cart, the better to avail himself of my discourses with her. When
she was tied up I began to address her nearly in the same words I did at
the Peacock, pressing upon her an acknowledgment of the murder in the
most solemn manner, but she declared her innocence in the presence of
the sheriff. I then interrogated her. 'Did you not commit the fact? Had
you no concern therein? Were you not interested in the murder?' She
answered, 'I am as clear of the whole affair as I was the day my mother
brought me into the world.' The sheriff on hearing these words shed
plenty of tears, and said, 'Good God! it is a second Coleman's case!'
This circumstance likewise brought tears from many persons who heard
her. When I was getting out of the cart the executioner put the
handkerchief over her eyes, but she quickly moved it away, and,
addressing herself to the multitude, begged them to pray that God would
bring to light, when she was departed, the cause of the assassination,
saying she had no doubt but the prayers of such persons would be heard;
but repeated her innocence, solemnly declaring that she was as ignorant
of the crime for which she was going to suffer as at the day of her
birth; and added also, 'I do not lay anything to the charge of my Maker,
He has an undoubted right to take me out of this world as seemeth Him
good; and although I am clear of this murder, yet I have sinned against
Him in many various instances; but I bless God He hath forgiven me all
my sins.' Her kinsman then came up into the cart, and would fain have
saluted her; but she mildly turned her face aside, strongly suspecting
him to be the assassin.
"After her kinsman had gone out of the cart, the executioner a second
time was putting the handkerchief over her face, when she again turned
it aside, looking at the sheriff, and saying, 'I think it cruel that
none is suffered to pray by me.' The sheriff then desired me, for God's
sake, to go a second time into the cart and render my prayers with her,
which when finished, she began to pray extempore, and in a most
excellent manner. When she had concluded her prayer, the executioner
performed his part, and being turned off, her body dropped against my
right shoulder, nor did she once struggle or move, but was as still as
if she had hung for three hours."
One other case I will extract from Silas Told, as it possesses some
peculiar features. It is that of the amateur highwaymen who took to the
road as a fitting frolic to end a day's pleasure. Messrs. Morgan,
Whalley, Brett, and Dupree, and two more, had dined freely at Chelmsford
to celebrate an election. Having "glutted themselves with immoderate
eating and drinking," they went out on the highway to rob the first
person they came across. This happened to be an Essex farmer, whom they
stripped of all he had. The farmer got help, followed them into
Chelmsford, where they were captured, sent to London, tried at the Old
Bailey, and cast for death. They were all of good station--Brett the son
of a clergyman in Dublin, Whalley a man of fortune, Dupree a gentleman,
and Morgan an officer on board one of His Majesty's ships of war. The
last was engaged to Lady E---- Howard, a daughter of the Duke of
Norfolk, who frequently visited Mr. Morgan in Newgate, Told being
generally present at their interviews. Lady E---- went daily to the
king, as did many other persons of great influence, to beg Mr. Morgan's
life; but His Majesty steadfastly rejected all petitions, stating that
to do so would be to show partiality and a want of justice. But the
devoted woman would not forego all hope, and, the morning before the
execution, again appeared, and fell upon her knees at the king's feet.
"My lady," said His Majesty, "there is no end to your importunity. I
will spare his life upon condition that he is not acquainted therewith
till he arrives at the place of execution." This was accordingly
carried. Brett, Whalley, and Dupree were actually tied up to the
gallows. Morgan and two others followed in a second cart, when the
sheriff rode up with the respite for Morgan.
"It is hard to express"--I again quote from Told--"the sudden alarm this
made among the multitude; and when I turned round and saw one of the
prisoners out of the cart, falling to the ground, he having fainted away
at the sudden news, I was seized with terror, as I thought it was a
rescue rather than a reprieve; but when I beheld Morgan put into a
coach, and perceived that Lady E. H. was seated therein, my fear was at
an end.
"As soon as Morgan was gone, a venerable gentleman, addressing himself
to Dupree, begged him to look steadfastly to God, in whose presence he
would shortly appear, and hoped the mercy his companion had received
would have no bad effect upon him. Dupree, with all calmness and
composure of mind, said, 'Sir, I thank God that him they reprieved; it
doesn't by any means affect me.' This gave the gentleman much
satisfaction. When prayers were ended, I addressed each of them in the
most solemn words I was capable of, which I hope was not in vain, as
they all appeared entirely resigned to their fate. Brett earnestly
craved the prayers of the multitude, and conjured them all to take
warning by the untimely end of the three objects of their present
attention. When they were turned off, and the mob nearly dispersed, I
hastened back to Newgate, and there seriously conversed with Morgan,
who, in consequence of the unexpected reprieve, was scarcely recovered."
Silas Told continued his labours for many years. In 1767 he visited the
notorious Mrs. Brownrigg, who was sentenced to be hanged for whipping
her servant-maid to death, and whom he accompanied to the gallows. His
death occurred in 1779. He lived to hear of Howard's philanthropic
exertions, and to see the introduction of some small measure of prison
reform.
While Silas Told was thus engaged, another but a more erratic and
eccentric philanthropist paid constant visits to Newgate. This was
Alexander Cruden, the well-known, painstaking compiler of the
'Concordance.' For a long time he came daily to the gaol, to preach and
instruct the prisoners in the gospel, rewarding the most diligent and
attentive with money, till he found that the cash thus disbursed was
often spent in drink the moment his back was turned. He did more good
than this. Through Mr. Cruden's solicitations a sentence of death upon a
forger, Richard Potter, was commuted to one of transportation.
More precise details of the manner in which a Newgate ordinary
interpreted his trust will be found in the evidence of the Rev. Brownlow
Forde, LL.D., before the committee of 1814. Dr. Forde took life pretty
easy. Had a prisoner sent for him, he told the committee, he might have
gone, but as no one did send, except they were sick and thought
themselves at death's door, he confined his ministrations to the
condemned, whom he visited twice a week in the day room of the press
yard, or daily after the order for execution had arrived. He repudiated
the notion that he had anything to do with the state of morals of the
gaol. He felt no obligation to instruct youthful prisoners, or attend to
the spiritual needs of the mere children so often thrown into Newgate.
He never went to the infirmary unless sent for, and did not consider it
his duty to visit the sick, and often knew nothing of a prisoner's
illness unless he was warned to attend the funeral. Among other reasons,
he said that as the turnkeys were always busy, there was no one to
attend him. While the chaplain was thus careless and apathetic, the
services he conducted were little likely to be edifying or decorous. The
most disgraceful scenes were common in the prison chapel. As the
prisoners trooped into the galleries they shouted and halloed to their
friends in the body of the church. Friends interchanged greetings, and
"How d'ye do, Sall?" was answered by "Gallows well, Conkey Beau," as the
men recognized their female acquaintances, and were recognized in turn.
The congregation might be pretty quiet after the chaplain had made his
appearance, but more often it was disorderly from first to last. Any
disposed to behave well were teased and laughed at by others.
Unrestricted conversation went on, accompanied by such loud yawning,
laughing, or coughing as almost impeded the service. No one in authority
attempted to preserve order; the gatesmen, themselves prisoners, might
expostulate, but the turnkeys who were present ignored any disturbance
until reminded of their duty by the chaplain. The keeper never attended
service. It was suggested to him that he might have a pew in the chapel
with a private entrance to it from his own house, but nothing came of
the proposal. It was not incumbent upon the prisoners, except those
condemned to death, to attend chapel. Sometimes it was crowded,
sometimes there was hardly a soul. In severe weather the place, in which
there was no fire, was nearly empty. It was very lofty, very cold, and
the prisoners, ill clad, did not care to shiver through the service. On
"curiosity days," those of the condemned sermon, more came, including
debtors and visitors from outside, who thronged to see the demeanour of
the wretched convicts under the painful circumstances already
described. The service must have been conducted in a very slovenly and
irreverent manner. Dr. Forde had no clerk, unless it chanced that some
one in the condemned pew knew how to read. If not, there were sometimes
no responses, and the "whole service was apt to be thrown into
confusion."[52]
A man who did so little himself could hardly be expected to view with
much favour the undisciplined efforts of amateurs and outsiders. In his
opinion the prisoners were only harassed and worried by the Dissenting
ministers and others who "haunted the gaol." Dr. Forde said they (the
prisoners) did not like it. "It was not to be expected of them, with
their habits, that they should be crammed with preaching and prayers."
They bore with the visitation, however, hoping to get from the preacher
a loaf, or money, or bread and cheese; although the tables were
occasionally turned on them, and the visitor, according to Dr. Forde,
"would eat up the mutton chop and drink the beer of some well-to-do
prisoner, then go to prayers, and depart." These ministers he styled
Methodist preachers, or "clergymen who affect to be methodistical
preachers," although one, according to him, was a "raggedly-dressed
Thames lighterman," who presumed to come in and expound the Scriptures.
Dr. Forde makes no mention of Mr. Baker, who must have been a constant
visitor in his day--a "white-headed old man" who was in frequent
attendance upon the prisoners when Mrs. Fry began her labours, and who
had for years "devoted much time and attention to unostentatious but
invaluable visits in Newgate."[53]
Dr. Forde seems to have been more in his element when taking the chair
at a public-house 'free-and-easy.' In the 'Book for a Rainy Day,'
already quoted, Mr. Smith gives us an account of a visit paid to Dr.
Forde at a public-house in Hatton Garden. "Upon entering the club-room,
we found the Doctor most pompously seated in a superb masonic chair,
under a stately crimson canopy placed between the windows. The room was
clouded with smoke, whiffed to the ceiling, which gave me a better idea
of what I had heard of the 'Black Hole of Calcutta' than any place I had
seen. There were present at least a hundred associates of every
denomination."
It is consoling to find that while officials slumbered, private
philanthropy was active, and had been in some cases for years. Various
societies and institutions had been set on foot to assist and often
replace public justice in dealing with criminals. The Marine Society
grew out of a subscription started by Justices Fielding and Welch, in
1756, for the purpose of clothing vagrant and friendless lads and
sending them on board the fleet. The Philanthropic Society had been
established in 1789 by certain benevolent persons, to supply a home for
destitute boys and girls, and this admirable institution steadily grew
and prospered. In 1794 it moved to larger premises, and in 1817 it had
an income of £6000 a year, partly from subscriptions and legacies,
partly from the profit on labour executed by its inmates.[54] In 1816
another body of well-meaning people, moved by the "alarming increase of
juvenile delinquency in the metropolis," formed a society to investigate
its causes, inquire into the individual cases of boys actually under
sentence, and afford such relief upon release as might appear deserved
or likely to prevent a relapse into crime. The members of this society
drew up a list containing seven hundred names of the friends and
associates of boys in Newgate, all of whom they visited and sought to
reform. They went further, and seriously discussed the propriety of
establishing a special penitentiary for juveniles, a scheme which was
never completely carried out. Another institution was the Refuge for the
Destitute, which took in boys and girls on their discharge from prison,
to teach them trades and give them a fair start in life. There were also
the Magdalen Hospital and the Female Penitentiary, both of which did
good work amongst depraved women.
Matters had improved somewhat in Newgate after the report of the
committee in 1814, at least as regards the juveniles. A school had been
established, over which the new ordinary, Mr. Cotton, who about this
time succeeded Dr. Forde, presided, and in which he took a great
interest. The chaplain was in communication with the Philanthropic and
other institutions, and promising cases were removed to them. The boys
were kept as far as possible apart from the men, but not at first from
one another. Hence in the one long room they occupied and used for all
purposes, eating, drinking, and sleeping, the elder and more vitiated
boys were still able to exercise a baneful influence over the young and
innocent. More space became available by the removal of the debtors to
Whitecross Street, and then the boys were lodged according to categories
in four different rooms. Mr. Cotton believed that the boys benefited
morally from the instruction and care they received. This juvenile
school was one bright spot in the prevailing darkness of Newgate at that
particular time. Another and a still more remarkable amelioration in the
condition of the prisoners was soon to attract universal attention. The
great and good work accomplished by that noble woman Mrs. Fry on the
female side of Newgate forms an epoch in prison history, and merits a
particular description.
Bad as were the other various courts and so called "sides" in Newgate
prison, the quadrangle appropriated to the females was far worse. Its
foul and degraded condition had attracted the sympathies of Elizabeth
Fry as early as 1813. The winter had been unusually severe, and Mrs. Fry
had been induced by several Friends, particularly by William Forster, to
visit Newgate and endeavour to alleviate the sufferings of the female
prisoners. The space allotted to the women was at that time still
curtailed by the portion given over to the state side.[55] They were
limited to two wards and two cells, an area of about one hundred and
ninety-two superficial yards in all, into which, at the time of Mrs.
Fry's visit, some three hundred women with their children were crowded,
all classes together, felon and misdemeanant, tried and untried; the
whole under the superintendence of an old man and his son. They slept on
the floor, without so much as a mat for bedding. Many were very nearly
naked, others were in rags; some desperate from want of food, some
savage from drink, foul in language, still more recklessly depraved in
their habits and behaviour. Everything was filthy beyond description.
The smell of the place was quite disgusting. The keeper himself, Mr.
Newman, was reluctant to go amongst them. He strove hard to dissuade
Mrs. Fry from entering the wards, and failing in that, begged her at
least to leave her watch in his office, assuring her that not even his
presence would prevent its being torn from her. Mrs. Fry's own account
fully endorses all this. "All I tell thee is a faint picture of the
reality; the filth, the closeness of the rooms, the ferocious manners
and expressions of the women towards each other, and the abandoned
wickedness which everything bespoke, are quite indescribable." "One act,
the account of which I received from another quarter, marks the degree
of wretchedness to which they were reduced at that time. Two women were
seen in the act of stripping a dead child for the purpose of clothing a
living one."[56]
Mrs. Fry must have gone again, for she wrote under date Feb. 16th,
1813--"Yesterday we were some hours in Newgate with the poor female
felons, attending to their outward necessities; we had been twice
previously. Before we went away dear Anna Buxton uttered a few words in
supplication, and very unexpectedly to myself I did also. I heard
weeping, and I thought they appeared much tendered. A very solemn quiet
was observed; it was a striking scene, with the poor people around in
their deplorable condition." Mrs. Fry's charity extended to the gift of
clothing, for it is recorded in her memoirs that many members of her
domestic circle had long a vivid recollection of the "green baize
garments," and their pleasure in assisting to prepare them.
Nearly four years elapsed before Elizabeth Fry resumed her visits.
Newgate and what she had seen there had no doubt made a deep impression
on her mind, but a long illness and family afflictions had prevented her
from giving her philanthropic yearnings full play. She appears to have
recommenced her visits about Christmas 1816, and on Feb. 16th, 1817,
there is an entry in her journal to the effect that she had been "lately
much occupied in forming a school in Newgate for the children of the
poor prisoners, as well as the young criminals." It was in this way
that she struck at the hearts of these poor degraded wretches, who were
only too eager to save their children from a life of crime. "The
proposal was received," Mrs. Fry says, "even by the most abandoned with
tears of joy." The three intervening years between 1813 and 1816 had
brought no improvement in the female side. Its inmates--the very scum of
the town--
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