MODUS OPERANDI OF SELLING.
"You wan'sh a nish pair o' bootsh? S'help, I shells you thish pair for two shillings, and they wash never made lesh than a guinea and a half! Don't you want to buy these sphlendid bootsh; s'help me, I only makes'h two pensh?"
I tried to get away, but he held to my arm and kept shaking the boots, while his sharp, black eyes glittered like sword points at the prospect of losing a sale. At last the detective, losing patience, jerked him away, and we passed on to the next slop stand.
This was kept by an old Irish woman. The Jew was all mercantile acerbity and sharpness. This old humbug of a female Celt was all treacle and honey.
"Ah, then, it's the foine gentleman that ye are. It's easy to see the good dhrop is in ye. May be it's a likin' ye'd be taking to this sphlindid waistcoat; that's all the fashion now, and it's well it 'id look on yer fine figger. And don't ye want nothing at all to wear? And shure ye wouldn't be afther goin' naked like an omaudhaun in the streets and havin' the people shoutin' after ye?"
"How much rent d'ye pay for this stall," said I to her, to get her off a topic by which she made her living.
"Is't the durty rint ye mane? Well, it's enouff for the ould hole. I pay sixpence a day in advance, and the devil resave the penny I've turned yet, this blessed mornin."
"Have you any one to support beside yourself?"
"Well, indade, I have two childher, and its small comfort they are to me. One of thim, the eldest, is down wud scarlet favir, and the docthor says it tin to one if she'll ever recover."
"You see sir," said the detective, "the people who rent stands from the men as own this place, they have to pay sixpence a day to 'old the stand. But those fellows as you see running around like lunatics, and a borin of every one, they pays two pence a day rents—cos why they 'ave no stands and honly walk habout with the clothes hon their harms."
"Yis, and I wish you'd sind them to the divil, the haythens—they niver give an honest woman a chance to make a penny be hook or be crook, wud thim runnin all over the fair."
"Halso, we never allows the 'awker as has no stands to stay in one place," said Dick Ralph, "cos hif we did, that would ruin the business of the people as pays rent for the stands. So we keeps them a movin' hon, and they doesn't like it, but we have got to do it, or else they would have rows hall the Sunday through with the nobs as keeps the stands. You see, the wery minute one of the 'awkers gets hopposite a stand, he collects a crowd and—now, there goes one now;" and he pointed to a fellow with a pair of trousers, who was bawling his goods out while a policeman had him by the neck shoving him along by main force.
"Oh, some of these lads are precious 'ard coves, I tell you, to manage. Some of them will fight and curse at you like as hif they wor made of brass. But we never talks long to them, 'cos hif we did Rag Fair would be too much for the force."
"How much a day do the hawkers make on an average?" I asked Ralph.
"Well, I can't tell, because they are sich werry 'ardened liars. I axed one the werry last Sunday as I wos 'ere. Says I, 'old Benjamin, how much do you take in on a day's work on a haverage?'"
"Oh! blesh your 'art," sez he, "some days I hash two pounds profit, and some days I makes a shillin' by 'ard vork."
"Now ye see," said Ralph, "I knew he was of gaffin me, for he was not worth two pounds, body and soul, and I don't suppose he never made more than half a crown in a day and do his best. Then Old Benjamin spends it hall in fish. The Jew peddlers here are wery fond of fish on Saturdays. They would go without a meal in three days to have a fresh mackerel on Sunday. And they are werry pertikler as to who kills the meat before they buys it."
Determining to make another attempt to see Petticoat Lane on a week day, I bade the polite policeman and the highly odorous quarter of the Old Clothes sellers, a very good day.
CHAPTER X.
FROM NEWGATE TO TYBURN.
LET us look at Newgate. This stern old pile of stones heaped upon stones, grey and grim, the burden of whose sighs afflict the weary skies above.
The strangest kind of a fascination hung over me as I looked at its Gate, cut in the deep wall like the entrance to a rocky cave. The spiked sill spoke of gibbets, the bars and locks and bolts of a felon gang, who dragged their blind life away, day following day, for them without hope, the outside world vacant, dumb and blank as the Ages, to their crime begotten souls, whose only music was the clank of fetters and the hoarse grating of iron hinges.
The building itself, covering half an acre, seemed sealed like a sepulchre. There was nothing to be gotten out of it, one way or the other. No one can have even looked at this terrible prison of Newgate without a shudder of despair for his kind.
Only on certain recurring Black Mondays did it yawn like a grave in the face of a great swearing mob, to put forth something into the open in the shadow of St. Sepulchre's, that was half dead; to take it back after an hour quite dead; and then it relapsed into its old, inscrutable dumbness.
Now Gate of Ivory, now Gate of Horn—now a porch above which might be inscribed the despairing legend of the Inferno, now a wicket at which the charitable might tap gently, fraughtwith messages of mercy to the fallen creatures within—the portal of Newgate could assume chameleon hues, not always hopeless.
Next to the spikes of Newgate, the visitor must always mark for lasting remembrance, the stones of Newgate doorsteps. They are not perhaps more than eighty years old, but they look more worn than the jambs of Temple bar—more decayed than the wheel windows of the Cloisters of Westminster Abbey. They are ancient through use, and not through time.
The Hall of the Lost Footsteps at Versailles is but an empty name, but the millions of footsteps that have worn Newgate stones, must make it an abiding reality. Here have united all the crooked roads. Here have fallen the last steps on the stones of the ford of the Black River. Beyond the steps has loomed the City of Dis.
How many footsteps! how many!
Lord George Gordon, after the riots and burnings of 1780, wrecked and crazy, totters feebly up Newgate steps to die in the prison which his murderous associates had attempted to burn. Desperate Thistlewood, fresh from the loft in Cato street, where his fellow conspirators were dragged—reeking from the murder of Smithers, whose ghost followed him to the gallows, is brought here heavily chained from the Tower Dungeon, in which the ministry with frantic fear had at first immured him.
He and his gang will leave Newgate no more save by the Debtor's Door, where the Man in the Mask—one of the few unsolved mysteries of the Nineteenth century—will do his horrible office upon them and hold up to the populace five severed heads, who at first shudder, but growing hardened by the dripping sight of blood, will cry as the clumsy butcher lets the last head fall—
"Hallo, butter-fingers!"
Down Newgate steps at dead of night, how many corpses of uncoffined wretches have been borne in sacks, to be dissected at Old Surgeon's Hall, over the narrow causeway which skirts the prison.
EXECUTION OF BARRETT.
The dread gaol keeps its secret better now. No grapnel hauls forth the dishonored carcass of the dead criminal for exposition at the Gemonian steps.
The place is doubly a Golgotha, and murder is buried on the spot where it has been slain.
Here died brave hearted Michael Barrett, the victim of the last public execution which will ever take place in Newgate, just three short years ago. How the huge metropolis seethed and boiled like a world-cauldron that day of days!
Condemned to die as a Fenian conspirator, he gave his life gallantly for his native land, and in his last hour frightened England more than a hundred living Barretts could have done.
I stood before Newgate with a member of the Old Jewry force who had seen the execution of Barrett. From the fact that the government, after that day, has prohibited any more public executions, his description of the scene will be worthy of recounting to my readers. The detective was a young man, and intelligent beyond his class. We were standing outside of the prison gate.
The lane or street of the Old Bailey, which begins at Ludgate Hill, one block below St. Paul's Cathedral, runs toward Newgate street, parallel with Giltspur street which it enters, and forms before ending a triangular space of about two acres square measurement. At the angle, formed by the Holborn Viaduct, which ends here, (Giltspur street and Newgate street,) is the old Church of St. Sepulchre. To the right and behind us, we could just trace the ornamented and beautiful facade of Christ Church Hospital. To our left and below us was the Sessions Court in the Old Bailey, a place in some respects like the Tombs Court and the Court of General Sessions in New York, were both courts to be combined. I am thus particular in order to show my readers where and how Michael Barrett, the last Newgate victim, died.
"Well, you see, Sir," said my Old Jewry friend to me, "the week as Barrett wos hung wos a busy week with us. Up all night sometimes and all day, searching the holes and cornersand dark places of the city for Fenians. We got information that they wos going to blow up St. Pauls, one day—another day we hears that they had a plot to bust hup the Bank of Hingland—then they were to burn down the Tower and the 'Oss Guards, and then somebody told us that they meant to send Westminster Habbey and Buckingham Palace sky high—and this way and that way we wos worrited to death with hinformation. One night I was detailed to St. Paul's to watch the crypts or vaults under the Cathedral, where the Fenians intended to put a lot of gunpowder to blow it hup. I staid there all night with some more of the men detailed, and a precious cold job it wos, we hiding among the vaults snapping our fingers and shivering like geese in a pond, and not a Fenian within three miles of us. That wos a lark, and the newspapers laughed at us, and had comic picters of us standing in the cold, for their hedification."
"Another night we hexpected them to set fire to the 'Ouses of Parlyment, and a blessed shame it would have been to have destroyed sich a fine hedifice, and there I wos night after night, a-playing hide and seek among the galleries and Towers of the 'Ouse, watching for Fenians and hexpecting to get a stab in the back, and all the time I wos wishing as how I could get relief, so as to get a pot o' beer in the King's Arms in Parlyment street."
DYING FOR AN IDEA.
"Well, Sir, at last came the busting and blowing up of Clerkenwell Prison, and a nice row that made all through England—and while the fellows as did it walked off quite cooly—Barrett and a few more who wos suspected, and who wos as I believe really hinnocent—of the Clerkenwell affair—wos taken and tried right over here in the Sessions Court (pointing with his hand over the wall of the Old Bailey Court), and he stood up in the dock that day as he wos found guilty, and I must say he was as brave a man as I ever saw—and defied the big wigs and all on them, and said he was not afraid to die, and then he told them that if it was twenty lives he would give it for "dear Ireland,"—thems just the words he said, and although I don't like Fenians or Fenianism, I must say for him that he was nomore afraid than I was, that is if you can judge from a man's face at such a hawful minute.
"The night afore his execution I was in his cell; I was let in by a friend of mine the turnkey, and I spoke to him kindly, cos you see I didn't feel exactly like as if he wos a man who had committed a common murder or robbed for a living, cos why, you see, a lawyer told me as how he was dying for an idea, like Russell or Hampden or some others of them Big Guns.
"I sez to him:
"How do you feel Mr. Barrett?"
"I feel well, thank you said he;" one of the turnkeys wos watching him, sitting up with him, and he had a light in his cell—he was ironed.
"They are putting up the scaffold," said he to me without a bit of fear.
"Yes, and I'm sorry for it," said I, "Mr. Barrett—is there anything I can do for you."
"Nothing," says he, standing up and turning down the book which he was reading, his chains clanking around his legs—"Nothing—but you see me the night before I die—tell those who employed you that Michael Barrett has made his peace with God—and is not afraid to die. Tell them," and he commenced reciting poetry like, with his eyes on the ceiling of his cell:
"Whither on the scaffold highOr in the battle's van;The fittest place for man to dieIs where he dies for man."
"Them's the lines as near as I can remember, for I saw them in a book after, and that made me recollect them.
"During the night they were busy in putting up the scaffold, and three or four thousand special constables were sworn in by the magistrates, cos why, they were afraid that the Fenians would rescue Barrett, and I, as well as every other man, wos armed with a six-barrelled revolver. When the morning came there must have been a hundred thousand people in the streetsand all around here. Hundreds staid up all night to get a chance for a good place to look at him, and there was more than three thousand women, and as many children in the crowd around the scaffold. The top of the scaffold, I mean the frame, was about twelve feet above the street, and the platform was about six feet high, so that hevery one was able to see him. Fifteen hundred police in uniform were drawn hup around Newgate, and to prevent the crowds from pushing or rescuing the prisoner, a barricade of trees was built at a distance of two hundred feet from the scaffold hevery way. Five hundred police in plain clothes were among the crowds armed with revolvers, and troops were stationed at all the barracks in the city so as to be ready for any attempt to save his life. The crowd Sir, was for all the world like a surging sea, and people were buying and selling of histers, and liquors, ginger beer, whelks, fruit and cigars, just the same as if they were at a fair, and men and boys were crying ballads and singing, and some of them were peddling Barrett's printed confession. Now you see, Sir, that was a humbug, becos Barrett never made no confession, but they sold just as well as if he had made one, at a penny a piece.
"Well, when St. Sepulchre's bell struck eight, which is always the signal, they brought him ought, and although the air was cold and some of us were shivering from standing up so long without anything to eat or drink, he never trembled at all, but looked at every man and woman of all that wos there with a smile, and a steady look.
"'He's a game un,' I heard many a man say, and our fellows who had such hard work watching the Fenians by night and by day, had no hard feelings agin the brave fellow then. The women around the scaffold waved their handkerchiefs to him, you see, Sir, the women, bless them, are always up to such blessed games, and there was some man in the crowd when the rope was put around his neck, who wore a fur coat, and seemed like an American, who cried out as loud as he could—
"Good heart—Michael Barrett—this day. All is not lost while one drop of Irish blood remains."
THE PESTIFEROUS PRISON.
"I saw the man, and I made a jump for him with two of my pals, but the crowd opened and let him pass through,—it seemed a purpose like, and just then I heard a roar and a great convulsive sob, and the crowd pushed this way and crushed that way, almost smothering me, and I nearly fainted from the awful squeezing I got, and I picked up a little girl from atween my feet, and when I looked up Barrett's body was a swinging to and fro from a rope, and all was over, and believe me, Sir, I was glad of it when it was over."
THE LAST EXECUTION AT NEWGATE.
It was high noon when I arrived at Newgate, and my visit was paid chiefly to that part of the prison devoted to the subsistence of the prisoners. I passed through the corridors and passages, and door after door, and hinge after hinge grated as I advanced with a companion. All around the prison are the high walls of the neighboring buildings, and attached to them are precipitous sheds with spikes to prevent the escape of prisoners who may succeed in getting as far as the yard. On top of the prison is a huge circular fan which revolves and gives ventilation to the interior of the jail. This improvement was the result of the labors of the great philanthropist John Howard.
In the old days Newgate was a hell upon earth. During the Eighteenth century prisoners endured the tortures of the damned here. Jail birds were shackled to the floor to prevent their escape, and mouldy bread and stinking water was given them to drink until their stomachs loathed the appearance of food. Their beds were of stinking straw, the rain from the heavens dripped through the roof upon them, the frost and cold eat into their bones; they festered in dirt, disease, and destitution, till their limbs broke out in horrible blains, and ulcers and all kinds of agues and dysenteries swept down upon them. Then in this terrible state, after rotting for months awaiting a trial, they came into the dock at the Old Bailey with the jail fevers upon them to slay with the pestiferous miasma which exhaled from their bodies, judge, jury, and pettifogging attorneys.
The prisoners were so crowded together in dark dungeons, that the air becoming corrupted by the stench, occasioned a disease called the "goal distemper," of which they died by dozens every day. Cartloads of dead bodies were carried out of the prison and thrown in a pit in the burying-ground of Christ's Church without ceremony. The effluvia in the year 1750 was so horrible that it made a pestilence in the whole district. Four judges who sat in the Session, a Lord Mayor, several aldermen, and other civic dignitaries were carried off by the distemper, together with a number of lawyers and jurors present at the trials of Newgate criminals.
GETTING WEAK IN THE BACK.
Then at last the prison was cleansed, and a system of ventilation introduced, which made some improvement in the condition of the prisoners. Still, Newgate was a disgrace to Christendom, and just one hundred years ago Parliament made a grant of £50,000 to construct a prison. Beckford, author of Vathek, and then Lord Mayor of London, laid the first stone. In 1780, Lord George Gordon, with his No-Popery rioters, burned down that part of the prison which had been constructed, andset at liberty three hundred of the prisoners confined there. £40,000 in addition had to be granted before the building was completed.
On an average there are between two and three hundred prisoners held in durance in Newgate, and twelve sessions are held during the year at the adjoining Old Bailey Court for their trial. This is called the Central Criminal Court, and it is here, in this very court, that Jack Sheppard, Dick Turpin, Claude Duval, Sixteen String Jack, Tom King, and all the other heroes of the yellow covered literature, were tried, condemned, taken in fetters to Newgate, and from thence to Tyburn Tree to hang by the neck until they were dead.
The Judges of the Old Bailey Court are the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, Recorder, and Common Sergeant of London, and the Judges of the Courts at Westminster Hall, who sit here by rotation to assist, by their superior legal knowledge, the inferior local magistrates.
The prison is divided into a male and female side, but beyond this there is little classification; the pickpocket, the swindler, the embezzler, the murderer, are all associated together; while the hardened offender and the one who is merely suspected of crime, but too often share the same cell, and feed at the same board.
There are separate cells, so that every one averse to society may dwell alone if he or she chooses, but in conversation with the turnkeys, I learned that the privilege was rarely claimed.
"Why, Lord bless your heart, Sir," said a turnkey to me, "there isn't one of the birds in this ere cage that wouldn't go down on his blessed knees and beg hoff if he was to be locked up alone for forty-eight hours. Ye see, sir, it sickens them, it does, to be alone and hear no one's voice but their own. There's a few of the high 'uns at first, when they come here, are werry hoffish and have a sort of a "how-dare-you-look-or-speak-to-me-air," but before three days they gets weak in the back and then they'll give a guinea a minute to look at a face if it only wor a monkey's dirty mug."
When prisoners become refractory, solitary confinement, for afew days, is the punishment, and it never fails to tame the most intractable. The beds of the prisoners are in tiers one above the other, like the berths on an emigrant ship, only that they are clean almost to painfulness. The beds consist of a hard mattress and coarse coverings, sufficient in all seasons to keep them comfortably warm. A plain deal table and bench constitute the only furniture of the place, and these, with the floor, are daily scrubbed into a state of scrupulous cleanliness by the inmates of the cells. There are paved court yards in which the prisoners may walk and breathe the small quantity of pure air that can circulate between those high and gloomy walls, surmounted by formidable spikes to impede the climber.
I went into the kitchen of Newgate and found it to be a commodious and well-fitted apartment, very like the kitchen of the Reform Club, only not so luxurious, from its want of French dishes, and I found here boilers, stoves, ranges, saucepans, kettles, and all that a chef could need for his cuisine. This was not the kitchen of the Old Newgate of which Ainsworth delights to tell, where the hangman used to seethe in a cauldron of molten pitch the heads and quarters of victims executed for treason, whose several members were afterwards affixed to the spikes of Temple Bar or London Bridge.
I saw the rations of each prisoner served out in tin panikins and platters, and the bread served was as white as any I ever ate. There were three large and beautiful potatoes allotted to each one, and three ounces of boiled beef, good and tender and free from bone, just of the same quality which I had seen served a few days before in the barracks of the Grenadier Guards down in Westminster. The meat might not have all the accessories and sauces which a Delmonico or a Blanchard could provide, but it was palatable and tender to the taste.
On "off" days they have soup and thick gruel for breakfast, and sixteen ounces of bread per day. They never get beer, butter, milk, cheese, cabbage, tea, coffee, or eggs.
HOTEL REGULATIONS.
So, after I had seen all this "bee bread," the hunks of meat duly weighed out, the potatoes and lumps of bread packed in their panniers and delivered out from door to door—the chiefwarder and I began to ascend a very Mont Blanc of iron staircases, and visited, one after the other, the cells of the wicked hive; in which, God knows, there was no honey making, but only wax, bitter as the book which the Apostle swallowed.
The original "comb," many stories high, had been built in one of the former yards of the gaol. The space between the different tiers of cells was quite sufficient for ventilation; but the architects had of necessity trusted more to height than to breadth, and this increased the hive-like appearance of the place. But when I came down again, the remembrance of what I had seen fresh upon me, all these iron staircases and galleries, all these shining locks, bars, numbers, plates, and "inspection holes," all these recrossing and crossing pillars, trusses, and girders, made me think that I had just left some great, bad exhibition of products of the devil's industry. One cell was, in all save its occupant, twin brother to its neighbor on either side; and so on, tier above tier, until the whole nest had been explored. I forgot to ask how many feet broad, by how many feet long, was each dungeon.
But here is one—the type of all the rest. It is as large say, as acabinet particulier, to hold four, at Vachett's or the Moulin Rouge; but it is given up to the occupancy of one man. It is a hundred times cleaner than ever wascabinetin Paris restaurant; and here the lodger eats, reads, and sleeps. His bedding lies on a shelf on the right corner as you enter the cell. It is a pile of rugs, matting, mattress, or some other kind of bedding, packed and folded up with mathematical accuracy, with an assortment of straps and hooks disposed in corresponding order. These hooks will, by and bye, at eight o'clock, be inserted in rings in the whitewashed cell, when the prisoner will make his bed and sleep athwart his cell.
There are his gas-pipe, his basin, and mug; there is a little desk-formed table, which he can prop up with a wooden support, to eat his meals upon; there are his tin panikin and wooden spoon, his Bible, prayer-book, and hymn-book, his comb, his salt-cellar, with a neat cover of blue paper. Everything shines, glistens, sparkles, almost as bravely as the gew-gaws in Mr. Benson's shop outside. The floor is of shining asphalte. The covered ceiling is without a flaw. The walls are unsmirched. A neat copy of the regulations enforced in this "hotel"—the code of discipline framed by the Sheriffs—are hung up for the prisoner's guidance. He has a ventilator, by means of which he can regulate the temperature of his cell; and I noticed that the chief warder had to tell almost every prisoner that he was keeping his cell too warm.
Among the many afflicting scenes that have taken place in the vicinity of Newgate, was that of February 23, 1807, when two men, named Haggerty and Holloway, were hanged for the murder of Mr. Steele, on Hounslow Heath. The greatest interest had been excited by the trial of these two men, and an immense crowd assembled to witness their execution.
By five o'clock in the morning every avenue was blocked up; every window that communicated a view of the place was crammed, and wagons, arranged in rows, groaned under the weight of the eager multitude. The pressure of the assemblage was tremendous; and when the criminals had been turned off—when they had given their last death struggle—the mass of the people began to move. But there was no room for them to move in.
Immediately rose the shrieks of affrighted women in the crowd, which but increased the alarm, and made each individual struggle to get out of the multitude. Hundreds were trodden under foot, and the furious and frightened crowd passed over them.
At last the confusion ceased a little, and the ground became comparatively clear.
DRINKING FROM ST. GILES' BOWL.
Some who had been thrown down arose but with little damage, and went home, but forty-two were found insensible, of this number twenty-seven were quite dead, of whom three were women. Of the other fifteen many had their legs or arms broken, and some of them afterward died. Since that occurrence barriers have been erected and executions have taken place without loss of life. The system of hanging in chains has also been abolished, and Newgate may one day hope, like its brother of the Bastille, for the light of freedom to break inupon its hell-holes, and show to humanity how like devils are men clad with a little brief authority.
Eighty-three years ago, the last victim, taken from Newgate to Tyburn Tree, was hung there upon the gallows in chains. The name of the criminal was John Austin. Tyburn was anciently a manor and village some miles west of London, and on this fated spot, in 1330, Roger de Mortimer was hanged, drawn, disemboweled, and quartered, for high treason. The gallows was a triangle upon three legs. Long years ago, when Dan Chaucer wrote his lays, criminals were taken to Tyburn, and hung from a lofty elm tree, which overshadowed a brook or "burn," hence the term of "Tyburn Tree." The gallows, in after years, stood on a small eminence at the corner of the Edgeware Road, where a tool-house was subsequently erected.
Beneath this spot, where the gallows formerly stood, the bones of Bradshaw, Ireton, and others, who had voted for the death of Charles I, repose, their remains, having been taken from their graves, after the Restoration, and thrown here. Around the gibbet were erected open galleries, like those at a modern race-course, from whence many thousand people, of both sexes, were wont to feast their eyes on the dying struggles of the condemned. "Mamma Douglas," an old toothless woman, held the keys of these seats, and she was, facetiously, called the Tyburn "pew opener." Prices of seats to witness the sport, varied from one and sixpence to three shillings, and in one instance, a reprieve having arrived for the prisoner in time to save his life, the mob became enraged at their disappointment, and tore up the benches. The criminal was conveyed in a cart to Tyburn, the parson chanting prayer and hymn on the route, and in passing through the quarter of St. Giles, a bowl of ale was always offered to the condemned to drink, the procession of Sheriffs, Stavesmen, and Constables, halting on the way for the purpose. Among the famous criminals executed here were Perkin Warbeck, for plotting his escape from the Tower, 1534; the Holy Maid of Kent, and her associates, 1535; the last Prior of the Charter House, same year; Southwell, the poet, 1615; Mrs. Turner, hanged in ayellow starched ruff, for the poisoning of Sir Thomas Overbury, 1628; John Felton, assassin of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, 1600; and in 1662 five persons who had signed the death warrant of Charles I; 1684, Sir Thomas Armstrong (Rye House Plot); 1705, John Smith, a burglar, having been hung for fifteen minutes, a reprieve arrived, and he was cut and bled, which saved his life. Jack Sheppard was hung in 1724; Jonathan Wild, the thief taker, in 1725, and Catharine Hayes was burnt alive here in 1726, for the murder of her husband, as the indignant mob would not suffer the hangman to strangle her, as was usual, before the fire was kindled. In 1760, Earl Ferrars, who had murdered his steward, rode from the Tower to Tyburn, in his open landau, drawn by six horses, and was hanged with a silken rope, the hangman and the mob fighting for the rope, while the latter tore the black cloth on the scaffold to pieces. Oliver Cromwell's body was taken up and here, long years after he had died, hung from the tree, while his head was set on a spike of Westminster Hall. The other famous hangings were as follows: 1767, Mrs. Browning, for murder; 1774, John Rann (Sixteen-Stringed Jack), highwayman; 1775, the two Perraus, for forgery; 1777, Rev. Dr. Dodd, forgery; 1779, Rev. James Hackman, assassination of Miss Reay: he was taken from Newgate in a mourning coach. 1783, Ryland, the engraver, for forgery. 1783, John Austin, the last person executed at Tyburn.
tailpiece
CHAPTER XI.
DOCTOR'S COMMONS.
ONE of the queerest old rookeries in London is the little old edifice in Great Knight-Rider street, just back of St. Paul's Churchyard, with its nest of courts and its ancient quadrangle, where people go to get licenses to marry—or to have divorces granted them, or to examine or prove wills—or perhaps to have a suite entered for salvage or flotsam, or jetsam,—where David Copperfield paid a thousand pounds to receive his matriculation as a proctor. This curious old relic of Roman Catholic England, where the wills of the British nation are preserved, is known as Doctors' Commons.
It is a college of civil, canon, and maritime law, and here all cases that belong to these three divisions of English law, as also divorce suits, are entered, argued, and decided.
The lawyers who practice here are all well to do, snug, aristocratic old fellows, and enjoy good living and nothing to do as no other disciples of the legal profession can.
It is called Doctor's Commons because the doctors or students at law used to eat in common, or dine together in a hall in the old days when the Archbishop of Canterbury acknowledged the supremacy of the See of St. Peter.
In the Doctors' Commons are—the Court of Arches, named from having been formerly kept in Bow Church, Cheapside, originally built upon arches, and the Supreme Ecclesiastical Court of the Province of Canterbury—the other English Ecclesiastical Province being that of York; the Prerogative Court, where all contentions arising out of testamentary causes, are tried; the Consistory Court of the Bishop of London; and the High Court of Admiralty; all these courts hold their sittings in the college hall, the walls of which are covered with the richly-emblazoned coats of arms of all the doctors who have practiced here for two hundred years past.
The Court of Arches has a jurisdiction over thirteen parishes, or "peculiars," which form a "Deanery," exempt from the authority of the Bishop of London, and attached to the Province of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is Primate of England. This court decides, as in the days of Wolsey, in all cases of usury, simony, heresy, sacrilege, blasphemy, apostacy from Christianity, adultery, fornication, bastardy, partial and entire divorce, and many exploded offenses, which in the Nineteenth century become farcical when tried in an ecclesiastical court. Fighting or brawling in church or vestry are also offenses under the jurisdiction of this absurd old court, but they are seldom or ever brought up in these days, as the newspapers are sure to seize upon such trials as subjects for derision and satire. Still the statutes are in existence and will probably never be repealed until the Established Church of England is abolished.
There are several Registries in Doctors' Commons, under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the bishops. Some of the very old documents connected with them are deposited for security in St. Paul's Cathedral and Lambeth Palace. At the Bishop of London's Registry, and the Registry for the Commission of Surrey, wills are proved for the respective dioceses, and marriage licences are granted. At the Vicar-General's Office and the Faculty Office, marriage licences are granted for any part of England. The Faculty Office also grants Faculties to notaries public, and dispensations to the clergy; and formerly granted privilege to eat flesh on prohibited days. At the Vicar-General's Office, records are kept of the confirmation and consecration of bishops.
MARRIAGE LICENSES.
Marriage licences, when required by persons who profess thefaith of the Established Church of England, are always procured in Doctors' Commons upon personal application to one of these old fogy Proctors, whom I saw running around the quaint quadrangle, like a hen on a hot griddle, with a roll of papers in his fleshy, fat hands. A residence of fifteen days is necessary to either bride or bridegroom, in the parish in which the marriage is to be solemnized, or not much longer than it takes a repeater to become a useful if not a legal voter in New York City. This little antique court of Doctors' Commons is in fine one of the pious swindles that the English people delight in perpetuating and groaning under, while the sinecurists make pots of money, and laugh and grow fat on the pious plunder. There are all kinds of little dodges in Doctors Commons, so that when a suitor enters here it is like a dip into chancery litigation; the victim being plucked before he leaves. Even to get married is very expensive in Doctors' Commons. The expense of an ordinary license is £2 12s.6d.; but if either party is a minor, there is 10s.6d.further charge; and if the party appearing swears that he has obtained the consent of the proper person having authority in law to give it, there is no necessity for either parents or minor to attend. A special license for marriage is issued after a fiat or consent has been obtained from the Archbishop, and is granted only to persons of rank, judges, and members of parliament, the Archbishop having a right to exercise his own discretion.
The expense of a Special License is usually twenty-eight guineas. This gives privilege to marry at any time or place, in private residence, or at any church or chapel situate in England; but the ceremony must be performed by a priest in holy orders, and of the Established Church. With the marriages of Dissenters, including Roman Catholics, Jews, and Quakers, the Commons has nothing to do, their licenses being obtainable of the Superintendent-Registrar. A Divorce when sought is carried through one of the courts in this profession (according to the diocese), and is conducted by a proctor; the evidence of witnesses is taken privately before an examiner of the court, and neither the husband, wife, nor any of the witnesses, needappear personally in court. A suit is seldom conducted at an expense less than £200.
Then there is the High Court of Admiralty, a "precious old swindle," as a seafaring man told me it had proved to him. He was a seaman before the mast, and to get a sum of eight pounds six and four-pence, he was compelled to pay eleven pounds of costs and fees. It comprises the "Instance Court," and the "Prize Court," where the famous Lord Stowell, in one year, adjudicated upon 2,206 cases connected with the high seas.
DOCTOR'S COMMONS.
The Instance Court has a criminal and civil jurisdiction; to the former belong piracy and other indictable offences on the high seas, which are now tried at the Old Bailey; to the latter, suits arising from ships running foul of each other, disputes about seamen's wages, bottomry, and salvage. The Prize Court applies to naval captures in war, proceeds of captured slave-vessels, &c. A silver oar is carried before the Judge asan emblem of his office. The business is very onerous, as in embargoes and the provisional detention of vessels, when incautious decision might involve the country in war; the right of search is another weighty question.
PAYING THE PIPER.
The practitioners in this court are advocates (D.D.C.L.) or counsel, and proctors or solicitors. The judge and advocates wear in court, if of Oxford, scarlet robes and hoods lined with taffety; and if of Cambridge, white minever and round black velvet caps. The proctors wear black robes and hoods lined with fur.
The College has a good library in civil law and history, bequeathed by an ancestor of Sir John Gibson, judge of the Prerogative Court; and every bishop at his consecration makes a present of books.
After a case has been worked slowly through one of these ecclesiastical courts, it is then transferred to another, and after bowling the cause about for years it is just possible that it will be lost for the suitor. Suits are brought in Doctors' Commons for the most ridiculous and trivial causes, and once a man gets into the Commons, he is made to pay the piper while the sleek, fat proctors, dance right merrily to the music paid for by their unhappy victims. A case in point I will mention. The cause had just been tried in the Archdeacon's Court, at Totness, and from thence an appeal had been sought in the Court at Exeter, thence it went to the Court of Arches, and from there to the Court of Delegates, and after all this fuss and expense, the question in discussion was to know which of two persons had the legal right to hang a hat on a certain peg! This is sober truth, and no exaggeration.
But the great perfection of legal scoundrelism was, in a case where a man, named Russell, whose wife's character had been impugned by a person named Bentham, at Yarmouth, was tried. This gentleman could find no remedy in Common Law for the defamation, so he must needs go to Doctors' Commons and the Ecclesiastical Courts. The Proctor's bill amounted to £700 after the case had gone through several courts, and finally each party had to pay his own costs after the case had been continued six or seven years; the special beauty of Ecclesiastical Courts being, that once a victim brings a suit, he is never allowed to withdraw it until it has gone the rounds of every court, thus giving fees to a score of persons, one-half of whom never hear of the case until they make up their minds to send in a bill for money. Finally, after seven years of this pious warfare, Mr. Russell, being a poor man, was ruined, and his wife's character was not half as good as when he began the suit.
The Prerogative Will Office is, however, the busiest and most interesting place in Doctor's Commons. Wills are always to be found here at half an hour's notice, and generally in a few minutes. They are kept in a fire-proof, strong room. The original wills begin with the year 1483, and the copies date from 1383. The latter are on parchment, strongly bound, with brass clasps. Here I saw the will of Shakespeare, on three folios of paper, each with his signature, and with the inter-lineation in his own handwriting: "I give unto my wife my brown, best bed, with the furniture." There is kept, also, the will of Milton, which was written when the poet was blind, and set aside by a decree of Sir Leoline Jenkins. And I saw alongside of Milton's will, the last testament of the soldier of democracy, Napoleon Bonaparte, made at St. Helena, April, 1821.
In one year 40,000 searches were made here for wills, and 7,000 extracts were made from testaments. There were, also, 5,000 commissions issued for the country. Some of the entries of wills made by the early Monks are beautiful specimens of illumination, the colors remaining fresh to this day.
Let us take a look into the Will Office, and give a glance to one of the most interesting phases of the drama of human life.
THE FORGOTTEN SAILOR.
People are passing rapidly in and out of the narrow court, their bustle alone disturbing the marked quiet of the neighborhood. At the end of the court, we ascend a few steps and open a door, when the scene exhibited in the sketch is before us. All seems hurry and confusion, the solicitors turning over the leaves of bulky volumes and folios at the desks, long practice having taught them to discover at a glance the object of theirsearch; rapidly to and fro move those who are bringing the tomes and taking them back to the shelves where they belong, and as rapidly glide the pens of the numerous copyists who are transcribing or making extracts from wills, in all their little boxes, along both sides of the room.
But as we begin to look a little more closely into the densely packed occupants' faces, we see persons who are certainly not solicitors' clerks, nor officials of Doctor's Commons, but parties whose interests in a worldly point of view may be materially benefited or damaged by the investigations they are ordering to be made.
Even the weather-beaten sailor, whose rugged face one would take to be proof against any fortune, betrays a good deal of sensibility. He has just returned probably from some long voyage, and one can fancy him to have come to Doctor's Commons to see whether the relative, whom the newspapers have informed him is dead, has left him, as he expected, the means to settle down quietly in a little box at Deptford, Greenwich, or Camberwell, or some other sailor's paradise.
He steps up to the box on the right hand as directed, pays his shilling, and gets a ticket, with a direction to the calendar, in which he is to search for the name of his deceased relative. He must surely be spelling every name in that page he has turned over—ah, there it is at last; and now he hurries off, as directed to, with the calendar, to the person pointed out to him as the Clerk of Searches. A volume from one of the shelves is laid before him, the place is found, and there lies the object of his hopes and fears—the great hopeful or threatening will. Line by line his face begins to grow darker—a ghastly grin at last appears—he has not been forgotten—there is a ring perhaps, or five pounds to buy one, or some such trifle; he closes the book with a bang and a curse, and the sailor hurries back to his ship and to storm and danger on the deep, deprived of all the contentment that had so long made him satisfied with his hard lot.
But here is another picture. A lady dressed in a style of the most gorgeous splendor, whose business is of a more important kind than a mere search—she is probably an executrix of a will—and is just leaving the office, when she meets at the door another lady, to whom she makes a low courtesy, with an expression of decided malice on her showy countenance. The successful legatee can be seen in her face, while blank and startled disappointment appears in the other woman's features.
Such is Doctors' Commons—and Such is Life.
tailpiece
CHAPTER XII.
THE BOHEMIANS OF LONDON.
GOING east through Oxford street, when you get near High Holborn, there is a narrow thoroughfare called Dean street. Turn down this and it will bring you to Carlisle street, a short and dark lane, a street only in name. This short street brings you to Soho Square, famous for its sauces and pickles all over the world from Calcutta to New York.
The neighborhood is a very quiet one, as by its peculiar exits and passages it is cut off from the busiest part of London on either side of it, and leaving the Holborn or Oxford street, with their crowded traffic, shops, busses, and cabs, in a moment you are in this quiet square, with its little dot of green, fresh grass; that seems a relief after the arid business waste which you have just left. Just opposite is Greek street, which leads to St. Martin's lane, where a nest of small dealers in milk, butter, eggs, and groceries herd together, and where the poor, mean chop-houses form a perfect rookery, from which comes the fumes of hot coffee, muffins, mutton chops, and kidneys all the long day. Little dirty, rosy-cheeked children play here in the gutters right merrily all the day through, and the noises of the peddlers' cries, and the joyous mirth of the children "glorious at their games," are the only sounds that break the remarkable stillness of the noonday hour.
When the gray in the sky begins to deepen, and the shades of night fall over and around this quiet square, then the scenechanges, and life and bustle and noisy interchange of voices fill the solitary place, which the shabby gentility of the neighborhood cannot repress or keep down. Then the coffee-shops become vocal, the pot-houses are once more vivacious, and streams of thirsty and hungry men and women pour into these places, and come out refreshed with beer and replete with cheap but plenteous food. This neighborhood is savory with macaroni and oils, betokening the presence of the Italian element, who flock to Soho Square in great numbers when they arrive in London. There are "albergos" and wine-shops where you may obtain a quarter of a fowl for ninepence, and a bottle of Marsala, which is only a darker and stronger sherry under another name, and you can get olives and brandied cherries, at dessert, for a few pence. The women who attend in these places are fat, jolly-looking persons, with rounded forms, finely shaped faces, and magnificent black hair, done up in massive bands, and they sit many hours of the day knitting on low stools at the doors of these foreign-looking inns. The customers who frequent these places are wealthy organ-grinders, men who cast figures from potters' clay and plaster of Paris, musicians and porters in the Italian warehouses along the docks, medical students, Bohemians, and the riff raff in general. One of the clay figure men wanted to sell me a well executed full length figure of Thackeray, with his spectacled, kindly face, at 7s. 6d., for which I was asked a guinea in Drury Lane, the workmanship and material being fully as good in every essential.
In the heart of Soho Square is this little dark Carlisle street, and in the centre of Carlisle street is a small, dingy public-house, called the "Carlisle Arms," which is one of the resorts of the Bohemians of London.