“Sir,“We are willing to admonish you before we attempt our design; and provide you use us civil, and admit us into your gallery, which is our property according to formalities, and if you think proper to come to a composition this way you’ll hear no further; and if not, our intention is to combine in a body, incognito, and reduce the playhouse to the ground. Valueing no detection, we are“Indemnified.”
“Sir,
“We are willing to admonish you before we attempt our design; and provide you use us civil, and admit us into your gallery, which is our property according to formalities, and if you think proper to come to a composition this way you’ll hear no further; and if not, our intention is to combine in a body, incognito, and reduce the playhouse to the ground. Valueing no detection, we are
“Indemnified.”
The manager carried these letters to the Lord Chamberlain and appealed to him for protection.A detachment of the guards, fifty strong, was ordered to do duty at the theatre nightly, and “thus deterred the saucy knaves from carrying their threats into execution. From this time,” says the ‘Newgate Calendar,’ “the gallery has been purged of such vermin.”
The footmen and male servants generally of this age were an idle, dissolute race. From among them the ranks of the highwaymen were commonly recruited, and it was very usual for the gentleman’s gentleman, who had long flaunted in his master’s apparel, and imitated his master’s vices, to turn gentleman on the road to obtain funds for the faro-table and riotous living. A large proportion of the most famous highwaymen of the eighteenth century had been in service at some time or other. Hawkins, James Maclane, John Rann, William Page, had all worn the livery coat. John Hawkins had been butler in a gentleman’s family, but lost his place when the plate chest was robbed, and suspicion fell upon him because he was flush of money. Hawkins, without a character, was unable to get a fresh place, and he took at once to the road. His operations, which were directed chiefly against persons of quality, were conducted in and about London. He stopped and robbed the Earl of Burlington, Lord Bruce, and the Earl of Westmoreland, the latter in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. When he got valuable jewels he carried them over to Holland and disposed of them for cash, which he squandered at once in a “hell,” for he wasa rash and inveterate gambler. Working with two associates, he made his head-quarters at a public-house in the London Wall, the master of which kept a livery stable, and shared in the booty. From this point they rode out at all hours and stopped the stages as they came into town laden with passengers. One of the gang was, however, captured in the act of robbing the mail and executed at Aylesbury. After this, by way of revenge, they all determined to turn mail-robbers. They first designed to stop the Harwich mail, but changed their mind as its arrival was uncertain, being dependent on the passage of the packet-boat, and determined to rob the Bristol mail instead. They overtook the boy carrying the bags near Slough, and made him go down a lane where they tied him to a tree in a wet ditch, ransacked the Bath and Bristol bags, and hurried off by a circuitous route to London, where they divided the spoil, sharing the bank-notes and throwing the letters into the fire. Soon after this, the Post-office having learnt that the public-house in the London Wall was the resort of highwaymen, it was closely watched. One of Hawkins’ gang became alarmed, and was on the point of bolting to Newcastle when he was arrested. He was hesitating whether or not he should confess, when he found that he had been forestalled by an associate, who had already given information to the Post-office, and he also made a clean breast of it all. The rest of the gang were taken at their lodgings in the Old Bailey, but not without a fight, and committed to Newgate.Hawkins tried to set up an alibi, and an innkeeper swore that he lodged with him at Bedfordbury on the night of the robbery; but the jury found him guilty, and he was hanged at Tyburn, his body being afterwards hung in chains on Hounslow Heath.
The defence of an alibi was very frequently pleaded by highwaymen, and the tradition of its utility may explain why that veteran and astute coachman, Mr. Weller, suggested it in the case of ‘Bardellv.Pickwick.’ In one genuine case, however, it nearly failed, and two innocent men were all but sacrificed to mistaken identity. They had been arrested for having robbed, on the Uxbridge road, a learned sergeant-at-law, Sir Thomas Davenport, who swore positively to both. His evidence was corroborated by that of Lady Davenport, and by the coachman and footman. Also the horses ridden by the supposed highwaymen, one a brown and the other a grey, were produced in the Old Bailey courtyard, and sworn to. Yet it was satisfactorily proved that both the prisoners were respectable residents of Kentish Town; that one, at the exact time of the robbery, was seated at table dining at some club anniversary dinner, and never left the club-room; that the other was employed continuously in the bar of a public-house kept by his mother. It was proved too that the prisoners owned a brown and a grey horse respectively. The Judge summed up in the prisoner’s favour, and they were acquitted. But both suffered severemental trouble from the unjust accusation. A few years later the actual robbers were convicted of another offence, and in the cells of Newgate confessed that it was they who had stopped Sir Thomas Davenport.
Maclane.Maclane.
A very notorious highwayman, who had also been in service at one time of his varied career, was James Maclane. He was the son of a dissenting minister in Monaghan, and had a brother a minister at the Hague. Maclane inherited a small fortune, which he speedily dissipated, after which he became a gentleman’s butler, lost his situation through dishonesty,determined to enlist in the Horse Guards, abandoned the idea, and turned fortune-hunter. He was a vain man, of handsome exterior, which he decked out in smart clothes on borrowed money. He succeeded at length in winning the daughter of a respectable London horse-dealer, and with her dowry of £500 set up in business as a grocer. His wife dying early, he at once turned his stock-in-trade into cash, and again looked to win an heiress, “by the gracefulness of his person and the elegance of his appearance.” He was at last reduced to his last shilling, and being quite despondent, an Irish apothecary, who was a daring robber, persuaded him to take to the highway. One of his earliest exploits was to stop Horace Walpole when the latter was passing through Hyde Park. A pistol went off accidentally in this encounter, and the bullet not only grazed Walpole’s cheek-bone, but went through the roof of the carriage. At this time Maclane had a lodging in St. James’ Street, for which he paid two guineas a week; his accomplice Plunkett lived in Jermyn Street. “Their faces,” says Horace Walpole, “are as well known about St. James as any gentleman’s who lives in that quarter, and who perhaps goes upon the road too.”[168]Maclane accounted for his style of living by putting out that he had Irish property worth £700 a year. Once when he had narrowly escaped capture he went over to his brother in Holland for safety, but when the danger was passed he returned andrecommenced his depredations. He made so good a show that he was often received into respectable houses, and was once near marrying a young lady of good position; but he was recognized and exposed by a gentleman who knew him. Maclane continued to rob with greater boldness till the 26th June, 1750. On this day he and Plunkett robbed the Earl of Eglinton on Hounslow Heath. Later in the day they stopped and rifled the Salisbury stage, and among the booty carried off two portmanteaus, which were conveyed to Maclane’s lodgings in St. James. Information of this robbery was quickly circulated, with a description of the stolen goods. Maclane had stripped the lace off a waistcoat, the property of one of the robbed, and recklessly offered it for sale to the very laceman from whom it had been purchased. He also sent for another salesman, who immediately recognized the clothes offered for those which had been stolen, and pretending to go home for more money, he fetched a constable and apprehended Maclane. He made an elaborate defence when brought to trial, but it availed him little, and he was sentenced to death. While under condemnation he became quite a popular hero. “The first Sunday after his trial,” says Horace Walpole, “three thousand people went to see him. He fainted away twice with the heat of his cell. You can’t conceive the ridiculous rage there is for going to Newgate; and the prints that are published of the malefactors, and the memoirs of their lives, set forth with as much parade as MarshalTurennes’.” Maclane suffered at Tyburn amidst a great concourse.
William Page did a better business as a highwayman than Maclane. Page was apprenticed to a haberdasher, but he was a consummate coxcomb, who neglected his shop to dress in the fashion and frequent public places. His relations turned him adrift, and when in the last stage of distress he accepted a footman’s place. It was while in livery that he first heard of what highwaymen could do, and conceived the idea of adopting the road as a profession. His first exploits were on the Kentish road, when he stopped the Canterbury stage; his next near Hampton Court. When he had collected some £200 he took lodgings in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and passed as a student of law. He learnt to dance, frequented assemblies, and was on the point of marrying well, when he was recognized as a discharged footman, and turned out of doors. He continued his depredations all this time, assisted by a curious map which he had himself drawn, giving the roads round London for twenty miles. His plan was to drive out in a phaeton and pair. When at a distance from town he would turn into some unfrequented place and disguise himself with a grizzle or black wig and put on other clothes. Then saddling one of his phaeton horses, he went on to the main road and committed a robbery. This effected, he galloped back to his carriage, resumed his former dress, and drove to London. He was often cautioned against himself; butlaughingly said that he had already lost his money once and could now only lose his coat and shirt. He was nearly detected on one occasion, when some haymakers discovered his empty phaeton and drove it off with his best clothes. He had just stopped some people, who pursued the haymakers with the carriage and accused them of being accomplices in the robbery. Page heard of this, and throwing the disguise into a well, went back to town nearly naked, where he claimed the carriage, saying the men had stripped him and thrown him into a ditch. The coach-builder swore that he had sold him the carriage, and they were committed for trial, but Page did not appear to prosecute. Page after this extended his operations, and in company with one Darwell, an old school-fellow, committed more than three hundred robberies in three years. He frequented Bath, Tunbridge, Newmarket, and Scarbro’, playing deep everywhere and passing for a man of fortune. Darwell and he next “worked” the roads around London, but while the former was near Sevenoaks he was captured by Justice Fielding. He turned evidence against Page, who was arrested in consequence at the Golden Lion near Hyde Park, with a wig to disguise him in one pocket and his map of the London roads in another. He was remanded to Newgate and tried for a robbery, of which he was acquitted; then removed to Maidstone and convicted of another, for which he was hanged at that place.
John Rann was first a helper, then postboy, thencoachman to several gentlemen of position. While in this capacity he dressed in a peculiar fashion, wearing breeches with eight strings at each knee, and was hence nick-named Sixteen-string Jack. Having lost his character he turned pickpocket, and then took to the road. He was soon afterwards arrested for robbing a gentleman of a watch and some money on the Hounslow road. The watch was traced to a woman with whom Rann kept company, who owned that she had had it from him. Rann denied all knowledge of the transaction, which could not be brought home to him. He appeared in court on this occasion in an extravagant costume. His irons were tied up with blue ribbons, and he carried in his breast a bouquet of flowers “as big as a broom.” He was fond of fine feathers. Soon afterwards he appeared at a public-house in Bagnigge Wells, dressed in a scarlet coat, tambour waistcoat, white silk stockings, and laced hat. He gave himself out quite openly as a highwayman, and getting drunk and troublesome, he was put out of the house through a window into the road. Later on he appeared at Barnet races in elegant sporting style, his waistcoat being blue satin trimmed with silver. On this occasion he was followed by hundreds who knew him, and wished to stare at a man who had made himself so notorious. At last he stopped Dr. Bell, Chaplain to the Princess Amelia, in the Uxbridge Road, and robbed him of eighteenpence and a common watch in a tortoiseshell case; the latter wastraced to the same woman already mentioned, and Rann was arrested coming into her house. Dr. Bell swore to him, and his servant declared that he had seen Rann riding up Acton Hill twenty minutes before the robbery. Rann was convicted on this evidence and suffered at Tyburn, after a short career of four years. It was not the first time he had seen the gallows. A short time previously he had attended a public execution, and forcing his way into the ring kept by the constables, begged that he might be allowed to stand there, as he might some day be an actor in the scene instead of a spectator.
The road was usually the last resource of the criminally inclined, the last fatal step in the downward career which ended abruptly at the gallows. Dissolute and depraved youths of all classes, often enough gentlemen, undoubtedly well-born, adopted this dangerous profession when at their wit’s ends for funds. William Butler, who did his work accompanied by his servant Jack, was the son of a military officer. Kent and Essex was his favourite line of country, but London was his head-quarters, where they lived in the “genteelest lodgings, Jack wearing a livery, and the squire dressed in the most elegant manner.”
A baronet, Sir Simon Clarke, was convicted of highway robbery at Winchester assizes, with an associate, Lieutenant Robert Arnott; although the former, by the strenuous exertions of his countryfriends, escaped the death penalty to which he had been sentenced. A very notorious highwayman executed in 1750 was William Parsons, the son of a baronet, who had been at Eton, and bore a commission in the Royal Navy. He had hopes of an inheritance from the Duchess of Northumberland, who was a near relative, but her Grace altered her will in favour of his sister. He left the navy in a hurry, and abandoned by his friends, became quite destitute, when his father got him an appointment in the Royal African Company’s service. But he soon quarrelled with the governor of James Fort on the Gambia, and returned to England again so destitute that he lived on three halfpence for four days and drank water from the street pumps. His father now told him to enlist in the Life Guards, but the necessary purchase-money, seventy guineas, was not forthcoming. He then, by personating a brother, obtained an advance on a legacy which an aunt had left the brother, and with these funds made so good a show that he managed to marry a young lady of independent fortune, whose father was dead and had bequeathed her a handsome estate. His friends were so delighted that they obtained him a commission as ensign in a marching regiment, the 34th. He immediately launched out into extravagant expenditure, took a house in Poland Street, kept three saddle-horses, a chaise and pair, and a retinue of servants. He also fell into the hands of a noted gambler and sharper, who induced him to play high, and fleecedhim. Parsons was compelled to sell his commission to meet his liabilities, and still had to evade his creditors by hiding under a false name.
Parsons.Parsons.
From this time he became an irreclaimable vagabond, put to all sorts of shifts, and adroit in all kinds of swindles, to raise means. Having served for some time he shipped as captain of marines on board a galley-privateer. He returned and lived by forgery and fraud. One counterfeit draft he drew was on the Duke of Cumberland for £500; another on Sir Joseph Hankey & Co. He defrauded tailors out of new uniforms, and a hatter of 160 hats, which he pretended he hadcontracted to supply to his regiment. He also robbed, by a pretended marriage, a jeweller of a wedding and several valuable diamond rings. In the ’45 he borrowed a horse from an officer intending to join the rebels, but he only rode as far as Smithfield, where he sold the nag, and let the officer be arrested as a supposed traitor. He was arrested for obtaining money on a false draft at Ranelagh, tried at Maidstone, sentenced to transportation, and despatched to Virginia. There, “after working as a common slave about seven weeks,” a certain Lord F. rescued him and took him as a guest into his house. Parsons robbed Lord F. of a horse and took the highway. With the proceeds of his first robbery he got a passage back to England. On arriving at Whitehaven, he represented himself as having come into a large estate, and a banker advanced him seventy pounds. With this he came on to London, took lodgings in the West End, near Hyde Park corner, and rapidly got through his cash. Then he hired a horse and rode out on to Hounslow Heath to stop the first person he met.
This became his favourite hunting-ground, although he did business also about Kensington and Turnham Green. Once having learnt that a footman was to join his master at Windsor with a portmanteau full of notes and money, he rode out to rob him, but was recognized by an old victim. The latter let him enter the town of Hounslow, then ordered him to surrender. He might still have escaped, butthe landlord of the inn where he lodged thought he answered the description of a highwayman who had long infested the neighbourhood. Parsons was accordingly detained and removed to Newgate. He was easily identified, and his condemnation for returning from transportation followed as a matter of course. His father and his wife used all their interest to gain him a pardon, but he was deemed too old an offender to be a fit object for mercy.
Paul Lewis was another reprobate, who began life as a king’s officer. He was the son of a country clergyman, who got him a commission in the train of artillery; but Lewis ran into debt, deserted from his corps, and took to the sea. He entered the royal navy, and rose to be first midshipman, then lieutenant. Although courageous in action, he was “wicked and base;” and while on board the fleet he collected three guineas apiece from his messmates to lay in stores for the West Indian voyages, and bolted with the money. He at once took to the road. His first affair was near Newington Butts, when he robbed a gentleman in a chaise. He was apprehended for this offence, but escaped conviction through an alibi; after this he committed a variety of robberies. He was captured by a police officer on a night that he had stopped first a lady and gentleman in a chaise, and then tried to rob a Mr. Brown, at whom he fired. Mr. Brown’s horse took fright and threw him; but when he got to his feet he found his assailant pinned to the ground by Mr. Pope, the police officer, who waskneeling on his breast. It seemed the lady and gentleman, Lewis’s first victims, had warned Pope that a highwayman was about, and the police officer had ridden forward quickly and seized Lewis at the critical moment. Lewis was conveyed to Newgate, and in due course sentenced to death. “Such was the baseness and unfeeling profligacy of this wretch,” says the Newgate Calendar, “that when his almost heart-broken father visited him for the last time in Newgate, and put twelve guineas into his hand to repay his expenses, he slipped one of the pieces of gold into the cuff of his sleeve by a dexterous sleight, and then opening his hand, showed the venerable and reverend old man that there were but eleven; upon which his father took another from his pocket and gave it him to make the number intended. Having then taken a last farewell of his parent, Lewis turned round to his fellow prisoners, and exultingly exclaimed, ‘I have flung the old fellow out of another guinea.’”
Pope’s capture of the highwayman Lewis was outdone by that of William Belchier, a few years previously, by William Norton, a person who, according to his own account of himself, kept a shop in Wych Street, and who “sometimes took a thief.” Norton at the trial told his story as follows. “The chaise to Devizes having been robbed two or three times, as I was informed, I was desired to go into it, to see if I could take the thief, which I did on the third of June, about half an hour after one in the morning.I got into the post-chaise; the post-boy told me the place where he had been stopped was near the half-way house between Knightsbridge and Kensington. As we came near the house the prisoner (Belchier) came to us on foot and said, ‘Driver, stop.’ He held a pistol and tinder box to the chaise, and said: ‘Your money directly, you must not stop; this minute, your money.’ I said, ‘Don’t frighten us, I have but a trifle—you shall have it.’ Then I said to the gentlemen,—there were three in the chaise,—‘Give your money.’ I took out a pistol from my coat pocket, and from my breeches’ pocket a five-shilling piece and a dollar. I held the pistol concealed in one hand and the money in the other. I held the money pretty hard. He said, ‘Put it in my hat.’ I let him take the five-shilling piece out of my hand. As soon as he had taken it I snapped my pistol at him. It did not go off. He staggered back and held up his hands, and said, ‘Oh Lord! oh Lord.’ I jumped out of the chaise; he ran away, and I after him about six or seven hundred yards, and then took him. I hit him a blow on his back; he begged for mercy on his knees. I took his neckcloth off and tied his hands with it, and brought him back to the chaise. Then I told the gentlemen in the chaise that was the errand I came upon, and wished them a good journey, and brought the prisoner to London.”
No account of the thief-taking or of the criminality of the eighteenth century would be complete withoutsome reference to Jonathan Wild. What this astute villain really was may be best gathered from the various sworn informations on which he was indicted. It was set forth that he had been for years the confederate of highwaymen, pickpockets, burglars, shoplifters, and other thieves; that he had formed a kind of corporation of thieves of which he was head, or director, and that, despite his pretended efforts at detection, he procured none to be hanged but those who concealed their booty or refused him his share. It was said that he had divided the town and country into districts, and had appointed distinct gangs to each, who accounted to him for their robberies; that he employed another set to rob in churches during divine service, and other “moving detachments to attend at court on birthdays and balls, and at the houses of Parliament.” His chosen agents were returned transports, who lay quite at his mercy. They could not be evidence against him, and if they displeased him he could at any time have them hanged. These felons he generally lodged in a house of his own, where he fed and clothed them, and used them in clipping guineas or counterfeiting coin.[169]He himself had been a confederate in numerous robberies; in all cases he was a receiver of the goods stolen; he had under his care several warehouses for concealing the same, and owned a vessel for carrying off jewels, watches, and other valuables to Holland, where he had a superannuatedthief for a factor. He also kept in his pay several artists to make alterations and transform watches, seals, snuff-boxes, rings, so that they might not be recognized, which he used to present to people who could be of service to him. It was alleged that he generally claimed as much as half the value of all articles which he pretended to recover, and that he never gave up bank-notes or paper unless the loser could exactly specify them. “In order to carry out these vile practices, and to gain some credit with the ignorant multitude, he usually carried a short silver staff as a badge of authority from the government, which he used to produce when he himself was concerned in robbing.” Last of all he was charged with “selling human blood;” in other words, of procuring false evidence to convict innocent persons; “sometimes to prevent them from being evidence against himself, and at other times for the sake of the great reward offered by the government.” Wild’s career was brought to an abrupt conclusion by the revelations made by two of his creatures. He absconded, but was pursued, captured, and committed to Newgate. He was tried on several indictments, but convicted on that of having maintained a secret correspondence with felons, receiving money for restoring stolen goods, and dividing it with the thieves whom he did not prosecute. While under sentence of death he made desperate attempts to obtain a pardon, but in vain, and at last tried to evade the gallows by taking a large dose of laudanum. This also failed, and he was conveyed toTyburn amidst the execrations of a countless mob of people, who pelted him with stones and dirt all the way. Among other curious facts concerning this arch-villain, it is recorded that when at the acme of his prosperity, Jonathan Wild was ambitious of becoming a freeman of the city of London. His petition to this effect is contained among the records of the Town Clerk’s office, and sets forth that the petitioner “has been at great trouble and charge in apprehending and convicting divers felons for returning from transportation from Oct. 1720 ... that your petitioner has never received any reward or gratuity for such his service, that he is very desirous of becoming a freeman of this honorable city....” The names follow, and include Moll King, John Jones, &c., “who were notorious street robbers.” The petition is endorsed as read Jan. 2nd, 1724, but the result is not stated.
Before I close this chapter I must refer briefly to another class of highway robbers—the pirates and rovers who ranged the high seas in the first half of the eighteenth century.[170]In those days there was no efficient ocean police, no perpetual patrolling by war-ships of all nations to prevent and put down piracy as a crime noxious to the whole world. Later, on the ascendancy of the British navy, this duty was more or less its peculiar province; but till then every sea was infested with pirates sailing under various flags.The growth of piracy has been attributed, no doubt with reason, to the narrow policy of Spain with regard to her transatlantic colonies. To baffle this colonial system the European powers long tolerated, even encouraged these reckless filibusters, who did not confine their ravages to the Spanish-American coast, but turned their hands, like nautical Ishmaels, against all the world. The mischief thus done was incalculable. One notorious rover, Captain Roberts, took four hundred sail. They were as clever in obtaining information as to the movements of rich prizes on the seas as were highwaymen concerning the traffic along the highroads. They were particularly cunning in avoiding war-ships, and knew exactly where to run for supplies. As Captain Johnson tells us, speaking of the West Indies in the opening pages of his ‘History of Pirates,’ “they have been so formidable and numerous that they have interrupted the trade of Europe in those parts; and our English merchants in particular have suffered more by their depredations than by the united force of France and Spain in the late war.”
Pirates were the curse of the North American waters when Lord Bellamont went as Governor of New England in 1695, and no one was supposed to be more in their secrets at that time, or more conversant with their haunts and hiding-place, than a certain Captain John Kidd of New York, who owned a small vessel, and traded with the West Indies. Lord Bellamont’s instructions were to put down piracy if he could, and Kidd was recommended to him as a fittingperson to employ. For some reason or other Kidd was denied official status; but it was pointed out to Lord Bellamont that, as the affair would not well admit delay, “it was worthy of being undertaken by some private persons of rank and distinction, and carried into execution at their own expense, notwithstanding public encouragement was denied to it.” Eventually the Lord Chancellor, Lord Somers, the Duke of Shrewsbury, the Earl of Romney, the Earl of Orford, with some others, subscribed a sum of £6000 to fit out an expedition from England, of which Kidd was to have the command; and he was granted a commission by letters patent under the great seal to take and seize pirates, and bring them to justice. The profits of the adventure, less a fifth, which went to Kidd and another, were to be pocketed by the promoters of the enterprise, and this led subsequently to a charge of complicity with the pirates, which proved very awkward, especially for Lords Orford and Somers.
Kidd sailed for New York in the Adventure galley, and soon hoisted the black flag. From New York he steered for Madeira, thence to the Cape of Good Hope, and on to Madagascar. He captured all that came in his way. French ships, Portuguese, “Moorish,” even English ships engaged in legitimate and peaceful trade. Kidd shifted his flag to one of his prizes, and in her returned to the Spanish main for supplies. Thence he sailed for various ports of the West Indies, and having disposed of much of his booty, steered for Boston. He had been preceded there by a merchantwho knew of his piratical proceedings, and gave information to Lord Bellamont. Kidd was accordingly arrested on his arrival in New England. A full report was sent home, and a man-of-war, the Rochester, despatched to bring Kidd to England for trial. As the Rochester became disabled, and Kidd’s arrival was delayed, much great public clamour arose, caused and fed by political prejudices against Lord Bellamont and the other great lords, who were accused of an attempt to shield Kidd. It was moved in the House of Commons that the “letters patent granted to the Earl of Bellamont and others respecting the goods taken from pirates were dishonourable to the king, against the law of nations, contrary to the laws and statutes of the realm, an invasion of property, and destructive to commerce.” The motion was opposed, but the political opponents of Lord Somers and Lord Orford continued to accuse them of giving countenance to pirates, while Lord Bellamont was deemed no less culpable. The East India Company, which had suffered greatly by Kidd’s depredations, and which had been refused[171]letters of marque to suppress piracy in the Indian Ocean, joined in the clamour, and petitioned that Captain Kidd “might be brought to speedy trial, and that the effects taken unjustly from the subjects of the Great Mogul may be returned to them as a satisfaction for their losses.”
It was ruled at last that Kidd should be examined at the bar of the House of Commons, with the idea of “fixing part of his guilt on the parties who had been concerned in sending him on his expedition.” Kidd was accordingly brought to England and lodged first in the Marshalsea, the prison of the Admiralty Court, and afterwards committed to Newgate. It was rumoured that Lord Halifax, who shared the political odium of Lords Somers and Orford, had sent privately for Kidd from Newgate to tamper with him, but “the keeper of the gaol on being sent for averred that it was false.”[172]It is more probable that the other side endeavoured to get Kidd to bear witness against Lord Somers and the rest; but at the bar of the House, where he made a very contemptible appearance, being in some degree intoxicated, Kidd fully exonerated them. “Kidd discovered little or nothing,” says Luttrell. In their subsequent impeachment they were, notwithstanding, charged with having been Kidd’s accomplices, but the accusation broke down. Kidd in the mean time had been left to his fate. He was tried with his crew on several indictments for murder and piracy at the Admiralty sessions of the Old Bailey, convicted and hung.[173]He must have prospered greatly in his short and infamous career. According to Luttrell, his effects were valued at £200,000, and one witness alone, Cogi Baba, a Persian merchant, charged him with robbing him in the Persian Gulf of £60,000. No case was made out against the above-mentioned peers. Lord Orfordset up in his defence that in Kidd’s affair “he had acted legally, and with a good intention towards the public, though to his own loss;”[174]and Lord Somers denied that he had ever seen or knew anything of Kidd. Hume sums up the matter by declaring that “the Commons in the whole course of the transaction had certainly acted from motives of faction and revenge.”
John Gow, who took the piratical name of Captain Smith, was second mate of the George galley, which he conspired with half the crew to seize when on the voyage to Santa Cruz. On a given signal, the utterance of a password, “Who fires first?” an attack was made on the first mate, surgeon, and supercargo, whose throats were cut. The captain hearing a noise came on deck, when one mutineer cut his throat, and a second fired a couple of balls into his body. The ship’s company consisted of twenty: four were now disposed of, eight were conspirators, and of the remaining eight, some of whom had concealed themselves below decks and some in the shrouds, four had joined the pirates. The other four were closely watched, and although allowed to range the ship at pleasure, were often cruelly beaten. The ship was rechristened ‘The Revenge’; she mounted several guns, and the pirates steered her for the coast of Spain, where several prizes were taken—the first a ship laden with salted cod from Newfoundland, the second a Scotch ship bound to Italy with a cargo of pickledherrings, the third a French ship laden with oil, wine, and fruit. The pirates also made a descent upon the Portuguese coast and laid the people under contributions.
Dissensions now arose in the company. Gow had a certain amount of sense and courage, but his lieutenant was a brutal ruffian, often blinded by passion, and continually fermenting discord. At last he attempted to shoot Gow, but his pistol missed fire, and he was wounded himself by two of the pirates. He sprang down to the powder-room and threatened to blow up the ship, but he was secured, and put on board a vessel which had been ransacked and set free, the commander of it being desired to hand the pirate over to the first king’s ship he met, “to be dealt with according to his crimes.” After this the pirates steered north for the Orkneys, of which Gow was a native, and after a safe passage anchored in a bay in one of the islands. While lying there one of his crew, who had been forced into joining them, escaped to Kirkwall, where he gave information to a magistrate, and the sheriff issued a precept to the constables and others to seize ‘The Revenge.’ Soon afterwards ten more of the crew, also unwilling members of it, laid hands on the long boat, and reaching the mainland of Scotland, coasted along it as far as Leith, whence they made their way to Edinburgh, and were imprisoned as pirates. Gow meanwhile, careless of danger, lingered in the Orkneys, plundering and ransacking the dwelling-houses to provide himself with provisions, and carryingoff plate, linen, and all valuables on which they could lay hands.
Arriving at an island named Calf Sound, Gow planned the robbery of an old schoolmate, a Mr. Fea, whom he sought to entrap. But Mr. Fea turned the tables upon him. Inviting Gow and several of the crew to an entertainment on shore, while they were carousing Mr. Fea made his servants seize the pirates’ boat, and then entering by different doors, fell upon the pirates themselves, and made all prisoners. The rest, twenty-eight in number, who were still afloat, were also captured by various artifices, and the whole, under orders of the Lord Chief Justice, were despatched to the Thames in H.M.S. Greyhound, for trial at the Admiralty Court. They were committed to the Marshalsea, and thence to Newgate, and arraigned at the Old Bailey, where Gow refused to plead, and was sentenced to be pressed to death. He pretended that he wished to save an estate for a relation; but when all preparations for carrying out the sentence were completed, he begged to be allowed to plead, and “the judge being informed, humanely granted his request.” Gow and six others were eventually hanged at Execution Dock.
Pirates who fell in with ships usually sought to gain recruits among the captured crews. The alternative was to walk the plank or to be set adrift in an open boat, or landed on an uninhabited island. The latter was the fate of as many in a shipload of convicts taken at sea by pirates as refused to signarticles. For those who thus agreed under compulsion a still harder fate was often in store. Captain Massey was an unfortunate instance of this. While serving in the Royal African Company he was for some time engaged in the construction of a fort upon the coast with a detachment of men. They ran short of food, and suffered frightfully from flux. When at the point of death a passing ship noticed their signals of distress, and sent a boat on shore to bring them on board. The ship proved to be a pirate. Captain Massey did not actually join them, but he remained on board while several prizes were taken. However, he gave information at Jamaica, the pirate captain and others were arrested and hanged, and Captain Massey received the thanks of the Governor, who offered him an appointment on the island. But Massey was anxious to return to England, whither he proceeded armed with strong letters of recommendation to the lords of the Admiralty. To his intense surprise, “instead of being caressed he was taken into custody,” tried, and eventually executed. His case evoked great sympathy. “His joining the pirates was evidently an act of necessity, not choice,” and he took the earliest opportunity of giving up his involuntary associates to justice—a conduct by which he surely merited the thanks of his country, and not the vengeance of the law.
Why chapter so styled—The gaol fever the visible exponent of foul state of gaols—Their evils briefly described—Neither sufficient light nor air—Often underground—Scantiest supply of water—No bed, no exercise—Meagre rations—Water soup—Allowance to criminals denied to debtors who had to beg alms—Prison buildings wretched—Often private property of local magnates, who farmed them out, and pocketed the gains—How the Bishop of Ely kept his prisoners—All prisoners loaded with irons—Legal opinions on the practice—Description of irons used—Women also fettered—John Wilkes when sheriff protests against ironing the untried—Avarice primary cause of ill-treatment of prisoners—Drunkenness encouraged—Gaol fees—Overcrowding the parent of gaol fever—Rarity of gaol deliveries—The gaol fever explained—Its causes—Its ravages—Extends from prisons to court-houses—To villages—Into the army and the fleet—Earliest mention of gaol distemper—The Black Assize—The sickness of the House at the King’s Bench prison—The gaol fever in the 17th century—Its outbreaks in the 18th—The Taunton Assize—Originated in Newgate in 1750—Extends to Old Bailey with deadly results—The Corporation alarmed—Seek to provide a remedy—Enquiry into the sanitary condition of Newgate—A new ventilator recommended by the Rev. Dr. Hales and Dr. Pringle, F.R.S.—The ventilator described—Hopes expressed that it will check the disease, but the air of Newgate continues pestiferous—Fatal effects of working at the ventilator—Men employed show all symptoms of gaol fever—The fever constantly present in Newgate—Mr. Akerman’s evidence—Statistics of deaths—The fever taken into thecountry gaols by prisoners removed from Newgate—Also to Southwark—Renewed dread in the Courts, which are protected by the fumes of vinegar—All this time no regular doctor at Newgate—Howard condemns construction of new Newgate as likely to produce gaol fever—Lord George Gordon dies of it in 1793—Dr. Smith reports and condemns the new prison at Newgate—Too crowded and faulty site—Mr. Akerman defends it as superior to the old, but admits that prisoners die in it, broken-hearted—Mr. Akerman a humane man—A friend of Boswell’s, who panegyrizes him—Mr. Akerman’s brave and judicious conduct at a fire in prison—Calms the prisoners, and remains in the midst of danger—Life at Newgate—The sexes intermixed—Debauchery—Gaming—Drunkenness—Moral contamination—Criminals willingly took military service to escape confinement in Newgate.
Why chapter so styled—The gaol fever the visible exponent of foul state of gaols—Their evils briefly described—Neither sufficient light nor air—Often underground—Scantiest supply of water—No bed, no exercise—Meagre rations—Water soup—Allowance to criminals denied to debtors who had to beg alms—Prison buildings wretched—Often private property of local magnates, who farmed them out, and pocketed the gains—How the Bishop of Ely kept his prisoners—All prisoners loaded with irons—Legal opinions on the practice—Description of irons used—Women also fettered—John Wilkes when sheriff protests against ironing the untried—Avarice primary cause of ill-treatment of prisoners—Drunkenness encouraged—Gaol fees—Overcrowding the parent of gaol fever—Rarity of gaol deliveries—The gaol fever explained—Its causes—Its ravages—Extends from prisons to court-houses—To villages—Into the army and the fleet—Earliest mention of gaol distemper—The Black Assize—The sickness of the House at the King’s Bench prison—The gaol fever in the 17th century—Its outbreaks in the 18th—The Taunton Assize—Originated in Newgate in 1750—Extends to Old Bailey with deadly results—The Corporation alarmed—Seek to provide a remedy—Enquiry into the sanitary condition of Newgate—A new ventilator recommended by the Rev. Dr. Hales and Dr. Pringle, F.R.S.—The ventilator described—Hopes expressed that it will check the disease, but the air of Newgate continues pestiferous—Fatal effects of working at the ventilator—Men employed show all symptoms of gaol fever—The fever constantly present in Newgate—Mr. Akerman’s evidence—Statistics of deaths—The fever taken into thecountry gaols by prisoners removed from Newgate—Also to Southwark—Renewed dread in the Courts, which are protected by the fumes of vinegar—All this time no regular doctor at Newgate—Howard condemns construction of new Newgate as likely to produce gaol fever—Lord George Gordon dies of it in 1793—Dr. Smith reports and condemns the new prison at Newgate—Too crowded and faulty site—Mr. Akerman defends it as superior to the old, but admits that prisoners die in it, broken-hearted—Mr. Akerman a humane man—A friend of Boswell’s, who panegyrizes him—Mr. Akerman’s brave and judicious conduct at a fire in prison—Calms the prisoners, and remains in the midst of danger—Life at Newgate—The sexes intermixed—Debauchery—Gaming—Drunkenness—Moral contamination—Criminals willingly took military service to escape confinement in Newgate.
IHAVEgiven this title to the present chapter because the gaol fever while it raged was the visible exponent of the foul condition of all gaols, including Newgate, or, as Dr. Guy puts it, “the physical expression of manifold prison neglect and mismanagement.” The loathsome corruption that festered unchecked or unalleviated within the prison houses was never revealed until John Howard began his self-sacrificing visitations, and it is to the pages of his ‘State of Prisons’ that we must refer for full details. Some would be incredible were they not vouched for on the unimpeachable testimony of the great philanthropist. All through the eighteenth century the case of all prisoners was desperate, their sufferings heart-rending, their treatment a disgrace to that or any age. They were either entirely deprived of, or at best but scantily provided with, the commonest and most indispensable necessaries of life. They were oftendenied both light and air, which are assuredly the free heritage of all God’s creatures. Rapacity and extortion, of which more directly, were too prevalent in prison administration to allow of many windows when all such openings were heavily taxed. What windows there were looked generally down dark entries or noisome passages, and gave no light. In Newgate until the building of the new (and last) gaol, the felons’ side and the common debtors’ side were so dark that it was necessary to use links and burners all day long; indeed, artificial light was generally necessary all over the prison, except in the press-yard.
The place of durance was sometimes underground, a dungeon, or subterranean cellar, into which the prisoners were lowered, to fight with rats for the meagre pittance of food thrown to them through a trap-door. These terribleoublietteswere too often damp and noisome, half a foot deep in water, or with an open sewer running through the centre of the floor. They had no chimneys, no fireplace, no barrack beds; the wretched inmates huddled together for warmth upon heaps of filthy rags or bundles of rotten straw reeking with foul exhalations, and fetid with all manner of indescribable nastiness. There was not the slightest attempt at ventilation, as we understand the word. The windows, when they existed, were seldom if ever opened, nor the doors, for the spaces within the prison walls were generally too limited to allow of daily exercise,and the prisoners were thus kept continuously under lock and key. Water, another necessary of life, was doled out in the scantiest quantities, too small for proper ablutions or cleansing purposes, and hardly sufficient to assuage thirst. Howard tells us of one prison where the daily allowance of water was only three pints per head, and even this was dependent upon the good will of the keepers, who brought it or not, as they felt disposed. At another, water could only be had on payment, the price being a halfpenny for three gallons.
The rations of food were equally meagre. In some prisons indeed nothing was given; in others, the prisoners subsisted on water-soup—“bread boiled in mere water.” The poor debtors were the worst off. For the felon, thief, murderer, or highwayman there was a grant either in money or in kind—a pennyworth of bread per diem, or a shilling’s worth per week, or a certain weight of bread. But the debtors, who formed three-fourths of the permanent prison population, and whose liabilities on an average did not exceed ten or fifteen pounds a piece, were almost starved to death. The bequests of charitable people, especially intended for their support, were devoted to other uses; creditors seldom if ever paid the “groat,” or fourpence per diem for subsistence required by the Act. Any alms collected within the prison by direct mendicancy were commonly intercepted by the ruffians who ruled the roost. When gaolers applied to the magistrates for food for the debtors theanswer was, “Let them work or starve”; yet the former was forbidden, lest the tools they used might fall into the hands of criminal prisoners, and furnish means of escape. At Exeter the prisoners were marched about the city soliciting charity in the streets. One Christmas-tide, so Howard says, the person who conducted them broke open the box and absconded with the contents. The debtors’ ward in this gaol was called the “shew,” because the debtors begged by letting down ashoefrom the window.
Prison buildings were mostly inconvenient, ill-planned, and but little adapted for the purposes of incarceration. Many of them were ancient strongholds—the gate of some fortified city, the keep or castle or embattled residence of a great personage. Some lords, spiritual and temporal, with peculiar powers in their own districts, once had their prisons, so to speak, under their own roof. The prisons lingered long after the power lapsed, and in Howard’s time many of the worst prisons were the private property of individuals,[175]who protected the keepers, their lessees, and pocketed the gains wrung from the wretched lodgers. The Duke of Portland was the proprietor of Chesterfield gaol, which consisted of one room with a cellar under it. For this accommodation, and the privilege it conferred upon himof demanding gaol fees, the keeper paid the Duke an annual rent of eighteen guineas. “The cellar,” Howard says, “had not been cleaned for months, nor the prison door opened for several weeks.” Another disgraceful prison was that owned by the Bishop of Ely. One bishop had been compelled to rebuild it in part fourteen years before Howard’s visit, but it was still bad. It had been so insecure that the keeper resorted to a most cruel contrivance in order to ensure safe custody. Prisoners were “chained down upon their backs upon a floor, across which were several iron bars, with an iron collar with spikes about their necks, and a heavy iron bar over their legs.” This barbarous treatment formed the subject of a special petition to the king, supported by a drawing, “with which His Majesty was much affected, and gave immediate orders for a proper inquiry and redress.”
Loading prisoners with irons was very generally practised, although its legality was questioned even then. Lord Coke gave his opinion against the oppression. Bracton affirmed that a sentence condemning a man to be confined in irons was illegal, and in ‘Blackstone Commentaries’[176]is this passage: “The law will not justify jailers in fettering a prisoner unless when he is unruly, or has attempted an escape. In 1728 the judges reprimanded the warders of the Fleet prison, and declared that a jailer could not answer the ironing of a man before he was found guilty of a crime.” When a keeper pleaded necessity for safe custody toLord Chief Justice King, the judge bade him “build higher his prison walls.” As Buxton observes, the neglect of this legal precaution was no excuse for the infliction of an illegal punishment. Prisoners should not suffer because authorities neglect their duty. “Very rarely is a man ironed for his own misdeeds, but frequently for those of others; additional irons on his person are cheaper than additional elevation to the walls. Thus we cover our own negligence by increased severity to our captives.”[177]
The irons were so heavy that “walking, even lying down to sleep, was difficult and painful.” In some county gaols women did not escape this severity, Howard tells us, but London was more humane. But in the London prisons the custom of ironing even the untried males was long and firmly established. An interesting letter is extant from John Wilkes, dated 1771, the year of his shrievalty to the keeper of Newgate, Mr. Akerman. This letter expresses satisfaction with his general conduct, and admits his humanity to the unhappy persons under his care. But Wilkes takes strong exceptions to the practise of keeping the prisoners in irons at the time of arraignment and trial, which he conceives to he alike repugnant to the laws of England and humanity.
“Every person at so critical a moment ought to be without any bodily pain or restraint, that the mind may be perfectly free to deliberate on its most interesting and awful concerns, in so alarming a situation.It is cruelty to aggravate the feelings of the unhappy in such a state of distraction, and injustice to deprive them of any means for the defence of supposed innocence by calling off the attention by bodily torture at the great moment when the full exertion of every faculty is most wanting. No man in England ought to be obliged to plead while in chains; we therefore are determined to abolish the present illegal and inhuman practice, and we direct you to take off the irons before any prisoner is sent to the bar, either for arraignment or trial.”[178]
Avarice was no doubt a primary cause of the ill-treatment of prisoners, and, as I have described elsewhere,[179]heavy fees were exacted to obtain “easement” or “choice” of irons. This idea of turning gaols to profit underlaid the whole system of prison management. The gaolers bought or rented their places, and they had to recoup themselves as best they could. A pernicious vested interest was thus established, which even the legislature acknowledged. The sale of strong drink within the prison, and the existence of a prison tap or bar, were recognized and regulatedby law. Drunkenness in consequence prevailed in all prisons, fostered by the evil practice of claiming garnish, which did not disappear, as I shall presently show, till well on into the present century. Another universal method of grinding money out of all who came within the grip of the law was the extortion of gaol fees. It was the enormity of demanding such payment from innocent men, acquitted after a fair trial, who in default were hauled back to prison, that first moved Howard to inquire into the custom at various prisons. As early as 1732 the Corporation of London had promulgated an order that all prisoners acquitted at the Old Bailey should be released without fees. But when Howard visited Newgate forty years later, Mr. Akerman the keeper showed him a table of fees “which was given him for his direction when he commenced keeper.” The sums demanded varied from 8s.10d.for a debtor’s discharge, to 18s.10d.for a felon’s, and £3 6s.8d.for a bailable warrant. The exactions for fees, whether for innocent or guilty, tried or untried, was pretty general throughout the kingdom, although Howard found a few prisons where there were none. Even he in his suggestions for the improvement of gaols, although recommending the abolition of fees and the substitution of a regular salary to the gaoler, was evidently doubtful of securing so great a reform, for he expresses a hope that if fees were not altogether abolished they may at least be reduced. However, the philanthropist found a welcome support from Mr. Popham, M.P. for Taunton, who in1773 brought in a bill “abolishing gaolers’ fees, and substituting for them fixed salaries payable out of the county rates,” which bill passed into law the following year in an amended form. This Act provided that acquitted prisoners “shall be immediately set at large in open court.” Yet the law was openly evaded by the clerks of assize and clerks of the place, who declared that their fees were not cancelled by the Act, and who endeavoured to indemnify themselves by demanding a fee from the gaoler for a certificate of acquittal. In one case at Durham, Judge Gould at the assizes in 1775 fined the keeper £50 for detaining acquitted prisoners under this demand of the clerk of assize, but the fine was remitted on explanation. Still another pretence often put forward for detaining acquitted prisoners until after the judge had left the town was, that other indictments might be laid against them; or yet again, prisoners were taken back to prison to have their irons knocked off, irons with which, as free, unconvicted men, they were manacled illegally and unjustly.
Perhaps the most hideous and terrible of all evils, and the immediate parent of gaol fever, was the disgraceful and almost indiscriminate overcrowding of the gaols. The rarity of gaol deliveries was a proximate cause of this. The expense of entertaining the judges was alleged as an excuse for not holding assizes more than once a year; but at some places—Hull, for instance—there had been only one gaol delivery in seven years, although, according to Howard,it had latterly been reduced to three. Often in the lapse of time principal witnesses died, and there was an acquittal with a failure of justice. Nor was it only the accused and unconvicted who lingered out their lives in gaol, but numbers of perfectly innocent folk helped to crowd the narrow limits of the prison-house. Either the mistaken leniency, or more probably the absolutely callous indifference of gaol-rulers, suffered debtors to surround themselves with their families, pure women and tender children brought thus into continuous intercourse with felons and murderers, and doomed to lose their moral sense in the demoralizing atmosphere. The prison population was daily increased by a host of visitors, improper characters, friends and associates of thieves, who had free access to all parts of the gaol. In every filthy, unventilated cell-chamber the number of occupants was constantly excessive. The air space for each was often less than 150 cubic feet, and this air was never changed. Of one room, with its beds in tiers, its windows looking only into a dark entry, its fireplace used for the cooking of food for forty persons, it was said that the man who planned it could not well have contrived “a place of the same dimensions more effectually calculated to destroy his fellow-creatures.”
The gaol fever or distemper, of which I shall now give some account, was the natural product of these insanitary conditions. This fell epidemic exercised strange terrors by the mystery which once surrounded it; but this has now been dispelled by the strong lightof modern medical science. All authorities are agreed that it was nothing but that typhus fever, which inevitably goes hand in hand with the herding and packing together of human beings, whether in prisons, workhouses, hospitals, or densely-populated quarters of a town. The disease is likely to crop up, as Dr. Guy remarks, “wherever men and women live together in places small in proportion to their numbers, with neglect of cleanliness and ventilation, surrounded by offensive effluvia, without proper exercise, and scantily supplied with food.”[180]It is easy to understand that the poison would be generated in gaol establishments such as I have described; still more, that prisoners should be saturated with it so as to infect even healthy persons whom they approached. This is precisely what happened, and it is through the ravages committed by the disorder beyond the prison walls that we mostly hear of it. The decimation it caused within the gaol might have passed unnoticed, but the many authentic cases of the terrible mortality it occasioned elsewhere forced it upon the attention of the chronicler. It made the administration of the law a service of danger, while its fatal effects can be traced far from beyond the limits of the court-house. Prisoners carried home the contagion to the bosoms of their families, whence the disease spread into town or village. They carried it on board ship, and imported it into our fleets. “The first English fleet sent toAmerica lost by it above 2000 men; ... the of infection were carried from the guardships into our squadrons; and the mortality thence occasioned was greater than by all other diseases or means of death put together.”[181]It was the same with the army: regiments and garrisons were infected by comrades who brought the fever from the gaol; sometimes the escorts returning with deserters temporarily lodged in prison also sickened and died.
The earliest mention of a gaol distemper is that quoted by Howard from Stowe, under date 1414, when “the gaolers of Newgate and Ludgate died, and prisoners in Newgate to the number of sixty-four.” In ‘Wood’s History of Oxford’ there is a record of a contagious fever which broke out at the assize of Cambridge in 1521. The justices, gentlemen, bailiffs, and others “resorting thither took such an infection that many of them died, and almost all that were present fell desperately sick, and narrowly escaped with their lives.” After this comes the Black Assize at Oxford in 1577, when, Holinshed says, “there arose amidst the people such a dampe that almost all were smouldered, very few escaping.... the jurors presently dying, and shortly after Sir Robert Bell, Lord Chief Baron.” To this account we may add that in ‘Baker’s Chronicle,’ which states that all present died within forty hours, the Lord Chief Baron, the sheriff, and three hundred more. The contagion spread into the city of Oxford, and thence into the neighbourhood, where there weremany more deaths. Stowe has another reference to the fever about this date, and tells us that in the King’s Bench Prison, in the six years preceding the year 1579, a hundred died of a certain contagion called “the sickness of the house.” Another outbreak occurred at Exeter, 1586, on the occasion of holding the city assizes, when “a sudden and strange sickness,” which had appeared first among the prisoners in the gaol, was dispersed at their trial through the audience in court, “whereof more died than escaped,” and of those that succumbed, some were constables, some reeves, some tithing men or jurors. No wonder that Lord Bacon, in writing on the subject, should characterize “the smell of the jail the most pernicious infection, next to the plague. When prisoners have been long and close and nastily kept, whereof we have had in our time experience twice or thrice, both judges that sat upon the trial, and numbers of those that attended the business or were present, sickened upon it and died.”
The gaol distemper is but sparingly mentioned throughout the seventeenth century, but as the conditions were precisely the same, it is pretty certain that the disease existed then, as before and after. But in the first half of the eighteenth century we have detailed accounts of three serious and fatal outbreaks. The first was at the Lent Assizes held in Taunton in 1730, “when,” Howard says, “some prisoners who were brought thither from the Ilchester gaol infectedthe court; and Lord Chief Baron Pengelly, Sir James Shepherd, sergeant, John Pigott, Esq., sheriff, and some hundreds besides died of the gaol distemper.” The second case occurred also in the west country, at Launceston, where “a fever which took its rise in the prisons was disseminated far and near by the county assizes, occasioned the death of numbers, and foiled frequently the best advice.” It is described as a contagious, putrid, and very pestilential fever, attended with tremblings, twitchings, restlessness, delirium, with, in some instances, early phrenzy and lethargy; while the victims broke out often into livid pustules and purple spots. The third case of gaol fever was in London in 1750, and it undoubtedly had its origin in Newgate. At the May Sessions at the Old Bailey there was a more than usually heavy calendar, and the court was excessively crowded. The prisoners awaiting trial numbered a hundred, and these were mostly lodged in two rooms, fourteen feet by seven, and only seven feet in height; but some, and no doubt all in turn, were put into the bail dock; many had long lain close confined in the pestiferous wards of Newgate. The court itself was of limited dimensions, being barely thirty feet square, and in direct communication with the bail dock and rooms beyond, whence an open window, “at the furthest end of the room,” carried a draught poisoned with infection towards the judges’ bench. Of these four, viz. Sir Samuel Pennant, the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Abney and Baron Clark,the judges, and Sir Daniel Lambert, alderman, were seized with the distemper, and speedily died; others, to the number of forty, were also attacked and succumbed. Among them were some of the under-sheriffs, several members of the bar and of the jury; while in others of lesser note the disease showed itself more tardily, but they also eventually succumbed. Indeed, with the exception of two or three, none of those attacked escaped.[182]The symptoms were the same as these already described, including the delirium and the spots on the skin.
The Corporation of London, moved thereto by a letter from the Lord Chief Justice, and not unnaturally alarmed themselves at the ravages of a pestilence which spared neither Lord Mayor nor aldermen, set about inquiring into its origin. A committee was appointed for this purpose in October, 1750, five months after the last outbreak, and their instructions were to ascertain “the best means for procuring in Newgate such a purity of air as might prevent the rise of those infectious distempers.” ... The committee consulted the Rev. Dr. Hales and Dr. Pringle, F.R.S.,[183]thelatter of whom subsequently published a paper in the ‘Transactions of the Philosophical Society,’ containing much curious information concerning the disease. The remedy suggested by Dr. Hales, and eventually approved of by the committee, was to try further the ventilator which some time previously had been placed upon the top of Newgate. Nothing less than the reconstruction on an extended plan of the prison, which was acknowledged to be too small for its average population, would have really sufficed, but this, although mooted, had not yet taken practical shape. The existing ventilator was in the nature of a main trunk or shaft, into which other air-pipes led from various parts of the prison. But these were neither numerous nor effective, while there was no process of extraction or of obtaining an up-draught. To effect this a machine was erected upon the leads of Newgate with large arms like those of a windmill. The plan was fully approved of by the Court of Aldermen, but its execution was delayed. At length, in July, 1752,[184]Dr. Pringle heard that a portion of the machine was completed and in working order, and went to inspect it, accompanied by other medical men. “Having visited several of the wards,” he says, “we were all of us very sensible that such as were provided with ventilating tubes were much less offensive than the rest that wanted them.” The air of the whole gaol they thought wasdistinctly improved. Some of the wards indeed were so free from the smell peculiar to such places that Dr. Pringle felt persuaded that if the design was completed, and persons appointed to regulate the sliders of the tubes, and keep the machine in order, the usual evil effects of overcrowding in gaols might be in a great measure if not wholly prevented in Newgate.
Nevertheless, throughout the execution of the work and afterwards the air of Newgate continued pestiferous and fatal to all who breathed it. The workmen employed in fixing the tubes ran great risks, and in several cases were seized with unmistakable gaol fever. One man had found himself indisposed for some days and left off work; then returning to Newgate, he had been employed in opening one of the tubes of the old ventilator which had stood for three or four years. Such an offensive smell had issued from the tube that he was seized with sickness and nausea. He went home, and that night fell ill of the fever, being afflicted with violent headache, retching, trembling of the hands, and last of all delirium. He was admitted into St. Thomas’ Hospital, and said to be suffering from continued fever, attended with stupor and a sunk pulse. Another victim was a fellow workman, who from, having been active and full of health, fell ill after working at Newgate, and shewed the same symptoms. Three more of his companions were also attacked, all of whom had the headaches, tremblings, stupor, and “petechial” spots.One of these was a lad of fifteen, who had been forced by his fellows to go down the great trunk of the ventilator in order to bring up a wig which some one had thrown into it; on coming up again he was immediately attacked by a violent headache, a great disorder in his stomach, and nausea, none of which had left him when seen weeks later. A peculiarity in his case was, that he had been twice let down into the ventilator when the machine on the leads had been standing still, and he had suffered no ill effects; but the last time it was in motion, and the heavily-laden up-draught had well nigh poisoned him and two others who had dragged him out of the shaft. These cases did not complete the mischief done. The infection was carried home and spread in the families of those attacked in Newgate. Wives, children, friends, and nurses all fell sick in turn. Besides those who received the contagion at second-hand, there were seven originally infected in the gaol, and this out of a total of eleven workmen employed.
It is probable that the great windmill and ventilator[185]did some good, for there is no further mention of epidemic seizure in court. But the sanitary condition of the inmates of Newgate cannot have been permanently or very appreciably improved. I find in the Home Office papers, under date July, 1769,
The Windmill fixed on Newgate to work the Ventilators erected there April 17, 1752.
a letter from Fras Ingram to Lord —— in favour of one William Wiseman, condemned for petty larceny, and awaiting transportation. The prisoner was in chains in Newgate, and when Mr. Ingram’s servant went to inquire for him he was forbidden to approach the bars of the room in which Wiseman was detained. The prison was so foul and loathsome in this hot season that there was a fear lest Mr. Ingram’s servant should run the risk of taking and carrying away the infection of the gaol distemper.
The gaol fever or its germs must indeed have been constantly present in Newgate. The more crowded the prison the more sickly it was. The worst seasons were the middle of winter or the middle of summer, or when the weather was damp and wet. The place was seldom without some illness or other; but in one year, according to Mr. Akerman, about sixteen died in one month from the gaol distemper. Mr. Akerman declared that the fever was all over the gaol, and that in ten years he had buried eight or ten of his servants. He also gave a return to the Commons’ committee, which showed that eighty-three prisoners had died between 1758 and 1765, besides several wives who had come to visit their husbands, and a number of children born in the gaol. This statement was supported by the evidence of the coroner for Middlesex, Mr. Beach, who went even further, and made out that one hundred and thirty-two had died between 1755 and 1765, or forty-nine more in the two additional years. In 1763 the deaths had been twenty-eight,all of them of contagion, according to Mr. Beach, who was also of opinion that a large percentage of the whole one hundred and thirty-two had died of the gaol fever.
Twenty years later, when Howard was visiting prisons, he heard it constantly affirmed by county gaolers that the gaol distemper was brought into their prisons by prisoners removed under Habeas Corpus from Newgate. In May, 1763, I find an inquisition was held in the new gaol, Southwark, upon the body of Henry Vincent, one of five prisoners removed there from Newgate. It then appeared that the Southwark prisoners had been healthy till those from Newgate arrived, all five being infected. About this date too, according to the coroner for Middlesex, there were several deaths in the new gaol, of prisoners brought from Newgate who had caught the fever in that prison. This same coroner had taken eleven “inquisitions” at Newgate in a couple of days, all of whom he thought had died of the gaol distemper. He was also made ill himself by going to Newgate. Again in 1772 there was a new alarm of epidemic. In the sessions of the preceding year there had been an outbreak of malignant distemper, of which several had died. An attempt was made to tinker up the ventilator, and other precautions taken. Among the latter was a plan to convey the fumes of vinegar through pipes into the Sessions House while the courts were sitting. At this date there was no regular medicalofficer in attendance on the Newgate prisoners, although an apothecary was paid something for visiting occasionally. Howard expresses his opinion strongly on the want. “To this capital prison,” he says, “the magistrates would, in my humble opinion, do well to appoint a physician, a surgeon, and an apothecary.” The new prison, that built by Dance, and still standing (1883), was just then in process of erection,[186]and was intended to embody all requirements in prison construction. But Howard was dissatisfied with it. Although it would avoid “many inconveniences of the old gaol,” yet it had some manifest errors. “It is too late,” he goes on, “to point out particulars. All I say is, that without more than ordinary care, the prisoners in it will be in great danger of gaol fever.”[187]
William Smith, M.D., who, from a charitable desire to afford medical assistance to the sick, inspected and reported in 1776 upon the sanitary conditions of all the London prisons, had not a better opinion of the new Newgate than had Howard. The gaol had now a regular medical attendant, but “it was filled with nasty ragged inhabitants, swarming with vermin, though Mr. Akerman the keeper is extremely humane in keeping the place as wholesome as possible.” The new prison, goes on Dr. Smith, is built upon the old principle of a great number being crowded together into one ward, with a yard for them to assemble inin the day, and a tap where they may get drink when they please and have the money to pay. He had no fault to find with the wards, which were large, airy, high, and “as clean as can well be supposed where such a motley crew are lodged.” But he condemns the prison, on which so much had been already spent, and which still required an immense sum to finish it. Its site was, he thought, altogether faulty. “The situation of a gaol should be high and dry in an open field, and at a distance from the town, the building spacious, to obviate the bad effects of a putrid accumulation of infectious air, and extended in breadth rather than height. The wards should have many divisions to keep the prisoners from associating.” Dr. Smith found that the numbers who sickened and died of breathing the impure and corrupted air were much greater than was imagined. Hence, he says, the absolute necessity for a sufficiency of fresh air, “the earth was made for us all, why should so small a portion of it be denied to those unhappy creatures, while so many large parts lay waste and uncultivated?”
Another person, well entitled to speak from his own knowledge and practical experience, declared that the new gaol contrasted very favourably with the old. This was Mr. Akerman the keeper, who was the friend of Johnson and Boswell, and whom Dr. Smith and others call extremely humane. But Mr. Akerman, in giving evidence before a committee of the House of Commons in 1779, while urging thatfew were unhealthy in the new prison, admitted that he had often observed a dejection of spirits among the prisoners in Newgate which had the effect of disease, and that “many had died broken-hearted.” Mr. Akerman clearly did his best to alleviate the sufferings of those in his charge. For the poor convicted prisoner, unable to add by private means or the gifts of friends to the meagre allowance of the penny loaf per diem, which was often also fraudulently under weight, the keeper provided soup out of his own pocket, made of the coarse meat commonly called clods and stickings.
Mr. Akerman had many good friends. He was an intimate acquaintance of Mr. James Boswell, their friendship no doubt having originated in some civility shown to Dr. Johnson’s biographer at one of the executions which it was Boswell’s craze to attend. Boswell cannot speak too highly of Mr. Akerman. After describing the Lord George London Riots,[188]he says, “I should think myself very much to blame did I here neglect to do justice to my esteemed friend Mr. Akerman, the keeper of Newgate, who long discharged a very important trust with an uniform intrepid firmness, and at the same time a tenderness and a liberal charity, which entitles him to be recorded with distinguished honour.” He goes on to describe in detail an incident which certainly proves Mr. Akerman’s presence of mind and capacity as a gaol governor. The story has been often quoted, but itis so closely connected with the chronicles of Newgate that I cannot forbear giving it again to the public. “Many years ago a fire broke out in the brick part, which was built as an addition to the old gaol of Newgate. The prisoners were in consternation and tumult, calling out, ‘We shall be burnt! we shall be burnt! down with the gate! down with the gate!’ Mr. Akerman hastened to them, showed himself at the gate, and having after some confused vociferations of ‘Hear him! hear him!’ obtained a silent attention, he then calmly told them that the gate must not go down; that they were under his care, and that they should not be permitted to escape; but that he could assure them they need not be afraid of being burnt, for that the fire was not in the prison properly so called, which was strongly built with stone; and that if they would engage to be quiet he himself would come to them and conduct them to the further end of the building, and would not go out till they gave him leave. To this proposal they agreed; upon which Mr. Akerman, having first made them fall back from the gate, went in, and with a determined resolution ordered the outer turnkey upon no account to open the gate, even though the prisoners (though he trusted they would not) should break their word and by force bring himself to order it. ‘Never mind me,’ he said, ‘should that happen.’ The prisoners peaceably followed him while he conducted them through passages of which he had the keys to the extremity of the gaol which was mostdistant from the fire. Having by this very judicious conduct fully satisfied them that there was no immediate risk, if any at all, he then addressed them thus: ‘Gentlemen, you are now convinced that I told you true. I have no doubt that the engines will soon extinguish the fire; if they should not, a sufficient guard will come, and you shall be all taken out and lodged in the compters. I assure you, upon my word and honour, that I have not a farthing insured. I have left my house that I might take care of you. I will keep my promise and stay with you if you insist upon it; but if you will allow me to go out and look after my family and property I shall be obliged to you.’ Struck with his behaviour, they called out, ‘Master Akerman, you have done bravely; it was very kind in you; by all means go and take care of your own concerns.’ He did so accordingly, while they remained and were all preserved.” Akerman received still higher praise for this, which was generally admitted to be courageous conduct. Dr. Johnson, according to Boswell, had been heard to relate the substance of the foregoing story “with high praise, in which he was joined by Mr. Edmund Burke.” Johnson also touched upon Akerman’s kindness to his prisoners, and “pronounced this eulogy upon his character. He who has long had constantly in his view the worst of mankind, and is yet eminent for the humanity of his disposition, must have had it originally in a great degree, and continued to cultivate it very carefully.”