Chapter 14

FOOTNOTES:[1]This chapter originally appeared in the ‘Fortnightly Review,’ June 1882.[2]See post, chap. iv.[3]See vol. ii. cap. ii.[4]See vol. ii. cap. iii.[5]See vol. ii. cap. v.[6]Something of the same ambition filled the breasts of the projectors of Seville Cathedral.[7]An entry in a letter book at Guildhall speaks of the “heynouse gaol of Newgate,” and its fetid and corrupt atmosphere. Loftie, ‘Hist. of London,’ vol. i. 437.[8]Noorthouck, ‘Hist. of London,’ p. 60.[9]The term “roarer,” and “roaring boy,” signifying a riotous person, was in use in Shakespeare’s day, and still survives in slang (Riley).[10]The word is so given in the text, although this text is in Latin, fol. cxxxii. 6 (Riley).[11]The indictment charged John Brid for having sought to falsely and maliciously obtain his own private advantage “by skilfully and artfully causing a certain hole to be made upon a table of his, called amoldingborde, pertaining to his bakehouse after the manner of a mouse-trap in which mice are caught, there being a certain wicket, warily provided for closing and opening such a hole.” When neighbours brought dough to make into bread and bake at his oven, John Brid got them to put it on hismoldingbordetable, having “one of his household ready provided for the same sitting in secret beneath such table; which servant of his, so seated beneath the hole, and carefully opening it, piecemeal and bit by bit craftily withdrew some of the dough aforesaid, frequently collecting great quantities from such dough, falsely, wickedly, and maliciously.” It was proved that the hole was made of aforethought, that large quantities of dough were drawn through the table and found beneath, and that the neighbours suffered grievous loss. Numerous other cases of similar fraud were brought forward at the same time, and all were equally proved, after “due inquisition as to the truth of the matter had been made.” Whereupon at a full court of aldermen, and in the presidency of Richard de Botoigne, Mayor, it was ordered that all male offenders against whom the charge was proved should be out upon the pillory with a certain quantity of the dough round their necks, in the cases where dough had been found; where it had not, the sentence was one of simple exposure. Two female bakers sought to escape by laying the crime upon their husbands, but “it was agreed and ordained that they should be sent back to the prison of Newgate, there to remain until as to them it should be otherwise ordained,” and there, according to the same document, they should lingersine die. To wipe out the disgrace, it was further ordered that all themoldingbordetables “should be thrown down and utterly destroyed,” and that any baker in future guilty of such an offence “should stand upon the pillory for a whole day, and afterwards abjure the city, so as at no time to return thereto.”[12]A prison for night-walkers and other suspicious persons, and called the Tun because the same was built somewhat in fashion of a Tun standing on the one end. It was built in 1282 by Henry Walers, Mayor.[13]“Our ancestors, with a strong love for practical jokes and an equally strong aversion to falsehood and boasting, checked an indulgence in such vices when they became offensive by very plain satire. A confirmed liar was presented with awhetstoneto jocularly infer that his invention, if he continued to use it so freely, would require sharpening.”—Chambers’ ‘Book of Days,’ ii. 45.[14]Pressing to death. See post, chap. vi.[15]Skinner or furrier.[16]Noorthouck calls him John Gate. See ‘Hist. of London,’ p. 49.[17]Sir Edward Coke derives the title of the court from the fact that justice was done in them as speedily as dust can fall from the foot.[18]A toll had been levied thirty years earlier (1373) for the cleansing of Smithfield, which may be referred to here. It is interesting as showing the status at this period of the keeper of Newgate. He, Adam Fernham by name, was one of those selected to levy the toll, and with two others was sworn faithfully to collect and receive the pennies, and cleanse the field, for a term of three years. Fernham must have been a man of credit and good repute to have been thus chosen.[19]For full account see Riley’s ‘Liber Albus,’ p. 41.[20]Sheriff Hoare (1740-1) tells us how the names of the prisoners in each gaol were read over to him and his colleagues; the keepers acknowledged them one by one to be in their custody, and then tendered the keys, which were delivered back to them again, and after executing the indentures, the sheriffs partook of sack and walnuts, provided by the keepers of the prison, at a tavern adjoining Guildhall. Formerly the sheriffs attended the Lord Mayor on Easter Eve through the streets to collect charity for the prisoners in the city prison. Sheriffs were permitted to keep prisoners in their own houses, hence the Sponging Houses. The “Sheriffs’ Fund” was started in 1807 by Sir Richard Phillips, who, in his letter to the Livery of London, states that he found, on visiting Newgate, so many claims on his charity that he could not meet a tenth part of them. A suggestion to establish a sheriffs’ fund was thereupon made public and found general support. In 1867 the fund amounted to £13,000.[21]‘Liber Albus,’ Riley, p. 108.[22]‘Harleian Miscell.,’ vol. vi.[23]The exemption of St. Martin’s from both ecclesiastical and civil jurisdiction until the time of James I., and by affording easy sanctuary to malefactors of the city, was a great nuisance. Loftie, i. 118.[24]Or “Porti-foug,” a breviary which could be carried about.[25]Riley’s ‘Memorials of London,’ p. 466.[26]State Papers.[27]See chap. iv.[28]This abjuring the king’s land was an act of self-banishment, akin in its effects to the old Roman penalty ofaquæ et ignis interdictio. Any criminal who took sanctuary might escape the law, provided that within forty days he clothed himself in sackcloth, confessed his crime before the coroner, and after solemnly abjuring the land, proceeded, cross in hand, to some appointed port, where he embarked and left the country. If apprehended within forty days he was again suffered to depart.—Note in Thom’s ‘Stow,’ p. 157.[29]It was based on a passage in the commentaries of Jerome Cardan. Cardan, in a calculation of the horoscope of Edward VI., amidst much astrological rubbish relates, on hearsay, his authority being the Bishop of Lisieux, that seventy-two thousand criminals had perished by the executioner in the reign of Henry VIII.—Froude, iii. 227.[30]Froude.[31]Stowe’s ‘Survey,’ p. 72.[32]Fabian’s ‘Chronicle.’[33]‘Maitland,’ i. 226.[34]Cromwell’s house was in the city in Throgmorton Street, close to the site of the monastic house of the Austin Friars.[35]This Benedict Spinola must have been an Italian with some influence. His personal relations with Burghley are manifest from a letter of congratulation sent by him to Burghley on the safe arrival of the Earl of Oxford at Milan. Other more or less confidential matters are mentioned in connection with Pasqual and Jacob Spinola, Benedict’s brothers.[36]Vol. iv. pp. 6, 7.[37]Of these ten friars of the Charterhouse sent to Newgate, Froude says “nine died of prison fever and filth, the tenth survivor was executed.” Secretary Bedyll, writing to Cromwell concerning them, says, “It shall please your lordship to understand that the monks of the Charterhouse here in London, which were committed to Newgate for their traitorous behaviour long time continued against the king’s Grace, be almost despatched by the hand of God, as may appear, to you by the bill enclosed.”[38]‘Foxe,’ v. 180.[39]‘Foxe,’ v. 451.[40]‘Foxe,’ vi. 612.[41]‘Foxe,’ vii. 684.[42]‘Harleian Miscell.’[43]Friday continued the day of horse-market until the closing of Smithfield as a market for live cattle.[44]The bell which was rung at mass on the elevation of the host.[45]Clink prison.[46]State Papers.[47]Stowe, who adds: “note that gaolers buying their offices will deal hardly with pitiful prisoners.”[48]Before Dios?See p. 90.[49]The priests were subject to espionage even beyond the limits of the realm. A deposition is given in the State Papers made by one Arthur Saul, a prisoner in Newgate, to the effect that he had been employed by Secretary Winwood and the Archbishop of Canterbury to report what English were at Douay College, particulars of priests who have returned to England, of their meeting-places and conveyance of letters. “One of them,” it is added, “helped four recusants to escape from Newgate.”[50]Chief of the Jesuits in England, afterwards executed (1608).[51]“On the Queen’s day ten were taken at mass in Newgate.”—State Papers, 1602.[52]This is beyond explanation.[53]Without paying gaoler’s fees.[54]There was a keeper and a deputy: the latter was resident, and did most of the work.[55]Calendar, “The prisoners of Newgate’s condemnation,” declaring every verdict of the whole Bench at the Sessions House in the Old Bailey. April 22, 1642.[56]The Jack Ketch of the period.[57]Seeante, p. 113.[58]A homily against play-acting and masquerades.[59]Printed by F. Coles and G. Lindsey, 1642.[60]The rebellion in Ireland.[61]As Colonel Gerard had been rescued by Mr. Anthuser, and next day the Portuguese, to the number of fifty, fell upon a Colonel Mayo, mistaking him for Anthuser, wounded him dangerously, and killed another person, Mr. Greenaway. The murderers were arrested in spite of the protection afforded them by the Portuguese ambassador and committed to Newgate. Whitelocke’s ‘Memorials,’ p. 569.[62]Their first victim, Colonel Gerard, survived only to be executed on Tower Hill the same year for conspiring to murder the Lord Protector. ‘State Trials,’ v. 518.[63]Seeante, chap. i. p. 58.[64]The disgusting brutality with which this operation was carried out will be realized from the following extract from the life of J. Ellwood, who found himself in Newgate in the beginning of Charles II.’s reign:—“When we first came into Newgate,” says Mr. Ellwood, “there lay (in a little by-place like a closet, near the room where we were lodged) the quartered bodies of three men, who had been executed some days before, for a real or pretended plot; ... and the reason why their quarters lay there so long, was, the relatives were all that while petitioning to have leave to bury them; which, at length, with much ado, was obtained for the quarters, but not for the heads, which were ordered to be set up in some part of the City. I saw the heads when they were brought up to be boiled; the hangman fetched them in a dirty dust basket, out of some by-place; and setting them down among the felons, he and they made sport with them. They took them by the hair, flouting, jeering, and laughing at them; and then, giving them some ill names, boxed them on the ears and cheeks. Which done, the Hangman put them into his kettle, and parboiled them with Bay-Salt and Cummin-seed,—that to keep them from putrefaction, and this to keep off the fowls from seizing on them. The whole sight (as well that of the bloody quarters first, and this of the heads afterwards) was both frightful and loathsome, and begat an abhorrence in my nature.”[65]“Bilboes” were bars of iron with fetters attached. The name comes from the Spanish town Bilbao, where they were first made.[66]Cf. chap. 6, vol. ii. Executions.[67]Who were responsible for the keeper and the prison generally.[68]Luttrell.[69]Luttrell.[70]Luttrell.[71]Macaulay, i. 380.[72]Still the seat of the Thynnes; and the property of the head of the family—the present Marquis of Bath.[73]Reresby’s Memoirs, p. 256.[74]Reresby.[75]Luttrell.[76]Reresby’s Memoirs.[77]Reresby.[78]Luttrell.[79]Luttrell.[80]See chap. vi.[81]‘Celebrated Trials,’ ii. 322.[82]‘Celebrated Trials,’ ii. 326.[83]Dr. Oates in the next reign was to some extent indemnified for his sufferings. When quite an old man he married a young city heiress with a fortune of £2000; and a writer who handled this “Salamanca wedding,” as it was called, was arrested. Oates was in the receipt of a pension of £300 from the Government when he died in 1705.[84]The practice of fining jurors for finding a verdict contrary to the direction of the judge had already been declared arbitrary, unconstitutional, and illegal.[85]‘History of the Press-yard.’[86]Ibid.[87]See chap. x.[88]This cobbler of Highgate was a zealous Jacobite, who turned out in his best suit of clothes on King James’s birthday. For this he was prosecuted, and sentenced to be whipped up and down Highgate Hill, with a year’s imprisonment in Newgate. He lived on the fat of the land during his incarceration, had quarters in the press-yard, and “lay in lodgings at ten or twelve shilling a week.”[89]This was Bernardi. See post, p. 226.[90]Bernardi.[91]Mr. Marvell was either principal hangman or the assistant.[92]‘History of the Press-yard.’[93]‘Secret History of the Rebels in Newgate: giving an account of their daily behaviour from their commitment to their gaol delivery.’ Taken from the diary of a gentleman in the same prison—who was evidently no particular admirer of theirs.[94]‘History of the Press-yard.’[95]It will be remembered that Mr. Forster’s want of generalship lost the battle of Prestonpans.[96]See chap. vii. for this and other escapes.[97]For this Dalton was convicted and fined fifty marks, with imprisonment for one year, also to find security for three more years.[98]Parson Paul was the Rev. William Paul, M.A., vicar of Orton-on-the-Hill, in Leicestershire. He met the rebels at Preston, and performed service there, praying for the Pretender as King James the Third. When the royal troops invested Preston, Mr. Paul escaped “in coloured clothes, a long wig, a laced hat, and a sword by his side.” He came to London, and was recognized in St. James’s Park by a Leicestershire magistrate, who apprehended him, and he was committed to Newgate.[99]One of the Halls of Otterburn, Northumberland, and a magistrate for the county. He joined the Pretender early, and was one of his most active and staunch supporters.[100]No doubt a form of the gaol fever.[101]‘Secret History.’[102]Seeante, p. 203.[103]According to the deposition of Harris the informer, Bernardi came with Rookwood to London on purpose to meet Barclay the chief conspirator.[104]Pike, ‘Hist, of Crime,’ ii. 83.[105]Camden’s ‘Annals of the Year 1581.’[106]Dr. Bastwick’s daughter, Mrs. Poe, after his ears were cut off, called for them, put them in a clean handkerchief, and carried them away with her.[107]No. 45 of the ‘North Briton’ charged the king with falsehood, and was the basis of the prosecutions; 45 became in consequence a popular number with the patriots. Tradesmen called their goods “forty-five”; and snuff so styled was still sold in Fleet Street only a few years ago. Horne Tooke declares that the Prince of Wales aggravated his august father, when the latter was flogging him, by shouting “Wilkes and 45 for ever!”[108]Lords of Leet were obliged to keep up a pillory or tumbrel, on pain of forfeiture of the leet; and villages might also be compelled to provide them.[109]The last stocks in London were those of St. Clement’s Dane’s in Portugal Street, which were removed in 1826, to make way for local improvements.—Wade, ‘British Chronology.’[110]‘Punishments in the Olden Time,’ by William Andrews, F.R.H.S., to which I am indebted for many of my facts.[111]This was not an uncommon offence. One Mary Hamilton was married fourteen times to members of her own sex. A more inveterate, but a more natural, bigamist was a man named Miller, who was pilloried, in 1790, for having married thirty different women on purpose to plunder them.[112]The ‘Reliquary,’ edited by Llewellyn Jewitt, F.S.A.[113]On the first introduction of the treadwheel in the early decades of the present century, its use was not restricted to males, and women were often made to suffer this punishment.[114]Whipping females was not abolished till 1817.[115]‘Ancient Law.’[116]Bernardo Visconti, Duke of Milan, in the 14th century, made a capital punishment, or more exactly the act of killing, last for forty days.[117]Pike, ‘Hist. of Crime,’ i. 210.[118]By “Halifax law” any thief who within the precincts of the liberty stole thirteen pence could on conviction before four burghers be sentenced to death. The same law obtained at Hull, hence the particular prayer in the thieves’ Litany, which ran as follows: “From Hull, Hell, and Halifax, good Lord, deliver us.”[119]Loftie, ‘Hist. of London,’ 1883, vol. ii. 215.[120]Waller, the Tyebourne and Westbourne paper read before the London and Middlesex Archæological Society.[121]‘History of Paddington.’[122]See account of Courvoisier’s trial in cap. vii., vol. ii.[123]Seeante, p. 186.[124]‘Memorials of George Selwyn,’ I. 11.[125]The season was the summer, and on the Sunday following the execution, London was like a deserted city; hundreds of thousands went out to see him hanging in chains.[126]The negligence and perfunctory performance of duty of the ordinary, Mr. Ford, is strongly animadverted upon in the ‘Report of Commons’ Committee in 1814.’ See vol. ii. cap. 2.[127]The Rev. Paul Lorraine.[128]The Scotch Dalziels bear sable, a hanged man with his arms extended. A Spanish hidalgo has in his coat armour, a ladder with gibbet; and various implements of torture have been borne by German families of distinction.[129]Many of the immediate successors of Brandon above-mentioned were called Gregory.[130]‘Natural History of Oxfordshire,’ cap. 8.[131]Seeante, chap. i.[132]The most ingenious and painstaking attempt of this kind was that made by some Thugs awaiting sentence in India, who sawed through the bars of their prison with packthread smeared with oil and coated with fine stone-dust.[133]In the proclamation for his apprehension after his second escape, he is described as about twenty-two years of age, five feet four inches in height, very slender, of a pale complexion, having an impediment or hesitation in his speech, and wearing a butcher’s blue frock with a great-coat over it; a carpenter or house-joiner by trade. Twenty guineas reward was offered to any who might discover or apprehend him.[134]I have followed the text of Ainsworth’s novel, which gives a clear and picturesque account. It is also accurate, and based on the best accounts extant.[135]I am quoting now from the ‘Tyburn Calendar,’ the wording of which is preserved in all other accounts.[136]The following stanzas were written at the time, and appeared in the ‘British Journal’ of Nov. 28, 1724:—“Thornhill, ’tis thine to gild with fameThe obscure and raise the humble name;To make the form elude the grave,And Sheppard from oblivion save.Tho’ life in vain the wretch implores,An exile on the farthest shores,Thy pencil brings a kind reprieve,And bids the dying robber live.. . . . . . . . . .Apelles Alexander drew,Cæsar is to Aurelius due,Cromwell in Lilly’s works doth shine,And Sheppard, Thornhill, lives in thine.”[137]Seeante, p. 268.[138]Seeante, p. 254.[139]Ordinary’s account of executions, Nov. 1736.[140]Seeante, p. 273.[141]Luttrell, iii. 1695.[142]Ibid.[143]I have described this in detail in the next chapter.[144]‘Life of Lord Hardwicke,’ i. 215.[145]‘An inquiry into the causes of the late increase of robbers,’ &c. London: 1751.[146]Fielding, ‘Robbers,’ p. 35.[147]Soldiers in the Guards, after long and faithful service, were granted leave of absence from military duty in order to take civil situations which did not monopolize all their time. By this means they eked out their scanty pay.[148]‘A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis,’ by P. Colquhoun, LL.D. London, 1800.[149]Fielding, p. xxviii.[150]Ibid., p. xxix.[151]Savage was tried before Sir Francis Page, commonly known as “the hanging judge,” and whose severity was most notorious. He afterwards admitted that he had been most anxious to hang Savage. In his old age when his health was inquired after, he is reported to have replied, “I keep hanging on, hanging on.”[152]‘Celebrated Trials,’ iii. 457. ‘Newgate Calendar,’ i. 39. Thornbury, in his ‘Old Stories Retold,’ calls it the King’s Arms, on what authority he does not say.[153]“What do you bring this fellow here for?” Oneby had cried to the keeper of Newgate when he appeared with Hooper. “Whenever I look at him I shall think of being hanged.” Hooper had a forbidding countenance, but he was an inimitable mimic, and he soon made himself an agreeable companion to the condemned man.[154]‘Calendar,’ i. 146.[155]The husband of the Lady Macclesfield, who was mother to Richard Savage. Seeante, p. 340.[156]‘Life of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke,’ by George Harris, i. 176.[157]Where Lambeth Suspension Bridge now stands.[158]The crime of petty treason was established when any person out of malice took away the life of another to whom he or she owed special obedience—as when a servant killed his master, a wife her husband, or an ecclesiastic his superior. The wife’s accomplices in the murder of a husband were not deemed guilty of petty treason.[159]The infamous Judge Jeffries in 1685 sentenced Elizabeth Gaunt to be burnt alive at Tyburn, for sheltering persons concerned in Monmouth’s rebellion.[160]As barristers often preferred to do business at their own homes, chambers in the Temple were rather at a discount just then, and their landlords, “preferring tenants of no legal skill to no tenants at all, let them out to any that offered, ...” consequently many private people creep about the Inns of Court.—‘Newgate Calendar,’ i. 470.[161]‘Newgate Calendar,’ i. 189.[162]“Beau” Fielding, who was tried at the Old Bailey in 1706 for committing bigamy with the Duchess of Cleveland, is one of the most remarkable instances of this. See ‘Celebrated Trials,’ iii. 534. Also see the trial of the Duchess of Kingston, ‘Remarkable Trials,’ 203. She was tried by the House of Lords, found guilty, but pleaded her peerage and was discharged.[163]Hackham was present at Dr. Dodd’s execution a short time previously. His remarks on the subject will be found in vol. ii. chap. i.[164]Quin could not resist the chance of making a sharp speech. When desired by the manager of Covent Garden to go to the front to apologize for Madame Rollau, a celebrated dancer, who could not appear, he said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, Madame Rollau cannot dance to-night, having dislocated her ancle—I wish it had been her neck.”[165]At this date abroad, Mr. Baretti pointed out, it was not the custom to put knives on the dinner-table, so that even ladies carried them in their pockets for general use.[166]The boot was the usual punning allusion to Lord Bute in the caricatures of the day; and the petticoat no doubt referred to his undue influence over the Princess of Wales, mother of the reigning sovereign, George III. Seeante, p. 238.[167]Cant names of the period for drinks.[168]Walpole’s Letters to Sir Horace Mann.[169]Wild at last had the audacity to occupy a house in the Old Bailey, opposite the present Sessions House.[170]There were sometimes as many as sixty or seventy pirates awaiting trial at a time in Newgate, about this period.[171]By Lord Orford and the Board of Admiralty.[172]Luttrell.[173]Seeante, chap. vi. p. 279.[174]Hume, xi. 418.[175]The following are some of the great people who owned prisons in those days: “The Dukes of Portland, Devonshire, Norfolk, and Leeds, the Marquis of Carnarvon, Lords Salisbury, Exeter, Arundel, and Derby, the Bishops of Salisbury, Ely, and Durham, the Dean and Chapter of Westminster.”[176]Book iv. c. 22.[177]‘Buxton on Prison Discipline,’ p. 11.[178]As late as 1818 the most capricious rules prevailed as to ironing in various prisons in the country. Thus at Newgate all felons were ironed; it was the same at Chelmsford; but at Bury and Norwich all felons were without irons. Again at Coldbath Fields, only the untried and those sent for re-examination were ironed; at other places the untried were not ironed, and so on. Dr. Dodd, in his ‘Thoughts in Prison,’ refers to the horror he experienced in Newgate from the constant rattling of chains. It seems the most hardened prisoners often clanked their irons for an amusement.[179]Seeante, chap. v. p. 211.[180]‘Dr. Guy on Public Health,’ 183.[181]Lind, ‘Health of our Seamen.’[182]According to Lord Campbell, Lord Chief Justice Lee was attacked with the gaol fever in this year, but recovered. It was through Lee’s remonstrances that certain precautions were adopted, such as plunging a hot iron into a bucket full of vinegar and sweet smelling herbs. ‘Lives of the Lord Chief Justices.’[183]Dr. (afterwards Sir John) Pringle had already published (1750) a pamphlet on hospital and ‘jayl’ fevers, in which he traced the distemper to jails being too small for their numbers, and too insecure to forego the use of dungeons. The only resource, he said, until these two evils were removed, was in ventilators.[184]In this year 1752 another Lord Mayor, Winterbottom, died of the gaol fever. Lord Campbell’s ‘Lives of Lord Chief Justices.’[185]A full account of the ventilator from the pen of Dr. Hales is published in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine,’ vol. xxii. p. 180 (1752), where also is the plan of the windmill which worked it, which plan I have introduced into this chapter. The various letters on the plan refer to the detailed description in the original.[186]For full account of this see next chapter.[187]Lord George Gordon died of it in the new Newgate in 1793.[188]See next chapter.[189]See page 379.[190]Dr. Dodd in his ‘Prison Thoughts’ animadverts strongly upon the evils of Newgate, but completely exonerates Mr. Akerman. “No man could do more,” says Dr. Dodd. “His attention is great, and his kindness and humanity to those in sickness or affliction peculiarly pleasing.”[191]There is a brief account of Newgate about this period in the ‘Memoirs of Casanova,’ who saw the interior of the prison while awaiting bail for an assault. Casanova was committed in ball dress, and received with hisses, which increased to furious abuse when they found he did not answer their questions, being ignorant of English. He felt as if he was in one of the most horrible circles of Dante’s hell. He saw, “Des figures fauves, des regards de vipères, des sinistres sourires tous les caractères de l’envie de la rage, du désespoir; c’était un spectacle épouvantable.”—‘Mémoires,’ vi. 48.[192]Some notion of the density of the prison population in Newgate in those times will be obtained by comparing it with modern ideas on this subject. The following figures give the acreage and average population of three comparatively new prisons.PrisonAcreageAverage prison population.Warwick9A.3R.2P.300St. Albans421100Lincoln16015180[193]See last chapter.[194]Lord George Gordon was the son of Cosmo, Duke of Gordon, and was born in 1750. He entered the navy as a midshipman, but left the service in consequence of a dispute with Lord Sandwich. He sat in Parliament for Ludgershall, and was a bitter opponent of the ministry.[195]Pennant’s ‘London.’[196]‘Barnaby Rudge.’[197]Lord Mansfield’s impartiality at the trial was the subject of general admiration. “He never shewed the slightest tinge of resentment or bias.” Yet with his house were destroyed not only much valuable property, but a mass of private journals and letters, which he had been collecting to form the basis of memoirs of his own times, and the loss of which was quite irreparable.[198]This position may well be questioned.Videvol. ii. cap. i.[199]The Right Honourable Charles Jenkinson was created Lord Hawkesbury in 1787, and made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, as well as President of the Board of Trade. He was an authority in all mercantile and commercial affairs.

FOOTNOTES:

[1]This chapter originally appeared in the ‘Fortnightly Review,’ June 1882.

[2]See post, chap. iv.

[3]See vol. ii. cap. ii.

[4]See vol. ii. cap. iii.

[5]See vol. ii. cap. v.

[6]Something of the same ambition filled the breasts of the projectors of Seville Cathedral.

[7]An entry in a letter book at Guildhall speaks of the “heynouse gaol of Newgate,” and its fetid and corrupt atmosphere. Loftie, ‘Hist. of London,’ vol. i. 437.

[8]Noorthouck, ‘Hist. of London,’ p. 60.

[9]The term “roarer,” and “roaring boy,” signifying a riotous person, was in use in Shakespeare’s day, and still survives in slang (Riley).

[10]The word is so given in the text, although this text is in Latin, fol. cxxxii. 6 (Riley).

[11]The indictment charged John Brid for having sought to falsely and maliciously obtain his own private advantage “by skilfully and artfully causing a certain hole to be made upon a table of his, called amoldingborde, pertaining to his bakehouse after the manner of a mouse-trap in which mice are caught, there being a certain wicket, warily provided for closing and opening such a hole.” When neighbours brought dough to make into bread and bake at his oven, John Brid got them to put it on hismoldingbordetable, having “one of his household ready provided for the same sitting in secret beneath such table; which servant of his, so seated beneath the hole, and carefully opening it, piecemeal and bit by bit craftily withdrew some of the dough aforesaid, frequently collecting great quantities from such dough, falsely, wickedly, and maliciously.” It was proved that the hole was made of aforethought, that large quantities of dough were drawn through the table and found beneath, and that the neighbours suffered grievous loss. Numerous other cases of similar fraud were brought forward at the same time, and all were equally proved, after “due inquisition as to the truth of the matter had been made.” Whereupon at a full court of aldermen, and in the presidency of Richard de Botoigne, Mayor, it was ordered that all male offenders against whom the charge was proved should be out upon the pillory with a certain quantity of the dough round their necks, in the cases where dough had been found; where it had not, the sentence was one of simple exposure. Two female bakers sought to escape by laying the crime upon their husbands, but “it was agreed and ordained that they should be sent back to the prison of Newgate, there to remain until as to them it should be otherwise ordained,” and there, according to the same document, they should lingersine die. To wipe out the disgrace, it was further ordered that all themoldingbordetables “should be thrown down and utterly destroyed,” and that any baker in future guilty of such an offence “should stand upon the pillory for a whole day, and afterwards abjure the city, so as at no time to return thereto.”

[12]A prison for night-walkers and other suspicious persons, and called the Tun because the same was built somewhat in fashion of a Tun standing on the one end. It was built in 1282 by Henry Walers, Mayor.

[13]“Our ancestors, with a strong love for practical jokes and an equally strong aversion to falsehood and boasting, checked an indulgence in such vices when they became offensive by very plain satire. A confirmed liar was presented with awhetstoneto jocularly infer that his invention, if he continued to use it so freely, would require sharpening.”—Chambers’ ‘Book of Days,’ ii. 45.

[14]Pressing to death. See post, chap. vi.

[15]Skinner or furrier.

[16]Noorthouck calls him John Gate. See ‘Hist. of London,’ p. 49.

[17]Sir Edward Coke derives the title of the court from the fact that justice was done in them as speedily as dust can fall from the foot.

[18]A toll had been levied thirty years earlier (1373) for the cleansing of Smithfield, which may be referred to here. It is interesting as showing the status at this period of the keeper of Newgate. He, Adam Fernham by name, was one of those selected to levy the toll, and with two others was sworn faithfully to collect and receive the pennies, and cleanse the field, for a term of three years. Fernham must have been a man of credit and good repute to have been thus chosen.

[19]For full account see Riley’s ‘Liber Albus,’ p. 41.

[20]Sheriff Hoare (1740-1) tells us how the names of the prisoners in each gaol were read over to him and his colleagues; the keepers acknowledged them one by one to be in their custody, and then tendered the keys, which were delivered back to them again, and after executing the indentures, the sheriffs partook of sack and walnuts, provided by the keepers of the prison, at a tavern adjoining Guildhall. Formerly the sheriffs attended the Lord Mayor on Easter Eve through the streets to collect charity for the prisoners in the city prison. Sheriffs were permitted to keep prisoners in their own houses, hence the Sponging Houses. The “Sheriffs’ Fund” was started in 1807 by Sir Richard Phillips, who, in his letter to the Livery of London, states that he found, on visiting Newgate, so many claims on his charity that he could not meet a tenth part of them. A suggestion to establish a sheriffs’ fund was thereupon made public and found general support. In 1867 the fund amounted to £13,000.

[21]‘Liber Albus,’ Riley, p. 108.

[22]‘Harleian Miscell.,’ vol. vi.

[23]The exemption of St. Martin’s from both ecclesiastical and civil jurisdiction until the time of James I., and by affording easy sanctuary to malefactors of the city, was a great nuisance. Loftie, i. 118.

[24]Or “Porti-foug,” a breviary which could be carried about.

[25]Riley’s ‘Memorials of London,’ p. 466.

[26]State Papers.

[27]See chap. iv.

[28]This abjuring the king’s land was an act of self-banishment, akin in its effects to the old Roman penalty ofaquæ et ignis interdictio. Any criminal who took sanctuary might escape the law, provided that within forty days he clothed himself in sackcloth, confessed his crime before the coroner, and after solemnly abjuring the land, proceeded, cross in hand, to some appointed port, where he embarked and left the country. If apprehended within forty days he was again suffered to depart.—Note in Thom’s ‘Stow,’ p. 157.

[29]It was based on a passage in the commentaries of Jerome Cardan. Cardan, in a calculation of the horoscope of Edward VI., amidst much astrological rubbish relates, on hearsay, his authority being the Bishop of Lisieux, that seventy-two thousand criminals had perished by the executioner in the reign of Henry VIII.—Froude, iii. 227.

[30]Froude.

[31]Stowe’s ‘Survey,’ p. 72.

[32]Fabian’s ‘Chronicle.’

[33]‘Maitland,’ i. 226.

[34]Cromwell’s house was in the city in Throgmorton Street, close to the site of the monastic house of the Austin Friars.

[35]This Benedict Spinola must have been an Italian with some influence. His personal relations with Burghley are manifest from a letter of congratulation sent by him to Burghley on the safe arrival of the Earl of Oxford at Milan. Other more or less confidential matters are mentioned in connection with Pasqual and Jacob Spinola, Benedict’s brothers.

[36]Vol. iv. pp. 6, 7.

[37]Of these ten friars of the Charterhouse sent to Newgate, Froude says “nine died of prison fever and filth, the tenth survivor was executed.” Secretary Bedyll, writing to Cromwell concerning them, says, “It shall please your lordship to understand that the monks of the Charterhouse here in London, which were committed to Newgate for their traitorous behaviour long time continued against the king’s Grace, be almost despatched by the hand of God, as may appear, to you by the bill enclosed.”

[38]‘Foxe,’ v. 180.

[39]‘Foxe,’ v. 451.

[40]‘Foxe,’ vi. 612.

[41]‘Foxe,’ vii. 684.

[42]‘Harleian Miscell.’

[43]Friday continued the day of horse-market until the closing of Smithfield as a market for live cattle.

[44]The bell which was rung at mass on the elevation of the host.

[45]Clink prison.

[46]State Papers.

[47]Stowe, who adds: “note that gaolers buying their offices will deal hardly with pitiful prisoners.”

[48]Before Dios?See p. 90.

[49]The priests were subject to espionage even beyond the limits of the realm. A deposition is given in the State Papers made by one Arthur Saul, a prisoner in Newgate, to the effect that he had been employed by Secretary Winwood and the Archbishop of Canterbury to report what English were at Douay College, particulars of priests who have returned to England, of their meeting-places and conveyance of letters. “One of them,” it is added, “helped four recusants to escape from Newgate.”

[50]Chief of the Jesuits in England, afterwards executed (1608).

[51]“On the Queen’s day ten were taken at mass in Newgate.”—State Papers, 1602.

[52]This is beyond explanation.

[53]Without paying gaoler’s fees.

[54]There was a keeper and a deputy: the latter was resident, and did most of the work.

[55]Calendar, “The prisoners of Newgate’s condemnation,” declaring every verdict of the whole Bench at the Sessions House in the Old Bailey. April 22, 1642.

[56]The Jack Ketch of the period.

[57]Seeante, p. 113.

[58]A homily against play-acting and masquerades.

[59]Printed by F. Coles and G. Lindsey, 1642.

[60]The rebellion in Ireland.

[61]As Colonel Gerard had been rescued by Mr. Anthuser, and next day the Portuguese, to the number of fifty, fell upon a Colonel Mayo, mistaking him for Anthuser, wounded him dangerously, and killed another person, Mr. Greenaway. The murderers were arrested in spite of the protection afforded them by the Portuguese ambassador and committed to Newgate. Whitelocke’s ‘Memorials,’ p. 569.

[62]Their first victim, Colonel Gerard, survived only to be executed on Tower Hill the same year for conspiring to murder the Lord Protector. ‘State Trials,’ v. 518.

[63]Seeante, chap. i. p. 58.

[64]The disgusting brutality with which this operation was carried out will be realized from the following extract from the life of J. Ellwood, who found himself in Newgate in the beginning of Charles II.’s reign:—“When we first came into Newgate,” says Mr. Ellwood, “there lay (in a little by-place like a closet, near the room where we were lodged) the quartered bodies of three men, who had been executed some days before, for a real or pretended plot; ... and the reason why their quarters lay there so long, was, the relatives were all that while petitioning to have leave to bury them; which, at length, with much ado, was obtained for the quarters, but not for the heads, which were ordered to be set up in some part of the City. I saw the heads when they were brought up to be boiled; the hangman fetched them in a dirty dust basket, out of some by-place; and setting them down among the felons, he and they made sport with them. They took them by the hair, flouting, jeering, and laughing at them; and then, giving them some ill names, boxed them on the ears and cheeks. Which done, the Hangman put them into his kettle, and parboiled them with Bay-Salt and Cummin-seed,—that to keep them from putrefaction, and this to keep off the fowls from seizing on them. The whole sight (as well that of the bloody quarters first, and this of the heads afterwards) was both frightful and loathsome, and begat an abhorrence in my nature.”

“When we first came into Newgate,” says Mr. Ellwood, “there lay (in a little by-place like a closet, near the room where we were lodged) the quartered bodies of three men, who had been executed some days before, for a real or pretended plot; ... and the reason why their quarters lay there so long, was, the relatives were all that while petitioning to have leave to bury them; which, at length, with much ado, was obtained for the quarters, but not for the heads, which were ordered to be set up in some part of the City. I saw the heads when they were brought up to be boiled; the hangman fetched them in a dirty dust basket, out of some by-place; and setting them down among the felons, he and they made sport with them. They took them by the hair, flouting, jeering, and laughing at them; and then, giving them some ill names, boxed them on the ears and cheeks. Which done, the Hangman put them into his kettle, and parboiled them with Bay-Salt and Cummin-seed,—that to keep them from putrefaction, and this to keep off the fowls from seizing on them. The whole sight (as well that of the bloody quarters first, and this of the heads afterwards) was both frightful and loathsome, and begat an abhorrence in my nature.”

[65]“Bilboes” were bars of iron with fetters attached. The name comes from the Spanish town Bilbao, where they were first made.

[66]Cf. chap. 6, vol. ii. Executions.

[67]Who were responsible for the keeper and the prison generally.

[68]Luttrell.

[69]Luttrell.

[70]Luttrell.

[71]Macaulay, i. 380.

[72]Still the seat of the Thynnes; and the property of the head of the family—the present Marquis of Bath.

[73]Reresby’s Memoirs, p. 256.

[74]Reresby.

[75]Luttrell.

[76]Reresby’s Memoirs.

[77]Reresby.

[78]Luttrell.

[79]Luttrell.

[80]See chap. vi.

[81]‘Celebrated Trials,’ ii. 322.

[82]‘Celebrated Trials,’ ii. 326.

[83]Dr. Oates in the next reign was to some extent indemnified for his sufferings. When quite an old man he married a young city heiress with a fortune of £2000; and a writer who handled this “Salamanca wedding,” as it was called, was arrested. Oates was in the receipt of a pension of £300 from the Government when he died in 1705.

[84]The practice of fining jurors for finding a verdict contrary to the direction of the judge had already been declared arbitrary, unconstitutional, and illegal.

[85]‘History of the Press-yard.’

[86]Ibid.

[87]See chap. x.

[88]This cobbler of Highgate was a zealous Jacobite, who turned out in his best suit of clothes on King James’s birthday. For this he was prosecuted, and sentenced to be whipped up and down Highgate Hill, with a year’s imprisonment in Newgate. He lived on the fat of the land during his incarceration, had quarters in the press-yard, and “lay in lodgings at ten or twelve shilling a week.”

[89]This was Bernardi. See post, p. 226.

[90]Bernardi.

[91]Mr. Marvell was either principal hangman or the assistant.

[92]‘History of the Press-yard.’

[93]‘Secret History of the Rebels in Newgate: giving an account of their daily behaviour from their commitment to their gaol delivery.’ Taken from the diary of a gentleman in the same prison—who was evidently no particular admirer of theirs.

[94]‘History of the Press-yard.’

[95]It will be remembered that Mr. Forster’s want of generalship lost the battle of Prestonpans.

[96]See chap. vii. for this and other escapes.

[97]For this Dalton was convicted and fined fifty marks, with imprisonment for one year, also to find security for three more years.

[98]Parson Paul was the Rev. William Paul, M.A., vicar of Orton-on-the-Hill, in Leicestershire. He met the rebels at Preston, and performed service there, praying for the Pretender as King James the Third. When the royal troops invested Preston, Mr. Paul escaped “in coloured clothes, a long wig, a laced hat, and a sword by his side.” He came to London, and was recognized in St. James’s Park by a Leicestershire magistrate, who apprehended him, and he was committed to Newgate.

[99]One of the Halls of Otterburn, Northumberland, and a magistrate for the county. He joined the Pretender early, and was one of his most active and staunch supporters.

[100]No doubt a form of the gaol fever.

[101]‘Secret History.’

[102]Seeante, p. 203.

[103]According to the deposition of Harris the informer, Bernardi came with Rookwood to London on purpose to meet Barclay the chief conspirator.

[104]Pike, ‘Hist, of Crime,’ ii. 83.

[105]Camden’s ‘Annals of the Year 1581.’

[106]Dr. Bastwick’s daughter, Mrs. Poe, after his ears were cut off, called for them, put them in a clean handkerchief, and carried them away with her.

[107]No. 45 of the ‘North Briton’ charged the king with falsehood, and was the basis of the prosecutions; 45 became in consequence a popular number with the patriots. Tradesmen called their goods “forty-five”; and snuff so styled was still sold in Fleet Street only a few years ago. Horne Tooke declares that the Prince of Wales aggravated his august father, when the latter was flogging him, by shouting “Wilkes and 45 for ever!”

[108]Lords of Leet were obliged to keep up a pillory or tumbrel, on pain of forfeiture of the leet; and villages might also be compelled to provide them.

[109]The last stocks in London were those of St. Clement’s Dane’s in Portugal Street, which were removed in 1826, to make way for local improvements.—Wade, ‘British Chronology.’

[110]‘Punishments in the Olden Time,’ by William Andrews, F.R.H.S., to which I am indebted for many of my facts.

[111]This was not an uncommon offence. One Mary Hamilton was married fourteen times to members of her own sex. A more inveterate, but a more natural, bigamist was a man named Miller, who was pilloried, in 1790, for having married thirty different women on purpose to plunder them.

[112]The ‘Reliquary,’ edited by Llewellyn Jewitt, F.S.A.

[113]On the first introduction of the treadwheel in the early decades of the present century, its use was not restricted to males, and women were often made to suffer this punishment.

[114]Whipping females was not abolished till 1817.

[115]‘Ancient Law.’

[116]Bernardo Visconti, Duke of Milan, in the 14th century, made a capital punishment, or more exactly the act of killing, last for forty days.

[117]Pike, ‘Hist. of Crime,’ i. 210.

[118]By “Halifax law” any thief who within the precincts of the liberty stole thirteen pence could on conviction before four burghers be sentenced to death. The same law obtained at Hull, hence the particular prayer in the thieves’ Litany, which ran as follows: “From Hull, Hell, and Halifax, good Lord, deliver us.”

[119]Loftie, ‘Hist. of London,’ 1883, vol. ii. 215.

[120]Waller, the Tyebourne and Westbourne paper read before the London and Middlesex Archæological Society.

[121]‘History of Paddington.’

[122]See account of Courvoisier’s trial in cap. vii., vol. ii.

[123]Seeante, p. 186.

[124]‘Memorials of George Selwyn,’ I. 11.

[125]The season was the summer, and on the Sunday following the execution, London was like a deserted city; hundreds of thousands went out to see him hanging in chains.

[126]The negligence and perfunctory performance of duty of the ordinary, Mr. Ford, is strongly animadverted upon in the ‘Report of Commons’ Committee in 1814.’ See vol. ii. cap. 2.

[127]The Rev. Paul Lorraine.

[128]The Scotch Dalziels bear sable, a hanged man with his arms extended. A Spanish hidalgo has in his coat armour, a ladder with gibbet; and various implements of torture have been borne by German families of distinction.

[129]Many of the immediate successors of Brandon above-mentioned were called Gregory.

[130]‘Natural History of Oxfordshire,’ cap. 8.

[131]Seeante, chap. i.

[132]The most ingenious and painstaking attempt of this kind was that made by some Thugs awaiting sentence in India, who sawed through the bars of their prison with packthread smeared with oil and coated with fine stone-dust.

[133]In the proclamation for his apprehension after his second escape, he is described as about twenty-two years of age, five feet four inches in height, very slender, of a pale complexion, having an impediment or hesitation in his speech, and wearing a butcher’s blue frock with a great-coat over it; a carpenter or house-joiner by trade. Twenty guineas reward was offered to any who might discover or apprehend him.

[134]I have followed the text of Ainsworth’s novel, which gives a clear and picturesque account. It is also accurate, and based on the best accounts extant.

[135]I am quoting now from the ‘Tyburn Calendar,’ the wording of which is preserved in all other accounts.

[136]The following stanzas were written at the time, and appeared in the ‘British Journal’ of Nov. 28, 1724:—“Thornhill, ’tis thine to gild with fameThe obscure and raise the humble name;To make the form elude the grave,And Sheppard from oblivion save.Tho’ life in vain the wretch implores,An exile on the farthest shores,Thy pencil brings a kind reprieve,And bids the dying robber live.. . . . . . . . . .Apelles Alexander drew,Cæsar is to Aurelius due,Cromwell in Lilly’s works doth shine,And Sheppard, Thornhill, lives in thine.”[137]Seeante, p. 268.[138]Seeante, p. 254.[139]Ordinary’s account of executions, Nov. 1736.[140]Seeante, p. 273.[141]Luttrell, iii. 1695.[142]Ibid.[143]I have described this in detail in the next chapter.[144]‘Life of Lord Hardwicke,’ i. 215.[145]‘An inquiry into the causes of the late increase of robbers,’ &c. London: 1751.[146]Fielding, ‘Robbers,’ p. 35.[147]Soldiers in the Guards, after long and faithful service, were granted leave of absence from military duty in order to take civil situations which did not monopolize all their time. By this means they eked out their scanty pay.[148]‘A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis,’ by P. Colquhoun, LL.D. London, 1800.[149]Fielding, p. xxviii.[150]Ibid., p. xxix.[151]Savage was tried before Sir Francis Page, commonly known as “the hanging judge,” and whose severity was most notorious. He afterwards admitted that he had been most anxious to hang Savage. In his old age when his health was inquired after, he is reported to have replied, “I keep hanging on, hanging on.”[152]‘Celebrated Trials,’ iii. 457. ‘Newgate Calendar,’ i. 39. Thornbury, in his ‘Old Stories Retold,’ calls it the King’s Arms, on what authority he does not say.[153]“What do you bring this fellow here for?” Oneby had cried to the keeper of Newgate when he appeared with Hooper. “Whenever I look at him I shall think of being hanged.” Hooper had a forbidding countenance, but he was an inimitable mimic, and he soon made himself an agreeable companion to the condemned man.[154]‘Calendar,’ i. 146.[155]The husband of the Lady Macclesfield, who was mother to Richard Savage. Seeante, p. 340.[156]‘Life of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke,’ by George Harris, i. 176.[157]Where Lambeth Suspension Bridge now stands.[158]The crime of petty treason was established when any person out of malice took away the life of another to whom he or she owed special obedience—as when a servant killed his master, a wife her husband, or an ecclesiastic his superior. The wife’s accomplices in the murder of a husband were not deemed guilty of petty treason.[159]The infamous Judge Jeffries in 1685 sentenced Elizabeth Gaunt to be burnt alive at Tyburn, for sheltering persons concerned in Monmouth’s rebellion.[160]As barristers often preferred to do business at their own homes, chambers in the Temple were rather at a discount just then, and their landlords, “preferring tenants of no legal skill to no tenants at all, let them out to any that offered, ...” consequently many private people creep about the Inns of Court.—‘Newgate Calendar,’ i. 470.[161]‘Newgate Calendar,’ i. 189.[162]“Beau” Fielding, who was tried at the Old Bailey in 1706 for committing bigamy with the Duchess of Cleveland, is one of the most remarkable instances of this. See ‘Celebrated Trials,’ iii. 534. Also see the trial of the Duchess of Kingston, ‘Remarkable Trials,’ 203. She was tried by the House of Lords, found guilty, but pleaded her peerage and was discharged.[163]Hackham was present at Dr. Dodd’s execution a short time previously. His remarks on the subject will be found in vol. ii. chap. i.[164]Quin could not resist the chance of making a sharp speech. When desired by the manager of Covent Garden to go to the front to apologize for Madame Rollau, a celebrated dancer, who could not appear, he said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, Madame Rollau cannot dance to-night, having dislocated her ancle—I wish it had been her neck.”[165]At this date abroad, Mr. Baretti pointed out, it was not the custom to put knives on the dinner-table, so that even ladies carried them in their pockets for general use.[166]The boot was the usual punning allusion to Lord Bute in the caricatures of the day; and the petticoat no doubt referred to his undue influence over the Princess of Wales, mother of the reigning sovereign, George III. Seeante, p. 238.[167]Cant names of the period for drinks.[168]Walpole’s Letters to Sir Horace Mann.[169]Wild at last had the audacity to occupy a house in the Old Bailey, opposite the present Sessions House.[170]There were sometimes as many as sixty or seventy pirates awaiting trial at a time in Newgate, about this period.[171]By Lord Orford and the Board of Admiralty.[172]Luttrell.[173]Seeante, chap. vi. p. 279.[174]Hume, xi. 418.[175]The following are some of the great people who owned prisons in those days: “The Dukes of Portland, Devonshire, Norfolk, and Leeds, the Marquis of Carnarvon, Lords Salisbury, Exeter, Arundel, and Derby, the Bishops of Salisbury, Ely, and Durham, the Dean and Chapter of Westminster.”[176]Book iv. c. 22.[177]‘Buxton on Prison Discipline,’ p. 11.[178]As late as 1818 the most capricious rules prevailed as to ironing in various prisons in the country. Thus at Newgate all felons were ironed; it was the same at Chelmsford; but at Bury and Norwich all felons were without irons. Again at Coldbath Fields, only the untried and those sent for re-examination were ironed; at other places the untried were not ironed, and so on. Dr. Dodd, in his ‘Thoughts in Prison,’ refers to the horror he experienced in Newgate from the constant rattling of chains. It seems the most hardened prisoners often clanked their irons for an amusement.[179]Seeante, chap. v. p. 211.[180]‘Dr. Guy on Public Health,’ 183.[181]Lind, ‘Health of our Seamen.’[182]According to Lord Campbell, Lord Chief Justice Lee was attacked with the gaol fever in this year, but recovered. It was through Lee’s remonstrances that certain precautions were adopted, such as plunging a hot iron into a bucket full of vinegar and sweet smelling herbs. ‘Lives of the Lord Chief Justices.’[183]Dr. (afterwards Sir John) Pringle had already published (1750) a pamphlet on hospital and ‘jayl’ fevers, in which he traced the distemper to jails being too small for their numbers, and too insecure to forego the use of dungeons. The only resource, he said, until these two evils were removed, was in ventilators.[184]In this year 1752 another Lord Mayor, Winterbottom, died of the gaol fever. Lord Campbell’s ‘Lives of Lord Chief Justices.’[185]A full account of the ventilator from the pen of Dr. Hales is published in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine,’ vol. xxii. p. 180 (1752), where also is the plan of the windmill which worked it, which plan I have introduced into this chapter. The various letters on the plan refer to the detailed description in the original.[186]For full account of this see next chapter.[187]Lord George Gordon died of it in the new Newgate in 1793.[188]See next chapter.[189]See page 379.[190]Dr. Dodd in his ‘Prison Thoughts’ animadverts strongly upon the evils of Newgate, but completely exonerates Mr. Akerman. “No man could do more,” says Dr. Dodd. “His attention is great, and his kindness and humanity to those in sickness or affliction peculiarly pleasing.”[191]There is a brief account of Newgate about this period in the ‘Memoirs of Casanova,’ who saw the interior of the prison while awaiting bail for an assault. Casanova was committed in ball dress, and received with hisses, which increased to furious abuse when they found he did not answer their questions, being ignorant of English. He felt as if he was in one of the most horrible circles of Dante’s hell. He saw, “Des figures fauves, des regards de vipères, des sinistres sourires tous les caractères de l’envie de la rage, du désespoir; c’était un spectacle épouvantable.”—‘Mémoires,’ vi. 48.[192]Some notion of the density of the prison population in Newgate in those times will be obtained by comparing it with modern ideas on this subject. The following figures give the acreage and average population of three comparatively new prisons.PrisonAcreageAverage prison population.Warwick9A.3R.2P.300St. Albans421100Lincoln16015180[193]See last chapter.[194]Lord George Gordon was the son of Cosmo, Duke of Gordon, and was born in 1750. He entered the navy as a midshipman, but left the service in consequence of a dispute with Lord Sandwich. He sat in Parliament for Ludgershall, and was a bitter opponent of the ministry.[195]Pennant’s ‘London.’[196]‘Barnaby Rudge.’[197]Lord Mansfield’s impartiality at the trial was the subject of general admiration. “He never shewed the slightest tinge of resentment or bias.” Yet with his house were destroyed not only much valuable property, but a mass of private journals and letters, which he had been collecting to form the basis of memoirs of his own times, and the loss of which was quite irreparable.[198]This position may well be questioned.Videvol. ii. cap. i.[199]The Right Honourable Charles Jenkinson was created Lord Hawkesbury in 1787, and made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, as well as President of the Board of Trade. He was an authority in all mercantile and commercial affairs.

[136]The following stanzas were written at the time, and appeared in the ‘British Journal’ of Nov. 28, 1724:—

“Thornhill, ’tis thine to gild with fameThe obscure and raise the humble name;To make the form elude the grave,And Sheppard from oblivion save.Tho’ life in vain the wretch implores,An exile on the farthest shores,Thy pencil brings a kind reprieve,And bids the dying robber live.. . . . . . . . . .Apelles Alexander drew,Cæsar is to Aurelius due,Cromwell in Lilly’s works doth shine,And Sheppard, Thornhill, lives in thine.”

[137]Seeante, p. 268.

[138]Seeante, p. 254.

[139]Ordinary’s account of executions, Nov. 1736.

[140]Seeante, p. 273.

[141]Luttrell, iii. 1695.

[142]Ibid.

[143]I have described this in detail in the next chapter.

[144]‘Life of Lord Hardwicke,’ i. 215.

[145]‘An inquiry into the causes of the late increase of robbers,’ &c. London: 1751.

[146]Fielding, ‘Robbers,’ p. 35.

[147]Soldiers in the Guards, after long and faithful service, were granted leave of absence from military duty in order to take civil situations which did not monopolize all their time. By this means they eked out their scanty pay.

[148]‘A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis,’ by P. Colquhoun, LL.D. London, 1800.

[149]Fielding, p. xxviii.

[150]Ibid., p. xxix.

[151]Savage was tried before Sir Francis Page, commonly known as “the hanging judge,” and whose severity was most notorious. He afterwards admitted that he had been most anxious to hang Savage. In his old age when his health was inquired after, he is reported to have replied, “I keep hanging on, hanging on.”

[152]‘Celebrated Trials,’ iii. 457. ‘Newgate Calendar,’ i. 39. Thornbury, in his ‘Old Stories Retold,’ calls it the King’s Arms, on what authority he does not say.

[153]“What do you bring this fellow here for?” Oneby had cried to the keeper of Newgate when he appeared with Hooper. “Whenever I look at him I shall think of being hanged.” Hooper had a forbidding countenance, but he was an inimitable mimic, and he soon made himself an agreeable companion to the condemned man.

[154]‘Calendar,’ i. 146.

[155]The husband of the Lady Macclesfield, who was mother to Richard Savage. Seeante, p. 340.

[156]‘Life of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke,’ by George Harris, i. 176.

[157]Where Lambeth Suspension Bridge now stands.

[158]The crime of petty treason was established when any person out of malice took away the life of another to whom he or she owed special obedience—as when a servant killed his master, a wife her husband, or an ecclesiastic his superior. The wife’s accomplices in the murder of a husband were not deemed guilty of petty treason.

[159]The infamous Judge Jeffries in 1685 sentenced Elizabeth Gaunt to be burnt alive at Tyburn, for sheltering persons concerned in Monmouth’s rebellion.

[160]As barristers often preferred to do business at their own homes, chambers in the Temple were rather at a discount just then, and their landlords, “preferring tenants of no legal skill to no tenants at all, let them out to any that offered, ...” consequently many private people creep about the Inns of Court.—‘Newgate Calendar,’ i. 470.

[161]‘Newgate Calendar,’ i. 189.

[162]“Beau” Fielding, who was tried at the Old Bailey in 1706 for committing bigamy with the Duchess of Cleveland, is one of the most remarkable instances of this. See ‘Celebrated Trials,’ iii. 534. Also see the trial of the Duchess of Kingston, ‘Remarkable Trials,’ 203. She was tried by the House of Lords, found guilty, but pleaded her peerage and was discharged.

[163]Hackham was present at Dr. Dodd’s execution a short time previously. His remarks on the subject will be found in vol. ii. chap. i.

[164]Quin could not resist the chance of making a sharp speech. When desired by the manager of Covent Garden to go to the front to apologize for Madame Rollau, a celebrated dancer, who could not appear, he said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, Madame Rollau cannot dance to-night, having dislocated her ancle—I wish it had been her neck.”

[165]At this date abroad, Mr. Baretti pointed out, it was not the custom to put knives on the dinner-table, so that even ladies carried them in their pockets for general use.

[166]The boot was the usual punning allusion to Lord Bute in the caricatures of the day; and the petticoat no doubt referred to his undue influence over the Princess of Wales, mother of the reigning sovereign, George III. Seeante, p. 238.

[167]Cant names of the period for drinks.

[168]Walpole’s Letters to Sir Horace Mann.

[169]Wild at last had the audacity to occupy a house in the Old Bailey, opposite the present Sessions House.

[170]There were sometimes as many as sixty or seventy pirates awaiting trial at a time in Newgate, about this period.

[171]By Lord Orford and the Board of Admiralty.

[172]Luttrell.

[173]Seeante, chap. vi. p. 279.

[174]Hume, xi. 418.

[175]The following are some of the great people who owned prisons in those days: “The Dukes of Portland, Devonshire, Norfolk, and Leeds, the Marquis of Carnarvon, Lords Salisbury, Exeter, Arundel, and Derby, the Bishops of Salisbury, Ely, and Durham, the Dean and Chapter of Westminster.”

[176]Book iv. c. 22.

[177]‘Buxton on Prison Discipline,’ p. 11.

[178]As late as 1818 the most capricious rules prevailed as to ironing in various prisons in the country. Thus at Newgate all felons were ironed; it was the same at Chelmsford; but at Bury and Norwich all felons were without irons. Again at Coldbath Fields, only the untried and those sent for re-examination were ironed; at other places the untried were not ironed, and so on. Dr. Dodd, in his ‘Thoughts in Prison,’ refers to the horror he experienced in Newgate from the constant rattling of chains. It seems the most hardened prisoners often clanked their irons for an amusement.

[179]Seeante, chap. v. p. 211.

[180]‘Dr. Guy on Public Health,’ 183.

[181]Lind, ‘Health of our Seamen.’

[182]According to Lord Campbell, Lord Chief Justice Lee was attacked with the gaol fever in this year, but recovered. It was through Lee’s remonstrances that certain precautions were adopted, such as plunging a hot iron into a bucket full of vinegar and sweet smelling herbs. ‘Lives of the Lord Chief Justices.’

[183]Dr. (afterwards Sir John) Pringle had already published (1750) a pamphlet on hospital and ‘jayl’ fevers, in which he traced the distemper to jails being too small for their numbers, and too insecure to forego the use of dungeons. The only resource, he said, until these two evils were removed, was in ventilators.

[184]In this year 1752 another Lord Mayor, Winterbottom, died of the gaol fever. Lord Campbell’s ‘Lives of Lord Chief Justices.’

[185]A full account of the ventilator from the pen of Dr. Hales is published in the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine,’ vol. xxii. p. 180 (1752), where also is the plan of the windmill which worked it, which plan I have introduced into this chapter. The various letters on the plan refer to the detailed description in the original.

[186]For full account of this see next chapter.

[187]Lord George Gordon died of it in the new Newgate in 1793.

[188]See next chapter.

[189]See page 379.

[190]Dr. Dodd in his ‘Prison Thoughts’ animadverts strongly upon the evils of Newgate, but completely exonerates Mr. Akerman. “No man could do more,” says Dr. Dodd. “His attention is great, and his kindness and humanity to those in sickness or affliction peculiarly pleasing.”

[191]There is a brief account of Newgate about this period in the ‘Memoirs of Casanova,’ who saw the interior of the prison while awaiting bail for an assault. Casanova was committed in ball dress, and received with hisses, which increased to furious abuse when they found he did not answer their questions, being ignorant of English. He felt as if he was in one of the most horrible circles of Dante’s hell. He saw, “Des figures fauves, des regards de vipères, des sinistres sourires tous les caractères de l’envie de la rage, du désespoir; c’était un spectacle épouvantable.”—‘Mémoires,’ vi. 48.

[192]Some notion of the density of the prison population in Newgate in those times will be obtained by comparing it with modern ideas on this subject. The following figures give the acreage and average population of three comparatively new prisons.PrisonAcreageAverage prison population.Warwick9A.3R.2P.300St. Albans421100Lincoln16015180

[193]See last chapter.

[194]Lord George Gordon was the son of Cosmo, Duke of Gordon, and was born in 1750. He entered the navy as a midshipman, but left the service in consequence of a dispute with Lord Sandwich. He sat in Parliament for Ludgershall, and was a bitter opponent of the ministry.

[195]Pennant’s ‘London.’

[196]‘Barnaby Rudge.’

[197]Lord Mansfield’s impartiality at the trial was the subject of general admiration. “He never shewed the slightest tinge of resentment or bias.” Yet with his house were destroyed not only much valuable property, but a mass of private journals and letters, which he had been collecting to form the basis of memoirs of his own times, and the loss of which was quite irreparable.

[198]This position may well be questioned.Videvol. ii. cap. i.

[199]The Right Honourable Charles Jenkinson was created Lord Hawkesbury in 1787, and made Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, as well as President of the Board of Trade. He was an authority in all mercantile and commercial affairs.

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