The squalor and uncleanness of the debtors’ side was intensified by constant overcrowding. Prisoners were committed to it quite without reference to its capacity. No remonstrance was attended to, no steps taken to reduce the number of committals, and the governor was obliged to utilize the chapel as a day and night room. Besides this, although the families of debtors were no longer permitted to live with them inside the gaol, hundreds of women and children came in every morning to spend the day there, and there was no limitation whatever to the numbers of visitors admitted to the debtors’ side. Friends arrived about nine a.m., and went out at nine p.m., when as many as two hundred visitors have been observed leaving the debtors’ yards at one time. The day passed in revelry and drunkenness. Although spirituous liquors were forbidden, wine and beer might be had in any quantity, the only limitation being that not more than one bottle of wine or one quart of beer could be issued at one time. No account was taken of the amount of liquors admitted in one day, and debtors might practically have as much as they liked, if they could only pay for it. No attempt was made to check drunkenness, beyondthe penalty of shutting out friends from any ward in which a prisoner exceeded. Quarrelling among the debtors was not unfrequent. Blows were struck, and fights often ensued. For this and other acts of misconduct there was the discipline of the refractory ward, or “strong room” on the debtors’ side. Bad cases were removed to a cell on the felons’ side, and here they were locked in solitary confinement for three days at a time.
Order throughout the debtors’ side was preserved and discipline maintained by a system open to grave abuses, and which had the prescription of long usage, and which was never wholly rooted out for many years to come. This was the pernicious plan of governing by prisoners, or of setting a favoured few in authority over the many. The head of the debtors’ prison was a prisoner called the steward, who was chosen by the whole body from six whom the keeper nominated. This steward was practically supreme. All the allowances of food passed through his hands; he had the control of the poor-box for chance charities, he collected the garnish money, and distributed the weekly grant from the prison charitable fund. In the latter duties he was, however, supervised by three auditors, freely chosen by the prisoners among themselves. The auditors were paid a shilling each for their services each time the poor-box was opened. The steward was also remunerated for his trouble. He had a double allowance of bread, deducted, of course, from the already too limited portion of therest, and no doubt made the meat also pay toll. Under the steward there were captains of wards, chosen in the same way, and performing analogous duties. These subordinate chiefs were also rewarded out of the scanty prison rations. The same system was extended to the criminal side, and cases were on record of the place of wardsman being sold for considerable sums. So valuable were they deemed, that as much as fifty guineas was offered to the keeper for the post.
Enough has been said, probably, to prove that there was room for improvement in the condition and treatment of debtors in the prisons of the city of London. This gradually was forced upon the consciousness of the Corporation, and about 1812 application was made to Parliament for funds to build a new debtors’ prison. Authority was given to raise money on the Orphans’ Fund to the extent of £90,000. A site was purchased between Red Lion and White Cross streets, and a new prison planned, which would accommodate the inmates of Newgate and of the three compters, Ludgate, Giltspur Street, and the Poultry, or about four hundred and seventy-six in all. The evils of association for these debtors were perpetuated, although the plan provided for the separation of the various contingents committed to it. There was no lack of air and light for the new gaol, and several exercising yards. The completion of this very necessary building was, however, much delayed for want of funds, and it was not ready to relieveNewgate till late in 1815. The reforms which were to be attempted in that prison, more particularly as regarded the classification of prisoners, and which were dependent on the space to be gained by the removal of the debtors, could not be carried out till then. It is to be feared that long after the opening of White Cross Street prison, Newgate continued to be a reproach to those responsible for its management.
I pass now to the criminal side of Newgate, which consisted of the six quarters or yards already enumerated and described.[39]The inmates of this part, as distinguished from the debtors, were comprised in four classes:—(1) those awaiting trial; (2) persons under sentence of imprisonment for a fixed period, or until they shall have paid certain fines; (3) transports awaiting removal to the colonies, and (4) capital convicts, condemned to death and awaiting execution. At one time the whole of these different categories were thrown together pell-mell, young and old, the untried with the convicted. An imperfect attempt at classification was, however, made in 1812, and a yard was as far as possible set apart for the untried, or class (1), with whom, under the imperious demand for accommodation, were also associated the misdemeanants, or class (2). This was the chapel yard, with its five wards, which were calculated to hold seventy prisoners, but often held many more. A further sub-classification was attempted by separating at night those charged with misdemeanours fromthose charged with felony, but all mingled freely during the day in the yard. The sleeping accommodation in the chapel-yard wards, and indeed throughout the prison, consisted of a barrack bed, which was a wooden flooring on a slightly inclined plane, with a beam running across the top to serve as a pillow. No beds were issued, only two rugs per prisoner. When each sleeper had the full lateral space allotted to him, it amounted to one foot and a half on the barrack bed; but when the ward was obliged to accommodate double the ordinary number, as was frequently the case, the sleepers covered the entire floor, with the exception of a passage in the middle. All the misdemeanants, whatever their offence, were lodged in this chapel ward. As many various and, according to our ideas, heinous crimes came under this head, in the then existing state of the law, the man guilty of a common assault found himself side by side with the fraudulent, or others who had attempted abominable crimes. In this heterogeneous society were also thrown the unfortunate journalists to whom I have already referred,[40]and on whom imprisonment in Newgate was frequently adjudged for so-called libels, or too out-spoken comments in print. It was particularly recommended by the Committee on Gaols in 1814 that some other and less mixed prison should be used for the confinement of persons convicted of libels. But this suggestion was ignored. Indeed the partial classification attempted seems to have beenabandoned within a year or two. The Hon. H. G. Bennet, who visited Newgate in 1817, saw in one yard, in a total of seventy-two prisoners, thirty-five tried and thirty-seven untried. Of the former, three were transports for life, four for fourteen years, and three of them persons sentenced to fines or short imprisonment—one for little more than a month. Two of the untried were for murder, and several for house-breaking and highway robbery. Nor were the misdemeanants and bail prisoners any longer separated from those whose crimes were of a more serious character. Mr. Bennet refers to a gentleman confined for want of bail, who occupied a room with five others—two committed by the Bankruptcy Commissioner, one for perjury, and two transports. Persons convicted of publishing libels were still immured in the same rooms with transports and felons.
The middle yard, as far as its limits would permit, was appropriated to felons and transports. The wards here were generally very crowded. Each ward was calculated to hold twenty-four, allowing each individual one foot and a half; “a common-sized man,” says the keeper, Mr. Newman, “can turn in nineteen inches.”[41]These twenty-four could just sleep on the barrack bed; when the number was higher, and it often rose to forty, the surplus had to sleep on the floor. The crowding was in consequence of the delay in removing transports. These often remained in Newgate for six months, sometimes ayear, in some cases longer; in one, for seven years—that of a man sentenced to death, for whom great interest had been made, but whom it was not thought right to pardon. Occasionally the transports made themselves so useful in the gaol that they were passed over. Mr. Newman admitted that he had petitioned that certain “trusty men” might be left in the gaol. Constantly associated with these convicted felons were numbers of juveniles, infants of tender years. There were frequently in the middle yard seven or eight children, the youngest barely nine, the oldest only twelve or thirteen, exposed to all the contaminating influences of the place. Mr. Bennet mentions also the case of young men of better stamp, clerks in city offices, and youths of good parentage, “in this dreadful situation,” who had been rescued from the hulks through the kindness and attention of the Secretary of State. “Yet they had been long enough,” he goes on to say, “in the prison associated with the lowest and vilest criminals, with convicts of all ages and characters, to render it next to impossible but that, with the obliteration of all sense of self-respect, the inevitable consequence of such a situation, their morals must have been destroyed; and though distress or the seduction of others might have led to the commission of this their first offence, yet the society they were driven to live in, the language they daily heard, and the lessons they were taught in this academy, must have had a tendency to turn them into the worldhardened and accomplished in the ways of vice and crime.”
Mr. Buxton, in the work already quoted, instances another grievous case of the horrors of indiscriminate association in Newgate. It was that of a person “who practised in the law, and who was connected by marriage with some very respectable families. Having been committed to Clerkenwell, he was sent on to Newgate in a coach, handcuffed to a noted house-breaker, who was afterwards cast for death. The first night in Newgate, and for the subsequent fortnight, he slept in the same bed with a highwayman on one side, and a man charged with murder on the other. Spirits were freely introduced, and although he at first abstained, he found he must adopt the manners of his companions, or that his life would be in danger. They viewed him with some suspicion, as one of whom they knew nothing. He was in consequence put out of the protection of their internal law.” Their code was a subject of some curiosity. When any prisoner committed an offence against the community or against an individual, he was tried by a court in the gaol. A prisoner, generally the oldest and most dexterous thief, was appointed judge, and a towel tied in knots was hung on each side in imitation of a wig. The judge sat in proper form; he was punctiliously styled “my lord.” A jury having been selected and duly sworn, the culprit was then arraigned. Justice, however, was not administered with absolute integrity. A bribe to the judge wascertain to secure acquittal, and the neglect of the formality was as certainly followed by condemnation. Various punishments were inflicted, the heaviest of which was standing in the pillory. This was carried out by putting the criminal’s head through the legs of a chair, and stretching out his arms and tying them to the legs. The culprit was then compelled to carry the chair about with him. But all punishments might readily be commuted into a fine to be spent in gin for judge and jury.
The prisoner mentioned above was continually persecuted by trials of this kind. The most trifling acts were magnified into offences. He was charged with moving something which should not be touched, with leaving a door open, or coughing maliciously to the disturbance of his companions. The evidence was invariably sufficient to convict, and the judge never hesitated to inflict the heaviest penalties. The unfortunate man was compelled at length to adopt the habits of his associates; “by insensible degrees he began to lose his repugnance to their society, caught their flash terms and sung their songs, was admitted to their revels, and acquired, in place of habits of perfect sobriety, a taste for spirits.” His wife visited him in Newgate, and wrote a pitiable account of the state in which she found her husband. He was an inmate of the same ward with others of the most dreadful sort, “whose language and manners, whose female associates of the most abandoned description, and the scenes consequent with such lost wretches, preventedme from going inside but seldom, and I used to communicate with him through the bars from the passage.” One day he was too ill to come down and meet her. She went up to the ward and found him lying down, “pale as death, very ill, and in a dreadfully dirty state, the wretches making game of him, and enjoying my distress; and I learned he had been up with the others the whole night. Though they could not force him to gamble, he was compelled to drink, and I was obliged afterwards to let him have five shillings to pay his share, otherwise he would have been stripped of his clothes.”
Felons who could pay the price were permitted, irrespective of their character or offences, to purchase the greater ease and comfort of the master’s side. The entrance fee was at least 13s.6d.a head, with half-a-crown a week more for bed and bedding, the wards being furnished with barrack bedsteads, upon which each prisoner had the regulation allowance of sleeping room, or about a foot and a half laterally. These fees were in reality a substantial contribution towards the expenses of the gaol; without them the keeper declared that he could not pay the salaries of turnkeys and servants, nor keep the prison going at all. Besides the gaol fees, there was garnish of half-a-guinea, collected by the steward, and spent in providing coals, candles, plates, knives, and forks; while all the occupants of this part of the prison supported themselves; they had the ration of prison bread only, but they had no share in the prison meat or othercharities, and they or their friends found them in food. All who could scrape together the cash seem to have gladly availed themselves of the privilege of entering the master’s side. It was the only way to escape the horrors, the distress, penury, and rags of the common yards. Idleness was not so universally the rule in this part of the gaol. Artizans and others were at liberty to work at their trades, provided they were not dangerous. Tailoring and shoemaking was permitted, but it was deemed unsafe to allow a carpenter or blacksmith to have his tools. All the money earned by prisoners was at their own disposal, and was spent almost habitually in drink, chambering, and wantonness.
The best accommodation the gaol could offer was reserved for the prisoners on the state side, from whom still higher fees were exacted, with the same discreditable idea of swelling the revenues of the prison. To constitute this the aristocratic quarter, unwarrantable demands were made upon the space properly allotted to the female felons,[42]and no lodger was rejected, whatever his status, who offered himself and could bring grist to the mill. The luxury of the state side was for a long time open to all who could pay—the convicted felon, the transport awaiting removal, the lunatic whose case was still undecided,[43]the misdemeanant tried oruntried, the debtor who wished to avoid the discomfort of the crowded debtors’ side, the outspoken newspaper editor, or the daring reporter of parliamentary debates. The better class of inmate complained bitterly of this enforced companionship with the vile, association at one time forbidden by custom, but which greed and rapacity long made the rule. The fee for admission to the state side, as fixed by the table of fees, was three guineas, but Mr. Newman declared that he never took more than two. Ten and sixpence a week more was charged as rent for a single bed; where two or more slept in a bed the rent was seven shillings a week each. Prisoners who could afford it sometimes paid for four beds, at the rate of twenty-eight shillings, and so secured the luxury of a private room. A Mr. Lundy, charged with forgery, was thus accommodated on the state side for upwards of five years. But the keeper protested that no single prisoner could thus monopolize space if the state side was crowded. The keeper went still further in his efforts to make money. He continued the ancient practice of letting out a portion of his own house, and by a poetical fiction treated it as an annexe of the state side. Mr. Davison, sent to Newgate for embezzlement, and whose case is given in the preceding chapter, was accommodated with a room in Mr. Newman’s house at the extravagant rental of thirty guineas per week; Mr. Cobbett was also a lodger of Mr. Newman’s; and so were anymembers of the aristocracy, if they happened to be in funds—among whom was the Marquis of Sligo in 1811.
The female felons’ wards I shall describe at length in the next chapter, which will deal with Mrs. Fry’s philanthropic exertions at this period in this particular part of the prison. These wards were always full to overflowing; sometimes double the number the rooms could accommodate were crowded into them. There was a master’s side for females who could pay the usual fees, but they associated with the rest in the one narrow yard common to all. The tried and the untried, young and old, were herded together; sometimes girls of thirteen, twelve, even ten or nine years of age, were exposed to “all the contagion and profligacy which prevailed in this part of the prison.” There was no separation even for the women under sentence of death, who lived in a common and perpetually crowded ward. Only when the order of execution came down were those about to suffer placed apart in one of the rooms in the arcade of the middle ward.
I have kept till the last that part of the prison which was usually the last resting-place of so many. The old press yard has been fully described in a previous chapter.[44]The name still survived in the new press yard, which was the receptacle of the male condemned prisoners. It was generally crowded, like the rest of the prison. Except in murder cases, where the executionwas generally very promptly performed, strange and inconceivable delay occurred in carrying out the extreme sentence. Hence there was a terrible accumulation of prisoners in the condemned cells. Once, during the long illness of George III., as many as one hundred were there waiting the “Report,” as it was called. At another time there were fifty, one of whom had been under sentence a couple of years. Mr. Bennet speaks of thirty-eight capital convicts he found in the press yard in February 1817, five of whom had been condemned the previous July, four in September, and twenty-nine in October. This procrastination bred certain callousness. Few realizing that the dreadful fate would overtake them, dismissed the prospect of death, and until the day was actually fixed, spent the time in roystering, swearing, gambling, or playing at ball. Visitors were permitted access to them without stint; unlimited drink was not denied them provided it was obtained in regulated quantities at one time. These capital convicts, says Mr. Bennet, “lessened the ennui and despair of their situation by unbecoming merriment, or sought relief in the constant application of intoxicating stimulants. I saw Cashman[45]a few hours before his execution, smokingand drinking with the utmost unconcern and indifference.” Those who were thus reckless reacted upon the penitent who knew their days were numbered, and their gibes and jollity counteracted the ordinary’s counsels or the independent preacher’s earnest prayers. For while Roman Catholics and Dissenters were encouraged to see ministers of their own persuasion, a number of amateurs were ever ready to give their gratuitous ministrations to the condemned.
The prisoners in the press yard had free access during the day to the yard and large day room; at night they were placed in the fifteen cells, two, three, or more together, according to the total number to be accommodated. They were never left quite alone for fear of suicide, and for the same reason they were searched for weapons or poisons. But they nevertheless frequently managed to secrete the means of making away with themselves, and accomplished their purpose. Convicted murderers were kept continuously in the cells on bread and water, in couples, from the time of sentence to that of execution, which was about three or four days generally, from Friday to Monday, so as to include one Sunday, on which day there was a special service for the condemned in the prison chapel. This latter was an ordeal which all dreaded, and many avoided by denying their faith. The condemned occupied an open pewin the centre of the chapel, hung with black; in front of them, upon a table, was a black coffin in full view. The chapel was filled with a curious but callous congregation, who came to stare at the miserable people thus publicly exposed. Well might Mr. Bennet write that the condition of the condemned side was the most prominent of the manifold evils in the present system of Newgate, “so discreditable to the metropolis.”
Yet it must have been abundantly plain to the reader that the other evils existing were great and glaring. A brief summary of them will best prove this. The gaol was neither suitable nor sufficiently large. It was not even kept weather-tight. The roof of the female prison, says the grand jury in their presentment in 1813, let in the rain. Supplies of common necessaries, such as have now been part of the furniture of every British gaol for many years, were meagre or altogether absent. The rations of food were notoriously inadequate, and so carelessly distributed, that many were left to starve. So unjust and unequal was the system, that the allowance to convicted criminals was better than that of the innocent debtor, and the general insufficiency was such that it multiplied beyond all reason the number of visitors, many of whom came merely as the purveyors of food to their friends.
The prison allowances were eked out by the broken victuals generously given by several eating-house keepers in the city, such as Messrs. Birch of Cornhill and Messrs. Leach and Dollimore of Ludgate Hill.These were fetched away in a large tub on a truck by a turnkey. Amongst the heap was often the meat that had made turtle soup, which, when heated and stirred together in a saucepan, was said to be very good eating. The bedding was scanty; fuel and light had to be purchased out of prisoners’ private means; clothing was issued but rarely, even to prisoners almost in nakedness, and as a special charitable gift. Extortion was practised right and left. Garnish continued to be demanded long after it had disappeared in other and better-regulated prisons. The fees on reception and discharge must be deemed exorbitant, when it is remembered the impoverished class who usually crowded the gaol; and they were exacted to relieve a rich corporation from paying for the maintenance of their own prison. This imposition of fees left prisoners destitute on their discharge, without funds to support them in their first struggle to recommence life, with ruined character, bad habits, and often bad health contracted in the gaol. A further and a more iniquitous method of extorting money was still practised, that of loading newly-arrived prisoners until they paid certain fees. Ironing was still the rule, not only for the convicted, but for those charged with felonies; only the misdemeanants escaped. At the commencement of every sessions, such of the untried as had purchased “easement” of irons were called up and re-fettered, preparatory to their appearance in the Old Bailey. Irons were seldom removed from the convicted until discharge; sometimes the wearer wasdeclared medically unfit, or he obtained release by long good conduct, or the faithful discharge of some petty office, such as gatesman or captain of a ward. The irons weighed from three to four pounds, but heavier irons, seven or eight pounds’ weight, were imposed in case of misconduct; and when there had been an attempt at escape, the culprit was chained down to the floor by running a chain through his irons which prevented him from climbing to the window of his cell. Among other excuses offered for thus manacling all almost without exception, was that it was the best and safest method of distinguishing a prisoner from a stranger and temporary visitor. Clothes or prison uniform would not have served the purpose, for a disguise can be rapidly and secretly put on, whereas irons cannot well be exchanged without loss of time and attracting much attention.[46]
The unchecked admission of crowds of visitors to the felons’ as well as the debtors’ side was another unmixed evil. By this means spirits, otherwise unattainable and strictly prohibited, were smuggled into the gaol. Searches[47]were made certainly, but they were too often superficial, or they might be evaded bya trifling bribe. Hence the frequent cases of drunkenness, of which no notice was taken, unless people grew riotous in their cups, and attracted attention by their disorderly behaviour. Another frightful consequence of this indiscriminate admission was the influx of numbers of abandoned women, only a few of whom had the commendable prudery to pass themselves off as the wives of prisoners. Any reputed, and indeed any real, wife might spend the night in Newgate if she would pay the shilling fee, commonly known as the “bad money,” a base payment which might have done something towards increasing the prison receipts, had it not been appropriated by the turnkey who winked at this evasion of the rules. Among the daily visitors were members of the criminal classes still at large, the thieves and burglars who carried on the active business of their profession, from which their confederates were temporarily debarred. One notorious character, while a prisoner awaiting transfer to the hulks, kept open house, so to speak, and entertained daily within the walls a select party of the most noted thieves in London. This delectable society enticed into their set a clerk who had been imprisoned for fraud, and offered him half the booty if he would give full information as to the transactions and correspondence of his late employers. Owing to the facility of intercourse between inside and outside, many crimes were doubtless hatched in Newgate. Some of the worst and most extensive burglaries were plannedthere. Forged notes had been fabricated, false money coined, and both passed out in quantities to be circulated through the country. “I believe,” says Mr. Bennet in the letter already largely quoted, “that there is no place in the metropolis where more crimes are projected or where stolen property is more secreted than in Newgate.”
These malpractices were fostered by the absence of all supervision and the generally unbroken idleness. Although attempted partially at Bridewell, and more systematically at the new Millbank penitentiary, but just open (1816), the regular employment of prisoners had never yet been accepted as a principle in the metropolitan prisons. Insuperable difficulties were still supposed to stand in the way of any general employment of prisoners at their trades. There was fear as to the unrestricted use of tools, limits of space, the interference of the ill-disposed, who would neither work nor let others do so, and the danger of losing material, raw or manufactured. Many years were to elapse before these objections should be fairly met and universally overcome. It was not strange, therefore, that the inmates of Newgate should turn their unoccupied brains and idle hands to all manner of mischief; that when they were not carousing, plotting, or scheming, they should gamble with dice or cards, and play at bumble puppy or some other disreputable game of chance.
The report of the Committee of the House of Commons painted so black a picture of Newgateas then conducted, that the Corporation were roused in very shame to undertake some kind of reform. The above-mentioned report was ordered to be printed upon the 9th May. Upon the 29th July the same year, the court of aldermen appointed a committee of its own body, assisted by the town clerk, Mr. Dance, city surveyor, son to the architect of Newgate, and Mr. Addison, keeper of Newgate, to make a visitation of the gaols supposed to be the best managed, including those of Petworth and Gloucester.[48]This committee was to compare allowances, examine rules, and certify as to the condition of prisoners; also to make such proposals as might appear salutary, and calculated to improve Newgate and the rest of the city gaols.
This committee made its report in September the following year, and an excellent report it is, so far as its recommendations are concerned. The committee seems to have fully realized, even at this early date (1815), many of the indispensable conditions of a model prison according to modern ideas. It admitted the paramount necessity for giving every prisoner a sleeping cell to himself, an amount of enlightenment which is hardly general among European nations at this the latter end of the nineteenth century,[49]several of which still fall far short of our English ideal, thatall prisoners should always be in separate cells by night, and those of short sentences by day. It recommended day cells or rooms for regular labour, which should be compulsory upon all transports and prisoners sentenced to hard labour, the work being constant and suitable, with certain hours of relaxation and for food and exercise. The personal cleanliness of all prisoners was to be insisted upon; they should be made to wash at least once a day, with the penalty of forfeiting the day’s allowance of food, an increase of which the committee had recommended. The provision of more baths was also suggested, and the daily sweeping out of the prison. The clothes of prisoners arriving dirty, or in rags, should be fumigated before worn in the gaol, but as yet no suggestion was made to provide prison uniform. A laundry should be established, and a matron appointed on the female side, where all the prisoners’ washing could be performed. Proper hours for locking and unlocking prisoners should be insisted upon; a bell should give notice thereof, and of meal-hours, working-hours, or of escapes.
The committee took upon itself to lay down stringent rules for the discipline of the prison. The gaoler should be required to visit every part and see every prisoner daily; the chaplain should perform service, visit the sick, instruct the prisoners, “give spiritual advice and administer religious consolation” to all who might need them;[50]the surgeon shouldsee all prisoners, whether ill or well, once a week, and take general charge of the infirmaries. All three, governor, chaplain, and surgeon, should keep journals, which should be inspected periodically by the visiting magistrates. It should be peremptorily forbidden to the keeper or any officer to make a pecuniary profit out of the supplies of food, fuel, or other necessaries. No prisoner should be allowed to obtain superior accommodation on the payment of any fees. Fees indeed should be generally abolished, garnish also. No prisoners should in future be ironed, except in cases of misconduct, provided only that their security was not jeopardized, and dependent upon the enforcement of another new rule, which recommended restrictions upon the number of visitors admitted. No wine or beer should be in future admitted into or sold in the gaol, except for the use of the debtors, or as medical comforts for the infirmary. Drunkenness, if it ever occurred, should be visited with severe punishment; gaming of all sorts should be peremptorily forbidden under heavy pains and penalties. The feelings of the condemned prisoners should no longer be outraged by their exposure in the chapel, and the chapel should be rearranged, so that the various classes might be seated separately, and so as not to see each other.
It will hardly be denied that these proposals went to the root of the matter. Had they been accepted in their entirety, little fault could in future have been found with the managers of Newgate. In common justice to them, it must be admitted that immediateeffect was given to all that could be easily carried out. The state side ceased to exist, and the female prisoners thus regained the space of which their quadrangle had been robbed. The privileges of the master’s side also disappeared; fees were nominally abolished, and garnish was scotched, although not yet killed outright. A certain number of bedsteads were provided, and there was a slight increase in the ration of bread. But here the recommendations touched at once upon the delicate subject of expense, and it is clear that the committee hesitated on this score. It made this too the excuse for begging the most important issue of the whole question. The committee did not deny the superior advantages offered by such prisons as Gloucester and Petworth, but it at once deprecated the idea that the city could follow the laudable example thus set in the provinces. “Were a metropolitan prison erected on the same lines, with all the space not only for air and exercise, but for day rooms and sleeping cells,” it would cover some thirty acres, and cost a great deal more than the city, with the example of Whitecross Street prison before it, could possibly afford. The committee does not seem to have yet understood that Newgate could be only and properly replaced by a new gaol built on the outskirts, as Holloway eventually was,[51]and permitted itself to be altogether countered and checked in its efforts towards reform by the prohibitory costliness of the land about Newgate. With the seeming impossibilityof extending the limits of the prison as it then stood, all chances of classification and separation vanished, and the greatest evils remained untouched. All the committee could do in this respect was to throw the responsibility on others. It pointed out that the Government was to blame for the overcrowding, and might diminish it if it chose. It was very desirable that there should be a more speedy removal of transports from Newgate to the ships. Again, there was the new Millbank penitentiary now ready for occupation. Why not relieve Newgate by drawing more largely upon the superior accommodation which Millbank offered?
Absence of religious and moral instruction in Newgate a hundred years ago—Chaplains not always zealous—Unprofessional amateur enthusiasts minister to the prisoners—Christian Knowledge Society—Silas Told, his life and work—Wesley leads him to prison visitation—Goes to Newgate regularly—Chaplain opposes his visits—Attends the condemned to the gallows—Attends Mary Edmondson—The gentlemen Highwaymen—Mrs. Brownrigg—Alexander Cruden of the ‘Concordance’ also visits Newgate—More precise account of a neglectful Chaplain—Dr. Forde—His hatred of amateur preachers—In his element in the chair of a ‘free-and-easy’—Private philanthropy active—Various societies formed—Prison schools—The female side the most disgraceful part of the prison—Mrs. Fry’s first visit—Her second visit—Awful description of interior of gaol—Ill-treatment of female prisoners—Their irons—Where Mrs. Fry commenced—The School—The Matron—Work obtained—Rules framed—Rapid improvement of Newgate—Female prison reformed—Publicity follows—Newgate becomes a show.
Absence of religious and moral instruction in Newgate a hundred years ago—Chaplains not always zealous—Unprofessional amateur enthusiasts minister to the prisoners—Christian Knowledge Society—Silas Told, his life and work—Wesley leads him to prison visitation—Goes to Newgate regularly—Chaplain opposes his visits—Attends the condemned to the gallows—Attends Mary Edmondson—The gentlemen Highwaymen—Mrs. Brownrigg—Alexander Cruden of the ‘Concordance’ also visits Newgate—More precise account of a neglectful Chaplain—Dr. Forde—His hatred of amateur preachers—In his element in the chair of a ‘free-and-easy’—Private philanthropy active—Various societies formed—Prison schools—The female side the most disgraceful part of the prison—Mrs. Fry’s first visit—Her second visit—Awful description of interior of gaol—Ill-treatment of female prisoners—Their irons—Where Mrs. Fry commenced—The School—The Matron—Work obtained—Rules framed—Rapid improvement of Newgate—Female prison reformed—Publicity follows—Newgate becomes a show.
AMONGthe many drawbacks from which the inmates of Newgate suffered through the eighteenth and the early part of the nineteenth century, was the absence of proper religious and moral instruction. The value of the ministrations of the ordinary, who was the official ghostly adviser, entirely depended upon hispersonal qualities. Now and again he was an earnest and devoted man, to whom the prisoners might fully open their hearts. More often he was careless and indifferent, satisfied to earn his salary by the slightest and most perfunctory discharge of his sacred duties. There were ordinaries whose fame rested rather upon their powers of digestion than in polemics or pulpit oratory. The Newgate chaplain had to say grace at city banquets, and was sometimes called upon to eat three consecutive dinners without rising from the table. One in particular was noted for his skill in compounding a salad, another for his jovial companionship. But the ordinary took life easy, and beyond conducting the services, did little work. Only when executions were imminent was he especially busy. It behoved then to collect matter for his account of the previous life and the misdeeds of the condemned, with their demeanour at Tyburn, and this, according to contemporary records, led him to get all the information he could from the malefactors who passed through his hands. In the history of the press yard there is an account of the proceedings of the chaplain, Mr. Smith, which may be somewhat over-coloured, but which has the appearance of truth. It was the ordinary’s custom to give interviews in his private closet to those condemned to death, and cross-examine them closely. One day a young fellow was brought before him, to whom he said at once, “Well, boy, now is the time to unbosom thyself to me. Thou hast been a great sabbath-breakerin thy time I warrant thee? The neglect of going to church regularly has brought thee under these unhappy circumstances.” “Not I, good sir,” was the reply; “I never neglected going to some church, if I was in health, morning and evening every Lord’s day.” The lad told truth, for his business took him to such places of resort for the better carrying on his trade, which was that of a pickpocket. Mr. Smith was not to be done out of his confession. “No sabbath-breaker? then thou hast been an abominable drunkard?” This the criminal denied, declaring that he had always had a mortal aversion to strong drinks. The chaplain continued to press the criminal, but could find that he had been guilty of nothing more than thieving, and as this was a topic he could not enlarge upon in his pamphlet, he dismissed the lad, to be entered in his account as an obstinate, case-hardened rogue.
But while the official lacked zeal or religious fervour, there were not wanting others more earnest and enthusiastic to add their unprofessional but devoted efforts to the half-hearted ministrations of the ordinary of Newgate. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, when the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge was first formed, Dr. Bray and other members visited Newgate, and made its inmates their especial care for a time. A prominent figure in the philanthropic annals of Newgate a little later is that of Silas Told, who devoted many years of his life to the spiritual needsof the prisoners. Told’s career is full of peculiar interest. He was a pious child; both father and mother were religious folk, and brought him up carefully. According to his own memoirs, when quite an infant he and his sister Dulcibella were wont to wander into the woods and fields to converse about “God and happiness.” Told passed through many trials and vicissitudes in his early years. At thirteen he went to sea as an apprentice, and suffered much ill-usage. He made many voyages to the West Indies and to the Guinea coast, being a horrified and unwilling witness of some of the worst phases of the slave trade. He fell into the hands of piratical Spaniards, was cast away on a reef, saved almost by a miracle, last of all was pressed on board a man-of-war. Here, on board H.M.S. ‘Phœnix,’ his religious tendencies were strengthened by a pious captain, and presently he married and left the sea for ever. After this he became a schoolmaster in Essex, then a clerk and book-keeper in London. Here he came under the influence of John Wesley, and although predisposed against the Methodists, he was profoundly impressed by their leader’s preaching. While listening to a sermon by John Wesley on the suddenness of conversion, Told heard another voice say to him, “This is the truth,” and from that time forth he became a zealous Methodist.
It was Wesley who led him to prison visitation. He was at that time schoolmaster of the Foundryschool, and his call to his long and devoted labours in Newgate were brought about in this wise. “In the year 1744,” to quote his own words, “I attended the children one morning at the five o’clock preaching, when Mr. Wesley took his text out of the twenty-fifth chapter of St. Matthew. When he read ‘I was sick and in prison, and ye visited me not,’ I was sensible of my negligence in never visiting the prisoners during the course of my life, and was filled with horror of mind beyond expression. This threw me well-nigh into a state of despondency, as I was totally unacquainted with the measures requisite to be pursued for that purpose. However, the gracious God, two or three days after, sent a messenger to me in the school, who informed me of the malefactors that were under sentence of death, and would be glad of any of our friends who could go and pray with them. The messenger, whose name was Sarah Peters, gave me to understand that they were all much awakened, and that one of them, John Lancaster, was converted, and full of the grace of God. In consequence of this reviving information, I committed my school without an hour’s delay to my trusty usher, and went with Sarah Peters to Newgate, where we had admittance to the cell wherein they were confined.”
Silas Told found Lancaster in a state of religious exaltation, thanking God that he had been sent to Newgate, and praying while they knocked his irons off, till even the attendant sheriff shed tears.
Rev. Mr. Whitfield Preaching on Kennington CommonRev. Mr. Whitfield Preaching on Kennington Common
Silas accompanied the condemned men to Tyburn, and saw the gallows for the first time. He tells us that he went not without much shame and fear, because he clearly perceived the greater part of the spectators considered him as one of the sufferers. Lancaster, on arriving at the fatal tree, lifted up his eyes thereto, and said, “Blessed be God,” then prayed extemporary in a very excellent manner, and the others behaved with great discretion. Lancaster was friendless, and no one came forward to give the body interment; so the “surgeon’s mob” secured it, and carried it over to Paddington for dissection. Scarcely had it disappeared before a party of sailors came on the scene and demanded what had become of it. They followed the “surgeon’s mob,” recovered the body, and carried it in state through Islington and Hounsditch till they were tired. Then they dropped it upon the first doorstep. The story ends most dramatically, and Told declares that an old woman, disturbed by the uproar, came down and recognized in John Lancaster’s corpse the body of her own son.
After this first visit Told went regularly to Newgate. He describes the place, twenty-one years later, but still remembered vividly, as “such an emblem of the infernal pit as he never saw before.” However, he struggled bravely on, having a constant pressure upon his mind “to stand up for God in the midst of them,” and praying much “for wisdom and fortitude.” He preached as often as he was permittedto both felons and debtors. But for the first few years, when attending the malefactors, he met with so many repulses from the keeper and ordinary, as well as from the prisoners themselves, that he was often greatly discouraged. “But notwithstanding I more vehemently pressed through all,” becoming the more resolute and “taking no denial.” His most bitter opponent, as was not unnatural, was the ordinary, Mr. Taylor, who would constantly station himself on Sunday mornings a few doors from Newgate, and wait there patiently for a couple of hours or more to obstruct his entrance, at the same time forbidding the turnkeys to give him admittance. Told’s persistence generally got him through, so that most Sunday mornings he had an opportunity of preaching on the debtors’ side to a congregation of forty or more. His influence among the debtors was so great that they readily formed themselves, at his request, into a society or organization, bound by rules and regulations to strict religious observances. In this he was ably seconded by the “circumspection” of two or three prisoners who highly approved of his proposals, and exercised a close watch on the others, whom they would not “suffer to live in any outward sin.” For a considerable time the debtors paid regular attention to his preachings and the meetings of the society. After some time, however, the ordinary “raised a great tumult,” and managed ever after to shut Silas Told out from that side of the prison.
Told was not to be repressed entirely. In spite of all opposition, he still visited the felons, among whom there was a blessed work, especially among the condemned malefactors. He frequently preached during the space which intervened between sentence and execution; he constantly visited the sick in all parts of the prison, which he tells us he had “reason to believe was made a blessing to many of their souls.” His zeal was so great that he spared no pains to do all the good in his power, “embracing every opportunity, both in hearing and speaking, so that in process of time he preached in every prison, as well as in every workhouse, in and about London, and frequently travelled to almost every town within twelve miles of the metropolis.”
Silas Told has left us several of his personal experiences in attending upon the condemned. One of the most interesting cases is that of Mary Edmonson, who was convicted of murdering her aunt, on slight evidence, and whose guilt seems doubtful. When the time of her departure for Tyburn approached, Silas begged the sheriff to let him visit her as soon as possible. The sheriff asked him if he was a clergyman. “No, sir,” replied Told. “Are you a Dissenting minister?” “I answered him ‘No.’ ” “What are you then?” he went on. Silas replied that he was one who preached the gospel, and who wished to be the means of bringing the prisoner to confession. The sheriff then bade Told seize hold of his bridle-rein, and go by his side to the place of execution;although he cautioned him against the attempt, there being a riotous mob all along the streets, who were fiercely incensed against the poor condemned woman. “As we were proceeding on the road,”—let Silas tell his own story,—“the sheriff’s horse being close to the cart, I looked at her from under the horse’s bridle, and said, ‘My dear, look to Jesus.’ This salutary advice quickened her spirit, insomuch that although she did not look about her before, yet she turned herself round to me and joyfully answered, ‘Sir, I bless God I can look to Jesus for my comfort!’ This produced a pleasant smile on her countenance, which when the sons of violence perceived, they d—d her in a shameful manner; this was accompanied with a vengeful shout, ‘See how bold she is! See how the ---- laughs!’
“At length we came to the gallows, where many officers were stationed on horseback, besides numbers more on foot, furnished with constables’ staves. When the cart was backed under the gallows, a very corpulent man trod on my foot with such weight that I really thought he had taken it quite off; however, the sheriff soon cleared the way, and formed an arrangement of constables round the cart, then directed some of them to put me into it, in order that I might be of all the service to the malefactor which lay in my power; the sheriff himself standing behind the cart, the better to avail himself of my discourses with her. When she was tied up I began to address her nearly in the same words I did at the Peacock, pressing upon her an acknowledgment of the murder inthe most solemn manner, but she declared her innocence in the presence of the sheriff. I then interrogated her. ‘Did you not commit the fact? Had you no concern therein? Were you not interested in the murder?’ She answered, ‘I am as clear of the whole affair as I was the day my mother brought me into the world.’ The sheriff on hearing these words shed plenty of tears, and said, ‘Good God! it is a second Coleman’s case!’ This circumstance likewise brought tears from many persons who heard her. When I was getting out of the cart the executioner put the handkerchief over her eyes, but she quickly moved it away, and, addressing herself to the multitude, begged them to pray that God would bring to light, when she was departed, the cause of the assassination, saying she had no doubt but the prayers of such persons would be heard; but repeated her innocence, solemnly declaring that she was as ignorant of the crime for which she was going to suffer as at the day of her birth; and added also, ‘I do not lay anything to the charge of my Maker, He has an undoubted right to take me out of this world as seemeth Him good; and although I am clear of this murder, yet I have sinned against Him in many various instances; but I bless God He hath forgiven me all my sins.’ Her kinsman then came up into the cart, and would fain have saluted her; but she mildly turned her face aside, strongly suspecting him to be the assassin.
“After her kinsman had gone out of the cart, the executioner a second time was putting the handkerchiefover her face, when she again turned it aside, looking at the sheriff, and saying, ‘I think it cruel that none is suffered to pray by me.’ The sheriff then desired me, for God’s sake, to go a second time into the cart and render my prayers with her, which when finished, she began to pray extempore, and in a most excellent manner. When she had concluded her prayer, the executioner performed his part, and being turned off, her body dropped against my right shoulder, nor did she once struggle or move, but was as still as if she had hung for three hours.”
One other case I will extract from Silas Told, as it possesses some peculiar features. It is that of the amateur highwaymen who took to the road as a fitting frolic to end a day’s pleasure. Messrs. Morgan, Whalley, Brett, and Dupree, and two more, had dined freely at Chelmsford to celebrate an election. Having “glutted themselves with immoderate eating and drinking,” they went out on the highway to rob the first person they came across. This happened to be an Essex farmer, whom they stripped of all he had. The farmer got help, followed them into Chelmsford, where they were captured, sent to London, tried at the Old Bailey, and cast for death. They were all of good station—Brett the son of a clergyman in Dublin, Whalley a man of fortune, Dupree a gentleman, and Morgan an officer on board one of His Majesty’s ships of war. The last was engaged to Lady E—— Howard, a daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, who frequently visited Mr. Morgan in Newgate,Told being generally present at their interviews. Lady E—— went daily to the king, as did many other persons of great influence, to beg Mr. Morgan’s life; but His Majesty steadfastly rejected all petitions, stating that to do so would be to show partiality and a want of justice. But the devoted woman would not forego all hope, and, the morning before the execution, again appeared, and fell upon her knees at the king’s feet. “My lady,” said His Majesty, “there is no end to your importunity. I will spare his life upon condition that he is not acquainted therewith till he arrives at the place of execution.” This was accordingly carried. Brett, Whalley, and Dupree were actually tied up to the gallows. Morgan and two others followed in a second cart, when the sheriff rode up with the respite for Morgan.
“It is hard to express”—I again quote from Told—“the sudden alarm this made among the multitude; and when I turned round and saw one of the prisoners out of the cart, falling to the ground, he having fainted away at the sudden news, I was seized with terror, as I thought it was a rescue rather than a reprieve; but when I beheld Morgan put into a coach, and perceived that Lady E. H. was seated therein, my fear was at an end.
“As soon as Morgan was gone, a venerable gentleman, addressing himself to Dupree, begged him to look steadfastly to God, in whose presence he would shortly appear, and hoped the mercy his companion had received would have no bad effect upon him.Dupree, with all calmness and composure of mind, said, ‘Sir, I thank God that him they reprieved; it doesn’t by any means affect me.’ This gave the gentleman much satisfaction. When prayers were ended, I addressed each of them in the most solemn words I was capable of, which I hope was not in vain, as they all appeared entirely resigned to their fate. Brett earnestly craved the prayers of the multitude, and conjured them all to take warning by the untimely end of the three objects of their present attention. When they were turned off, and the mob nearly dispersed, I hastened back to Newgate, and there seriously conversed with Morgan, who, in consequence of the unexpected reprieve, was scarcely recovered.”
Silas Told continued his labours for many years. In 1767 he visited the notorious Mrs. Brownrigg, who was sentenced to be hanged for whipping her servant-maid to death, and whom he accompanied to the gallows. His death occurred in 1779. He lived to hear of Howard’s philanthropic exertions, and to see the introduction of some small measure of prison reform.
While Silas Told was thus engaged, another but a more erratic and eccentric philanthropist paid constant visits to Newgate. This was Alexander Cruden, the well-known, painstaking compiler of the ‘Concordance.’ For a long time he came daily to the gaol, to preach and instruct the prisoners in the gospel, rewarding the most diligent and attentivewith money, till he found that the cash thus disbursed was often spent in drink the moment his back was turned. He did more good than this. Through Mr. Cruden’s solicitations a sentence of death upon a forger, Richard Potter, was commuted to one of transportation.
More precise details of the manner in which a Newgate ordinary interpreted his trust will be found in the evidence of the Rev. Brownlow Forde, LL.D., before the committee of 1814. Dr. Forde took life pretty easy. Had a prisoner sent for him, he told the committee, he might have gone, but as no one did send, except they were sick and thought themselves at death’s door, he confined his ministrations to the condemned, whom he visited twice a week in the day room of the press yard, or daily after the order for execution had arrived. He repudiated the notion that he had anything to do with the state of morals of the gaol. He felt no obligation to instruct youthful prisoners, or attend to the spiritual needs of the mere children so often thrown into Newgate. He never went to the infirmary unless sent for, and did not consider it his duty to visit the sick, and often knew nothing of a prisoner’s illness unless he was warned to attend the funeral. Among other reasons, he said that as the turnkeys were always busy, there was no one to attend him. While the chaplain was thus careless and apathetic, the services he conducted were little likely to be edifying or decorous. The most disgraceful sceneswere common in the prison chapel. As the prisoners trooped into the galleries they shouted and halloed to their friends in the body of the church. Friends interchanged greetings, and “How d’ye do, Sall?” was answered by “Gallows well, Conkey Beau,” as the men recognized their female acquaintances, and were recognized in turn. The congregation might be pretty quiet after the chaplain had made his appearance, but more often it was disorderly from first to last. Any disposed to behave well were teased and laughed at by others. Unrestricted conversation went on, accompanied by such loud yawning, laughing, or coughing as almost impeded the service. No one in authority attempted to preserve order; the gatesmen, themselves prisoners, might expostulate, but the turnkeys who were present ignored any disturbance until reminded of their duty by the chaplain. The keeper never attended service. It was suggested to him that he might have a pew in the chapel with a private entrance to it from his own house, but nothing came of the proposal. It was not incumbent upon the prisoners, except those condemned to death, to attend chapel. Sometimes it was crowded, sometimes there was hardly a soul. In severe weather the place, in which there was no fire, was nearly empty. It was very lofty, very cold, and the prisoners, ill clad, did not care to shiver through the service. On “curiosity days,” those of the condemned sermon, more came, including debtors and visitors from outside, who thronged to see the demeanour of thewretched convicts under the painful circumstances already described. The service must have been conducted in a very slovenly and irreverent manner. Dr. Forde had no clerk, unless it chanced that some one in the condemned pew knew how to read. If not, there were sometimes no responses, and the “whole service was apt to be thrown into confusion.”[52]
A man who did so little himself could hardly be expected to view with much favour the undisciplined efforts of amateurs and outsiders. In his opinion the prisoners were only harassed and worried by the Dissenting ministers and others who “haunted the gaol.” Dr. Forde said they (the prisoners) did not like it. “It was not to be expected of them, with their habits, that they should be crammed with preaching and prayers.” They bore with the visitation, however, hoping to get from the preacher a loaf, or money, or bread and cheese; although the tables were occasionally turned on them, and the visitor, according to Dr. Forde, “would eat up the mutton chop and drink the beer of some well-to-do prisoner, then go to prayers, and depart.” These ministers he styled Methodist preachers, or “clergymen who affect to be methodistical preachers,” although one, according to him, was a “raggedly-dressed Thames lighterman,” who presumed to come in and expound the Scriptures. Dr. Forde makes no mention of Mr. Baker, who must have been a constant visitor in his day—a “white-headed old man” who was in frequent attendance upon theprisoners when Mrs. Fry began her labours, and who had for years “devoted much time and attention to unostentatious but invaluable visits in Newgate.”[53]
Dr. Forde seems to have been more in his element when taking the chair at a public-house ‘free-and-easy.’ In the ‘Book for a Rainy Day,’ already quoted, Mr. Smith gives us an account of a visit paid to Dr. Forde at a public-house in Hatton Garden. “Upon entering the club-room, we found the Doctor most pompously seated in a superb masonic chair, under a stately crimson canopy placed between the windows. The room was clouded with smoke, whiffed to the ceiling, which gave me a better idea of what I had heard of the ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’ than any place I had seen. There were present at least a hundred associates of every denomination.”
It is consoling to find that while officials slumbered, private philanthropy was active, and had been in some cases for years. Various societies and institutions had been set on foot to assist and often replace public justice in dealing with criminals. The Marine Society grew out of a subscription started by Justices Fielding and Welch, in 1756, for the purpose of clothing vagrant and friendless lads and sending them on board the fleet. The Philanthropic Society had been established in 1789 by certain benevolent persons, to supply a home for destitute boys and girls, and this admirable institution steadily grew and prospered. In 1794 it moved to larger premises, and in 1817 it had anincome of £6000 a year, partly from subscriptions and legacies, partly from the profit on labour executed by its inmates.[54]In 1816 another body of well-meaning people, moved by the “alarming increase of juvenile delinquency in the metropolis,” formed a society to investigate its causes, inquire into the individual cases of boys actually under sentence, and afford such relief upon release as might appear deserved or likely to prevent a relapse into crime. The members of this society drew up a list containing seven hundred names of the friends and associates of boys in Newgate, all of whom they visited and sought to reform. They went further, and seriously discussed the propriety of establishing a special penitentiary for juveniles, a scheme which was never completely carried out. Another institution was the Refuge for the Destitute, which took in boys and girls on their discharge from prison, to teach them trades and give them a fair start in life. There were also the Magdalen Hospital and the Female Penitentiary, both of which did good work amongst depraved women.
Matters had improved somewhat in Newgate after the report of the committee in 1814, at least as regards the juveniles. A school had been established, over which the new ordinary, Mr. Cotton, who about this time succeeded Dr. Forde, presided, and in whichhe took a great interest. The chaplain was in communication with the Philanthropic and other institutions, and promising cases were removed to them. The boys were kept as far as possible apart from the men, but not at first from one another. Hence in the one long room they occupied and used for all purposes, eating, drinking, and sleeping, the elder and more vitiated boys were still able to exercise a baneful influence over the young and innocent. More space became available by the removal of the debtors to Whitecross Street, and then the boys were lodged according to categories in four different rooms. Mr. Cotton believed that the boys benefited morally from the instruction and care they received. This juvenile school was one bright spot in the prevailing darkness of Newgate at that particular time. Another and a still more remarkable amelioration in the condition of the prisoners was soon to attract universal attention. The great and good work accomplished by that noble woman Mrs. Fry on the female side of Newgate forms an epoch in prison history, and merits a particular description.
Bad as were the other various courts and so called “sides” in Newgate prison, the quadrangle appropriated to the females was far worse. Its foul and degraded condition had attracted the sympathies of Elizabeth Fry as early as 1813. The winter had been unusually severe, and Mrs. Fry had been induced by several Friends, particularly by William Forster, to visit Newgate and endeavour to alleviate the sufferings of thefemale prisoners. The space allotted to the women was at that time still curtailed by the portion given over to the state side.[55]They were limited to two wards and two cells, an area of about one hundred and ninety-two superficial yards in all, into which, at the time of Mrs. Fry’s visit, some three hundred women with their children were crowded, all classes together, felon and misdemeanant, tried and untried; the whole under the superintendence of an old man and his son. They slept on the floor, without so much as a mat for bedding. Many were very nearly naked, others were in rags; some desperate from want of food, some savage from drink, foul in language, still more recklessly depraved in their habits and behaviour. Everything was filthy beyond description. The smell of the place was quite disgusting. The keeper himself, Mr. Newman, was reluctant to go amongst them. He strove hard to dissuade Mrs. Fry from entering the wards, and failing in that, begged her at least to leave her watch in his office, assuring her that not even his presence would prevent its being torn from her. Mrs. Fry’s own account fully endorses all this. “All I tell thee is a faint picture of the reality; the filth, the closeness of the rooms, the ferocious manners and expressions of the women towards each other, and the abandoned wickedness which everything bespoke, are quite indescribable.” “One act, the account of which I received from another quarter, marks the degree of wretchedness to which they were reducedat that time. Two women were seen in the act of stripping a dead child for the purpose of clothing a living one.”[56]
Mrs. Fry must have gone again, for she wrote under date Feb. 16th, 1813—“Yesterday we were some hours in Newgate with the poor female felons, attending to their outward necessities; we had been twice previously. Before we went away dear Anna Buxton uttered a few words in supplication, and very unexpectedly to myself I did also. I heard weeping, and I thought they appeared much tendered. A very solemn quiet was observed; it was a striking scene, with the poor people around in their deplorable condition.” Mrs. Fry’s charity extended to the gift of clothing, for it is recorded in her memoirs that many members of her domestic circle had long a vivid recollection of the “green baize garments,” and their pleasure in assisting to prepare them.
Nearly four years elapsed before Elizabeth Fry resumed her visits. Newgate and what she had seen there had no doubt made a deep impression on her mind, but a long illness and family afflictions had prevented her from giving her philanthropic yearnings full play. She appears to have recommenced her visits about Christmas 1816, and on Feb. 16th, 1817, there is an entry in her journal to the effect that she had been “lately much occupied in forming a school in Newgate for the children of the poor prisoners, as well as the young criminals.” It was inthis way that she struck at the hearts of these poor degraded wretches, who were only too eager to save their children from a life of crime. “The proposal was received,” Mrs. Fry says, “even by the most abandoned with tears of joy.” The three intervening years between 1813 and 1816 had brought no improvement in the female side. Its inmates—the very scum of the town—were filthy in their habits and disgusting in their persons. Mrs. Fry tells us she found the railings in the inner yard crowded with half-naked women, struggling together for the front situations with the most boisterous violence, and begging with the utmost vociferation. As double gratings had now been fixed at some distance apart to prevent close communication between prisoners and their visitors, the women had fastened wooden spoons to the end of long sticks, which they thrust across the space as they clamoured for alms. Mrs. Fry tells us that she felt as if she were going into a den of wild beasts, and that she well recollects quite shuddering when the door closed upon her, and she was locked in with such a herd of novel and desperate companions. The women, according to another eye-witness, sat about the yard on the stones, squalid in attire, ferocious in aspect. On this occasion a woman rushed out from the ward “yelling like a wild beast;” she made the circuit of the yard, brandishing her arms and tearing the caps or coverings from the heads of the other women. In spite of these terrible scenes, the ladies, several Friends having joined with Mrs. Fry, continued to give theirattention to the school. “It was in our visits to the school,” she afterwards observed, when giving evidence before the Parliamentary committee of 1818, “where some of us attended every day, that we were witnesses of the dreadful proceedings that went forward on the female side of the prison; the begging, swearing, gaming, fighting, singing, dancing, dressing up in men’s clothes; the scenes are too bad to be described, so that we did not think it suitable to admit young persons with us.” This awful place had long been aptly entitled “Hell above ground.”
It was not strange that these miserable women should be absolutely unsexed. They were often subjected to brutal ill-treatment even before their arrival at Newgate. Many were brought to the prison almost without clothes. If coming from a distance, as in the case of transports lodged in Newgate until embarkation, they were almost invariably ironed, and often cruelly so. One lady saw the female prisoners from Lancaster Castle arrive, not merely handcuffed, but with heavy irons on their legs, which had caused swelling and inflammation. Others wore iron-hoops round their legs and arms, and were chained to each other. On the journey these poor souls could not get up or down from the coach without the whole of them being dragged together. A woman travelled from Cardigan with an iron hoop round her ankle, and fainted when it was removed. This woman’s story was, that during a long imprisonment she had worn an iron hoop round her waist, asecond round her leg above the knee, a third at the ankle, and all these connected by chains. In the waist hoop were two bolts or fastenings, in which her hands were confined at night when she went to bed. Her bed was only of straw. These wretched and ill-used creatures might be forgiven if they at times broke out into rebellion. For a long time it was the practice with the female transports to riot previous to their departure from Newgate, breaking windows, furniture, or whatever came in their reach. Their outrageous conduct continued all the way from the gaol to the water-side, whither they were conveyed in open waggons, noisy and disorderly to the last, amidst the jeers and shouts of the assembled crowds.
Mrs. Fry, as I have said, endeavoured first to form a school. For this purpose an unoccupied room was set apart by the authorities. Although looking upon her experiment as hopeless, she received cordial support from the sheriffs, the governor, Mr. Newman, and the ordinary of Newgate, Mr. Cotton. The prisoners selected from among themselves a schoolmistress, Mary Connor by name, who had been committed for stealing a watch, and “who proved eminently qualified for her task.” The school, which was for children only and young persons under twenty-five, prospered, and by degrees the heroic band of ladies were encouraged to greater efforts. The conduct of the prisoners, their entreaties not to be excluded from the benefits of the school, inspired Mrs. Fry with confidence, and she resolved to attempt the introduction of order, industry,and religious feeling into Newgate. In April 1817 eleven members of the Society of Friends and another lady, the wife of a clergyman, formed themselves into “an association for the improvement of the female prisoners in Newgate.”[57]These devoted persons gave themselves up entirely to their self-imposed task. With no interval of relaxation, and with but few intermissions from the call of other and more imperious duties, they lived among the prisoners.[58]They arrived, in fact, at the hour of unlocking, and spent the whole day in the prison.