The Dawn of the XIXth Century in England: A social sketch of the times

by John Ashton

CHAPTER LIII.

Execution for treason—Burying a suicide at the junction of a cross-road—Supposed last such burial in London—The Prisons—List, and description of them—Bow Street Police Office—Expense of the Police and Magistracy—Number of watchmen, &c., in 1804—The poor, and provision for them—Educational establishments.

BUT OF ALL brutal sentences, that for the crime of high treason, was the worst. When Colonel Despard was sentenced to death for conspiracy, on the 9th of February, 1802, the words used by the Judge, were as follow:—

“The only thing now remaining for me, is the painful task of pronouncing against you, and each of you, the awful sentence which the law denounces against your crime, which is, that you, and each of you (here his lordship named the prisoners severally), be taken to the place from whence you came, and from thence you are to be drawn on hurdles to the place of Execution, where you are to be hanged by the neck, but not until you are dead; for while you are still living, your bodies are to be taken down, your bowels torn out, and burnt before your faces! your heads are to be then cut off, and your bodies divided each into four quarters, and your heads and quarters to be then at the King’s disposal; and may the Almighty God have mercy on your Souls.”

In this case the disembowelling and dismemberment were remitted, but they were dragged to the place of execution on a hurdle, which, in this instance, was the body of a small cart, on which two trusses of clean straw were laid. They were hanged, and after hanging for about twenty-five minutes, “till they were quite dead,” they were cut down. “Colonel[80] Despard was first cut down, his body placed upon saw dust, and his head on a block. After his coat had been taken off, his head was severed from his body. The executioner then took the head by the hair, and carrying it to the edge of the parapet on the right hand, held it up to the view of the populace, and exclaimed, “This is the head of a traitor—Edward Marcus Despard!... The bodies were then put into their different shells, and are to be delivered to their friends for interment.”

Another relic of barbarism was the driving a stake through the body of a suicide, and burying him at the junction of a cross road—Morning Post, April 27, 1810: “The Officers appointed to execute the ceremony of driving a stake through the dead body of James Cowling, a deserter from the London Militia, who deprived himself of existence, by cutting his throat, at a public-house in Gilbert Street, Clare Market, in consequence of which, the Coroner’s Jury found a verdict of Self-murder, very properly delayed the business until twelve o’clock on Wednesday night, when the deceased was buried in the cross roads at the end of Blackmoor Street, Clare Market.”

The motive for this practice was, that by fastening the body to the ground, by means of a stake, it rendered it “of the earth, earthy,” and thus prevented its perturbed spirit from wandering about. It is believed that the last burial of a suicide in London, at a cross road, was in June, 1823, when a man, named Griffiths, was buried about half-past one a.m., at the junction of Eaton Street, Grosvenor Place, and the King’s Road, but no stake was driven through the body.

The Prisons in London were fairly numerous, but several of them were for debtors, whose case was very evil. There they languished, many in the most abject poverty, for years, trusting to the charity of individuals, or to funds either bequeathed, or set aside, for bettering their condition. In 1804, an Act was passed (44 Geo. III. cap. 108, afterwards repealed by the Stat. Law. Rev. Act, 1872) for the Relief of Insolvent Debtors, and they were not slow in taking advantage of it. Not only had they poverty, and loss of liberty, to contend with, but gaol fever, which carried them off at times, and cleared the prisons. So contagious was it, that in February, 1805, almost all the cadets at Woolwich suffered from it, and several died. It was imported into the school, by one of the cadets, who had been to visit some prison.

The prisons were as follow, in 1805:—

1. King’s Bench Prison, for debtors on process or execution, and for persons under sentence for misdemeanour, &c. This was in St. George’s Fields, Southwark, and was considered more wholesome than the London prisons. There were districts surrounding the prison both here, and at the Fleet, where prisoners could dwell, without going inside, by payment of fees. The prisoners inside the King’s Bench, could but obtain leave to go out once every term, or four times a year. There were 300 rooms in the prison, but it was always full, and decent accommodation was even more expensive to obtain, than at the Fleet.

2. The Fleet Prison was one belonging to the Courts of Common Pleas, and Chancery, to which debtors might remove themselves from any other prison, at the expense of six or seven pounds. A contemporary account says:

“It contains 125 rooms, besides a common kitchen, coffee and tap rooms, but the number of prisoners is generally so great, that two, or even three, persons are obliged to submit to the shocking inconvenience of living in one small room!! Those who can afford it, pay their companion to chum off, and thus have a room to themselves. Each person so paid off, receives four shillings a week. The prisoner pays one shilling and threepence a week for his room without furniture, and an additional sevenpence for furniture. Matters are sometimes so managed, that a room costs the needy and distressed prisoner from ten to thirteen shillings a week.

INTERIOR OF FLEET PRISON.

“Those who have trades that can be carried on in a room, generally work, and some gain more than they would out of doors, after they become acquainted with the ways of the place. During the quarterly terms,[81] when the court sits, prisoners, on paying five shillings a day, and on giving security, are allowed to go out when they please, and there is a certain space round the prison, called the rules, in which prisoners may live, on furnishing two good securities to the warden for their debt, and on paying about 3 per cent. on the amount of their debts to the warden. The rules extend only from Fleet Market to the London Coffee House, and from Ludgate Hill to Fleet Lane, so that lodgings are bad, and very dear. Within the walls there is a yard for walking in, and a good racquet ground.”

3. Ludgate Prison, or Giltspur Street Compter, for debtors who were freemen of the City of London.

4. Poultry Compter—a dark, small, ill-aired dungeon—used as a House of Detention.

5. Newgate—which was the gaol both for Criminals, and Debtors, for the County of Middlesex. On the debtors’ side, the overcrowding was something terrible. The felons’, or State side, as it was called, was far more comfortable, and the criminals better accommodated. The prison might, then, be visited on payment of two or three shillings to the turnkeys, and giving away a few more to the most distressed debtors.

6. The New Prison, Clerkenwell, was also a gaol for the County of Middlesex, and was built in 1775. The fare here was very meagre—only a pound of bread a day.

7. Prison for the liberty of the Tower of London, Wellclose Square.

8. Whitechapel Prison, for debtors in actions in the Five Pounds Courts, or the Court of the Manor of Stepney.

9. The Savoy Prison, used as a Military prison, principally for deserters.

10. Horsemonger Lane Gaol, the County prison for Surrey.

11. The Clink, a small debtors prison in Southwark.

12. The Marshalsea Gaol, in Southwark, for pirates.

13. The House of Correction, Cold Bath Fields, which was built according to a plan of Howard, the philanthropist, on the basis of solitary confinement. At this time it was dreaded as a place of punishment, and went by the name of the Bastille. (Its slang name now is the Steel.)

HOUSE OF CORRECTION. COLD BATH FIELDS.

The prisoners were not too well fed. A pound of bread, and twopenny worth of meat a day, and a very fair amount of work to do—was not calculated to make it popular among the criminal classes.

It was the only prison in which the inmates wore uniform. That of the men was blue jacket and trousers, with yellow stockings, whilst the women had a blue jacket and blue petticoat. They had clean linen every week; so that, probably, it was a healthy prison. One good thing about it was, that a portion of the prisoners’ earnings was reserved, and given to them when they quitted prison.

14. City Bridewell, Blackfriars, was a house of Correction for the City.

15. Tothill Fields, Bridewell, was a similar institution for Westminster.

16. New Bridewell, Southwark, for Surrey.

Besides these public prisons, were several private establishments used as provisional prisons—kept by the Sheriffs Officers, called lock-up, or, sponging houses, where for twelve, or fourteen shillings a day, a debtor might remain, either until he found the means to repay the debt, or it was necessary to go to a public prison, when the writ against him became returnable. They were nests of extortion and robbery.

The Police Offices in London were:

The Mansion House.	Lambeth Street, Whitechapel.
Guildhall.	High Street, Shadwell.
Bow Street.	Union Street, Southwark.
Hatton Garden.	Queen’s Square, Westminster.
Worship Street.	Great Marlborough Street.

Wapping New Stairs, for offences committed on the Thames. Of those extra the City, Bow Street was the chief, and the head magistrate there, was called the Chief Magistrate, and received a stipend of £1,000 per annum; a large sum in those days. He was assisted by two others, at a salary of £500 each.

Dr. Patrick Colquhoun called so much attention to the inefficiency of the police, that a Committee of the House of Commons, in the session of 1798, sifted the matter, and from the report of this Committee, only, can we gather the criminal statistics of the kingdom (at least with regard to its expense).

BOW STREET POLICE OFFICE—1808.

The amount of the general expense of the criminal police of the kingdom, is stated by the Committee as follows:

1st.	The annual average of the total expenseof the seven public offices in the Metropolisfrom their institution in 1792, tothe end of the year 1797	£18,281	18	6
2nd.	Total expenses of the office in BowStreet in the year 1797, including remunerationto the magistrates in lieu offees, perquisites, &c., and the expenseof a patrol of sixty-eight persons	7,901	7	7
		————————
	Total for the Metropolis	£26,183	6	1
	The other expenses for the prosecutionand conviction of felons, the maintenance,clothing, employment, and transportationof convicts, to which may beadded the farther sums annually chargedon the county rates, amounted in 1797 to	£215,869	13	10½
		════════════

In 1804, it was estimated that there were 2,044 beadles and watchmen, and 38 patrols, on nightly duty in, and around the Metropolis. Of these, the City proper, with its 25 wards, contributed 765 watchmen, and 38 patrols.

The poor were pretty well taken care of. Besides the parochial workhouses, there were 107 endowed almshouses, and many other like institutions; the City Companies, it was computed, giving upwards of £75,000, yearly, away in charity. There were very many institutions for charitable, and humane purposes—mostly founded during the previous century—for the relief of widows and orphans, deaf and dumb persons, lunatics, relief of small debtors, the blind, the industrious poor, &c. And there were 1,600 Friendly Societies in the Metropolis, and its vicinity, enrolled under the Act, 33 George III. cap. 54. These had 80,000 members, and their average payments were £1 each per annum.

For education in London, there were:

16	Inns of Court and Chancery, for education in the law.
5	Colleges, viz., Zion College, Gresham, Physicians, DoctorsCommons, and Herald’s College.
62	Schools or public Seminaries, such as Westminster, the BlueCoat, St. Paul’s, Merchant Taylors, Charterhouse, &c., educatingsome 5,000 children.
237	Schools, belonging to the different parishes, educating some9000.
3,730	Private Schools.
———
4,050	Total Seminaries of Education.
════

This does not include nearly twenty educational establishments such as the Orphan Working School, the Marine Society, Freemasons School, &c.

And there were about the same number of Religious and Moral Societies, such as the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, Religious Tract Society, Missionary Societies, &c.; besides a number of Sunday Schools—so that we see education, and philanthropy, were hard at work in the Dawn of the Nineteenth Century.

THE END.

---