“The cavalcade then went back to Newgate, and about eleven o’clock, Jonathan Stacey, for demolishing Mr. Malo’s house, and George Staples, for demolishing the Romish Chapel, &c., adjoining, were put into the cart and conveyed to Moorfields, the gallows being fixed directly opposite the ruins thereof.
“They arrived there about a quarter after eleven, when the Ordinary went up to them, and performed his duty, which, being finished, the executioner pulled their caps over their eyes, and they were launched into eternity.
“These poor men prayed in a most exemplary manner all the way from Newgate to the place of execution, and never once took their eyes from their books but when they lifted them to Heaven for mercy.”
Out of one hundred and thirty-five rioters who were tried, fifty-nine were capitally convicted.
The prison arrangements in the olden time were far different to the present regulations.
The author of a work entitled, “The Penns and Penningtons of the Seventeenth Century,” tells the following story of Newgate, which, as we are discoursing on the City gaol, may be interesting to our readers as a contrast to our present prison regulations.
When we came to Newgate (says the narrator) we found that side of the prison very full of Friends, who were prisoners there before us; as indeed were all the other parts of that prison, and most of the other prisons about the town; and our addition caused a still greater throng on that side of Newgate.
We had the liberty of the hall, which is on the first story over the gate, and which in the daytime is common to all the prisoners on that side, felons as well as others.
But in the night we all lodged in one room, which was large and round, having in the middle of it a great pillar of oaken timber, which bore up the chapel that is over it.
To this pillar we fastened our hammocks at one end, and to the opposite wall on the other end, quite round the room, in three stories, one over the other; so that they who lay in the upper and middle row of hammocks were obliged to go to bed first, because they were to climb up to the higher by getting into the lower ones.