Many applications were also made for admission to the condemned sermon. None, however, was preached. In the case of murderers this solemnity is not granted. The tolling of the prison-bell, which adds so much to the horrors of a common execution, by sounding the knell for the dead in the ears of those about to die, was also dispensed with. We never heard that any sufferer complained of the omission. We have seen many who were not murderers deeply affected by the funeral honour or compliment thus paid to them on their way to the scaffold.
During the whole of Saturday and Sunday, the lord-mayor and sheriffs, assisted by the city marshals, Messrs. Brown and Cope, were busily engaged in adopting precautions to guard against the possibility of accident at the execution. All the officers of the various wards in the city were ordered to attend; and besides the usual force of the city police, a large body of special constables were sworn in. An extra number of heavy barriers were erected in the Old Bailey, immediately contiguous to the space on which the gallows stands, at short distances, so as to prevent the crush of the multitude as much as possible; and the same precautions were adopted at either end of the Old Bailey, at the end of Newgate-street, Giltspur-street, and Skinner-street.
All the constabulary force received orders from the city marshals to assemble at five o'clock in the morning, and to take the stations appointed for them.
During the afternoon of Sunday groups of persons were congregated in different parts of the Old Bailey. Towards evening the crowds increased, and by midnight great numbers were assembled, who actually remained all night on the spot, in order to secure places near the scaffold on the following morning. The occupiers of houses, from the windows of which a view could be obtained of the execution, exhibited placards, announcing various prices for seats according to the proximity of the domicile to the spot, and though it was generally stipulated that such seats could not be kept for parties after six o'clock in the morning, they were eagerly sought for and secured at a guinea per seat and upwards. So much as ten guineas was given for a single window, and all these seats were occupied by those who had engaged them, at so early an hour as five o'clock, upon a cold, cheerless, and most uninviting morning. Shortly after midnight the gallows was brought from the yard, and the workmen proceeded to erect it in the usual place, opposite the debtors' door of Newgate. A large space around it was barricadoed to keep off the crowd, and the inside of that space was subsequently nearly filled by constables and marshalmen.
The crowd, as early as one o'clock, amounted to several thousand persons, and continued rapidly increasing. By five o'clock nearly two-thirds of the Old Bailey were filled with a dense mass of people. The continued buzz among the multitude at this time, the glare of light from the torches that were used for the purpose of enabling the workmen to proceed with their labours, and the terrific struggles among the crowd, altogether presented a scene which those who witnessed it will not soon forget. As the dawn of day approached, and with it the fatal hour that was to consign the wretched criminals to their well-merited fate, all the streets leading to the Old Bailey were thronged with people, chiefly of the working classes, hastening to the spot. Constant streams of population were pouring into the Old Bailey till they formed, around the scaffold and at the corner of every street from whence even a distant or a faint view could be obtained, a vast lake of life. Amongst the immense assemblage might be noticed several females, most of them of that caste whose attendance on such an occasion might be naturally expected, but some of them, we regret to state, of a class that decency, if not humanity, should have kept away from a scene so revolting to those delicate sensibilities that generally characterize females.
When the fatal drop was stationed in its usual place, it was observed that three chains were suspended from it. As soon as Mr. Wontner, the governor of Newgate, heard of it, he ordered an officer to remove one of them, May having been respited. This was done, and although it was then dark, it was instantly communicated throughout the vast assemblage, and a general cry of 'May is respited' was uttered. The announcement did not seem to excite much surprise, although a few individuals expressed their disapprobation by yelling and hooting.
About half-past six o'clock a body of city police, amounting to about two hundred men, came up the Old Bailey, but the crowd was so dense at this time that it was found impossible for them to proceed to their station, which was at the foot of the gallows. After several ineffectual attempts to pass on, it was arranged that they should be allowed to go through the prison. Several persons seized this as a favourable opportunity, by presenting constables' staves, to pass themselves off as belonging to the police; but Mr. Browne, the marshal, suffered no one to pass whom he did not recognize either as belonging to the city police or as special constables. The pressure in the immediate neighbourhood of the scaffold was tremendous, in spite of the barriers; and many persons exhausted with fatigue, as early as seven o'clock, rescuing themselves with difficulty from the throng, were heard to exclaim, as they passed the outskirts of the mob, 'Thank God, I have got away!' Many who thus quitted the scene with torn clothes, and faces streaming with perspiration, had remained on the spot for hours. Indeed, the avenue from the house of Mr. Cotton, the ordinary, to the house of Mr. Wontner, the governor of Newgate, was so completely blocked up at an early hour, that Mr. Cotton, and another clergyman who accompanied him on his last visit to these unhappy convicts, were unable to force their way through the crowd, and could only obtain admittance into the prison by making a detour to the other end of the Old Bailey, and by entering it through the iron railings around the New Court.
As day began to break we had an opportunity of surveying the crowd from the top of Newgate, and we should think that at that time there were not less than from thirty thousand to forty thousand persons assembled. The tops of the houses, lamp-posts, and every station from which the most distant view of the execution could be obtained, were by this time occupied. In fact, from one end of the Old Bailey to the other, was one dense mass; and the streets in the neighbourhood, although not a glance could be had of the platform or the proceedings, were, from an early hour, rendered impassable by the throng of persons hurrying towards the scene of execution. The assemblage was the largest that has ever been witnessed on an occasion of the kind, since the execution of Holloway and Haggarty, upwards of twenty years since, when some fourteen or fifteen persons were trampled to death in the crowd. The following fact will convey some idea of the extent and densely-congregated state of the crowd on Monday,—namely, that even so far as St. Sepulchre's church, in Skinner-street, several individuals, whose screams for relief had induced the people to raise them up, were passed over the heads of their neighbours for some dozen yards before they could obtain a resting-place.
Notwithstanding the many precautions taken by the city authorities to prevent accidents, we are sorry to say that several occurred; and though no lives were lost, we fear that some of the injuries that were sustained were of a very serious description. At the end of Giltspur-street, immediately opposite the Compter, a very heavy barrier was erected across the road for the purpose of counteracting the immense pressure of the mob, which in that direction extended to Smithfield. This barrier was fastened to two uprights, that were placed two feet in the ground, by iron hooping, which was by no means of sufficient strength for the immense weight of the timber to which it was attached. The consequence was, that at the moment the culprits were visible on the gallows, the barrier was forced down, and a number of persons of both sexes fell with it. The screams of the females, and the confusion that ensued, were truly alarming. One female of very respectable appearance, with her husband, were most dreadfully injured, the barrier having fallen upon their chests, and others of the mob pressing upon them. A city constable was also under the barrier, which rested on his abdomen, and his cries were most deplorable. In this dreadful situation did the sufferers remain for some minutes. A cry of 'Stand back; for God's sake, stand back!' was raised, but all was of no avail, and people in all directions were trampling upon each other.