LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
VOL. II.

PAGE
AN INNER GATE[Frontispiece]
CHARLES PRICE, alias OLD PATCH[18]
JUSTICE HALL IN THE OLD BAILEY[To face p. 36]
WHIPPING AT THE OLD BAILEY[To face p. 50]
REV. MR. WHITFIELD PREACHING ON KENNINGTON COMMON [To face p. 118]
ENTRANCE TO MRS. FRY’S WARD [To face p. 143]
BELLINGHAM[244]
PREPARING FOR AN EXECUTION[To face p. 246]
EXHIBITION OF BODY OF WILLIAMS [To face p. 267]
CONSPIRATORS’ STABLE IN CATO STREET [To face p. 281]
FAUNTLEROY IN THE DOCK[297]
COURVOISIER[349]
EXECUTION SHED (1883)[To face p. 427]
INTERIOR OF CHAPEL (1880) [To face p. 498]

CHRONICLES OF NEWGATE.

CHAPTER I.
CRIMES AND CRIMINALS.

State of crime on opening new gaol—Newgate full—Executions very numerous—Ruthless penal code—Forgery punished with death—Its frequency—How fostered—Some notable forgers—The first forgery of Bank of England notes—Gibson—Bolland—The two Perreaus—Dr. Dodd—Charles Price, alias Old Patch—Clipping still largely practised—John Clarke hanged for it—Also William Guest, a clerk in Bank of England—His elaborate apparatus for filing guineas—Coining—Forty or fifty private mints for making counterfeits—Always at work—Town and country orders regularly executed—650 prosecutions for coining in seven years—Offences against life and property—Streets unsafe—High roads infested by robbers—No regular police—Inefficiency of watchmen—Assaults on the weaker sex—Renwick Williams “the monster”—Daring Robberies at lévees—The Duke of Beaufort robbed by gentleman Harry—George Barrington, the gentleman thief, frequents Ranelagh, the Palace, the Opera House—His depredations—He aids authorities to suppress a mutiny, turns police officer and becomes chief constable of New South Wales before he dies—Gentlemen of the road ubiquitous and always busy—Highwaymen put down by the horse patrol—Horse patrol described—Executions still numerous, but transportation now adopted as a secondary punishment for lesser offenders—Some of these described—“Long firm” swindlers—Alexander Day, alias Marmaduke Davenport, Esq.—Female Sharpers—Elizabeth Grieve pretends to sell places under the Crown—So does David James Dignam—Traffic in places flourished in this corrupt age—Mrs. Clarke and the Duke of York—Other forms of swindling—Jacques defrauds Warden of the Fleet—Juvenile depravity—Increased by committing the young to Newgate—Various youthful crimes—A girl for sale—Prize-fighting—Writers in gaol—The North Briton—Wilkes—The Press oppressed—Mr. Walter of the ‘Times’ in Newgate—Sir Francis Burdett and Mr. John Gale Jones—William Cobbett in Newgate—Also the Marquis of Sligo.

IN the years immediately following the erection of the new gaol, crime was once more greatly in the ascendant. After the peace which gave independence to the United States, the country was overrun with discharged soldiers and sailors. They were mostly in dire poverty, and took to depredation almost as a matter of course. The calendars were particularly heavy. At the September Sessions of the Old Bailey in 1783, fifty-eight were convicted for capital offences. The Deputy Recorder, in passing sentence, remarked that it gave him inexpressible pain, and that it was truly alarming “to behold a bar so crowded with persons whose wickedness and imprudence had induced them to commit such enormous crimes as the laws of their country justly and necessarily punish with death. Those laws,” he added, being thoroughly imbued with the ferocious spirit of the times, “while they are founded in equity, and executed with lenity, (!) impartiality, and rectitude, are written in blood.” The exemplary punishment of so many failed to have a very deterrent effect. In the December Sessions following the number of trials was greater, although there were not so many capital convictions. Twenty-four received sentence of death, and ninety were convicted of single felonies. “Two such sessions,” says a contemporary writer, “were never known before in London.” The same depravity, dealt with in the same ruthless manner, prevailed throughout England. In the Lent Assizes of 1785 the judges on every circuit dealt out death with a liberal hand. At Kingston there were twenty-one capital sentences, and nine executions. At Lincoln twelve of the former, and at Gloucester sixteen, with, in both cases, nine executions; seven executions at Warwick, six at Exeter, Winchester, and Salisbury, five at Shrewsbury, and so on. The total number of capital sentences in England alone was two hundred and forty-two, of whom one hundred and three suffered, and only at Stafford, Oakham, and Ludlow was there a “maiden assize,” or no capital conviction. At this date there were forty-nine persons lying in Newgate under sentence of death, one hundred and eighty under sentence of transportation, and prisoners of other categories, making the total prison population up to nearly six hundred souls.

Speaking of those times, Mr. Townshend, a veteran Bow Street runner, in his evidence before a Parliamentary Committee in 1816,[1] declared that in the years 1781-7 as many as twelve, sixteen, or twenty were hanged at one execution; twice he saw forty hanged at one time. In 1783 there were twenty at two consecutive executions. He had known, he said, as many as two hundred and twenty tried at one sessions. He had himself obtained convictions of from thirteen to twenty-five for returning from transportation. Upon the same authority we are told that in 1783 the Secretary of State advised the King to punish with all severity. The enormity of the offences was so great, says Mr. Townshend, and “plunder had got to such an alarming pitch,” that a letter was circulated among judges and recorders then sitting, to the effect that His Majesty would dispense with the recorders’ reports, and that the worst criminals should be picked out and at once ordered for execution.

The penal code was at this period still ruthlessly severe. There were some two hundred capital felonies upon the statute book. Almost any member of parliament eager to do his share in legislation could “create a capital felony.” A story is told of Edmund Burke, that he was leaving his house one day in a hurry, when a messenger called him back on a matter which would not detain him a minute: “Only a felony without benefit of clergy.” Burke also told Sir James Mackintosh, that although scarcely entitled to ask a favour of the ministry, he thought he had influence enough to create a capital felony.[2] It is true that of the two hundred, not more than five-and-twenty sorts of felonies actually entailed execution. It is true too that some of the most outrageous and ridiculous reasons for its infliction had disappeared. It was no longer death to take a falcon’s egg from the nest, nor was it a hanging matter to be thrice guilty of exporting live sheep. But a man’s life was still appraised at five shillings. Stealing from the person, or in a dwelling, or in a shop, or on a navigable river, to that amount, was punished with death. “I think it not right nor justice,” wrote Sir Thomas More in 1516, “that the loss of money should cause the loss of man’s life; for mine opinion is that all the goods in the world are not able to countervail man’s life.” Three hundred years was still to pass before the strenuous efforts of Sir Samuel Romilly bore fruit in the amelioration of the penal code. In 1810 he carried a bill through the House of Commons, which was, however, rejected by the Lords, to abolish capital punishment for stealing to the amount of five shillings in a shop. His most bitter opponents were the great lawyers of the times, Lords Ellenborough, Eldon, and others, Lords Chancellors and Lords Chief Justice, who opposed dangerous innovations, and viewed with dismay any attempt “to alter laws which a century had proved to be necessary.” Lord Eldon on this occasion said that he was firmly convinced of the wisdom of the principles and practice of our criminal code. Romilly did not live to see the triumph of his philanthropic endeavours. He failed to procure the repeal of the cruel laws against which he raised his voice, but he stopped the hateful legislation which multiplied capital felonies year by year, and his illustrious example found many imitators. Within a few years milder and more humane ideas very generally prevailed. In 1837 the number of offences to which the extreme penalty could be applied was only seven, and in that year only eight persons were executed, all of them for murders of an atrocious character.[3]