Palace and Hovel; Or, Phases of London Life

by Daniel Joseph Kirwan

THE "OLD BAILEY" COURT.

The Old Bailey Court is a square hall with a gallery for visitors, below which is a large clock, that ticks in the prisoner's ears, like a bell of doom. Below it is the dock for the culprits, with stairs descending to the covered passage, by which they are conveyed to and from Newgate. Opposite the dock in which the wretched prisoner stands up to plead for mercy, is the bench for the judges, and here may be seen day after day the Recorder of London sitting to try offenders, in his blue cloth gown, with furred borders, and his neck encircled with a gold chain, listening listlessly to the testimony, and now and then making notes on a square piece of paper, while from the open window comes the chirruping of birds; and before him are arraigned poor wretches in rags and squalor, on trial for offences which may peril their lives, reputation and happiness.

There are three large square windows in this Court, through which appear the ridge of the gloomy walls of Newgate, having on their left a gallery close to the ceiling, with projecting boxes, and on the right the Bench extending the whole length of the wall, with desks at intervals, for the use of the judges, whilst in the body of the Court are the witness-box and the jury-box, below the windows of the Court, an arrangement that allows the jury to look clearly, and without turning, on the faces of the witnesses and the prisoners. The strong light from the windows enables the witness to identify the prisoner, who stands shivering in the dock, at the same time that it permits the judges on the Bench and the counsel below in the hollow space of the Court to keep jury, witnesses and prisoners all at once within the same perspective line.

In the upper seats are the double rows of reporters, smart, well-looking and well-dressed fellows, the majority of whom look bored and disgusted, as well they may, when it is taken into account that they have to sit here day after day, to look at the same horse-hair wigs of the jabbering lawyers, the same gowns, the same blank ceiling, the same stupid, harsh faced jurymen, and the same hard looking or wobegone wretches who stand up in the dock to listen to sentence or acquittal. Occasionally there is a little amusement for them when some ass of an alderman attempts in a pompous way, to show the bearing of a statute in a criminal case, and only succeeds in exposing his turtle-fed ignorance to the merriment of the knowing ones.

Look there now. A youth well-dressed and cleanly-looking is brought into the dock and placed for trial on a charge of forgery on his employer, for the sum of one hundred and fifty pounds. The young fellow has a weak, pallid face, and seems rather dazed at all the preparation and mysterious jabber on his account. A dozen of the counsel, in black stuff gowns and with white wigs of horse-hair look around for a minute at the dock, where the prisoner stands, merely out of curiosity, as if he were a sheep or a calf brought in for slaughter. Their curiosity satisfied, they turn away from him and dismiss his pale face from their thoughts almost instantaneously. The judge on the bench—who is flanked by a fat alderman on each side, in red robes—sits, looking at some documents, with a far-away, abstracted look, as if the prisoner at the bar was a thousand miles distant, and a free man.

And meanwhile the case progresses, the counsel for the Crown opening indignantly on the side of virtue and the law, and witness after witness is called up and kisses the book, and there is much making of affidavit and counter-affidavit, and through all this maze of swearing and mist of statement, it appears that the young lad at the bar has been wild and reckless, and has signed his master's name, beyond all doubt, to a check, which he had cashed, the proceeds of which were spent in the haunts of vice and shame. The case goes to the jury, who pronounce him guilty without leaving their seats, and the sun streams through the windows on the despairing face of the youth, and I am awakened from a sort of a trance into which I have fallen, to hear the voice of the Recorder of the good city of London, drone out at the prisoner:

"In this case I can find no extenuating circumstances. You are of age to know better, and the sentence of the Court is, therefore, that you suffer penal servitude, with hard labor, for the space of twelve years."

Good God! twelve years! He is not yet eighteen, and the twelve best years of his life are erased from his span of existence, by the breath of the man in blue cloth gown and the fur tippet, and now the latter goes up stairs to eat his dinner, the jury are dismissed, and a young girl falls fainting in the Court as the prisoner is led out—however it is only his sister. There is a little stir among the horse-hair-wigged counsel and a buzz in the audience, and in three minutes another case comes on to excite new interest, and make us forget the convict and his sobbing, fair-haired sister.

Upon the front of the dock is placed a sprig of rue, which dissipates any infection that may proceed from the clothes of the prisoner, should he be suffering from illness. The origination of this custom is worthy of note.

In 1750, when the jail fever raged in Newgate, the effluvia entering the Court, caused the death of Baron Clarke, Sir Thomas Abney, the judge of the Common Pleas; and Pennant's "respected kinsman," Sir Samuel Pennant, Lord Mayor; besides members of the bar and of the jury, and other persons. This disease was also fatal to several persons in 1772. Since that time a sprig of rue has always been kept in the dock to drive away contagion.