"Good heart—Michael Barrett—this day. All is not lost while one drop of Irish blood remains."
THE PESTIFEROUS PRISON.
"I saw the man, and I made a jump for him with two of my pals, but the crowd opened and let him pass through,—it seemed a purpose like, and just then I heard a roar and a great convulsive sob, and the crowd pushed this way and crushed that way, almost smothering me, and I nearly fainted from the awful squeezing I got, and I picked up a little girl from atween my feet, and when I looked up Barrett's body was a swinging to and fro from a rope, and all was over, and believe me, Sir, I was glad of it when it was over."
THE LAST EXECUTION AT NEWGATE.
It was high noon when I arrived at Newgate, and my visit was paid chiefly to that part of the prison devoted to the subsistence of the prisoners. I passed through the corridors and passages, and door after door, and hinge after hinge grated as I advanced with a companion. All around the prison are the high walls of the neighboring buildings, and attached to them are precipitous sheds with spikes to prevent the escape of prisoners who may succeed in getting as far as the yard. On top of the prison is a huge circular fan which revolves and gives ventilation to the interior of the jail. This improvement was the result of the labors of the great philanthropist John Howard.
In the old days Newgate was a hell upon earth. During the Eighteenth century prisoners endured the tortures of the damned here. Jail birds were shackled to the floor to prevent their escape, and mouldy bread and stinking water was given them to drink until their stomachs loathed the appearance of food. Their beds were of stinking straw, the rain from the heavens dripped through the roof upon them, the frost and cold eat into their bones; they festered in dirt, disease, and destitution, till their limbs broke out in horrible blains, and ulcers and all kinds of agues and dysenteries swept down upon them. Then in this terrible state, after rotting for months awaiting a trial, they came into the dock at the Old Bailey with the jail fevers upon them to slay with the pestiferous miasma which exhaled from their bodies, judge, jury, and pettifogging attorneys.
The prisoners were so crowded together in dark dungeons, that the air becoming corrupted by the stench, occasioned a disease called the "goal distemper," of which they died by dozens every day. Cartloads of dead bodies were carried out of the prison and thrown in a pit in the burying-ground of Christ's Church without ceremony. The effluvia in the year 1750 was so horrible that it made a pestilence in the whole district. Four judges who sat in the Session, a Lord Mayor, several aldermen, and other civic dignitaries were carried off by the distemper, together with a number of lawyers and jurors present at the trials of Newgate criminals.