Palace and Hovel; Or, Phases of London Life

by Daniel Joseph Kirwan

GETTING WEAK IN THE BACK.

Then at last the prison was cleansed, and a system of ventilation introduced, which made some improvement in the condition of the prisoners. Still, Newgate was a disgrace to Christendom, and just one hundred years ago Parliament made a grant of £50,000 to construct a prison. Beckford, author of Vathek, and then Lord Mayor of London, laid the first stone. In 1780, Lord George Gordon, with his No-Popery rioters, burned down that part of the prison which had been constructed, and set at liberty three hundred of the prisoners confined there. £40,000 in addition had to be granted before the building was completed.

On an average there are between two and three hundred prisoners held in durance in Newgate, and twelve sessions are held during the year at the adjoining Old Bailey Court for their trial. This is called the Central Criminal Court, and it is here, in this very court, that Jack Sheppard, Dick Turpin, Claude Duval, Sixteen String Jack, Tom King, and all the other heroes of the yellow covered literature, were tried, condemned, taken in fetters to Newgate, and from thence to Tyburn Tree to hang by the neck until they were dead.

The Judges of the Old Bailey Court are the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, Recorder, and Common Sergeant of London, and the Judges of the Courts at Westminster Hall, who sit here by rotation to assist, by their superior legal knowledge, the inferior local magistrates.

The prison is divided into a male and female side, but beyond this there is little classification; the pickpocket, the swindler, the embezzler, the murderer, are all associated together; while the hardened offender and the one who is merely suspected of crime, but too often share the same cell, and feed at the same board.

There are separate cells, so that every one averse to society may dwell alone if he or she chooses, but in conversation with the turnkeys, I learned that the privilege was rarely claimed.

"Why, Lord bless your heart, Sir," said a turnkey to me, "there isn't one of the birds in this ere cage that wouldn't go down on his blessed knees and beg hoff if he was to be locked up alone for forty-eight hours. Ye see, sir, it sickens them, it does, to be alone and hear no one's voice but their own. There's a few of the high 'uns at first, when they come here, are werry hoffish and have a sort of a "how-dare-you-look-or-speak-to-me-air," but before three days they gets weak in the back and then they'll give a guinea a minute to look at a face if it only wor a monkey's dirty mug."

When prisoners become refractory, solitary confinement, for a few days, is the punishment, and it never fails to tame the most intractable. The beds of the prisoners are in tiers one above the other, like the berths on an emigrant ship, only that they are clean almost to painfulness. The beds consist of a hard mattress and coarse coverings, sufficient in all seasons to keep them comfortably warm. A plain deal table and bench constitute the only furniture of the place, and these, with the floor, are daily scrubbed into a state of scrupulous cleanliness by the inmates of the cells. There are paved court yards in which the prisoners may walk and breathe the small quantity of pure air that can circulate between those high and gloomy walls, surmounted by formidable spikes to impede the climber.

I went into the kitchen of Newgate and found it to be a commodious and well-fitted apartment, very like the kitchen of the Reform Club, only not so luxurious, from its want of French dishes, and I found here boilers, stoves, ranges, saucepans, kettles, and all that a chef could need for his cuisine. This was not the kitchen of the Old Newgate of which Ainsworth delights to tell, where the hangman used to seethe in a cauldron of molten pitch the heads and quarters of victims executed for treason, whose several members were afterwards affixed to the spikes of Temple Bar or London Bridge.

I saw the rations of each prisoner served out in tin panikins and platters, and the bread served was as white as any I ever ate. There were three large and beautiful potatoes allotted to each one, and three ounces of boiled beef, good and tender and free from bone, just of the same quality which I had seen served a few days before in the barracks of the Grenadier Guards down in Westminster. The meat might not have all the accessories and sauces which a Delmonico or a Blanchard could provide, but it was palatable and tender to the taste.