The night before Greenacre’s execution at Newgate (the 2nd of May, 1837) hundreds slept on the prison steps and round about the neighbourhood of the old gaol. Crowds spent the night in taverns and lodging-houses, indulging in unseemly revelry and ribald and drunken dissipation. Nor were the spectators all drawn from the lowest class; all classes were represented. Positions within sight of the drop fetched from five shillings to a couple of guineas each, and a first-floor room overlooking the scaffold commanded as much as £12, no small price in those days.
It is a grim story, but who has not been entertained by the account in the Ingoldsby Legends of the way in which “My Lord Tomnoddy” failed to witness the launching into eternity of a doomed fellow creature?
As the result of a happy thought from “Tiger Tim”—
“An’t please you, my Lord, there’s a man to be hang’d”—
Tomnoddy invites a party of convivial friends to enjoy the scene, for
“To see a man swing
At the end of a string,
With his neck in a noose, will be quite a new thing.”
So he