“Our popular festivals!” said a lady, who had been emancipated by a lengthened residence on the Continent. “You wish to know where the people’s merry-makings are held? Go to Newgate on a hanging day, or to Horsemonger Lane, or to any other open space in front of a prison; there you will find shouting, and joking, and junketting, from early dawn until the hangman has made his appearance and performed his office. The windows are let out, stands are erected, eating and drinking booths surround the scaffold; there is an enormous consumption of beer and brandy. They come on foot, on horseback, and in carriages, from a distance of many miles, to see a spectacle which is a disgrace to humanity; and foremost are the women—my countrywomen—not only the females of low degree, but also ladies, ‘by birth and education.’ It is a shame; but, nevertheless, it is true. And our newspapers are afterwards compelled to chronicle the last death-struggles of the wretched criminal!”
There is no exaggeration in this. A criminal process, robbery and murder, a case of poisoning—these suffice to keep the families of England in breathless suspense for weeks at a time. The daily and weekly papers cannot find space enough for all the details of the inquest, the proceedings of the police, the trial, and the execution; and woe to the paper that dared to curtail these interesting reports! it would at once lose its supporters. Rather let such a paper take no notice of an insurrection in Germany; but neglect a criminal trial, a scene on the scaffold—never!
Let us look into that room. The father of the family, his wife, the old grandmother, with her hands demurely folded, and the daughters and little children, are all crowded round the table. The father reads the newspaper; the family listens to him. The tea is getting cold, the fire is going out, the curtains are still undrawn and the blinds are up; the very passengers in the street—“O tell it not in Gath!”—can see what is going on in the parlour; but the listeners pay no attention to all this, for the paper contains a full report of the trial of Mrs. Manning, or some other popular she-assassin. Did she do the deed? Is she innocent? Did she make a confession? And what about her husband? And how was it done, and when, and where?
It is truly marvellous! These good, gentle people, who would not willingly hurt or pain any living creature, actually warm to the scenes of horror reported in that paper. It is altogether incomprehensible, how and to what extent this passion for the horrible has seized hold of the hearts of English men and women. They languish after strong emotions; they yearn for something which will make their flesh creep. A similar phenomenon may occasionally be observed on the other side of the Channel; but there it forms the exception, while here it is the rule. And on the Continent, too, we find this horror-mongering only in the provinces, where people, wearied with the monotony of their long winter evenings, hunger and thirst after anything like a public scandal or spectacle; but we do not find this sort of thing in large towns, where people have a variety of objects and incidents to attract their attention. But the English on the Continent make long journeys to be present at an execution. Their passion accompanies them even across the Channel. Surely we do not envy their feelings in this respect!
Newgate is a gloomy-looking, ancient building. It is the beau ideal of prison architecture, with hardly any windows, with here and there an empty niche, or some dilapidated carvings; all besides is gloomy, stony, and cold.
Newgate has gone down in the world. In its early years it was devoted to the reception of persons of high rank; it has since submitted to the principle of legal equality, and rich and poor, high and low, pass through its gates to freedom or the scaffold. About three thousand prisoners are annually confined within its walls. The prison can accommodate five hundred at a time, and this number is usually found there immediately before the commencement of the sessions. But the sessions of the Central Criminal Court once over, Newgate is almost empty, for some of its inmates have been discharged from custody, while the majority of them have received their sentence and taken their departure for sundry houses of detention and correction. The prisoners in Newgate are at liberty to communicate with one another; they are not compelled to work.
We pass through Newgate-street and turn to the right into Paternoster-row, a narrow street, from times immemorial the manufactory of learning, where the publishing trade is carried on in dingy houses, and where it runs its anarchical career without the benefit of a censor.
“From times immemorial!” That is a hasty expression. There was a time when Paternoster-row harboured the grocery trade of the city, while the upper stories were taken by Marchandes des Modes and visited by all the beauty and elegance of old London. But gaiety had to give way to religion, and the Marchandes des Modes, taking flight to more modern streets, were followed by the rosary-girls under Henry VIII. Luther’s translation of the Bible was publicly burnt in this neighbourhood, and soon after warrants were issued against those who had burnt it. So varied have been the applications of this narrow dusky lane, in which, to this day, the traveller may read an inscription on a stone tablet, announcing that Paternoster-row is the highest point of ancient London.
In our own days this street is to London what Leipzig is to Germany. The departments of the publishing trade are, however, kept more strictly separate. The publishers of Bibles, who send forth the Scriptures in volumes of all sizes, from the smallest to the largest, and who do business in all the civilised and barbarous languages on the face of the earth, exclude all vain and secular literature, such as tales, novels, plays, poems, and works of history. While the publishers of such like works in their turn, generally fight shy of tourists and travellers whose works belong to departments of another class of publishing firms. Juvenile books form a very important department of the publishing trade; and this department, like the infant schools, is entirely devoted to the instruction and amusement of the rising generation. So strenuous are the exertions of those publishers to entice the babes and infants of England into the treacherous corners of the A, B, C, and of the higher sciences, that their solicitude in this respect appears almost touching to those who fancy that all this trouble is taken and all this ingenuity expended, purely and simply for the interest of philanthropy, and of good sound education.
We ought not to stop too long in Paternoster-row. Our presence is required elsewhere. But still we must for the benefit of German mothers and publishers, state the fact, that of late years the publishers of Paternoster-row have hit upon the plan of printing the rudiments of all human science on strong white canvass. English children, in the dawn of their young existence, are as essentially practical as German children. They have an instinctive aversion to all printed matter. The A, B, C, is to them the first fruit from the tree of knowledge, the key to the mysteries and woes of life. Therefore do the children of England detest the primers; they soil them, tear them, roll the leaves, in short treat them with as much scorn and contumely, as though the annihilation of a single copy would lead to the extinction of the whole species.