Aldersgate Street leads northward from St. Martin’s-le-Grand; passing the first block in which, Falcon Street turns on the right (No. 16) towards Falcon Square, a small city piazza, where may be found (No. 8) The Falcon Hotel. This is the place at which John Jasper sojourned when visiting London. In “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” we read the following commendation of the house in question:—
“It is hotel, boarding-house, or lodging-house at its visitor’s option. It announces itself, in the new Railway advertisers, as a novel enterprise, timidly beginning to spring up. It bashfully, almost apologetically, gives the traveller to understand that it does not expect him, on the good old constitutional hotel plan, to order a pint of sweet blacking for his drinking, and throw it away; but insinuates that he may have his boots blacked instead of his stomach, and may also have bed, breakfast, attendance, and a porter up all night, for a certain fixed charge.”
Returning to Aldersgate Street, we shall find that the opposite turning, leading to Smithfield, is Little Britain. In “Great Expectations” we learn that the Offices of Mr. Jaggers, the Old Bailey lawyer, were here situated, in near proximity to Bartholomew Close; but the house cannot be precisely indicated. Here Mr. Wemmick assisted his Principal in the details of his professional business. He may be remembered as having a decided preference for “portable property.”
Proceeding onward by Duke Street, the visitor will shortly come into Smithfield, a locality which is considerably changed since the days when Pip first arrived in London. He says—
“When I told the clerk that I would take a turn in the air while I waited, he advised me to go round the corner and I should come into Smithfield. So I came into Smithfield; and the shameful place, being all asmear with filth, and fat, and blood, and foam, seemed to stick to me. So, I rubbed it off with all possible speed by turning into a street where I saw the great black dome of Saint Paul’s bulging at me from behind a grim stone building which a bystander said was Newgate Prison.”
Adopting the same line of route, the Rambler may pass the south front of the Metropolitan Meat Market, turning to the left by St. Bartholomew’s Hospital into Giltspur Street, which leads to Newgate Street, and faces on the opposite corner of Old Bailey Newgate Prison. In “Great Expectations,” Pip describes his visit to the interior, at the invitation and in the company of Mr. Wemmick:—
“We passed through the Lodge, where some fetters were hanging up, on the bare walls among the prison rules, into the interior of the jail. At that time jails were much neglected, and the period of exaggerated reaction consequent on all public wrong-doing—and which is always its longest and heaviest punishment—was still far off. So, felons were not lodged and fed better than soldiers (to say nothing of paupers), and seldom set fire to their prisons with the excusable object of improving the flavour of their soup. It was visiting-time when Wemmick took me in, and a potman was going his rounds with beer, and the prisoners behind bars in yards were buying beer and talking to friends; and a frowsy, ugly, disorderly, depressing scene it was.”
Again, it may be remarked that things have much improved since the good old days. Inter alia, the principles and rules of prison management and discipline have greatly changed for the better.
In the tale of “Barnaby Rudge” is the narrative of the burning of Newgate and the liberation of the prisoners by the rioters (1780), on which occasion it will be remembered that our old friend Gabriel Varden was somewhat roughly handled. For full particulars, see chapter 64.
Immediately south of Newgate is the adjacent Central Criminal Court of The Old Bailey, the scene of Charles Darnay’s trial in “The Tale of Two Cities.” At the time there described (1775)—