If the accused be held for trial by the magistrate, the next step, as with us, is the presentation of the charge to the grand jury. The grand jury either throw out the indictment or find a true bill, in which event a jury trial follows at the Central Criminal Court.
CHAPTER XII
THE CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT;—THE OLD BAILEY
CURRENT TRIALS.
At the corner of Newgate and Old Bailey streets, near Fleet street and not far from Ludgate Hill, stands a modern building, officially known as the Central Criminal Court, but popularly called "the Old Bailey." It occupies the site of the ancient Newgate Gaol and Fleet Prison, where, for nearly seven centuries the criminals of London expiated their crimes. There they were tried and, if convicted, hanged on the premises, or—a scarcely better fate—thrown into Newgate Prison, which, from time immemorial, was so overcrowded, so ill-ventilated and so poorly supplied with water that it was the hot-bed of diseases designated as "prison fever." At a single session of court the fever had been known to carry off fifty human beings; not only prisoners, but such august personages as judges, mayors, aldermen and sheriffs.
The present fine structure is exclusively a court house to which prisoners are brought for trial and confined in sanitary cells beneath the court rooms only while awaiting the call of their cases. There are three courts: two presided over by judges called, respectively, the Common Serjeant and the Recorder, together with the Lord Chief Justice of England, or such other judge of the High Court as may be designated for the month, who comes from his civil work in the Strand Law Courts to try criminal cases at the Old Bailey. Each month, also, two or three Aldermen and Sheriffs of the City of London are scheduled for the complimentary duty of attending their Lordships and entertaining them at luncheon.
The court rooms are rather small and nearly square. Like every London court, they have oak panelled walls, and excellent illumination from above by skylights; they are arranged with a high dais—on which are the chairs and desks for the presiding judge, the sheriffs, or for any guest—and they have the usual steep upward slope of the benches for barristers on the one side and for the jury on the other. Only the solicitors' table is at the floor level. This arrangement brings all the participants in a trial more nearly together than if they were distributed over a flat floor. At the end of the room farthest from the judge is the prisoners' dock, a large square box, elevated almost to the judge's level. This the prisoner reaches by a stairway from the cells below (invisible because of the sides of the dock), accompanied by officers, and he stands throughout the trial—unless invited by the judge to be seated—completely isolated from his barrister and from his solicitor and can only communicate with his defenders by scrawling a lead pencil note and passing it to an officer. A small area of sloping benches, together with a very inadequate gallery, are the only accommodations for the public.
If the visitor happens to be a guest of the Court, he will be ushered in by a door leading to the raised dais and will sit at a desk beside the judge. His eye will first be arrested by a small heap on his desk of dried aromatic herbs and rose leaves and, while speculating as to the purpose of these, he will discover similar little piles on the desks of the presiding judge and sheriffs. He will also observe that the carpet of the dais is thickly strewn with the same litter. Vaguely it is suggested that the court room has been used over night for some kind of a horticultural exhibition and that the sweeping has been overlooked. Later, his astonishment, however, is redoubled when enter the sheriffs and the judge each carrying a bright colored bouquet of roses or sweet peas bound up in an old-fashioned, stiff, perforated paper holder. The visitor ventures to whisper his curiosity and he is then informed that, in the former times, these herbs, and the perfume of fresh flowers, were supposed to prevent the contagion of prison fever; and that the ancient custom has survived the use of disinfectants and the modern sanitation of prisoners and cells.