When the last night of some poor condemned wretch had arrived, at midnight, and from hour to hour, till the dawn of the execution morning, a bell man used to parade outside the prison walls under the grating of the condemned cell, and in loud solemn tones accompanied the harsh sounds of his bell with his warning-cries, to “prepare for death.” With a blush of shame for our forefathers, we are obliged to confess that, murder by law on the gallows was then so common for burglary, highway robbery, forgery, horse and sheep stealing, shop-lifting to the value of forty shillings, and other minor offences, that “hanging Monday” was regularly looked for, after every Old Bailey sessions, when a batch of males and females, sometimes amounting to half a dozen, would be hung up like so many dogs and cats on a Monday morning, although only found guilty and sentenced on the preceding Friday. Simple stealing from a house or the person was then oftener punished with death than were murderous offences. And so awfully unscrupulous were the “Bow-street runners,” as the officers of police were termed, that the innocent used to be “planted” with stolen property, entrapped, sworn positively against, and put to death for the sake of the £40 “blood money” then given for every one capitally convicted. Then the horror of the “condemned cell, and pew, and press yard” were kept continually going, and the blood-thirsty monsters afterwards held their nightly saturnalias together, with spies, informers, bawdy-house pimps of both sexes, and the master and deputy-hangman amongst them; who revelled and toasted the success of their trade of blood-spilling. Then also, the “press yard” witnessed every sessions the torturing of its many youthful victims by the lead-knotted lash; and the “press room” resounded with the piercing shrieks of a prisoner undergoing the punishment awarded to those who refused to plead. Whenever a prisoner at the bar declined to say whether he was guilty or not guilty (a formality required by the law before he could be tried), he was taken to the “press room,” laid on the stone floor naked, and with arms and legs extended, chained fast by the wrists and ancles; and a stout board was placed on the front of his body, on which heavy iron weights, one by one, were gradually placed, after every time he was asked if he would plead to the question first put to him, “guilty or not guilty?” Some poor tortured wretches, after a certain number of ponderous weights, never less than half-hundreds or hundreds, had been heaped upon them, would be terrified into pleading and standing the chance of their trial; but others would be obstinately dumb till such a pile of weights was added, that they were, according to the sentence of the law, crushed to death! The murderer’s pew in the chapel, on the sabbath day, often presented a spectacle, that once seen, never was forgotten. While the late Rev. Dr. Cotton, then the prison chaplain, was preaching the “condemned sermon” one time scowling assassins deep-dyed with the blood of many victims would be seen grouped together; at another time youth and innocence, wrongfully condemned to die a felon’s death on the gallows (as history has since proved), through perjury, or misconstrued circumstances and uncertain evidence. Amongst these we must not forget the fair and beautiful Eliza Fenning, a virtuous maiden servant of a tradesman’s family in Fleet Street, who suffered death on the public gibbet for an offence which she called God to witness that she was totally innocent of! She was convicted on doubtful circumstantial evidence of attempting to poison the whole family, by putting arsenic into the flour of some dumplings she made for their dinner. All her solemn asseverations of innocence availed her not, and the best of characters was entirely useless: sentenced to die she was, and she was ruthlessly hanged by her fair neck, before a vast sympathising multitude of men, women, and children in the Old Bailey, all melted to tears, and crying out “shame,” “shame!”
The beauteous innocent creature appeared on the gallows platform in a new white dress from head to foot, as spotless as her own purity; and we doubt not her soul, the moment it was released by the executioner’s vile hands, was caught up by attending angels and carried to the haven of eternal bliss.
Long after it was too late to wipe out the stain of her judicial murder, her master’s son confessed on his death bed that he secretly mixed the arsenic in the flour she used, during her brief absence from the kitchen, as an act of revenge for refusing to submit to his embraces.
Tom Cheshire and Newgate has witnessed other ghastly scenes, and his predecessor has had adventures with “Sixteen-string-Jack, Jerry Abershaw, Jonathan Wild, Jack Shepherd, Betsy the bank-note forger and foot-pad, who was half executed and restored to life; when the CONDEMNED used to go in an open cart, sitting on their coffins, from Newgate all through Holborn to a public half-way house in St. Giles’s, where they were allowed to stop and drink their “parting draught” with their friends, and be presented with their “last nosegay,” and then resume their procession through Oxford Road, and at the top of it, in the open space facing the gates of Hyde Park, near the turnpike that then existed, to be at once executed on Tyburn’s three-corner’d gibbet.
Passing to later times, Cheshire and his man Calcraft knew something about the noted Dr. Brooks and the dreadful secrets of old surgeon’s hall at the back of Newgate. Subjects for dissection being very scarce, “BODY-SNATCHERS,” sometimes called “resurrectionists” used to watch funerals during the day time in the church-yards of London, mark where the youngest and plumpest subjects were interred, and at night, with digging tools take them up and bag them in sacks, which they would speedily convey to a hired hackney coach standing conveniently near, and drive off with them to the said hall, or to St. Bartholomew’s, according to orders. As body-snatching did not always supply enough subjects for the numerous doctors and students who required them for lectures and experiments, a viler class of offenders sprang to way-lay the friendless and unfortunate, entice them into some lonely out of way house surrounded by vacant ground walls, and there poison and smother them. These horrible villains were called Burkers, who contrived for a long time to sell the bodies of their victims undetected for large sums, as persons who had died naturally and been buried. At last a poor Italian boy who exhibited white mice in the streets, was burked by Bishop, May, and Williams, in a lone house in Bethnal-green, and one night was offered at Bartholomew’s hospital. The doctor to whom they took it, feeling certain after a minute examination, that the corpse had died a violent death, quietly sent for the officers of justice, and gave them into custody. They were tried and found guilty on the clearest evidence of Italians who identified the boy, and were hanged by Calcraft and his master amidst the loudest execrations ever heard in the precincts of Newgate.
During the earlier times of that awful looking gail, the classification and administration were so loose as to render it a perfect HELL ON EARTH. Depravity, ribaldry, drunkenness, gambling and debauchery there reigned unchecked in its dark dungeon, between gaolers and the lowest of their male and female prisoners. The latter sex often times exchanged clothes with their keepers, when the govener was, at night, fast asleep, and in their cells they carrried on whatever lewd revels they had a fancy for, and made a pandemonium of the prison. At the death of Cheshire, Calcraft became principal executioner. He was previously a private watchman at Reid’s brewery, Liquorpond Street, and by trade a lady’s shoemaker. He is also celebrated as a first-class rabbit-fancier, whose breed has won prizes, and unknown, has graced the festive board of many London families. At the Tiger public house, corner of Devizes Street, near the Rosemary Branch, Hoxton, next door to his old residence in his younger days, he used to meet great numbers of his brother snobs, rabbit-breeders, and skittle players, and there held jollifications and played skittles with them. On account of the prejudice of the neighbours, and the too-great freedom of impudent boys in calling out “Jack Ketch,” his habit was to go out very early in the morning and after dark. He is married, and is the parent of a goodly number of sons and daughters, morally brought up and schooled, who have sometimes, been unjustly annoyed by ignorent people on account of their unfortunate parentage. To show the full force of this prejudice we will mention a curious circumstance that happened to one of his daughters.
She was accustomed to meet and court a young mechanic at a friend’s house. One night a supper was appointed to be held there, and the sweetheart had promise of a good merry-making with mutual acquaintances of both sexes, not one of whom knew Miss Calcraft by her paternal name. Through some mysterous cause we have never had explained, just as all were comfortably seated around the smoking viands on the table, and were pledging the lovers and each other in preliminary bumpers of beer and gin, strange footsteps were heard on the stairs, followed by a knock at the door, and when it was opened, the whole company, especially Miss Calcraft’s lover, were suddenly petrified with horror. No sooner was the fatal name pronounced and a recognition passed between father and daughter, than the young man at one bound cleared the table, rushed down the stairs, ran fast away from the house and was seen no more; thus proving again to the deserted hangman’s daughter, that “the course of true love never runs smooth.”
A parallel to the iniquities of the old Bow Street runners are to be found in the records of our modern police force of London. “Jack Ketch’s warren” was well supplied by police scoundrels from many quarters of the poverty stricken districts. One of the most infamous was the “prig’s haunt” in Tyndal’s Buildings, Gray’s Inn Lane, inhabited by low Irish, where King, a policeman in disguise, attended daily when off duty, to teach pocket-picking and all the arts of burglary to poor outcast boys. Between experiments with various instruments, and lessons on the way to use them, a coat was swung across a line, and the young ones were shown how to pick the pocket single-handed when a thief was by himself, and when they went together in twos and threes. As fast as they became adepts in the art and went into the streets to obtain their living by it, King, who always knew their walks, watched them in his uniform, and the moment they committed a robbery, pounced upon them and procured their conviction, for which he obtained the praise of his superiors for extraordinary vigilance, and rewards, besides court-fees at the sessions. At last this vile thief-trainer became too clever; he was denounced by some boys sharper than himself, and some of his honester brother-constables took the clue up, unravelled it to the end, and on the clearest evidence got him sentenced to penal servitude for life. A more recent proof, while we are penning this, has come out, that perjury is still rife in the Metropolitan police force. Three policemen have been wrongfully procuring the conviction of a drover on the charge of stealing several sheep from a field at Tottenham, and have received their “blood money” from the County of Middlesex funds. Since their poor victim has been suffering incarceration, the real thief, at the trial of one of his confederates, has confessed to his own guilt, and declared the entire innocence of the man formerly sworn to by the said policemen. May justice soon overtake them.
Returning to Calcraft and his latter days, we have to congratulate our readers upon his religious conversion, and regular Sunday attendance with his wife, at a church near Poole-street, Islington. He has long ceased to love his office and make money by sales of the clothes of the numerous culprits, and bits of the ropes that hanged them. The ancient ceremony of swearing in the executioner was an awful one. Amidst a collection of ropes, fetters and handcuffs, with his hand upon the bible, he was required to solemnly swear that he would execute every criminal condemned to die, without favouring father or mother, or any friend whatsoever; and when he had taken the horrible oath he was dismissed with the ominous words—“GET THEE HENCE WRETCH!”
The latest performance of Calcraft is reported below, and shows that the first private execution at Newgate was like the one at Maidstone, privately barbarous and publicly useless.