Olde London Punishments Read Online Free PDF

whore for the night cost 12 d . In fact, the regime inside the prison was little different from that on the outside. The one thing that money could not usually buy was freedom.
    The City authorities must bear much of the blame for the abuses which took place in Newgate: their aim seems to have been one of systematic neglect while trying to avoid drawing attention. In 1628 a structural survey was undertaken which described Newgate as a ‘ruin’ desperately in need of repair, the cost being estimated at £500. Newgate was damaged severely in the Great Fire of 1666 but was rebuilt with rather fine decorative embellishments on the outside (which contrasted greatly with what rapidly became the noisome conditions which had to be endured by its inmates). Nothing was done to improve the supply of fresh water or to make provision for effective ventilation. The irony of equipping Newgate with a splendid façade with prominent statues symbolising ‘Peace’, ‘Security’, ‘Plenty’ and ‘Liberty’ was not lost on the satirists of the day.
    In 1665 the plague had struck Newgate with lethal effect. Fear of the plague is entirely understandable, and led to the temporary suspension of court sessions. Unfortunately, this may have caused even more deaths, as prisoners who might have been acquitted were kept confined with other prisoners in conditions where fatalities from plague were bound to be high. In fact, the conditions inside Newgate in the early eighteenth century were so pestilential that many of the condemned felons sent there before being taken to be hanged at Tyburn got no further, succumbing to gaol fever and other epidemic scourges. The nadir was probably reached in 1750 when Newgate was more than usually overcrowded, and inmates who appeared in the nearby Old Bailey seemed to bring an almost tangible contagion with them. In May, more than sixty people attending the Old Bailey died as gaol fever raged indiscriminately through prisoners, judges, jury and anyone else in attendance. Such a disaster led to prisoners from Newgate being soused in vinegar as a disinfectant before they appeared in court and to the practice, still extant, whereby judges on certain occasions carry nosegays with them as they enter court. Immediate steps to counter the foulness of Newgate’s atmosphere included building an open exercise yard and a windmill on the roof as a primitive air extraction device. Such was the smell emanating from Newgate, particularly in hot weather, that passers-by would cross the street to avoid the stench and keep their noses covered!
    The prison had many notable inmates over the centuries. These included Anne Askew, the English Protestant martyr who was racked in Newgate and burnt at Smithfield, the highwayman Claude Duval in 1670 and Daniel Defoe in 1702 and 1703. The darling of the London crowd, Jack Sheppard, the burglar, highwayman and escapologist, was in and out on several occasions in 1723 and 1724 – and the hated Jonathan Wild was incarcerated in 1725. With the exception of Defoe, when the others finally left Newgate, it was to undertake their last journey. In most cases this was to Tyburn. Innumerable other wretches ‘went west’ from Newgate.

    The hated Jonathan Wild displayed on a ‘Tyburn Ticket’ for his execution.

    Jack Sheppard in Newgate Prison.
    An entertaining feature of life in Newgate was the presence of the chaplain or ordinary whose ostensible job was to cater for the spiritual welfare of the inmates. The services this man offered cut little ice with most of Newgate’s residents (except perhaps when they were in extremis ). Routine services were frequently a noisy shambles as the ordinary struggled to make his voice heard above the uncouth and irreverent hubbub of his captive audience. For all that the ordinary had an important role to play in the carnivalesque atmosphere that was expected in Newgate on the day before a felon was taken off to Tyburn to be hanged. This involved the