The History and
Romance of
Crime
FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES
TO THE PRESENT DAY
THE GROLIER SOCIETY
LONDON
Chronicles of Newgate
FROM THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
TO ITS DEMOLITION
A SKETCH OF THE TOWER
Author of
"The Mysteries of Police and Crime"
"Fifty Years of Public Service," etc.
In Two Volumes
Volume II
THE GROLIER SOCIETY
EDITION NATIONALE
Limited to one thousand registered and numbered sets.
NUMBER 307
The gaol of Newgate may be taken as the type of all the early prisons,the physical expression of manifold neglect and mismanagement from thethirteenth century down to our own times. The case of all prisoners inEngland was desperate, their sufferings heartrending, their treatmentan indelible disgrace to a nation claiming to be civilized. The placeof durance was sometimes underground, a dungeon, or subterraneancellar, into which the prisoners were lowered, to fight with rats forthe meagre pittance of food thrown to them through a trap-door. Theseterrible oubliettes were too often damp and noisome, half a footdeep in water, or with an open sewer running through the centre ofthe floor. They had no chimneys, no fire-place, no barrack beds; thewretched inmates huddled together for warmth upon heaps of filthy ragsor bundles of rotten straw reeking with foul exhalations. There wasnot the slightest attempt at ventilation, as we understand the word.The windows, when they existed, were seldom if ever opened, nor thedoors; the spaces within the prison walls were generally too limited to[6]allow of daily exercise, and the prisoners were thus kept continuouslyunder lock and key. Water, another necessary of life, was doled out inthe scantiest quantities, too small for proper ablutions or cleansingpurposes, and hardly sufficient to assuage thirst. John Howard, thegreat philanthropist, tells us of one prison where the daily allowanceof water was only three pints per head, and even this was dependentupon the good will of the keepers, who brought it or not, as they felt