The Gaol: The Story of Newgate, London's Most Notorious Prison by Kelly Grovier( book review )
From The Sunday Times
July 13, 2008
The Gaol: The Story of Newgate, London's Most Notorious Prison by Kelly Grovier
The Sunday Times review by Andrew Holgate
Few buildings in London's history have exerted such a malign hold on the city's imagination as Newgate jail on Old Bailey. Dickens called the place a “gloomy depository of the guilt and misery of London”, Casanova (who experienced life inside at first-hand) “a hell such as Dante might have conceived”. Dozens of writers, from Thomas Malory, Ben Jonson and Daniel Defoe to John Gay and Henry Fielding, have plundered its dark corners for inspiration (the first three after doing time there), and Hogarth, Cruikshank and Gustave Doré all portrayed its excesses. So central, in fact, did the institution become in the cultural landscape of the 17th to 19th centuries, that it gave birth to a whole litany of allusion, from the Newgate novel and Newgate cant (a glossary of underworld patois) to the “Newgate hornpipe” (slang for a hanging) and the Newgate Calendar, a lurid almanac of misdemeanours that was almost as popular in its day as the Bible.
The question, however, lurking inside this breathless tour of the prison's history is, how and why did this 12th-century jail, which was gutted twice and rebuilt several times before its demolition in 1902 to make way for the Central Criminal Court, become so extraordinarily famous? Certainly it seems to have had nothing to do with age or size - it was never, Kelly Grovier asserts, the oldest prison in the country, nor the biggest. Nor did it gain any lustre from housing royal prisoners, who tended to be confined in the Tower
Some of Newgate's notoriety has to do, undoubtedly, with the sheer horror of life inside. Inmates could enter its maze of filthy corridors and dank dungeons and never be heard of again - the Jacobite John Bernardi, arrested in 1696, languished there for 40 years without ever being charged, until his death at the age of 82 in 1736. Many miserable wretches spent years sleeping in hellishly cramped and fetid conditions on dank stone floors, barely 18in of space separating them from their neighbour. (One jailbird described prisoners as being “like swine upon the ground, one upon another, howling and roaring”.) The smell emanating from inside the walls, enriched by the dogs, poultry and pigs that wandered the yards until they were banished in 1792, was foul: shops nearby were often forced to close because of the stench, and lawyers in the Sessions House next door wore nosegays to ward off the evil humours. Disease was a constant (for every inmate taken out to hang or burn, four are said to have died inside of typhus), and inmates were often preyed on by sadistic keepers, who charged for everything from mattresses and food to cells and the “easing” of manacles.
Adding to this infamy was the stream of infamous criminals who paraded through the prison (often from the Sessions House) on their way to execution. Captain Kidd, the highwayman Claude Duval and the “thief-taker general” Jonathan Wild were all incarcerated there, as was the thief Jack Sheppard, the most famous criminal of the 18th century, whose feat of escaping from jail on four separate occasions turned both him and Newgate, his victim twice, into celebrities. Newspapers and pamphlets fed voraciously on the tales of these villains, whose exploits reflected glory of a sort back on to the prison.
By far the most important reason for Newgate's notoriety, though, was its role as the departure point for the ritualised journey to the Tyburn gallows at the western end of Oxford Street. And when, in 1783, executions were transferred from Tyburn to the front of Newgate itself, the jail's grip on the popular imagination simply tightened. Tens of thousands of spectators would jam into the street outside to catch the last gasp of a condemned felon. In 1807, as many as 40,000 were said to have gathered there for the end of the murderess Elizabeth Godfrey, only for a stampede to claim the lives of 100 people.
Grovier deals with all of this dutifully enough as he gallops through Newgate's familiar tales of terror. He promises rather adventurously in his preface to explore “the meaning of Newgate as an unparalleled icon [and] an incubator of inspiration”, but in truth he never brings enough rigour to his task, rarely goes beyond the familiar sources and fails almost completely to offer a coherently organised argument for the jail's inflated status. Often, instead of analysis or thesis, the book simply resorts to rather tired anecdote, at least part of whose rationale seems to be to fill space. Grovier can at times be markedly effective in his descriptions, particularly of Sheppard, but he frequently succumbs to breathless hyperbole and a type of sub-Ackroydian mysticism that does his subject no favours. The result is a book that, for all the drama of its material, fails far too often to engage.
The Gaol by Kelly Grovier
J Murray £25 pp350 Buy the book from Books First £22.50 including free delivery
The question, however, lurking inside this breathless tour of the prison's history is, how and why did this 12th-century jail, which was gutted twice and rebuilt several times before its demolition in 1902 to make way for the Central Criminal Court, become so extraordinarily famous? Certainly it seems to have had nothing to do with age or size - it was never, Kelly Grovier asserts, the oldest prison in the country, nor the biggest. Nor did it gain any lustre from housing royal prisoners, who tended to be confined in the Tower
Some of Newgate's notoriety has to do, undoubtedly, with the sheer horror of life inside. Inmates could enter its maze of filthy corridors and dank dungeons and never be heard of again - the Jacobite John Bernardi, arrested in 1696, languished there for 40 years without ever being charged, until his death at the age of 82 in 1736. Many miserable wretches spent years sleeping in hellishly cramped and fetid conditions on dank stone floors, barely 18in of space separating them from their neighbour. (One jailbird described prisoners as being “like swine upon the ground, one upon another, howling and roaring”.) The smell emanating from inside the walls, enriched by the dogs, poultry and pigs that wandered the yards until they were banished in 1792, was foul: shops nearby were often forced to close because of the stench, and lawyers in the Sessions House next door wore nosegays to ward off the evil humours. Disease was a constant (for every inmate taken out to hang or burn, four are said to have died inside of typhus), and inmates were often preyed on by sadistic keepers, who charged for everything from mattresses and food to cells and the “easing” of manacles.
Adding to this infamy was the stream of infamous criminals who paraded through the prison (often from the Sessions House) on their way to execution. Captain Kidd, the highwayman Claude Duval and the “thief-taker general” Jonathan Wild were all incarcerated there, as was the thief Jack Sheppard, the most famous criminal of the 18th century, whose feat of escaping from jail on four separate occasions turned both him and Newgate, his victim twice, into celebrities. Newspapers and pamphlets fed voraciously on the tales of these villains, whose exploits reflected glory of a sort back on to the prison.
By far the most important reason for Newgate's notoriety, though, was its role as the departure point for the ritualised journey to the Tyburn gallows at the western end of Oxford Street. And when, in 1783, executions were transferred from Tyburn to the front of Newgate itself, the jail's grip on the popular imagination simply tightened. Tens of thousands of spectators would jam into the street outside to catch the last gasp of a condemned felon. In 1807, as many as 40,000 were said to have gathered there for the end of the murderess Elizabeth Godfrey, only for a stampede to claim the lives of 100 people.
Grovier deals with all of this dutifully enough as he gallops through Newgate's familiar tales of terror. He promises rather adventurously in his preface to explore “the meaning of Newgate as an unparalleled icon [and] an incubator of inspiration”, but in truth he never brings enough rigour to his task, rarely goes beyond the familiar sources and fails almost completely to offer a coherently organised argument for the jail's inflated status. Often, instead of analysis or thesis, the book simply resorts to rather tired anecdote, at least part of whose rationale seems to be to fill space. Grovier can at times be markedly effective in his descriptions, particularly of Sheppard, but he frequently succumbs to breathless hyperbole and a type of sub-Ackroydian mysticism that does his subject no favours. The result is a book that, for all the drama of its material, fails far too often to engage.
The Gaol by Kelly Grovier
J Murray £25 pp350 Buy the book from Books First £22.50 including free delivery
Tales from the Hanging Court by HITCHCOCK and SHOEMAKER( BOOK REVIEW )
Tales from the Hanging Court Tim Hitchcock & Robert Shoemaker
Summary:
Tales from the Hanging Court draws on published accounts of Old Bailey trials from 1674-1834, a rich seam of social, political and legal history. Through these compelling true stories of theft, murder, rape and blackmail, Hitchcock and Shoemaker capture the early history of the judicial system and the colourful, vibrant and sometimes scandalous world of pre-industrial London:
‘This was a time when an orphan could live for a week by stealing a single handkerchief, but be hanged for less; when stocks and pillories were still in use, duels were still fought, and the medieval punishment of ‘pressing’ to death – spreadeagled on the ground and poled with heavy weights – was still on the statute books; when your jailer could invite you upstairs for a beer or leave you in an airless dungeon with no water on a whim; when you might be murdered in your bed for some linen or a silver tankard …’ Time Out
In its heyday the court was a soap opera of intrigue, sensation and murky goings on where authors such as Dickens and Defoe would go for inspiration. Thieves and murderers were often caught by members of the public and prosecutions brought by victims. Hitchcock and Shoemaker chart an increasingly sophisticated society taking crime and punishment away from the anarchy of the London mob to put it into a court where a judge and jury meted out justice.
The authors paint a vivid picture of a flourishing city where market capitalism and Enlightenment thinking battled to impose order on the chaotic crime that accompanied Britain's economic miracle.
- London history in the raw
- Gripping and colourful excerpts from real-life trials
- Describes the grit and humanity of life in eighteenth-century London
- 4-page colour plate section
Table of Contents:
Prologue
Introduction
Stop Thief!
Crimes of Blood
The Trial
Crimes of Greed, Crimes of Lust
Retribution
Epilogue
Further Reading
Index
PrologueIntroductionStop Thief!Crimes of BloodThe TrialCrimes of Greed, Crimes of LustRetributionEpilogueFurther ReadingIndexAbout the Author(s):
Robert Shoemaker and Tim Hitchcock are the Editors of the online proceedings of the Old Bailey archives.
Robert Shoemaker and Tim Hitchcock are the Editors of the online proceedings of the Old Bailey archives.
The Old Bailey: Eight Centuries of Crime, Cruelty and Corruption ( BOOK REVIEW )
amazon.co.uk
Compelling curiosities, horrific brutality and cases of routine corruption are to be found in the events which make up the history of London's Old Bailey. Theresa Murphy, a writer on diverse subjects, is concerned to see the modern flaws of the British criminal justice system in the context of Old Bailey history through a fascinating collection of historical anecdotes and outlines of more recent cases. More descriptive than analytical, The Old Bailey, in its coverage of the gruesome horrors of the past, attains a grisly Chamber of Horrors sort of appeal. It can also be highly entertaining in its lighter, less macabre passages. Murphy provides sparks of contention as her criticisms of the system's continued flaws occasionally pierce the historical narrative. The courts in which judges are nurtured, she states, are "narrow and hardening", even now places of "ludicrous ill-fitting wigs" and "archaic language peppered with hypocrisy." She illustrates how now, as in the past, a high degree of personal power rests in the hands of judges, ensuring that "anomalies in sentencing must be expected and accepted." Posing questions rather than providing answers, this book should appeal not only to those who relish the more unsavoury elements of social history but also to anyone interested in pondering the development and current state of Britain's judicial system.
Synopsis
This is the story of an arena of crime and degradation, of infamy and human suffering. It is the history of the Old Bailey, an institution as flawed as all man-made attempts at justice are doomed to be. In the beginning there was barbarity and injustice. The court was thronged with a restless, muttering mob eager for the verdicts of "guilty" so they could enjoy public executions, hurling abuse and missiles at those with the noose around their neck. Today we fool ourselves that we have evolved beyond barbarism, but are made uneasy by the continuing exposure of miscarriages of justice. While welcoming the release of those wrongly imprisoned, the innocents who died on the scaffold haunt us. Those who believe they have the divine power to judge their fellow man are unable to perform resurrections. With the Old Bailey for a yardstick, mankind has not progressed much through the centuries. There was some optimism as the Millennium drew near, but it was misplaced. There was no apocalypse, no miracle. The Old Bailey has since seen its usual parade of misfits.
Tales from the Hanging Court ( BOOK REVIEW )
Tales from the Hanging Court
Tales from the Hanging Court draws on published accounts of Old Bailey trials from 1674-1834, a rich seam of social, political and legal history. Through these compelling true stories of theft, murder, rape and blackmail, Hitchcock and Shoemaker capture the early history of the judicial system and the colourful, vibrant and sometimes scandalous world of pre-industrial London:
‘This was a time when an orphan could live for a week by stealing a single handkerchief, but be hanged for less; when stocks and pillories were still in use, duels were still fought, and the medieval punishment of ‘pressing’ to death – spreadeagled on the ground and poled with heavy weights – was still on the statute books; when your jailer could invite you upstairs for a beer or leave you in an airless dungeon with no water on a whim; when you might be murdered in your bed for some linen or a silver tankard …’ Time Out
In its heyday the court was a soap opera of intrigue, sensation and murky goings on where authors such as Dickens and Defoe would go for inspiration. Thieves and murderers were often caught by members of the public and prosecutions brought by victims. Hitchcock and Shoemaker chart an increasingly sophisticated society taking crime and punishment away from the anarchy of the London mob to put it into a court where a judge and jury meted out justice.
The authors paint a vivid picture of a flourishing city where market capitalism and Enlightenment thinking battled to impose order on the chaotic crime that accompanied Britain's economic miracle.
‘This was a time when an orphan could live for a week by stealing a single handkerchief, but be hanged for less; when stocks and pillories were still in use, duels were still fought, and the medieval punishment of ‘pressing’ to death – spreadeagled on the ground and poled with heavy weights – was still on the statute books; when your jailer could invite you upstairs for a beer or leave you in an airless dungeon with no water on a whim; when you might be murdered in your bed for some linen or a silver tankard …’ Time Out
In its heyday the court was a soap opera of intrigue, sensation and murky goings on where authors such as Dickens and Defoe would go for inspiration. Thieves and murderers were often caught by members of the public and prosecutions brought by victims. Hitchcock and Shoemaker chart an increasingly sophisticated society taking crime and punishment away from the anarchy of the London mob to put it into a court where a judge and jury meted out justice.
The authors paint a vivid picture of a flourishing city where market capitalism and Enlightenment thinking battled to impose order on the chaotic crime that accompanied Britain's economic miracle.
GALLOWS THIEF ( BOOK REVIEW )
Gallows Thief
amazon.co.uk
By setting Gallows Thief in the Regency period, Bernard Cornwell is able to use his customary skills of characterisation and razor-sharp plotting against a vividly realised new backdrop.
It is Britain in the 1820s. After the wars with France, with unemployment high and soldiers paid off, the government lives in mortal fear of social unrest. The solution is draconian punishment for any crime, and thousands die on the gallows. But despite this, it was possible to petition the King and instigate an investigation. Cornwell's new hero Rider Sandman is a hero of Waterloo struggling to repay his family debts when he becomes involved in the case of a man waiting to be hanged in Newgate prison. Given the job by the Home Secretary of investigating the man's guilt or innocence, Sandman finds himself knee-deep in labyrinthine plots involving bribes, sedition and a massive conspiracy of silence. As this suggests, the contemporary parallels are never far away. The world Cornwell has conjured for us is as richly drawn as any in his distinguished career: gentlemen's clubs and taverns, haughty aristocrats, fashionable painters and their mistresses, and professional cut-throats; all this creates a heady melange that is just as impressive as anything in Cornwell's Sharpe series.
London: The Executioner's City ( BOOK REVIEW )
London: The Executioner's City
amazon.co.uk
Tyburn Fields is the best known site of execution in London, but London may be aptly named the executioner's city, so many were the places where executions could and did occur. "London - The Executioner's City" reveals the capital as a place where the bodies of criminals defined the boundaries of the city and heads on poles greeted patrons on London Bridge. The ubiquity of crime and punishment was taken for granted by countless generations of the capital's inhabitants, though it seems to have done little to stem the tide of criminality that has always threatened to engulf the city. The book is a powerful evocation of the dark side of London's history, where the great and not so good, the poor and helpless, the cruel and the idealistic crowd together to be punished in public. A King and more than one Queen, heretics, archbishops, pirates, poisoners, plotters, murderers and a cook executed for selling putrid fish met death by hanging, beheading, burning or boiling in London, and on most occasions the crowd roared its approval. David Brandon and Alan Brooke's book is a vivid picture of capital punishment in a capital that seems to have thrived on executions.
TYBURN : LONDON'S FATAL TREE ( BOOK REVIEW )
Tyburn: London's Fatal Tree
amazon.co.uk
BY : Alan Brooke (Author), David Brandon (Author)
"Tyburn" is synonymous with the idea of execution - over 50,000 people died there between the 12th century and 1783. Among those who met their end at Tyburn were William Wallace, the Scottish patriot, Perkin Warbeck, who claimed to be one of the Princes in the Tower and the hated Jonathan Wild, perhaps London's first master criminal. Alan Brooke and David Brandon tell the story of how Tyburn came to be the place of execution and of the rituals and spectacle associated with the deaths of so many people, both famous and obscure. They provide a vivid picture of crime and punishment in London, mixing martyrs, pickpockets, traitors and errant aristocrats all playing their final scene on London's 'nevergreen tree'
THE LAST OF NEWGATE ( BOOK REVIEW )
The Last Days of Newgate
By : Andrew Pepper
onionbooks.co.uk
A story of high intrigue and low politics, of brutal murder and cunning conspiracies, set against the backdrop of a fascinating period in British history and introducing an ingenious, pragmatic and unforgettable hero.
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In his pursuit of the murderer, Pyke ruffles the feathers of some powerful people, and, falsely accused of murder himself, he soon faces a death sentence, and the gallows of Old Bailey. Imprisoned, and with only his uncle and the headstrong, aristocratic daughter of his greatest enemy who believe in him, Pyke must engineer his escape, find the real killer and untangle the web of politics that has been spun around him.
From the gutters of Seven Dials, to the cells of Newgate prison; from the turmoil of 1800s Belfast to the highest levels of murky, pre-Victorian politics, The Last Days of Newgate is a gripping, darkly atmospheric story with a fantastic, pragmatic - and reluctantly heroic - hero.
" In No Heathen Land " ( BOOK REVIEW )
In No Heathen Land
THE OLD BAILEY AND ITS TRIALS (226 pp.)—Bernard O'Donnell—Macmillan
Monday, Aug. 07, 1950
TIME magazine
"Hangman, I charge you pay particular attention to this lady. Scourge her soundly, man; scourge her till the blood runs down. It is Christmas—a cold time for madam to strip. See that you warm her shoulders thoroughly."
In such language the Lord Chief Justice of England's most renowned court of law, London's Old Bailey, ladled out a generous helping of what was known as British justice in the 1680s. It was shocking language from a judge, but few Britons were shocked. In the courts, as on the street, the times had a raw, cruel edge. Defendants stood trial in irons, professional witnesses under the court's protection glibly swore to false evidence, juries were bullied unmercifully.
Down with the Jury !
The common practice in dealing with a jury in disagreement, writes Author Bernard O'Donnell, Fleet Street crime reporter, was to load its members into a cart and haul them around the city "so that a jeering populace could express their contempt for men so heedless of their duties as citizens." All in all, readers who still think that King John's Magna Carta brought a fairly modern sense of justice into British courts will have their eyes opened by Author O'Donnell's blood-curdling history of Old Bailey and its even older neighbor, Newgate Gaol. The earliest trials were held once a year in Newgate in a building which dated from 1190. Later, in 1550, when Newgate had become too pest-ridden for the judges' personal comfort, the first of three successive Old Baileys was built next door. The two institutions were to stand side by side, one funneling miserable wretches to the other, for more than 300 years.
Up with the Body !
From Newgate's governor down to the lowliest keeper, every prison official had his private source of income. The governor sold liquor and encouraged his charges to get drunk. For a price, a prisoner could get a drink of water, have his manacles removed, or sleep with a woman. "Even the prisoners themselves imposed a charge for what they called 'chummage'" upon a newcomer, in return for which he could have a seat near the fire. Next door, in Old Bailey, life was just as sordid. In their dining room upstairs, the judges "indulged in feasts of gargantuan size" at state expense, then came staggering drunkenly down to pass sentence. Householders with windows looking out on the gallows had a lucrative business on hanging days. "As much as £10 a seat was demanded," says Author O'Donnell, "and the surrounding viewpoints in the street were thronged with deliriously excited men & women who gathered in position on the eve of the execution, whiling away the long night hours with song and dance and drunken debauch."
The Gratified Public.
The sight of crowds stoning the swinging bodies pleased even Dr. Samuel Johnson. Thundered Johnson, in 1783, when there was talk of abandoning the execution procession from Newgate to Tyburn: "No, Sir! ... executions are intended to draw spectators . . . The old method was most satisfactory to all parties; the public was gratified by a procession; the criminal was supported by it. Why is all this to be swept away?" Twenty years before public hangings were finally abolished (in 1868), Charles Dickens begged to differ: "I believe that a sight so inconceivably awful as the wickedness and levity of the crowd . . . could be imagined by no man, and could be presented in no heathen land under the sun . . ." The Old Bailey is weakest where it might have been richest: in Author O'Donnell's sketchy, fleshless recounting of the trials that took place there through the centuries. He seems to be chiefly interested in showing off Old Bailey's progress from the dim, grim, soulless courtroom of the Reformation days, when more than 200 different crimes carried the death penalty, to today's "fine and stately" oak-paneled Central Criminal Court, where justices take a not-guilty verdict calmly.
Like the unblindfolded statue atop the "new" Old Bailey (erected in 1907), Justice finally has her eyes open in 20th Century England. But just to keep his fellow countrymen from congratulating themselves, Author O'Donnell reminds them that only a century or so ago a nine-year-old boy could be sentenced to death for stealing tuppence.
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