New Gate Prison and the Criminal Justice System of the 18th Century

The business end of Newgate

Money might not have bought happiness, but it could buy…

• Lighter manacles• A cleaning maid or

prostitute• Better food, clothes,

bedding, candles, soap

• Drinks at the bar!!!

For those without money…

The vast majority of prisoners simply had no money, so…

• Heavy, painful manacles, stapled to the floor

• Little better than rags for clothing

• Food…raw (cooking wasn’t offered)

• Rotting corpses…

John Howard, The State of Prisons (1777)

“ Prisoners crowded in close rooms, cells, and subterraneous dungeons, for fourteen or fifteen hours out of the four and twenty. In some of those caverns the floors are very damp: in others there is sometimes an inch or two of water: and straw, or bedding is laid on such floors…”

Referenced by Godwin, Appendix C, Caleb Williams, p 516

One More from John Howard:

“ Many who went in healthy, are in few months changed to emaciated dejected objects. Some are seen pining under diseases, ‘sick, and in prison’; expiring on the floors, in loathsome cells, of pestilential fevers, and the confluent smallpox; victims, I must not say to the cruelty, but I will say to the inattention, of the sheriffs, and gentlemen in the commission of the peace.”

Referenced by Godwin, Appendix C, Caleb Williams, p 516

William Godwin’s views on the desperate need for Prison Reform…namely Newgate.

Finally a push to clean up the tyrannical methods of government was at a high.

Criticism of inhumane conditions using actual Newgate prison cases and laws.

Horrific treatment of prisoners.

Quotations on English “justice” and the state of New Gate Prison: But the dirt of a prison speaks sadness to

the heart and appears to be already in a state of putridity and infection (Godwin, 262).

Alas! He that has observed the secrets of a prison, well knows that there is more torture in the lingering existence of a criminal, in the silent intolerable minutes that he spends, than in the tangible misery of whips and racks (Godwin, 265)!

Godwin’s views about the Judicial system… But the law has neither eyes, nor

ears, nor bowels of humanity; and it turns into marble the hearts of all those that are nursed in its principles (Godwin, 378).

Godwin, William. Caleb Williams. Ontario: Broadwiew Press, 2000.

Defoe’s Newgate term… Daniel Defoe spent stints

in the Newgate prison as well…

His political publications were his crime.

“The Shortest-Way with the Dissenters; Or, Proposals for the Establishment of the Church”

http://www.britannica.com/eb/print?articleId=29745&fullArticle=true&tocId=1771

Old Bailey Session…

Built in 1539, then rebuilt after Great Fire of 1666

1674- Open Court… Closed in court =

hundreds of deaths due to Typhus

Criminal Statistics:

Laws created by landed gentry Applied by wealthy magistrates Jurors were tradesmen 90% of crimes were petty larceny:

pickpocketing and shoplifting

Transportation

As criminal punishment, or

Wealthy merchants would buy healthy inmates to sell as indentured servants in the New World

Newgate at Tyburn

The gallows at Tyburn built in 1571

A 3 hour journey (3 mile walk)

Procession of people with a carnival like atmosphere

“The Bells of Old Bailey…”

"Oranges and lemons" say the Bells of St. Clement's

"You owe me five farthings" say the Bells of St. Martin's

"When will you pay me?" say the Bells of Old Bailey

"When I grow rich" say the Bells of Shoreditch

"When will that be?" say the Bells of Stepney

"I do not know" say the Great Bells of Bow

"Here comes a Candle to light you to Bed

Here comes a Chopper to Chop off your Head

Chip chop chip chop - the Last Man's Dead."

The Old Bailey- 2007

Rebuilt in 1907 Current building

stands on top of the old sit of Newgate Prison

The Lady Justice stands on top of the dome

“Defend the Children of the Poor and Punish the Wicked”