Old and New London, A Narrative of its History, its People and its Places. Illustrated with Numerous Engravings from the Most Authentic Sources. vol 2
Thornbury, Walter
1872-78
Chapter LII:Newgate.Newgate Exterior Newgate Gateway Newgate New Counters Newgate Calendar Newgate Interior The Garroter's Reward
Chapter LII:Newgate.Newgate Exterior Newgate Gateway Newgate New Counters Newgate Calendar Newgate Interior The Garroter's Reward
Newgate, which Stow classifies as the principal gate in the city wall, was built about the reign of Henry I. or Stephen, and was a prison for felons and trespassers at least as early as the reign of King John. It was erected when, being rebuilt, the old wards, from to Ludgate, were stopped up by enclosures and building materials, and people had to work round deviously by and the old Exchange to get to Ludgate. | |
In the year the king wrote to the Sheriffs of London, (Stow). In some rich Jews (accused of imaginary crimes) were ordered to pay , or be kept perpetual prisoners at Newgate and other prisons. In this same reign Henry sent the sheriffs to the Tower, and fined the city , for allowing a convicted priest, who had killed a prior, a cousin of the queen, to escape from Newgate. Sir William in left money to relieve the prisoners in Newgate, and Whittington left money to rebuild the prison. In there was again a break-out from Newgate prison. Lord Egremond, Sir Thomas and Sir Richard Percy, committed to Newgate for a fray in the north country with the Earl of Salisbury's sons, in which fray many were maimed or slain, broke out of prison by night, and went to petition the king, the other prisoners, in the meantime, garrisoning the leads of Newgate, and defending it against all the sheriffs; till at last the citizens were called up to subdue and lay in irons the reckless rebels. | |
The gate was repaired in -, destroyed in the Great Fire, and rebuilt in a stronger and more convenient way, with a postern for foot passengers. On the east or city side of the old prison were stone statues-Justice, Mercy, and Truth; and on the west, or side-Liberty (with Whittington's cat at her feet), Peace, Plenty, and Concord. of these figures, which survived the Gordon riots, ornament part of the front of the present prison. | |
Howard, the philanthropist, writing in , gives a favourable account of the Newgate of . | |
says Howard, | |
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From the Session Papers for , we gather a very vivid and picturesque notion of the destruction of Newgate during the Gordon riots. The mob came pouring down , between and o'clock, on the evening of the . There were flags carried by the ringleaders--the of green silk, with a Protestant motto; the , dirty blue, with a red cross; the , a flag of the Protestant Union. A sailor named Jackson had hoisted the flag in , when Justice Hyde had launched a party of horse upon the people; and when the rabble had sacked the justice's house in , Jackson shouted, and led the people on to the . Mr. Akerman, a friend of Boswell, and of the keepers of Newgate, had had intimation of the danger hours before, when a friend of of the prisoners called upon him just as he was packing up his plate for removal, told him and cursed him. Exactly at , of the rioters knocked at Mr. Akerman's door, which had been already barred, | |
p.443 | bolted, and chained. A maid-servant had just put up the shutters, when the glass over the hall-door was dashed into her face. The ringleader who knocked was better dressed than the rest, and wore a dark brown coat and round hat. The man knocked times, and rang times; then, finding no came, ran down the steps, pointed to the door, then retired. The mob was perfectly organised, and led by about men walking abreast. men carried iron crowbars, mattocks, and chisels, and after them followed armed with bludgeons and the spokes of cart-wheels. The band instantly divided into parts- set went to work at Mr. Akerman's door with the mattocks, a went to the debtors' door, and a to the felons'. A shower of bludgeons instantly demolished the windows of the keeper's house; and while these sticks were still falling in showers, men, of them a mad Quaker, the son of a rich corn-factor, who wore a mariner's jacket, came forward with a scaffold-pole, and drove it like a battering-ram against the parlour shutters. A lad in a sailor's jacket then got on a man's shoulders, and rammed in the half-broken shutters with furious blows of his bullet-head. A chimney-sweeper's boy then scrambled in, cheered by the mob, and after him the mad Quaker. A moment more, and the Quaker appeared at the -floor window, flinging out pictures into the street. Presently, the parlour window gave way, the house-door was forced, and the furniture and broken chattels in the street were set in a blaze. All this time a circle of men, better dressed than the rest, stood in the , exciting and encouraging the rioters. The leader of these sympathiser was a negro servant, named Benjamin Bowsey, afterwards hung for his share in the riot. of the leaders in this attack was a mad waiter from the St. Alban's Tavern, named Thomas Haycock. He was very prominent, and he swore that there should not be a prison standing in London on the morrow, and that the Bishop of London's house and the Duke of Norfolk's should come down that night. for there were or noblemen and members of Parliament on their side. This man helped to break up a bureau, and collected sticks to bum down the doors of Akerman's house. While Akerman's house was still burning, the servants escaping over the roofs, and Akerman's neighbours were down among the. mob, entreating them to spare the houses of innocent persons, a waiter, named Francis Mockford, who wore a hat with a blue cockade in it, went up to the prison-gate and held up the main key, and shouted to the turnkeys, Mockford, who was eventually sentenced to death for this riot, afterwards took the prison keys, and flung them over . George Sims, a tripeman in , always forward in street quarrels, then went up to the great gate in the with some others, and swore desperately that Then the storm broke; the mob rushed on the gate with the sledge-hammers and pickaxes they had stolen from coachmakers, blacksmiths, and braziers in and , and plied them with untiring fury. The tripeman, who carried a bludgeon, urged them on; and the servant of Akerman, having known the man for several years, called to him through the hatch, Then John Glover, a black, a servant of a Mr. Phillips, a barrister in , who was standing on the steps leading to the felons' gate (the main gate), dressed in a rough short jacket, and a round hat trimmed with dirty silver lace, thumped at the door with a gun-barrel, which he afterwards tried to thrust through the grating into the faces of the turnkeys, while another split the door with a hatchet. The mob, finding they could not force the stones out round the hatch, then piled Akerman's shattered furniture, and placing it against the gates set the heap on fire. |
Several times the gate caught fire, and as often the turnkeys inside pushed down the burning furniture with broomsticks, which they pushed through the hatch, and kept swilling the gates with water, in order to cool them, and to keep the lead that soldered the hinges from melting and giving way. But all their efforts were in vain; for the flames, now spreading fast from Akerman's house, gradually burnt in to the fore-lodge and chapel, and set the different wards after the other on fire. Crabbe--the poet, who was there as a spectator, describes seeing the prisoners come up out of the dark cells with their heavy irons, and looking pale and scared. Some of them were carried off on horseback, their irons still on, in triumph by the mob, who then went and burnt down the Fleet. At the trial of Richard Hyde, the poor mad Quaker, who had been of the to scramble through. Mr. Akerman's windows, the most conclusive proofs were brought forward of the prisoner's insanity. A grocer in , with whom he had lodged, deposed to his burning a bible, and to his thrashing him. day at the in , the crazed fellow had come in, and pretended to cast the nativities of persons drinking there. He also prophesied how long each of them would live. On hearing this evidence, the prisoner broke out: It was also shown that, the night after the burning of Newgate, the prisoner came to a poor woman's house in , Covent Garden, and he then wore an old grey great-coat and a flapped hat, painted blue. As the paint was wet, the woman asked him to let her dry it. He replied, (the Protestant colour); When the woman brought him a pint of beer, he drank once, and then pushed it angrily on side. He then said, Doctor Munro, the physician who attended George III. in his madness, deposed to the insanity both of the prisoner's father and the prisoner. He was sent to a mad-house. | |
Crabbe, who, having failed as a surgeon and apothecary down at Aldborough, his native place, had just come up to London to earn his bread as a poet, and being on the brink of starvation, was about to apply to Burke for patronage and bread. Rambling in a purposeless way about London to while away the miserable time, the young poet happened to reach the just as the ragged rioters set it on fire to warm their Protestantism. Suddenly, at a turning out of , on his way back to his lodgings at a hairdresser's shop near the Exchange, a scene of terror and horror broke red upon the view of the mild young Suffolk apothecary. The new prison, Crabbe says, in his kept for the perusal of his Myra (), was a very large, strong, and beautiful building, having wings besides Mr. Akerman's house, and strong intermediate works and other adjuncts. Akerman had rioters in custody, and these rascals the mob demanded. He begged he might send to the sheriff, but this was not per mitted. (they were mere squirts in those days), This was about half-past . (Newgate was burnt on the Tuesday). (to , to burn Lord Mansfield's house).
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On the Wednesday, the day after the fire, a big carelessly-dressed man worked his way to the ruins from Bolt Court, . The burly man's name was Doctor Samuel Johnson, and he wrote to Mrs. Thrale and her husband a brief account of what had happened since the Friday before. On that day Lord George Gordon and the mob went to , and that night the rioters burnt the in , . On Monday they gutted Sir George Saville's house in ; on Tuesday pulled down the house of Sir John Fielding, the blind magistrate and the novelist's half-brother, in ; and the same night burnt Newgate, Lord Mansfield's house in Bloomsbury, and a in . On Wednesday they burnt the Fleet and the King's Bench, and attacked the , but were driven off by a party of constables headed by John Wilkes. | |
says the doctor, to come to what he actually saw himself, | |
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