In Jail with Charles Dickens Part 1

In Jail with Charles d.i.c.kens.

by Alfred Trumble.

INTRODUCTORY.

Readers of Charles d.i.c.kens must all have remarked the deep and abiding interest he took in that grim accessory to civilization, the prison. He not only went jail hunting whenever opportunity offered, but made a profound study of the rules, practices and abuses of these inst.i.tutions.

Penology was, in fact, one of his hobbies, and some of the most powerful pa.s.sages in his books are those which have their scene of action laid within the shadow of the gaol. It was this fact which led to the compilation of the papers comprised in the present volume.

The writer had been a student of d.i.c.kens from the days when the publication of his novels in serial form was a periodical event. When he first visited England, many of the landmarks which the novelist had, in a manner, made historical, were still in existence, but of the princ.i.p.al prisons which figure in his works Newgate was the only one which existed in any approximation to its integrity. The Fleet and the King's Bench were entirely swept away; of the Marshalsea only a few buildings remained, converted to ordinary uses. In this country, however, the two jails which interested him, still remain, with certain changes that do not impair their general conformance to his descriptions.

These papers, therefore, consist of personal knowledge, as a voluntary visitor, be it understood, of Newgate. The Tombs in New York, and the Eastern District Penitentiary in Philadelphia, supplemented by references to the records. For the Fleet, Marshalsea, and Kings Bench, the writer is indebted to the chronicles and descriptions of Peter Cunningham, John Timbs, Leigh Hunt, and other ingenious and interesting historians of the London of the early Victorian era. In connection with the paper relating to the Eastern District Penitentiary of Philadelphia, his thanks are due for the a.s.sistance and information rendered by Mr.

Michael J. Ca.s.sidy, the Warden.

ALFRED TRUMBLE.

New York, March 1896.

CHAPTER I.

NEWGATE WITHOUT.

Newgate was the first prison to which Charles d.i.c.kens gave any literary attention. An account of a visit to it appears among the early "Sketches by Boz." It is also the only one of the London jails of which he has left us graphic descriptions, or briefer, spirited sketches, which preserves to-day so much of its original character as to be identifiable in detail by the student of his works. The Fleet and the King's Bench have disappeared. The Marshalsea may only be recognized by slight surviving landmarks. But the sombre and sullen bulk of Newgate rears itself in the heart of London, a sinister monument to the horrors bred by a civilization rotten of its own over-ripeness, in the forcing-bed of the most magnificent, wonderful and monstrously terrible city of the world.

If external gloom could exercise an influence to deter anyone from the commission of crime of which it is a part of the penalty, Newgate would never have any inmates. Surrounded at the time of my introductory visit to it, as an accidental but not legally involuntary visitor, by low public-houses, poor shops and a tumble-down market, all bearing the grime of age and the marks of decay, as if the frown of the great jail had blighted them; with the foul, miry lane of Newgate street, and the scarcely-cleaner Old Bailey, alive with muddy carts and shabby people, skulking roughs, draggled women and squalling children, no man who had no business there would care, once having seen it, to seek it out again.

Being then new in London, I had been begriming myself among the old books of St. Paul's Churchyard until I was tired and thirsty, and strolling along Ludgate Hill in quest of refreshment, turned into the second street I came to. A few steps more and I found myself stopping at another street corner to look at an immense and grim ma.s.s of gray stone towering loftily in the fog, with little windows here and there along its frowning wall. They were so small that they might have been mere s.p.a.ces where the builders had forgotten to put in a block of granite, if it had not been for the strong, rusty bars that crossed them. I asked a man who came out of a public-house wiping his mouth on the back of his hand what place that was. He stared at me in evident amazement for a minute, and then said, shortly, in an aggravated tone of voice, poking a finger, still moist from his libation, at it, like a dagger:

"Newgate, that is."

He went along, shaking his head in a dubious way and looking back several times at me, clearly either suspicious of the genuineness of my stupendous ignorance, or unable to comprehend how anyone could be ignorant of the ident.i.ty of the famous jail. I have no doubt that it was vastly stupid of me. In fact, I experienced a certain feeling of contempt for myself, now that I knew what the place was, and that it was the place of which I had read so much that I almost had its history by heart; but after all, London is a "very considerable-sized town," as I once had a Chicago acquaintance generously admit, and one could scarcely be expected to know it like a guide-book, within forty-eight hours after making first acquaintance with its bitter beer, its b.l.o.o.d.y beef, and its beds into whose coverlids the essence of the fog seemed to have penetrated, if, indeed, the sheets were not woven out of the fog itself.

Newgate, in its external appearance, at least, is an ideal prison. Its aspect, whether purposely or through the adaptation of its construction to its uses, is thoroughly jail-like. The few openings in the walls, the empty blind niches, which might have been left there for statues of great felons never set up in them; the entrance, with its festooned fetters carved in stone as an ornament to the gloomy and forbidding portal, all are appropriate to and a significant part of it. Within a few feet of where I stood when I viewed it first was the spot where the scaffold used to be put up. Here, on the occasion of an execution, as one may read in Chapter 52 of "Oliver Twist," the s.p.a.ce before the prison was cleared, and a few strong barriers painted black thrown across the road to break the pressure of the crowd, while the more favored portion of the audience occupied every post of vantage, at windows and housetops, that commanded a view of the ghastly show. Here, as Oliver noted when he came away from his last interview with f.a.gin at the dawn of day: "A great mult.i.tude had already a.s.sembled; the windows were filled with people smoking and playing cards to beguile the time; the crowd was pushing, quarreling and joking. Everything told of life and animation, but one dark cl.u.s.ter of objects in the very centre of all--the black stage, the crossbeam, the rope, and all the hideous apparatus of death."

Prisoners of old were executed on Tyburn Hill in public, or on some occasions, when it was especially desired to enforce an example, as close as possible to the scene of guilt. Those who were punished for partic.i.p.ation in the Gordon Riots of 1780 were swung off in the various parts of the city where their crimes were committed. In 1793 the common places of execution were changed to the Old Bailey, in front of Newgate.

There the first culprit was executed on December 9 of that year. Hanging was brisk when George III was king. Between February and December, 1785, ninety-six persons suffered by the trap arrangement now in common use the world over, which was then known as the "new drop." Previous to that time it had been the custom to perch the candidates for the halter on a cart, which was driven from under them at the fatal signal, while someone hung on to their legs to choke them more speedily and surely--an expeditious practice quite frequently resorted to by Judge Lynch in America in after years, and still not entirely out of use for extemporaneous executions. In "Barnaby Rudge" (volume 2, chapter 19) d.i.c.kens gives the most detailed description of a Newgate execution which occurs in his works. The pa.s.sage is well worth quoting at length:

"The time wore on. The noises in the streets became less frequent by degrees until the silence was scarcely broken, save by the bells in the church towers marking the progress, softer and more stealthily while the city slumbered, of that Great Watcher with the h.o.a.ry head, who never sleeps or rests. In the brief interval of darkness and repose which feverish towns enjoy, all busy sounds were hushed; and those who awoke from dreams lay listening in their beds, and longed for dawn, and wished the dead of the night were pa.s.sed.

"Into the street, outside the gaol's main wall, workmen came straggling, at this solemn hour, in groups of two or three, and, meeting in the centre, cast their tools upon the ground and spoke in whispers. Others soon issued from the gaol itself, bearing on their shoulders planks and beams: these materials being all brought forth, the rest bestirred themselves, and the dull sound of hammers began to echo through the stillness.

"Here and there among this knot of laborers, one with a lantern or a smoky link stood by to light his fellows at their work; and by its doubtful aid some might be seen dimly, taking up the pavement of the road, while others held upright great posts, or fixed them in holes thus made for their reception. Some dragged slowly on toward the rest an empty cart, which they brought rumbling from the prison yard, while others erected strong barriers across the street. All were busily engaged. Their dusky figures moving to and fro at that unusual hour, so active and so silent, might have been taken for those of shadowy creatures toiling at midnight on some ghostly, unsubstantial work, which, like themselves, would vanish with the first gleam of day, and leave but morning mist and vapor.

"While it was yet dark a few lookers-on collected, who had plainly come there for that purpose and intended to remain; even those who had to pa.s.s the spot on their way to some other place, lingered, and lingered yet, as though the attraction of that were irresistible.

Meanwhile the noise of the saw and mallet went on briskly, mingled with the clattering of boards on the stone pavement of the road, and sometimes with the workmen's voices as they called to one another.

Whenever the chimes of the neighboring church were heard--and that was every quarter of an hour--a strong sensation, instantaneous and indescribable, but perfectly obvious, seemed to pervade them all.

"Gradually a faint brightness appeared in the East, and the air, which had been very warm through the night, felt cool and chilly. Though there was no daylight yet, the darkness was diminished, and the stars looked pale. The prison, which had been a mere black ma.s.s, with little shape or form, put on its usual aspect; and ever and anon a solitary watchman could be seen upon its roof, stopping to look down upon the preparations in the street. This man, from forming, as it were, a part of the gaol, and knowing, or being supposed to know, all that was pa.s.sing within, became an object of much interest, and was eagerly looked for, and as awfully pointed out as if he had been a spirit.

"By and by the feeble light grew stronger, and the houses, with their signboards and inscriptions, stood plainly out in the dull gray of the morning. Heavy stage-wagons crawled from the inn yard opposite, and travelers peeped out, and, as they rolled sluggishly away, cast many a backward look toward the gaol. And now the sun's first beams came glancing into the street, and the night's work, which in its various stages and in the varied fancies of the lookers-on had taken a hundred shapes, wore its own proper form--a scaffold and gibbet.

"As the warmth of the cheerful day began to shed itself upon the scanty crowd the murmur of tongues was heard, shutters were thrown open, the blinds drawn up, and those who had slept in rooms over against the prison, where places to see the execution were let at high prices, rose hastily from their beds. In some of the houses people were busy taking out the window-sashes for the better accommodation of the spectators; in others, the spectators were already seated, and beguiling the time with cards, or drink, or jokes among themselves.

Some had purchased seats upon the housetops, and were already crawling to their stations from parapet and garret window. Some were yet bargaining for good places, and stood in them in a state of indecision, gazing at the slowly-swelling crowd, and at the workmen as they rested listlessly against the scaffold--affecting to listen with indifference to the proprietor's eulogy of the commanding view his house afforded, and the surpa.s.sing cheapness of his terms.

"A fairer morning never shone. From the roofs and the upper stories of the buildings the spires of the city churches and the great cathedral dome were visible, rising up beyond the prison into the blue sky, and clad in the color of light summer clouds, and showing in the clear atmosphere their every sc.r.a.p of tracery and fretwork, and every niche and loophole. All was lightness, brightness and promise, excepting in the street below, into which (for it lay yet in the shadow) the eye looked down into a dark trench, where, in the midst of so much life and hope and renewal of existence, stood the terrible instrument of death. It seemed as if the very sun forbore to look upon it.

"But it was better, grim and sombre in the shade, than when, the day being more advanced, it stood confessed in full glare and glory of the sun, with its black paint blistering and its nooses dangling in the light like loathsome garlands. It was better in the solitude and gloom of midnight, with a few forms cl.u.s.tering about it, than in the freshness and the stir of the morning, the centre of an eager crowd.

It was better haunting the street like a spectre, when men were in their beds, and influencing, perchance, the city's dreams, than braving the broad day, and thrusting its obscene presence upon the waking senses.

"Five o'clock had struck--six, seven and eight. Along the two main streets, at either end of the crossway, a living stream had now set in, rolling to the marts of gain and business. Carts, coaches, wagons, trucks and barrows, forced a pa.s.sage through the outskirts of the throng and clattered onward in the same direction. Some of these, which were public conveyances, and had come from a short distance in the country, stopped, and the driver pointed to the gibbet with his whip, though he might have spared himself the pains, for the heads of all the pa.s.sengers were turned that way without his help, and the coach windows were stuck full of staring eyes. In some of the carts and wagons women might be seen, glancing fearfully at the same unsightly thing; and even little children were held up above the peoples' heads to see what kind of a toy a gallows was and to learn how men were hanged.

"Two rioters were to die before the prison, who had been concerned in the attack upon it; and one directly after in Bloomsbury Square. At nine o'clock a strong body of military marched into the street, and formed and lined a narrow pa.s.sage into Holborn, which had been indifferently kept all night by constables. Through this another cart was brought (the one already mentioned had been employed in the construction of the scaffold), and wheeled up to the prison gate.

These preparations made, the soldiers stood at ease; the officers lounged to and fro in the alley they had made, or talked together at the scaffold's foot; and the concourse which had been rapidly augmenting for some hours, and still received additions every minute, waited with an impatience which increased with every chime of St.

Sepulchre's clock for twelve at noon.

"Up to this time they had been very quiet, comparatively silent, save when the arrival of some new party at a window, hitherto unoccupied, gave them something to look at or to talk of. But, as the hour approached, a buzz and a hum arose, which, deepening every moment, soon swelled into a roar, and seemed to fill the air. No words, or even voices, could be distinguished in this clamor, nor did they speak much to each other; though such as were better informed on the topic than the rest would tell their neighbors, perhaps, that they might know the hangman when he came out, by his being the shorter one; and that the man that was to suffer with him was named Hugh; and that it was Barnaby Rudge who would be hanged in Bloomsbury Square.

"The hum grew, as the time drew near, so loud that those who were at the windows could not hear the church clock strike, though it was close at hand. Nor had they any need to hear it either, for they could see it in the peoples' faces. So surely as another quarter chimed there was a movement in the crowd--as if something had pa.s.sed over it--as if the light upon them had been changed--in which the fact was readable as on a brazen dial, figured by a giant's hand.

Three-quarters past eleven. The murmur now was deafening, yet every man seemed mute. Look where you would among the crowd, you saw strained eyes and lips compressed; it would have been difficult for the most vigilant observer to point this way or that, and say that yonder man had cried out. It were as easy to detect the motion of the lips in a sea-sh.e.l.l.

"Three-quarters past eleven. Many spectators who had retired from the windows came back refreshed, as though their watch had just begun.

Those who had fallen asleep aroused themselves; and every person in the crowd made one last effort to better his position, which caused a press against the st.u.r.dy barriers that made them bend and yield like twigs. The officers, who until now had kept together, fell into their several positions, and gave the words of command. Swords were drawn, muskets shouldered, and the bright steel, winding its way among the crowd, gleamed and glittered in the sun like a river. Along this shining path two men were hurrying on, leading a horse, which was speedily harnessed to the cart at the prison door. Then a profound silence replaced the tumult that had so long been gathering, and a breathless pause ensued. Every window was now choked up with heads; the housetops teemed with people clinging to chimneys, peering over gable-ends, and holding on where the sudden loosening of any brick or stone would dash them down into the street. The church-tower, the church-roof, the churchyard, the prison-leads, the very waterspouts and lampposts, every inch of room swarmed with human life.

"At the first stroke of twelve the prison bell began to toll. Then the roar, mingled now with cries of 'Hats off!' and 'Poor fellows!'--and, from some specks in the great concourse, with a shriek or groan--burst forth again. It was terrible to see--if anyone in that distraction of excitement could have seen--the world of eager eyes all strained upon the scaffold and the beam."

The Newgate gallows in "Barnaby Rudge" was set up for the ruffian Hugh, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d of Sir John Chester and his gypsy light-o-love, and for Dennis the hangman, who had been concerned as leaders in the attack on the prison by the Gordon Rioters. "Two cripples--both were boys--one with a leg of wood, one who dragged his twisted body along with the help of a crutch, were hanged in Bloomsbury Square, where they had helped to sack Lord Mansfield's house, and other rioters in other parts of the town, in despoiling which they had been conspicuous." It may be recalled that the mother of Hugh herself had died on the scaffold, at Tyburn, for the crime of pa.s.sing forged notes. To descend from the realm of romance to that of reality, the most memorable executions in the Old Bailey were those of Mrs. Phipoe, the murderess, in 1797; of Governor Wall of Trinidad, for murder, on Jan. 28, 1802; of Halloway and Haggerty, the murderers, on Feb. 22, 1807, when thirty spectators were trampled to death; of Bellingham, the a.s.sa.s.sin of a member of Parliament, Percival, on May 18, 1812; of the Cato Street Conspirators, who were cut down and decapitated on the scaffold in the presence of the mult.i.tude, on May 1, 1820; of Fauntleroy, the banker, hanged for forging in 1824; of the a.s.sa.s.sin Greenacre, in 1837; of Courvoiser, who murdered Lord William Russell, in 1840; and of Franz Muller, the railway murderer, who was extradited from this country, as will doubtless be remembered by many, and sent to his doom in 1864. That same year seven pirates were also suspended in the Old Bailey. Since then executions have been carried out privately within the walls of the prison.

A contemporary of d.i.c.kens, in the "Ingoldsby Legends," has given us a picture, in a different vein, of the same period and subject. He has told us, in his own rattling verse, how my Lord Tomnoddy, having nothing to do, and being deucedly bored, learned from his faithful Tiger Tim that Greenacre was to be hanged at Newgate; here was indeed a sensation for His Lordship: "To see a man swing, at the end of a string, with his neck in a noose, will be quite a new thing." So he hires the whole first floor of the Magpie and Stump, opposite the jail, and invites his friends to come and help him see a man die in his shoes. They help him so effectually during the night, what with "cold fowl and cigars, pickled onions in jars, Welsh rabbits and kidney, rare work for jaws, and very large lobsters with fine claws," and the like, not to mention gin-toddy and cold and hot punch, that they fall asleep and lose the show after all, when, as they cannot have the man hung over again, they go home to bed in hackney coaches and a state of deep disgust. Another contemporary, of more ample renown, Thackeray to wit, gave some attention to the matter. In July, 1840, he published, in Frazer's Magazine, a paper called "Going to see a man hanged." The man was Courvoiser; and Thackeray, unlike Lord Tomnoddy, did not fall asleep over the feast, and so did see him mount the scaffold.

Surgeons' Hall used to stand close to Newgate and the Old Bailey, and the victims of the halter were handed over to the doctors for dissection. The corpse of wicked Lord Ferrers, who was executed in 1760 at Tyburn for murdering his steward, was taken in his own landau and six to the Burgeons' Theatre to be cut up. After having been disemboweled, in conformance with the sentence, the body of the bad lord was put on show in the first floor window, to be hissed and hooted at by the mob.

The account of the Ferrers execution, by the way, provides a curious picture of the time. Ferrers dressed himself in his wedding suit to be hanged. He had the harness of his horses decorated with ribbons. On the way to Tyburn from the Tower, my Lord intimated a desire for some wine, being thirsty. The Sheriff, who was in the coach with him, declined to allow him to refresh himself. "Then," said the Earl, taking a bite of pigtail tobacco from a plug which he had in his pocket, "I must be content with this." He harbored no malice against the Sheriff, however, for he presented him with his watch as they neared Tyburn. To the Chaplain he gave five guineas, and to the executioner the same sum. The executioner had to pull him by the legs to effectually strangle him, and while the body swung for an hour on the gallows, the sheriffs and their friends had luncheon on the platform within reach of it. "The executioners fought for the rope," says the chronicler, "and the one who lost it, cried."

But we have wandered far from Newgate in this wicked company. Old Newgate, upon a portion of whose site the present jail stands, was built in the reign of King John. It derived its name from the fact that London was then a walled city, and the jail was erected close to the newest gate in the fortification. It was, in fact, at first a mere tower or appendage of the gate. Newgate was used as a State prison long before the Tower. One of the many captives of this sort which it held was William Penn. The founder of Pennsylvania spent six months there for the atrocious offense of street preaching. Defoe spent some time here on account of a political tract, and wrote several others while in confinement. Dr. Dodd wrote his successful comedy, "Sir Roger de Coverly," in Newgate. One of the last persons confined here for political offense was Mr. Hobhouse, afterward Lord Broughton. The street used to be filled with people when he took his exercise on the roof, who watched and cheered at his hat, which was all they could see of him above the wall. An odd circ.u.mstance about Mr. Hobhouse's imprisonment is that Byron had prophesied it in the remark that "having foamed himself into a reformer, he would subside in Newgate." Among the famous prisoners here we find Savage, the poet, for murder; Jack Sheppard, whose remarkable escape, very much exaggerated upon fact, you may have read of from Mr. Ainsworth's pen; and Jonathan Wild, who, by the by, once lived nearly opposite the court-house, in the Old Bailey; Catherine Hayes, the abandoned heroine of Thackeray's novel; Mrs. Brownrigg, the fiend who tortured her serving-maids; Astlett, the Bank of England clerk, who committed forgeries for over $1,500,000, and many more. Lord George Gordon, familiar to all who have read "Barnaby Rudge," died in 1793, of gaol-fever, in one of the cells of Newgate, after several years of confinement, for libelling the Queen of France. The poor, mad lord, whose rioters had turned the jail into a ruin once, found it strong enough to hold him and his fantastic visions securely in the end. Here is d.i.c.kens's description of the attack upon the prison, caused by him, commencing in the second volume of "Barnaby Rudge," Chapter Fifth.

"It was about six o'clock in the evening when a vast mob poured into Lincoln's Inn Fields by every avenue, and divided, evidently in pursuance of a previous design, into several parties. It must not be understood that this arrangement was known to the whole crowd, but that it was the work of a few leaders, who, mingling with these men as they came upon the ground, and calling to them to fall into this or that party, effected it as rapidly as if it had been determined on by a council of the whole number, and every man had known his place.

"It was perfectly notorious to the a.s.semblage that the largest body, which comprehended about two-thirds of the whole, was designed for the attack on Newgate. It comprehended all the rioters who had been conspicuous in any of their former proceedings; all those whom they recommended as daring hands and fit for the work; all those whose companions had been taken in the riots; and a great number of people who were relatives or friends of the felons in the gaol. This last cla.s.s included not only the most desperate and utterly abandoned villains in London, but some who were comparatively innocent. There was more than one woman there, disguised in man's attire, and bent on the rescue of a child or a brother. There were the two sons of a man who lay under the sentence of death, and who was to be executed, along with three others, the next day but one. There was a great party of boys, whose fellow pickpockets were in the prison; and, at the skirts of all, a score of miserable women, outcasts from the world, seeking to release some other fellow creature as miserable as themselves, or moved by general sympathy, perhaps, G.o.d knows, with all who were without hope and wretched.

"Old swords, and pistols without ball or powder; sledge-hammers, knives, axes, saws, and weapons pillaged from the butcher shops; a forest of iron bars and wooden clubs; long ladders for scaling the walls, each carried on the shoulders of a dozen men; lighted torches, tow smeared with pitch, and tar, and brimstone; staves roughly plucked from a fence and paling; and even crutches taken from crippled beggars on the streets composed their arms. When all was ready, Hugh and Dennis, with Simon Tappert.i.t between them, led the way. Roaring and chafing like an angry sea, the crowd pressed after them."

They halt upon the way to drag Gabriel Varden from his shop, in order to compel him to pick the lock of the prison gate. They march him at the head of the mob to the jail. They find that their visit was not wholly unexpected, "for the governor's house, which fronted the street, was strongly barricaded, the wicket of the prison gate was closed up, and at no loophole or grating was any person to be seen." The governor, inspecting the mob from the roof of his house, is summoned to surrender his charge. He refuses. The rabble call on the locksmith to pick the locks. He defies them, and is dragged away barely in time to save his life by Joe Willets and Edward Chester, who are in the mob in disguise.

Then the a.s.sault on the jail begins.