Newgate : A romance

Preface

. In concluding the romance of Newgate, the author cannot refrain from saying a few words to his readers with regard to the design of the work. The object of the novel was not to create any morbid sympathy with criminals — it was not to paint scenes of horror which should curdle the blood, and "Make the young hair stand on end;" it was not for the purpose of taking away, by clashing it in the language of romance, any of that highly proper and deoorous dread and"<lislike of vice, which is the surest safeguard of virtue. No, it was an effort " to hold the mirror up to nature," and, by illustrating a building having about it so many dreary and shuddering accessories, to succeed in bringing over and deciphering another great page in the history ef human nature. Men and women never exhibit themselves so naturally as in this •risis, and hence it is that the Chronicles of Newgate have a truth speaking air.

We can likewise assure our readers that some of the narrations which it has been so pleasing a task to lay before them, cheered on by such great success, are all truths. Although we are forbid " To tell tho secrets of the prison house" in some resj ects, we have overleaped that prohibilion in others, and that we had access to documents of the surest character we could prove, but that it would not he desirable to compromi e in any way those who befriended us in our search into the Mysteries of Newgate. London, November, 181". I <& movnnmt. Bid hope farewell, thou saddened heart, As 'neath this gloomy porch, Thou leavest behind thee light and joy. Massinqer. LONDON : PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY E. LLOYD, 12,SALISBURY.5QltARE, FLEET-STREET. NEWGATE. St ftamante. See page 6.

Introduction

. Newgate ! what cfowds of strange associations rush across the mind at the very pronunciation of that, melancholy name ! Stern, unpitiful, and terrific rises the massive structure before the mind's eye. Of all the crowds that hurry past its por tals, who is there that now pauses to reflect for one moment upon the mass of human misery which those rough hewn walls have enclosed? We are too familiar with the spectacle of such a building standing in the heart of such a city as London to feel acutely the shadow of its presence ; and yet, Newgate, what art thou ? — a mute NEWGATE. but terrible appeal to the imagination— a huge, a terrifying fact— a pile of masonry, reared by human nature, as an awful evidence of its frailties. Should aught but melancholy musings light on such a building? We cannot hear the sighs of those who pine within its walls ; we cannot see the hot, gushing tears that course each other down the wan and wasted cheeks of its inhabitants ; we cannot hear the shrieks which proclaim the mind's wreck : but we can look upon the cold and mas sive walls, and we can shudder as we tell ourselves that such things are, as, with a sadder mien, we turn our backs upon that gaunt epitomy of woe.

And London — mighty, majestic London — has its churches and its cathedrals, its high places, and its places of holy worship beautified with all that art can do, to win the wandering soul to faith ; and palaces, too, on which a nation has expended a nation's taste, resplendent with regal glories, are there in this, our native land — a land where crime and virtue, destitution and opulence, jostle eaeh other as closely as may the noble and the beggar in the overfull graveyard. And admiring crowds will gaze on the fair temples, reared for Heaven's service — they will pause and sigh in vain for a participation in the gaudy frivolities and the gilded pettiness of a con temptible court. But who stops at Newgate ? Of all the throngs that pass its doors, intent on business or on pleasure, who casts a look upwards to the reproachful structure ?

Few, few — few indeed ; and yet how pregnant with thought is that building ! It is massive and substantial beyond ordinary structures, as if it would proclaim the endurance of human crime. There is nothing hopeful, nothing joyous within it or without it. The innocent may well shudder with the guilty as its portals close upon them. Opposite to that doorway through which so many wretched beings, tottering upon the verge of eternity, have passed, there is the arched entrance of an ancient inn. Pause with us, then, reader, and let us look at Newgate. How the mind fills with thought — how the past seems now to struggle with the present— what myriads of names and events connected with that terrific structure now float upon the imagination ! Yes, Newgate, in thy history is to be found the history of a large class of men and of manners.

The very contemplation of the blackened stonework, heaped so roughly yet so sternly together, that compose thee, carries the mind back to other days — to those days, the habits, the feelings, and the manners of which can never again return. We look back a hundred years, and we see the bold highwayman, who has committed some daring robbery by Charing Cross — it was so lonely — brought by mounted armed men to thy grim portals. We see in him the Captain Macheath of his time. There are the long jack boots, the spurs, the scarlet coat, with its rich lace trimmings, the swagger of the ruffian, who fancies himself the gentleman, because it is a bolder occupation to rob than to work. And such a man, for a time, would he the darling of the town— his exploits would be the theme of universal gossip, and he would hold a levee the day before his exe cution, and his progress to Tyburn would be a gala.

Contrast this for a moment with modern criminality, and most truly shall we find that the romantic rascals of days gone by were a very different class from the ruffian of 1845. Authors have at various times asserted that this, that, and the other were the best. modes of tracing habits and customs of one age to another ; some, with a limited gaze, have looked no further than the court for their examples of the mutations of habit and manner ; while others have, with a bigotted apprehension, considered that no changes were worth consideration that were not in some way connected with the cant of religious observance ; but, for our parts, if we would wish to paint a faithful record of society, as it was and as it is, we would dive into the secrets of ancient Newgate— we would listen to the revelations of its occupants— we would traverse its gloomy passages, and open the doors of its most hidden cells, and in so doing we should obtain juster notions ofthe domestic habits of the past than by any other means. ' The very modes by which crimes were accomplished, point out the manners of NEWGATE. 5 the time ; and among judges, jurors, witnesses, and criminals, we shall surely find variety enough of human nature to satisfy us that we are not taking a limited view of sooiety, but are entering into the very spirit of the times.

It is not because we may depict the fortunes of a dashing knight of the road, that we should know nothing but of him and his feelings and habits ; on the contrary, we should see with what an air he robs some titled dame, with what a grace she submits to the illegal toll. We shall see how the wealthy, the great, and the noble, came into collision with these characters, who, in olden times, were the desperadoes of society ; and let the individual who doubts that some of the most exquisite pages of romance are to be found in these records in real life, pause awhile over these pages, and he shall find, that in chronicling Newgate we have struck upon an abundant vein of most exciting material. There will be found feeling battling with principle ; chivalric admiration over powering in many cases reflection ; hair-breadth escapes and imminent dangers of those in whom we shall feel a kindly interest ; suffering such as would indeed be hard to bear on the parts of the innocent, were it not through all afflictions that they cling to the dear hope of a better life.

In fact, such an epitomy of the times — full of adventure, passion, incident, and fearful catastrophe as Newgate presents to us, may be vainly looked for elsewhere.

Chapter I. The Offal Cellar

I had mused upon Newgate from the archway of the ancient inn in the broad light of day, and many strange thoughts and feelings had swept across me ; but I longed to look at it in a quieter and more solemn hour — I wished to experience what would be the feelings that it would give to me at midnight, or at some short time beyond that hour, when the great city would be in its most composed and calm state. It was at such an hour that I longed to contemplate the gloomy structure. It is not easy in London to find an hour for quiet contemplation, but observation had induced me to believe that the one which precedes day-break was that in which the greatest repose existed : the honest, pains-taking citizen is of course in his house and at rest ; the theatres, and various places of amusement, have disgorged their multitudes ; the latest visitors of the public-houses have reeled homeward, and those who were too far gone in inebriety to do so have probably fallen into the paternal arms of the police ; the night robber has done his work, and, like some hideous phantom of humanity, begins to scent the morning air, and goes skulking home to the dismal haunt which conceals him from the eye of day ; exhaustion has compelled the night-wanderer, be he whom or what he may, to lie down somewhere : and so for about an hour before the slant rays of the morning sun falls upon the city, we may find the greatest amount of quietude and repose that so vast a hive of humanity can know.

It was at such a time that I stood alone, opposite to Newgate, musing upon its chronicles and conjuring up ghostly visions of beings over whom the grave had long since elosed, and whose faults, fellies, crimes, and virtues, had rolled alike down the stream of time, alike unheeded and forgotten. I noticed not a remarkable and sudden change in the aspect of the weather. The night had been serene, but now the wind blew in short puffy gusts around the melancholy building; the sky became of a pitchy darkness, and occasionally a strange moaning sound pervaded the air, as if the sighs of some of the unhappy beings, imprisoned in that terrible building, had escaped, and were borne on the wings of the night air, to some sympathising bosom. At times, too, a dashing gust of rain would fly laterally before the wind, dashing against the houses for a moment, and thes as rapidly disappearing as if it had had no existence.

The eastern sky ought to have been getting bright with the early tints of morn, but huge masses of black clouds interposed themselves, and all around was dark, dreary, and desolate. NEWGATE. 6 But dimly did the grim outline of the ancient prison now present i'self to my eyes. I could see it, and that was all ; but yet the very dimness of its aspect seemed to conjure up with more distinctness to my mind's eye the visions of the past. " Innocent hearts," I said, " have felt the painful throb of causeless agony within thy walls ; the guiltless have even been heralded to death by thy sad ceremonies ; and the blood of the judicially murdered cries aloud for vengeance against thee, Newgate I Oh, what a catalogue of woe would a brief chronicle of but a few of the scenes enacted within thy massive walls afford I" Something at this moment touched me, and 1 started on one side, for truly I thought I had been alone in the archway of that ancient inn.

" Are you deaf?" said a querulous voice. " Are you deaf? I have spoken twice, and had no answer." I looked to where the voice came from, and I saw a miserable-looking object. It was a little old beggarman. As the Duke of Gloster says, he was made up " unfashionably," and so much to one side had nature or accident inclined him, that he was compelled to use a crutch for supporl, and it was with that he had touched me,and made me start so suddenly. " Well," he said, when he saw me by the very dim light there was, regarding him minutely. " Well, what do you think of me now ? I am a cripple and a beggar. Can you add anything else to the description?" " I had no intention of offending you," I said, " if I have done so. I thought I was alone." " Humph ! did you come here to look at Newgate ? I wonder how many times I have come to look at it by night and by day — in sunshine and in gloom — in sere nity and in storms.

What do you know of Newgate?" " It is to me full of reflection." " It is soil of facts. You spoke ofthe guiltless suffering unknown pangs within those walls. I like the tone in which you spoke. Look at me again. 1 am hideously ugly. I am wretchedly poor. I am somewhat crabbed, too, in disposi tion. I don't seem to be fashioned by God. Perhaps I am a little mad. Will you come home with me and pass an hour, if you are at all curious about New. gate ?" " Willingly." " 'Tis well. I say I like your voice. When I see your face, I will decide upon what more 1 can do. Perhaps I may give you an admission to Newgate." " You give me an admission ? I thought that only the city dignitaries had such a power?" " The city dignitaries!" cried the little old man, with scorn in his tone. " The city dignitaries show you Newgate?"

Here he knocked his crutch against the ground furiously, as he added, " They never saw it themselves." " Indeed! You much surprise me." " You will be more surprised. If 1 please I can show you Newgate. Look there," and he iaised his crutch towards the building. " You have been moralising upon what you see, upon what those walls may have enclosed ; but it is below the level of the moving mass of humanity that throng the city, you will find there is something to see." " Subterraneous places ?" " Ay ; beneath Newgate are its sights. Who will show you the old dunoeons and the dusky passages long since deserted to noisome reptiles? Who will <mide you through the curiosities of that part of Newgate which lies far below the level of all that those walls you now see before you enclose? There is not a cell not a dungeon, but has its romance.

If I chose to tell that which I know — but I have not seen your face. Will you sUp with me ." " I will accompany you with pleasure ; but I think it is nearer the hour of break fast than of supper." " Call it what you will. Come on." Curiosity, interest, and great expectation that I should really learn from the NEWGATE. 7 little old man something highly entertaining, urged me on, and I followed him willingly, saying, as I did so, " I feel greatly obliged to you, indeed, for the offer, and will gladly follow you to your home, be it where it may." " You don't know that," he said, sharply. " Probably you was never in such a home as mine before. Do you know what an offal cellar is ?" "A what?" I said. " An offal cellar. You have talked largely of accompanying me wheresoever I shall please to lead you ; that is my only home, and therefore is it that to such a place I must conduct you.

Now, I presume, you shrink, and the romance of accompanying the old cripple is lost in the reality of his wretohed home. Ah, ah ! is it not so?" " No," I replied, " you judge me wrongly. It matters not to me whether it be a eellar, or a saloon, to which you would conduct me. I admit with you, the hour is a strange one, and that probably I am wanting in worldly wisdom in accompany. ing you at all." " That speech," said the curious little creature, " would be insulting, were it not for its candour. But, come on, follow me quickly, I am wearied, and would be at home." It amazed me to see the dexterity and quickness with which he darted across the street ; cripple as he was, and using a crutch, I had enough to do to follow him closely. 1 think he saw that such was the case, and, with the pardonable vanity of one so afflicted, he put on an extra vigour, to show how well he could compete with the man fashioned according to the mass of mankind, and with all his physical energies fresh and young about him.

I made sure of this by his laugh of satisfaction, when, as we reached the corner of Newgate-street, I requested him to go at an easier pace. " Ah, indeed !" he said ; " and how much nearer Heaven you are than I. Strong, too, and your limbs well knit, and yet the old cripple with his crutch can beat you. Come on, come on. This way lies our route." In a few moments he darted down one of the narrow avenues leading to Newgate market, and now I trod closely upon his heels, for I was much afraid of losing him in the intricacies of that, to me, maze-like place. The wind had dropped, or else it was so cut up among the narrow thoroughfares which we now were threading, that I heard it not ; but the rain fell more heavily than before, and I began to think that any shelter would be desirable, until some more advanced hour of the morning should enable me to procure some easy means of transit homewards through tne moist streets.

And yet now that I was out of the shadow of that huge building, which seemed to have thrown a halo of romance across my spirit, 1 began to revolve in my mind the imprudence 1 was guilty of in promising to accompany a total stranger to his home. It was true that the poor deformed little creature who was flitting before me through the miry, kennel-looking thoroughfares could have but little powers of mischief; but Heaven knows what more sinewy confederates he might nave. AU that 1 had heard of midnight murders — of assassinations of unwary passengers — of heedless people decoyed into dens of crime, and then slaughtered perhaps for the mere value of their apparel, or because it would be dangerous, even when disappointed of booty, to let them go again, flashed across my imagination ; so that when the little old man suddenly paused in an extremely dark corner of the market, I felt half inclined to give up the idea of accom panying him further.

" This is my home," he cried. I glanced at the place, and saw that it was a butcher's shop, for there were all the insignia of the trade, in the shape of huge hooks and benches for the meat to rest upon. "How!" I said; " are you in this trade ?" " No," he cried ; " but this is one of the oldest shops in the market. When NEWGATE. 8 business was not near so great as now it is, and London not the leviathan it has become, the butchers would cast the offal from their slaughter-houses into, the cellars beneath these places. It is a practice long since abandoned, and the wealthy man who owns this place, out of the abundance of his benevolence, allows the poor crippled beggar a refuge in the deserted offal cellar, which other wise were tenantless. Follow me !" He seemed now to have no manner of hesitation whatever, but to consider the point as quite settled regarding my accompanying him.

Had he doubted, I should have held back, but somehow or another, by his own confidence, he hurried me on, and I found myself following him down a most unpleasant flight of steps, for each one had a prodigious slope downwards, before I had time to think again of what I was about. Indeed these stairs were so ingeniously con structed, that when you commenced descending them, you were in a manner compelled to go all the way, from the impetus which the first two or three gave you. *___.. ... .... .. ... .... . ...... . .. __. _.. f_ " Stop I" cried the old cripple, in a shrill voice, " I'll get you a light ; there's a deep hole somewhere about here ; the remains of some old well, 1 think." " Good God !" I said, "why did you not mention that before _" "Time enough! time enough!" he muttered, and presently I heard him striking a light, and as the showers of sparks fell upon the tinder, I caught strange, spectral-looking glances at bis face.

I dared not move, for I had a whole some fear of the old well before my eyes, and right glad I was when I saw that he had procured a light, and the strange cavernous-looking place in which I was became unfolded to my gaze. 1 don't know why I should have thought so, but I had got a notion in my head that the offal cellar was small and mean iu its proportions. This was a great mistake. I found its roof massively arched, and the feeble rays of the candle which the old eripple held above his head, were all insufficient to penetrate into its deepest recesses. " Yeu can come in safety now," he said. " You are welcome. Is it not a splendid place ? Saw you ever the like ? Well suited either for the quick or the dead ! A word or two in your ear. See you yon walls, partly of flints, and partly of bricks?"

" I do not yet," I said, " for my eyes are not sufficiently accustomed to the place to enable me to see so far." " Come closer, come closer," he said, and hopping along by the assistance of his crutch in the peculiar mode of progress which belonged to him, he led the way to the further end of the offal cellar. I followed him very quickly, sor I got over my fears upon finding that we were alone, so that when he suddenly turned, which he did, and held up the light, I nearly fell over him, and the rays dazzled my eyes for a moment. " Ah ! ah !" he said, " I thought I should not be deceived ! I don't like every one ; but you have my kind of face." " Thank'ee," I said, and I thought the compliment a dubious one at the moment he uttered it. " Look !" he said, as he swung round on his crutch, and held the light towards the wall.

" Look ! we share that between us." "Share what?" I said. "That wall, and the low, arched door, way you see, once built up, but which I have rescued, and brought again to human observance ; we share it between us." " Very good," I said ; " but I am very willing to give Up my moiety." " Bah ! bah !" he cried, with a fretfulness incidental to such creatures. " I meant not you ; Newgate and I share it between us. This is my offal cellar— my home— my palace of thought. It will be my tomb ! On the other side is Newgate, sor we are exactly at the back of that mansion of despair. Think you the secrets of that prison-house lie upon its surface to meet the gaze of any casual visitant? Think you you have seen Newgate when you have strolled through its whitened, ventilated walls, preceded by an obsequious official?

Do you NEWGATE. 9 know one of its secrets — one of its mysteries ? Is there aught to carry you back to the past, and make you familiar with the human hearts that from time to time have beat within its walls ? No ! the romance of the old prison has departed. It may be better — perchance it is — but time was when within those walls truth, far stranger than those wildest fictions which imagination pictures to the most discursive thinker, could be found. Oppression has there raised its gigantic head, remorse has shrieked its shriek of agony, the suicide has taken his last shuddering look upon that stony fragment of the world, to which he was Seepage IS. to bid adieu for ever ! Innocent hearts have broken with the worse than agony of hopelessness ! The audacious, bold libertine — the cringing, shrieking wretch — the beautiful — the brave — the true — the callous — vicious— and the selfish, have alike aroused the melancholy echoes of the ancient pile!

Look at me! old, wretched, and despised ! yet am 1 the living chronicle of those things which have been ! No. 2. NEWGATE. Newgate, I know you— I knew you In your pride of power I I knew you in your inquisitorial moods! I knew you when the voice of sweet humanity has not appealed to you in vain! Through the vista of years long past have I viewed you ! In your social relations to the vast herd of humanity, among which you are centered. Yes, I— even I— the cripple— the beggar— the felon's father— he who has taken the hangman's cord from the neck of his own child— a ghastly relic " t i j He paused abruptly, and the crutch dropped from his hold. Before 1 could catch him, for I had to stoop to do so, he had fallen to the earth, and it was a rare chance the candle was not extinguished. " You are ill," 1 said ; " you have worked yourself into a state of excitement.

Let me pray you to be calm ; this is a subject which affects you too strongly to talk upon." " Newgate ! Newgate I" he gasped. " It is my destiny !" There was a strange pallid hue upon his face. I began to get seriously alarmed, and anxiously asked of him if he had no restorative in the place which would aid in his recovery. He merely shook his head, and then, in a faint voice, requested me to raise him from the ground. I did so ; and he said languidly that he was better, and forbade me to leave him. "I have said," he added, "that Newgate is my destiny. I never set foot within what may be called its public walls. That low arched doorway conducts to all its subterraneous cells and gloomiest passages. Places long since hidden from the public gaze, and forgotten even by those who, if they would, might visit them.

A wiser, better policy prevails ; the criminal now is believed to be human ; and men will not, as once they did, cast off their erring fellow because his iniquity has assumed, perchance, a more troublesome shape than theirs. The time is coming when human nature will shrink from the perpetra tion of a great crime to be revenged sor a lesser. In the dreary suture I can see so much. It is not religion that will work the miracle, but pure and holy humanity, that origin of the heart which knows no dogmas and laughs at creeds. Man will know man better, and will judge his fellows more by motives than by acts! and so, Charles, some glimpses of happiness may yet be ours, and when you see your mother, tell her Hush ! hush I who speaks ? Where are we now?" A seeling at the moment came over me that he was dying.

His strange and abrupt transition from the present to some picture of the past which was traced upon his imagination, convinced me that delirium had seized upon him. " You must permit me," I said, "to seek for aid." " Hush, hush I" he cried, " stir not, move not ; like bloodhounds they're upon your path,— they will drag you to a scaffold, but I must first be killed. You see the door that leads to the vaults of Newgate. A strange hiding-place for a convicted felon. It is the blessed sun that blinds my eyes. A fleecy mist is spread between me and the murmuring trees. The wallet ! the wallet ! This way, this way ; support me better." He indicated with his finger a particular corner of the cellar ; and, as he struggled to reach it, I hesitated not to support him in his progress. " Now unhand me," he said ; *' with a blessing and a soigiveness, I bid fare well to all.