The Works of William Harrison Ainsworth

by William Harrison Ainsworth

  “Mother!” cried Jack, unable to endure this agonizing scene longer. “Don’t you know me, mother?”

  “Ah!” shrieked Mrs. Sheppard. “What’s that? — Jack’s voice!”

  “It is,” replied her son.

  “The ceiling is breaking! the floor is opening! he is coming to me!” cried the unhappy woman.

  “He stands before you,” rejoined her son.

  “Where?” she cried. “I can’t see him. Where is he?”

  “Here,” answered Jack.

  “Are you his ghost, then?”

  “No — no,” answered Jack. “I am your most unhappy son.”

  “Let me touch you, then; let me feel if you are really flesh and blood,” cried the poor maniac, creeping towards him on all fours.

  Jack did not advance to meet her. He could not move; but stood like one stupified, with his hands clasped together, and eyes almost starting out of their sockets, fixed upon his unfortunate parent.

  “Come to me!” cried the poor maniac, who had crawled as far as the chain would permit her,— “come to me!” she cried, extending her thin arm towards him.

  Jack fell on his knees beside her.

  “Who are you?” inquired Mrs. Sheppard, passing her hands over his face, and gazing at him with a look that made him shudder.

  “Your son,” replied Jack,— “your miserable, repentant son.”

  “It is false,” cried Mrs. Sheppard. “You are not. Jack was not half your age when he died. They buried him in Willesden churchyard after the robbery.”

  “Oh, God!” cried Jack, “she does not know me. Mother — dear mother!” he added, clasping her in his arms, “Look at me again.”

  “Off!” she exclaimed, breaking from his embrace with a scream. “Don’t touch me. I’ll be quiet. I’ll not speak of Jack or Jonathan. I won’t dig their graves with my nails. Don’t strip me quite. Leave me my blanket! I’m very cold at night. Or, if you must take off my clothes, don’t dash cold water on my head. It throbs cruelly.”

  “Horror!” cried Jack.

  “Don’t scourge me,” she cried, trying to hide herself in the farthest corner of the cell. “The lash cuts to the bone. I can’t bear it. Spare me, and I’ll be quiet — quiet — quiet!”

  “Mother!” said Jack, advancing towards her.

  “Off!” she cried with a prolonged and piercing shriek. And she buried herself beneath the straw, which she tossed above her head with the wildest gestures.

  “I shall kill her if I stay longer,” muttered her son, completely terrified.

  While he was considering what would be best to do, the poor maniac, over whose bewildered brain another change had come, raised her head from under the straw, and peeping round the room, asked in a low voice, “If they were gone?”

  “Who?” inquired Jack.

  “The nurses,” she answered.

  “Do they treat you ill?” asked her son.

  “Hush!” she said, putting her lean fingers to her lips. “Hush! — come hither, and I’ll tell you.”

  Jack approached her.

  “Sit beside me,” continued Mrs. Sheppard. “And, now I’ll tell you what they do. Stop! we must shut the door, or they’ll catch us. See!” she added, tearing the rag from her head,— “I had beautiful black hair once. But they cut it all off.”

  “I shall go mad myself if I listen to her longer,” said Jack, attempting to rise. “I must go.”

  “Don’t stir, or they’ll chain you to the wall,” said his mother detaining him. “Now, tell me why they brought you here?”

  “I came to see you, dear mother!” answered Jack.

  “Mother!” she echoed,— “mother! why do you call me by that name?”

  “Because you are my mother.”

  “What!” she exclaimed, staring eagerly in his face. “Are you my son? Are you Jack?”

  “I am,” replied Jack. “Heaven be praised she knows me at last.”

  “Oh, Jack!” cried his mother, falling upon his neck, and covering him with kisses.

  “Mother — dear mother!” said Jack, bursting into tears.

  “You will never leave me,” sobbed the poor woman, straining him to her breast.

  “Never — never!”

  The words were scarcely pronounced, when the door was violently thrown open, and two men appeared at it. They were Jonathan Wild and Quilt Arnold.

  “Ah!” exclaimed Jack, starting to his feet.

  “Just in time,” said the thief-taker. “You are my prisoner, Jack.”

  “You shall take my life first,” rejoined Sheppard.

  And, as he was about to put himself into a posture of defence, his mother clasped him in her arms.

  “They shall not harm you, my love!” she exclaimed.

  The movement was fatal to her son. Taking advantage of his embarrassed position, Jonathan and his assistant rushed upon him, and disarmed him.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Sheppard,” cried the thief-taker, as he slipped a pair of handcuffs over Jack’s wrists, “for the help you have given us in capturing your son. Without you, we might have had some trouble.”

  Aware apparently in some degree, of the mistake she had committed, the poor maniac sprang towards him with frantic violence, and planted her long nails in his cheek.

  “Keep off, you accursed jade!” roared Jonathan, “ — off, I say, or—” And he struck her a violent blow with his clenched hand.

  The miserable woman staggered, uttered a deep groan, and fell senseless on the straw.

  “Devil!” cried Jack; “that blow shall cost you your life.”

  “It’ll not need to be repeated, at all events,” rejoined Jonathan, looking with a smile of malignant satisfaction at the body. “And, now, — to Newgate.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER IX. OLD NEWGATE.

  At the beginning of the twelfth century, — whether in the reign of Henry the First, or Stephen is uncertain, — a fifth gate was added to the four principal entrances of the city of London; then, it is almost needless to say, surrounded by ramparts, moats, and other defences. This gate, called Newgate, “as being latelier builded than the rest,” continued, for upwards of three hundred years, to be used as a place of imprisonment for felons and trespassers; at the end of which time, having grown old, ruinous, and “horribly loathsome,” it was rebuilt and enlarged by the executors of the renowned Sir Richard Whittington, the Lord Mayor of London: whence it afterwards obtained amongst a certain class of students, whose examinations were conducted with some strictness at the Old Bailey, and their highest degrees taken at Hyde-park-corner, the appellation of Whittington’s College, or, more briefly, the Whit. It may here be mentioned that this gate, destined to bequeath its name — a name, which has since acquired a terrible significance, — to every successive structure erected upon its site, was granted, in 1400, by charter by Henry the Sixth to the citizens of London, in return for their royal services, and thenceforth became the common jail to that city and the county of Middlesex. Nothing material occurred to Newgate, until the memorable year 1666, when it was utterly destroyed by the Great Fire. It is with the building raised after this direful calamity that our history has to deal.

  Though by no means so extensive or commodious as the modern prison, Old Newgate was a large and strongly-built pile. The body of the edifice stood on the south side of Newgate Street, and projected at the western extremity far into the area opposite Saint Sepulchre’s Church. One small wing lay at the north of the gate, where Giltspur Street Compter now stands; and the Press Yard, which was detached from the main building, was situated at the back of Phoenix Court. The south or principal front, looking, down the Old Bailey, and not upon it, as is the case of the present structure, with its massive walls of roughened freestone, — in some places darkened by the smoke, in others blanched, by exposure to the weather, — its heavy projecting cornice, its unglazed doubly-grated windows, its gloomy porch decorated with fetters, and defended by an enormous iron door, had a stern and striking effect.
Over the Lodge, upon a dial was inscribed the appropriate motto, “Venio sicut fur.” The Gate, which crossed Newgate Street, had a wide arch for carriages, and a postern, on the north side, for foot-passengers. Its architecture was richly ornamental, and resembled the style of a triumphal entrance to a capital, rather than a dungeon having battlements and hexagonal towers, and being adorned on the western side with a triple range of pilasters of the Tuscan order, amid the intercolumniations of which were niches embellished with statues. The chief of these was a figure of Liberty, with a cat at her feet, in allusion to the supposed origin of the fortunes of its former founder, Sir Richard Whittington. On the right of the postern against the wall was affixed a small grating, sustaining the debtor’s box; and any pleasure which the passer-by might derive from contemplating the splendid structure above described was damped at beholding the pale faces and squalid figures of the captives across the bars of its strongly-grated windows. Some years after the date of this history, an immense ventilator was placed at the top of the Gate, with the view of purifying the prison, which, owing to its insufficient space and constantly-crowded state, was never free from that dreadful and contagious disorder, now happily unknown, the jail-fever. So frightful, indeed, were the ravages of this malady, to which debtors and felons were alike exposed, that its miserable victims were frequently carried out by cart-loads, and thrown into a pit in the burial-ground of Christ-church, without ceremony.

  Old Newgate was divided into three separate prisons, — the Master’s Side, the Common Side, and the Press Yard. The first of these, situated a the south of the building, with the exception of one ward over the gateway, was allotted to the better class of debtors, whose funds enabled them to defray their chamber-rent, fees, and garnish. The second, comprising the bulk of the jail, and by many degrees worse in point of accommodation, having several dismal and noisome wards under ground, was common both to debtors and malefactors, — an association little favourable to the morals or comforts of the former, who, if they were brought there with any notions of honesty, seldom left with untainted principles. The last, — in all respects the best and airiest of the three, standing, as has been before observed, in Phoenix Court, at the rear of the main fabric, — was reserved for state-offenders, and such persons as chose to submit to the extortionate demands of the keeper: from twenty to five hundred pounds premium, according to the rank and means of the applicant, in addition to a high weekly rent, being required for accommodation in this quarter. Some excuse for this rapacity may perhaps be found in the fact, that five thousand pounds was paid for the purchase of the Press Yard by Mr. Pitt, the then governor of Newgate. This gentleman, tried for high treason, in 1716, on suspicion of aiding Mr. Forster, the rebel general’s escape, but acquitted, reaped a golden harvest during the occupation of his premises by the Preston rebels, when a larger sum was obtained for a single chamber than (in the words of a sufferer on the occasion) “would have paid the rent of the best house in Saint James’s Square or Piccadilly for several years.”

  Nor was this all. Other, and more serious impositions, inasmuch as they affected a poorer class of persons, were practised by the underlings of the jail. On his first entrance, a prisoner, if unable or unwilling to comply with the exactions of the turnkeys, was thrust into the Condemned Hold with the worst description of criminals, and terrified by threats into submission. By the old regulations, the free use of strong liquors not being interdicted, a tap-house was kept in the Lodge, and also in a cellar on the Common Side, — under the superintendence of Mrs. Spurling, formerly, it may be remembered, the hostess of the Dark House at Queenhithe, — whence wine, ale, and brandy of inferior quality were dispensed, in false measures, and at high prices, throughout the prison, which in noise and debauchery rivalled, if it did not surpass, the lowest tavern.

  The chief scene of these disgusting orgies, — the cellar, just referred to, — was a large low-roofed vault, about four feet below the level of the street, perfectly dark, unless when illumined by a roaring fire, and candles stuck in pyramidal lumps of clay, with a range of butts and barrels at one end, and benches and tables at the other, where the prisoners, debtors, and malefactors male and female, assembled as long as their money lasted, and consumed the time in drinking, smoking, and gaming with cards and dice. Above was a spacious hall, connected with it by a flight of stone steps, at the further end of which stood an immense grated door, called in the slang of the place “The Jigger,” through the bars of which the felons in the upper wards were allowed to converse with their friends, or if they wished to enter the room, or join the revellers below, they were at liberty to do so, on payment of a small fine. Thus, the same system of plunder was everywhere carried on. The jailers robbed the prisoners: the prisoners robbed one another.

  Two large wards were situated in the Gate; one of which, the Stone Ward, appropriated to the master debtors, looked towards Holborn; the other called the Stone Hall, from a huge stone standing in the middle of it, upon which the irons of criminals under sentence of death were knocked off previously to their being taken to the place of execution, faced Newgate Street. Here the prisoners took exercise; and a quaint, but striking picture has been left of their appearance when so engaged, by the author of the English Rogue. “At my first being acquainted with the place,” says this writer, in the ‘Miseries of a Prison,’ “the prisoners, methought, walking up and down the Stone Hall, looked like so many wrecks upon the sea. Here the ribs of a thousand pounds beating against the Needles — those dangerous rocks, credulity here floated, to and fro, silks, stuffs, camlets, and velvet, without giving place to each other, according to their dignity; here rolled so many pipes of canary, whose bungholes lying open, were so damaged that the merchant may go hoop for his money,” A less picturesque, but more truthful, and, therefore, more melancholy description of the same scene, is furnished by the shrewd and satirical Ned Ward, who informs us, in the “Delectable History of Whittington’s College,” that “When the prisoners are disposed to recreate themselves with walking, they go up into a spacious room, called the Stone Hall; where, when you see them taking a turn together, it would puzzle one to know which is the gentleman, which the mechanic, and which the beggar, for they are all suited in the same garb of squalid poverty, making a spectacle of more pity than executions; only to be out at the elbows is in fashion here, and a great indecorum not to be threadbare.”

  In an angle of the Stone Hall was the Iron Hold, a chamber containing a vast assortment of fetters and handcuffs of all weights and sizes. Four prisoners, termed “The Partners,” had charge of this hold. Their duty was to see who came in, or went out; to lock up, and open the different wards; to fetter such prisoners as were ordered to be placed in irons; to distribute the allowances of provision; and to maintain some show of decorum; for which latter purpose they were allowed to carry whips and truncheons. When any violent outrage was committed, — and such matters were of daily, sometimes hourly, occurrence, — a bell, the rope of which descended into the hall, brought the whole of the turnkeys to their assistance. A narrow passage at the north of the Stone Hall led to the Bluebeard’s room of this enchanted castle, a place shunned even by the reckless crew who were compelled to pass it. It was a sort of cooking-room, with an immense fire-place flanked by a couple of cauldrons, and was called Jack Ketch’s Kitchen, because the quarters of persons executed for treason were there boiled by the hangman in oil, pitch, and tar, before they were affixed on the city gates, or on London Bridge. Above this revolting spot was the female debtor’s ward; below it a gloomy cell, called Tangier; and, lower still, the Stone Hold, a most terrible and noisome dungeon, situated underground, and unvisited by a single ray of daylight. Built and paved with stone, without beds, or any other sort of protection from the cold, this dreadful hole, accounted the most dark and dismal in the prison, was made the receptacle of such miserable wretches as could not pay the customary fees. Adjoining it was the Lower Ward,— “Though, in what degree of latitude it was situated,” observes Ned
Ward, “I cannot positively demonstrate, unless it lay ninety degrees beyond the North Pole; for, instead of being dark there but half a year, it is dark all the year round.” It was only a shade better than the Stone Hold. Here were imprisoned the fines; and, “perhaps,” adds the before-cited authority, “if he behaved himself, an outlawed person might creep in among them.” Ascending the gate once more on the way back, we find over the Stone Hall another large room, called Debtors’ Hall, facing Newgate Street, with “very good air and light.” A little too much of the former, perhaps; as the windows being unglazed, the prisoners were subjected to severe annoyance from the weather and easterly winds.

  Of the women felons’ rooms nothing has yet been said. There were two. One called Waterman’s Hall, a horrible place adjoining the postern under the gate, whence, through a small barred aperture, they solicited alms from the passengers: the other, a large chamber, denominated My Lady’s Hold, was situated in the highest part of the jail, at the northern extremity. Neither of these wards had beds, and the unfortunate inmates were obliged to take their rest on the oaken floor. The condition of the rooms was indescribably filthy and disgusting; nor were the habits of the occupants much more cleanly. In other respects, they were equally indecorous and offensive. “It is with no small concern,” writes an anonymous historian of Newgate, “that I am obliged to observe that the women in every ward of this prison are exceedingly worse than the worst of the men not only in respect to their mode of living, but more especially as to their conversation, which, to their great shame, is as profane and wicked as hell itself can possibly be.”

  There were two Condemned Holds, — one for each sex. That for the men lay near the Lodge, with which it was connected by a dark passage. It was a large room, about twenty feet long and fifteen broad, and had an arched stone roof. In fact, it had been anciently the right hand postern under the gate leading towards the city. The floor was planked with oak, and covered with iron staples, hooks, and ring-bolts, with heavy chains attached to them. There was only one small grated window in this hold, which admitted but little light.