Chronicles of Newgate, Vol. 1: From the twelfth to the eighteenth centuryGriffiths, Arthur
History
Chronicles of Newgate, Vol. 1: From the twelfth to the eighteenth century
Griffiths, Arthur
Criminals -- Great Britain; Newgate (Prison : London, England); Prisons -- England; Punishment -- Great Britain
the other lords and noblemen following with haltered horses, bound like
common malefactors, and reviled and hooted.
Those for Newgate brought up the rear. They were civilly and humanely
treated on arrival there. The prison officers received them under the
gateway, and no sooner were the prisoners alighted from their horses
and their names called over, than their cords were immediately cut from
their arms and shoulders, and refreshment of wine brought to them.
"Their number was about seventy," says our author. "And amongst them in
particular I could not but cast my eye upon one Mr. Archibald Bolair,
who in the sixteenth year of his age was said to have signalized his
courage, and have displayed as much skill and dexterity in feats
of arms in the battle of Preston as the oldest commander of them,
Brigadier Macintosh himself, though trained up in warlike affairs, not
excepted. What induced me to distinguish him from the rest was the
fearless way of expression he made use of when the clerk of the prison
cut his cords. 'By my soul, man,' said he, 'you should not have done
that, but kept it whole that I might either have been hanged with it,
or have it to show, if I escaped the gallows, how I had been led like a
dog in a string for twice two miles together.' Mr. Bolair then inquired
feelingly for his followers, who had been brought so many miles from
home out of observance of his orders, and he was anxious that they
should not want." Young Mr. Bolair was told off to the same room as our
author, in which two additional beds were placed, for the convenience
of the keeper, who by four beds in one room, filled each with three
tenants, got £6 per week, besides the sums paid as entrance money.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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