Transcriber's Notes: Words in italics in the original are surrounded with _underscores_. Variations in spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the original. Ellipses match the original. A complete list of corrections follows the text. The History and Romance of Crime FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE PRESENT DAY [Illustration: colophon] THE GROLIER SOCIETY LONDON [Illustration: _The Chapel at Newgate_] Chronicles of Newgate FROM THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TO ITS DEMOLITION A SKETCH OF THE TOWER _by_ MAJOR ARTHUR GRIFFITHS _Late Inspector of Prisons in Great Britain_ _Author of "The Mysteries of Police and Crime" "Fifty Years of Public Service," etc._ In Two Volumes Volume II THE GROLIER SOCIETY EDITION NATIONALE Limited to one thousand registered and numbered sets. NUMBER 307 INTRODUCTION The gaol of Newgate may be taken as the type of all the early prisons, the physical expression of manifold neglect and mismanagement from the thirteenth century down to our own times. The case of all prisoners in England was desperate, their sufferings heartrending, their treatment an indelible disgrace to a nation claiming to be civilized. The place of durance was sometimes underground, a dungeon, or subterranean cellar, into which the prisoners were lowered, to fight with rats for the meagre pittance of food thrown to them through a trap-door. These terrible _oubliettes_ were too often damp and noisome, half a foot deep in water, or with an open sewer running through the centre of the floor. They had no chimneys, no fire-place, no barrack beds; the wretched inmates huddled together for warmth upon heaps of filthy rags or bundles of rotten straw reeking with foul exhalations. There was not the slightest attempt at ventilation, as we understand the word. The windows, when they existed, were seldom if ever opened, nor the doors; the spaces within the prison walls were generally too limited to allow of daily exercise, and the prisoners were thus kept continuously under lock and key. Water, another necessary of life, was doled out in the scantiest quantities, too small for proper ablutions or cleansing purposes, and hardly sufficient to assuage thirst. John Howard, the great philanthropist, tells us of one prison where the daily allowance of water was only three pints per head, and even this was dependent upon the good will of the keepers, who brought it or not, as they felt disposed.